Taste Read online

It took a while for my good-girl sister to get it. “Oh, you mean… Sasha!” Serena’s cheeks went pink.

  Sasha laughed. “Well, it sounded like a very satisfied moan.”

  “It was! But I’m confident it was to do with a very satisfying chocolate mousse and nothing your overactive mind would otherwise believe.”

  “Isn’t it you with the overactive mind?” Sasha asked.

  “No. Yes. I mean… oh you know what I mean!” She glanced at the floor.

  “Don’t worry, I’m just messing with you!” Sasha slid an arm around her.

  “Come on, back to business.” Talia cleared her throat. “I felt the texture of the chocolate mousse, though I didn’t know at the time it was chocolate. Felt nice. What about you Savvy?”

  “I saw it on the spoon, then it went toward my mouth, then nothing. Bummer.” She turned to me. “Can you make some?”

  “I’ll try tomorrow.”

  She gave me a thumbs-up.

  “I also saw paper and a pen around the same time. No idea what that means.”

  Talia jotted it down, then exhaled deeply. “Okay, now the other vision.” She looked up from the journal and waited for each of us. I knew she didn’t want to reveal yet what she’d felt.

  I relayed the experience of my saliva tsunami and the tastes associated with it.

  “Hang on, technically you would have felt the saliva, so how is that possible if Talia has the sense of touch, not you?” Serena tapped a finger against her chin.

  I shrugged. “I could still kind of taste it, the saliva. It’s hard to explain, but my taste visions seem to be a mixture of texture and the actual taste of something. And I do get a kind of—saliva overload before tasting something. Sorry, TMI. I guess the same way we can each feel each other’s hands during our visions.”

  Talia tapped her pen on the paper. Maybe that was the prediction Savvy had seen, Talia getting impatient with writing down our vision.

  “Well, I heard some muffled voices, panicking. Like, freaking out and not knowing what to do. Someone said ‘Call 911’ and someone else was gasping for breath.”

  Sasha made a sound that was a cross between a sigh and a fearful groan. Not again, she was probably thinking. Not more people in danger, and please not one of us again. “I could just smell food, like dinner. It wasn’t bad or anything. But then there was a scent of something sort of… bitter, maybe? I dunno. Can you smell bitter things? It wasn’t like anything I’ve really smelled before, so maybe it was more of a symbolic scent.”

  Ah, like mine to do with taste. “So like it meant something bad?”

  “I guess. Though, I also smelled a hint of aftershave.”

  “Dad’s?” Savannah asked with urgency.

  “No. Something cheaper, sort of older.” Sasha glanced at Savvy. “Did you see an old guy?”

  “I think I was the old guy. I mean, in his point of view.” She paced the room, her eyes going distant. “I could see old hands in front of me like they were mine, wrinkled and a bit hairy. But they went all stiff and sort of curled.”

  “Like in a seizure?” asked Talia, her pen poised above the paper and shaking slightly.

  Savannah nodded. “Probably. I think there were faces around too, but they were blurry, and then everything kind of went black.” Her eyes cleared, and she looked at Talia. “Oh, and I saw a plate break, just before the hand thing.”

  “Oh, I heard that!” Serena’s finger shot up like she’d had a great idea. “Sorry, I forgot until now.”

  Talia jotted notes. And when no one else added any more clues, she took a deep breath and looked up. “My tongue was really sore, like I’d bitten it. Still hurts a bit.” She moved her lips around and scrunched up her eyes.

  “That can happen in seizures,” Serena stated, and I remembered the taste of blood I’d had in my mouth. “Maybe the person in the vision is an epileptic. Do we know any epileptics?”

  I shrugged, and the others shook their heads.

  “Anyway, I also felt very tense, rigid, like my body stiffened up and I could hardly breathe.”

  I sat next to my twin on the bed and lightly touched her shoulder.

  She looked at me. “I could feel the saliva too. Like it was frothing.”

  “Eww!” Sasha turned away.

  “Definitely sounds like a seizure.” Serena peered at Talia’s notes.

  “So then what are we supposed to do?” I asked. “How would we even stop a seizure?”

