The First Supper

The door buzzed, a harsh, electric sound that cut through the sizzle of butter in the pan. Emma pulled the pan off the heat and hurried to the intercom.

“Jasper!”

“Ems! You sound surprised! Didn’t think I’d come?” the voice on the other end crackled, laced with a smile she could hear even through the cheap speaker.

“Nah,” she said, pressing the button to unlock the lobby door. “Just didn’t expect YOU to be first.”

A minute later, he was at her door, a bottle of red wine in hand, his grin giving off the distinct energy of a golden retriever who’d somehow taught himself to use the subway. He was wearing a flannel shirt that looked like it cost either eight dollars or eight hundred—with Jasper, you could never tell—and his hair was doing that thing where it appeared to have been styled by a gust of wind and sheer optimism.

“Well, if I’m being honest, I still haven’t reset my clocks for daylight savings and I got my times mixed up…” Jasper trailed off as Emma, already having turned back to the kitchen, shot him a look over her shoulder.

“Daylight savings is next month, you bozo. Also, you were literally looking at your phone when I opened the door. You could just say you made an effort to be here on time,” Emma said, her attention back on the stove. The butter had hit that perfect point—foaming, gone nutty and brown, the thyme crackling in it, the smell filling the narrow kitchen with a warmth that no scented candle could touch.

Jasper, unfazed, began digging around in a drawer for a corkscrew.

“Two drawers to the left. Like literally always,” Emma said without looking.

Jasper located the corkscrew and finally responded, “I wouldn’t want to lie to you.”

She glanced at him, they both smiled, and she rolled her eyes.

The door buzzed again. “Can you get that?” Jasper called to nobody, already on his way, the corkscrew half-twisted into the bottle. He freed the cork with a dramatic tug and a satisfying pop, then pulled the door wide open.

“WELL, LOOK WHO IT IS,” Jasper announced to the hallway with his trademark smirk.

“Olivia?” Emma called from the kitchen.

“And Oliver and Noah,” Olivia’s cheerful voice called back as the trio stepped inside. Olivia entered first, as she always did—a flurry of energy in a cashmere scarf and a smile that could talk you into anything. She was carrying a small paper bag that smelled like something expensive and floral. Oliver followed a half-step behind, already looking for somewhere unobtrusive to stand, and Noah brought up the rear, shrugging off his jacket.

“Welcome, welcome,” Jasper continued, playing the role of host in someone else’s apartment. “I’ve just opened a very exclusive vintage that needs a bit of time to open up. Can I get you anything else to drink while we wait?”

“Liv, I’ve got some deviled eggs in the fridge. Can you take them out and sprinkle some paprika on them?” Emma called out, cutting through Jasper’s performance.

“On it!” Olivia said, brushing past Jasper to help Emma in the kitchen. She set down her paper bag—candles, Emma noticed, her own, from the small batch Marcus stocked at his shop on Bedford Ave, the ones that smelled like cedar and blood orange—and opened the fridge. She pulled the eggs out, dusted them with paprika, and arranged them on a plate with the instinctive precision of someone who’d once seen a magazine spread on appetizer presentation and had never recovered. Then she pulled out her phone and snapped a photo.

“These are gorgeous, Ems. I’m posting this.” Olivia was already typing. “Seriously, you should let me set you up with some private dinner gigs. I know at least three people who would pay real money for this.”

“Liv—”

“I’m just saying. You’re too good to not be cooking for people.” She hit post and slid the plate onto the coffee table with a flourish.

“Rude, but okay,” Jasper sniffed. “How ‘bout you, gents?”

“How about a glass of that $15 bottle of wine you bought because it had a fancy-looking label?” Noah said dryly, already scanning the room for an empty surface to claim. He settled on the end of the couch that was least structurally questionable—Noah had strong opinions about Emma’s furniture, none of them positive.

“Ah! You know me all too well!” Jasper went into the now-crowded kitchen in search of wine glasses. Emma’s apartment was what real estate agents called “charming” and what everyone else called “tiny”—a railroad layout where the kitchen bled into the living room, which bled into the bedroom, all of it connected by a narrow hallway that could accommodate roughly one and a half human beings at a time. When all six of them were here, the apartment felt less like a living space and more like a ship’s galley during a particularly social storm. Emma loved it. She’d furnished the place with an eclectic mix of hand-me-downs and street finds—a loveseat she’d rescued from a stoop in Greenpoint, folding chairs she’d bought in bulk, and milk crates that served as both seating and storage depending on how desperate the evening got.

Jasper found the glasses on his third cabinet, poured—generously, as always—and handed them out. Olivia, doing a quick count, asked, “What about Elijah?”

Before Jasper could say something sarcastic, Oliver jumped in. “He had a report to file before the end of the day. Said he’d head over as soon as that was done.”

“And you’re just telling me now? Also, it’s Sunday!” Olivia retorted.

“Yeah, guy never stops working,” Noah chimed in. “He needs to find work-life balance. He’s too caught up in that hustle culture; it’s gonna catch up with him.”

