Earl Grey

I knew there was something different about Jonna the minute she walked into the cafe. I’d had so many lackluster first dates, waited so long to meet someone to fall for. The first time we kissed, it utterly consumed me.

“I love you,” I told her two weeks later, the words surprising me, and my mouth filled with the taste of honey and cream spritzed with lemon.

“That happens,” she said, after she’d stopped kissing me and our giddiness had ebbed.

“Really?” I asked, surprised by my disappointment. It was a novelty I wanted to be ours, and ours alone.

“Just once or twice,” she assured me, taking my hand. “Nothing that lasted.”

There was no reason or one cuisine behind the synesthesia. The next time I said the words, it was velvety chocolate and anise. Then scallops simmered in butter. Then the sweet flesh of roasted chestnuts.

As we went through the phases and motions of our love, she fed me a smorgasbord. Soft cheeses and flowery liqueurs. Umami and freshly baked bread. Sometimes in our passion, love was a heavy korma sauce or the juice of a grilled mushroom cap. Other times, when I held her after a bad dream, it was rose petals spun in sugar. When we woke in the mornings and I kissed her forehead, it was the yolk of an over-easy egg.

In the fervor of our early love, I told Jonna everything. The salty brine of olives after a night out, sticky rice in light miso broth when she nursed me better from the flu. Fried chicken skin rolled in cayenne when I let her tie me up. Bitter stalks of Swiss chard after our first fight.

We spent as much of our time together as we could while still getting by at work, family gatherings, and the ever more infrequent evenings with friends. I practically forgot my own bed, barely saw my roommate, knew the bus routes from her place better than mine.

I put on a few pounds, the weight of a good love, filling like blood and grease from a seared steak. I didn’t tell her, but that was what I tasted after the makeup sex that left us bruised and grinning.

Any recipe can go wrong. Too much sugar; too much salt. Too much heat, or not enough. Dried out. Burnt. Putrefied.

The first time I winced after telling Jonna I loved her, she said, “What?”

I shook my head. “Just ice cream. I didn’t expect the cold.” Strawberry, so freezer-burnt I could taste the ice crystals.

Then it was chalky antacids. A tough cut of sushi. Wilting spinach. Overdone pasta.

I began sleeping at home more, showing up to work early once again. My friends were happy to see me out. My parents asked why I didn’t bring Jonna to Mom’s birthday.

“She’s not feeling well,” I told them. A lie instead of, We’re having a rough time.

We kept trying. There were still moments of crisp apples, hearty stews, sweet nightcaps. But more and more, love rotted on my tongue. I lost my appetite, lost weight, lost my desires—all of them, not just for Jonna.  Unwilling to swallow another curdled I love you, I stopped saying those words all together.

“This isn’t working, and neither of us can fix it,” Jonna told me. It was a cold day after a week apart, and she’d finally invited me back to her place again. We held each other and cried, broken and relieved at the same time.

When I left, she told me, “I still love you.”

“I love you too.” I was hesitant, but there was no decay. Just a soft note of Earl Grey tea.

I went home to unpack the things I’d left at her place. To hibernate and heal through the cold months.

Half a year later, it was late spring. My roommate and I had been cleaning, tossing out all the fouled food in the fridge, making space for new things. I didn’t know if I was ready for a love like Jonna’s again. And maybe that was for the best.

One April afternoon, I held a new lover’s hand as we wandered through their neighborhood, stopping to admire the tulips that had shot up in every color.

“I love you,” I said, twining my fingers in theirs, breathless and a little afraid. I waited. And tasted only saliva and a freshness in the still-chilly air.

© 2021 Jae Steinbacher

About the Author

Jae Steinbacher is a queer nonbinary trans writer and editor. Their fiction has appeared most recently in Voyage YA Journal, Revolute, and Flyway Journal. They are a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop and North Carolina State University’s MFA program. Jae lives in unceded Duwamish territory and works for Clarion West as its workshop coordinator. You can find them on Twitter @JaeSteinbacher.