  “Hey,” Serena said. “Did you know there are some specially trained dogs that some epileptics use that can sense when a seizure is coming so they can warn the person to get somewhere safe where they won’t hurt themselves?”

  “Are you saying we need to be like those dogs and warn someone?”

  Serena shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe. If we can find out who the person is and where it might take place, maybe we can.”

  Silence followed. I knew we were all thinking, But how?

  “Anyway, we’ve written down the clues, maybe we’ll get more later.” Talia stood and stretched. “I think I’ll go for a walk and get some fresh air.”

  “Me too,” said Savannah. “I might walk over to the gym and see what Riley’s up to.”

  “Um…working?” said Sasha. “Maybe you should get a job there too so you can spend 99.9 percent of your time together instead of 99.5 percent.” She grinned.

  “Speaking of jobs,” I said. “Time for me to get one. Sasha?” I eyed her and gestured to the closet.

  “Oh yes, let Mission Leo begin!”

  “Mission Job, Sasha. Mission Job!”

  She scoffed. “Whatever you say, sis. Whatever you say.”

  Chapter 4

  As I paused outside Harborside at 4:15 p.m. (not too early; professionally early), I wished I could have that saliva tsunami back again. My mouth was as dry as the cake Sasha once tried to bake for my birthday. I worried that if I spoke my tongue might get permanently stuck to the roof of my mouth. I tried to moisten my lips, but as soon as I did they dried up again. God, I was going to sound like an idiot! A mumbling, bumbling, dry-mouthed idiot. “Hi, Leo, how are you?” would become: “Thigh, Theo, thow are thoo?”

  I wished I could just dash in, throw him a batch of my cupcakes, then make a run for it and never have to speak to him ever.

  A nervous laugh shot from my mouth, and a man seated at a table near the door looked at me strangely.

  Don’t mind me, old sir. I’ll just stand here outside the restaurant frozen in place from nervous paralysis and laugh out loud for no reason at regular intervals.

  I placed my hand on the door. Okay, time to get this over with. As I pushed open the door, I caught the glance of the old man at the table and gave him a small, I’m-not-really-crazy smile. He smiled back.

  Old sir. Old guy. Vision.

  I looked at his hands. They were wrinkled and hairy.

  Oh no! Is he the one who’s going to have a seizure?

  Savvy said she saw a plate breaking. He had a plate!

  Well, duh, Tamara, he’s in a restaurant.

  Instead of hovering outside the door, I was now hovering near the man, who now probably thought I was some kind of stalker obsessed with watching people eat. His half-eaten ginormous slice of cake toppled over sideways, and I jumped. A sign of things to come? Was he going to be like that half-eaten cake and go splat into a pile of whipped cream?

  “Are you all right, miss?” he asked.

  “Yes. Sorry,” I said, glancing briefly toward the kitchen to check if Leo could see me. I couldn’t see him. “It’s just I ah, have a job interview. I’m a bit nervous.” I crossed my fingers in front of my body in a show of hopefulness.

  “Miss, I’ve been to my fair share of job interviews over my seventy-eight years, and you’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, using his fork to rescue the fallen cake from its creamy grave. “Just imagine the interviewer naked and you’ll be less nervous. They’re only human, like you.”

  I almost choked on my ton
gue. My eyes teetered on the edges of their sockets.

  Naked? Leo? Oh my God!

  If I did that my nerves would probably skyrocket to Mars, and I’d forget my own name.

  “Um, thanks.” I lowered my burning face, then looked up, remembering the vision. “Seventy-eight, huh? You look pretty good for your age. No nasty health conditions then?”

  He eyed me curiously. “Not many girls your age care about the health status of an old guy like me. That’s very kind of you.” He smiled. “All is in good working order.”

  Phew. “No epilepsy or anything?”

  “Epilepsy?”

  “Yeah, um, it’s just that um, my grandmother has it.” She didn’t. “So I just wondered, you know.”

  He nodded slowly, like he was trying to understand why that would make it relevant to him. “No, unless I’m going to develop it later, no epilepsy, thank the heavens above.”