Before Jasper and Noah could start in on hustle culture again, Olivia changed the subject. “A toast!” she exclaimed, holding her half-full glass of wine aloft and staring pointedly at Oliver to follow suit. He raised his glass, then looked at Jasper and Noah, nodding for them to do the same.

“To Ems!” Olivia said, pushing her glass higher.

The men answered with a messy, affectionate chorus of names for their host. “To Emma!” “To Ems!” “To Mama E!”

Emma turned around from the stove, a genuine smile on her face—the first one that had felt easy all day. “Thanks, guys, but seriously, I don’t need any of that. Just relax and enjoy Liv’s beautiful presentation with your very exclusive vintage.” She winked at Jasper, who winked back.

The guests settled into the living room, finding their usual spots in the geography of Emma’s furniture. Oliver and Olivia shared the loveseat, Oliver’s arm draped behind her with the comfort of seven years of marriage. Noah stayed put on his end of the couch. Jasper sprawled across a folding chair in a way that suggested he believed furniture was merely a suggestion.

Emma continued with dinner, occasionally bringing a tasting spoon into the living room to let her friends try her work. The squash soup was keeping warm on the back burner. The root vegetables were turning golden in the oven, filling the apartment with the smell of browned butter and thyme. The conversation overlapped, circled back, branched into tangents that sometimes lasted twenty minutes before someone remembered what they’d originally been talking about. They shared stories of work, bad dates, and the news, though whenever they circled back to the news, they inevitably agreed to change the topic. Nobody wanted to ruin a Sunday.

Jasper’s wine was running low, and Noah seized the opportunity to introduce his own bottle. It was from a sustainable vineyard in the Finger Lakes that grew organic, sulfur-free wines. He was explaining the biodynamic farming process with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just discovered a new religion when Jasper interrupted to let Noah know, with great compassion, that they didn’t care.

Oliver added in the background that most new wine-growing regions were the result of tax policy rather than changing weather patterns, in the tone of a man resigned to nobody hearing him. At least one person did. Olivia looked over and mouthed “thank you, babe” while Jasper and Noah were fake fighting over whether sulfites were a government conspiracy.

Olivia, tired of their typical banter, interrupted with a loud call to the chef, “Everything alright in there?”

“Soup’s ready,” Emma announced, ladling it into bowls. She set one in front of each of them—the butternut squash, silky and golden, with a thin ribbon of deep red heat swirled across the surface. “Try it before I tell you anything.”

Jasper went first. He took a big spoonful, paused, and looked up. “Ems. What is in this?”

“Just try it.”

He did. “Holy shit.”

Olivia was next. She closed her eyes after the first taste and made a sound that was somewhere between appreciation and disbelief. “Emma, this is… what is that? There’s this heat, but it’s not just heat. It’s like… smoky? And there’s something sweet underneath?”

“It blooms,” Oliver said quietly, having already had two spoonfuls. He was studying the soup the way he studied everything—carefully, seriously. “The heat doesn’t hit you immediately. It builds.”

Even Noah, who had been about to say something about the wine, stopped mid-sentence after his first taste. “Okay. Yeah. That’s really good.”

Emma watched them eat and stopped rehearsing the apology she’d had ready. This was the reaction she’d been hoping for. She reached behind her and held up the bottle.

“This is from a guy named Hank who sells at the farmers markets. Or he did.” She set the bottle on the counter. “Fish Peppers. His great-grandmother’s. He’s been at McCarren every Saturday, McGolrick every Sunday, for three years. You’d love him.”

She paused. “He’s gone.”

And she told them the rest: the empty corner, the phone that went straight to voicemail, the stall he’d given up on Wednesday without a word to anyone. Dorothy at the honey stall, and the bottle Hank had left with her. Just in case.

The soup steamed in their bowls.

“In case of what?” Olivia asked.

“That’s what I said. She didn’t know.”

Olivia set down her spoon and looked at Emma a moment longer than the question needed. “And you? You aren’t really you today. Everything okay? I know life’s been a bit… messy lately.” The men went quiet.

For as long as they’d known her in New York, Emma had worked in kitchens: bad hours, worse shifts. They’d known it weighed on her. They’d still been floored when she told them she’d quit. In this city you didn’t just not have a job, not unless you had a plan or a safety net, and Emma had neither.

“Don’t worry about it,” Emma said, turning back to the stove. She slid the root vegetables out of the oven, checking their edges. “The kitchen just needs looked at.” Western Pennsylvania had slipped back into her voice; she heard it a second after they did.

“Yeah?” Olivia said softly, and waited.

“Honestly!”

“Honestly, it sounds like you’re, I don’t know, kind of stressed,” Jasper interjected. “You know I’ve got you if you need. Just, like, let me know.” The volume had gone out of his voice.

Emma picked up the bottle and turned it over in her hands. “It’s not just about me. It’s this. It might be the last bottle that exists, and nobody knows where he went.” She set it down. “I know it sounds ridiculous. But something’s wrong, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

She took a sip of her wine, winced, and poured the rest down the sink. “Can I choose the next wine?”

“YES!” Everyone but Noah responded in unison.