  I didn’t normally worry like this. I was a happy-go-lucky, go-with-the-flow, life-is-great-apart-from-our-father’s-disappearance kinda girl.

  “I think someone is waiting for you,” the man said, and I turned to see Leo Pearce standing at the doorway to the kitchen, his face like a perfect sculpture.

  Gulp.

  Don’t picture him naked. Don’t picture him naked!

  I smiled goodbye to the man, hopefully not a permanent goodbye, and walked toward Leo, who somehow had morphed from a chef-outfit-wearing guy to a nothing-but-a-towel-wearing guy. Imagination, stop it!

  “Hi, Leo, how are you?” Did I say that out loud? Did I say it with a lisp and my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth? Should I say it again to make sure?

  “Hi, Tamara. Come through.” He gestured into the kitchen.

  Phew.

  I walked through, and a variety of aromas greeted me. Even though they were all merging into each other I could still differentiate some of them, though I’m sure Sasha would have been better at it than me, even though she wasn’t as knowledgeable about ingredients as I was. There was garlic, lemon, and turmeric, and faint hints of honey, vanilla, and cocoa.

  There was also something else, a warm, male scent as I brushed past Leo and his outstretched arm.

  White surfaces and shiny stainless steel appliances gleamed everywhere, light reflecting off them and into my eyes. Savannah wouldn’t be able to cope in this environment. But for me, it was heaven. A couple of staff glided around effortlessly like smooth little robots, doing their assigned tasks. Steam seeped out like winter mist from under the lid of a pot. One of the staff members lifted the lid, and the steam billowed up. He stirred the pot then replaced the lid.

  “So this is where the magic happens, huh?” I asked Leo. I glanced at him and noticed him looking at me. With a sense of curiosity? In wonder?

  “I guess you could call it that,” he replied.

  He led me to a small office at the back and gestured to a chair. I sat as straight and eagerly and professionally as I could.

  “I take it you like food.” Leo sat at a forty-five-degree angle to me, one of his elbows resting on the small desk beside him. “I mean, cooking. Not food. Well, food, obviously, but cooking the food.”

  Oh God, I could just die from the adorableness! Who would have thought mysterious, brooding Leo Pearce had a cute and slightly awkward way about him. He had obviously thought his remark sounded like he was saying I was overweight or something, though I knew what he meant. “It’s okay,” I said. “Yes, I do like cooking. And food.” I smiled. Hey, this isn’t as hard as I thought it’d be!

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. Not that you’d be cooking in the position we have available, but…”

  “I’d enjoy the atmosphere.”

  “Yes.” He picked up a pen and tapped it on a sheet of paper, which I was guessing had my name on it. “So, have you had a job before?”

  “No.” I cleared my throat. “This is my first interview.” Could he tell?

  “I’ll be kind then.” A small smile appeared, and my eyes connected with his briefly. His dark, deep, beautiful eyes I could look into for hours and probably become hypnotized by.

  “Thanks.” I cleared my throat again. What was with that? I didn’t actually need to. My throat just did it.

  “And what made you want to apply for the job?”

  You.

  More throat clearing. “Riley told me about it and I thought it would be a great way to get some experience in a professional kitchen while also earning some money.” He nodded, jotted something down, then I added, “I want to be a chef.”

  He looked at me. “Cool. So, you don’t aspire to be the best kitchen hand in history and work the job till retirement?”

  A little chuckle floated from my mouth. So he had his brother’s sarcastic wit. I think I was learning more about him in this interview than he was about me. “Not exactly, sorry to say!”

  “It’s okay, none of our applicants have expressed an interest in that as of yet.” He adjusted his position in his chair, but ended up in the same position as before. It occurred to me then that maybe he was slightly nervous about conducting these interviews. Maybe this day was his first time being an interviewer, just as it was my first time being interviewed.

  “Any of them want to be chefs?” I asked, then regretted it. It was none of my business, and who was I to ask him questions? Nice one, Tam.

  “You’re the only one.” When he said this he locked eyes with me again, and it was like a laser—eye to eye, on target, no escape. My mind drifted for a second, and I forgot what I’d asked and what he was saying, and didn’t know what to say next.

  This time Leo cleared his throat. “Ah, okay, next question. Oh, actually, I already know the answer.” He studied his paper like he was trying to figure out what to ask next.

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I was going to ask if you had any experience in a kitchen. But since you haven’t had a job, then obviously you haven’t, but I know you’ve had some experience in a home kitchen.”

  My face became warm. “Yep. I mean yes.” Damn, a rule I’d read about doing interviews was to always use proper words, to not be too casual. No “yep” or “nope” or anything unprofessional.

  “You could have your own cooking show one day, who knows?” he said with a small grin.

  I went to brush my hair off my face then remembered it was in a ponytail, so I ran my hand down it instead. “I didn’t know my sister was going to post that video online. So embarrassing.” I shook my head.

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about. I thought it was pretty good.”

  “Thanks.” My face became hotter and hotter. And now my hands needed a towel. And an ice bucket. This was starting to feel like a date instead of an interview. An inappropriate image of Leo walking me out the door at the end of it all and then planting a whopping big kiss on my lips invaded my mind.

  I distracted myself by remembering the old man sitting near the door, and hoped he was okay. “Does everyone who works here have to learn first aid?” I blurted.

  Leo’s eyebrows rose. “First aid? Yes, but not the kitchen hands.”

  “Oh, that’s good. I mean, it would be good to learn it, but I thought I’d make sure just in case.”

  “Sure thing. So, you’re still at school, right, so I take it you’re available afternoons, evenings, and weekends?”

  “Yes. I’m happy to work any day.”

  “That’s good. But don’t worry, we wouldn’t need you every single day—you’d still have some time for a life as well.”

  Was that a small wink? Or did he just have a random eye twitch? Maybe he had something in his eye. Some garlic or turmeric, perhaps.

  “I go straight to the kitchen at home after school, so I might as well go somewhere else and get paid for it!” I hoped I didn’t sound greedy.

  “Makes sense. Though I guess your family will have to put up with making their own food if you’re not at home.”

  “True. Oh well.”

  Leo chuckled. “This
interview is turning out a bit different than the others I’ve done.”

  “It is? Sorry, I hope I haven’t rambled. It’s just… I love food. I love cooking. I’d love to work here.”

  “I understand.” He smiled. “Actually, I’m curious, what’s your favorite food?”

  “My favorite food…?” I tapped my chin with my finger. It varied depending on my mood, but I didn’t want him to think I was moody. Was saying chocolate too girly and predictable? Oh, I know! “Chocolate mousse, I think.”

  Leo’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”

  Oh who cares, might as well be honest. “Depends on the mood I’m in, but at the moment chocolate mousse.”

  Leo shifted in his chair, then he stood.

  Did I offend him in some way? Did he have some chocolate mousse phobia I’d just triggered and now he was going to have a panic attack and tell me to get my crazy chocolate mousse-loving self outta there?

  “Back in a sec.” He dashed out to the kitchen.

  My heart rate rose a little, confused at his response. I crossed my ankles and swung my legs back and forth under the chair.

  He came back in with a small dish and two spoons. I straightened up and peered toward the dish.

  “I’ve just been working on a new recipe, serving it on our updated dessert menu from tonight.”

  A small sample of chocolate mousse sat in the dish. My taste buds tingled, not only from the smooth, creamy sight of it, but from the memory of the vision, too.

  Leo handed me a spoon. “Let me know what you think. Be honest.”

  As if I’d tell him it was bad, even if it was. And anyway, I already had advance proof that it was amazing, but I couldn’t tell him that. I dug the spoon in and scooped up a blob of the mousse, then lifted it to my mouth, slightly self-conscious that Leo’s eyes were on me, but mostly eager to experience the delicious taste and texture again, this time for real. I slid it into my mouth and couldn’t help it; I closed my eyes. “Mmm,” I said as I swirled the taste around. I waited till I’d finished before speaking properly. “This is seriously amazing.” I stuck my spoon up in the air as I spoke, prodding the air.

  “Yeah? You sure? I won’t be offended if you’ve tasted better.”