![]() ![]() She’d seen a photo of the two of them in the last issue of the college alumni magazine, smiling and holding the hands of two chubby toddlers.Įven though Atid figured very briefly in her life, she still makes the salted lemonade often. He went on to date, and then marry, a petite brunette from Tennessee, with a deep dimple in one cheek and a lilting Southern accent, in their graduating class who became one of the first female recipients of a MacArthur Genius Grant in the field of geophysics. Atid broke up with her roommate in a manner gentler than she’d ever seen in a boy of that age: He had always seemed more mature and self-possessing than any of their peers. The relationship didn’t last beyond the following autumn. ![]() She begs Atid to make the lemonade on hot days, and sometimes instead of cutting it with seltzer water, he throws everything in a blender until frothy and thick, like a slushy, then spikes it with vodka. It tasted like lemonade but sharper and somehow more wild (later he shows her how to make it and reveals that he adds crushed mint and a tiny bit of pepper). It was both sweet and salty - if pressed, she wasn’t sure she could put her finger on which. It was like drinking the edge of salted margarita glass, but fizzier and as refreshing as Gatorade. “In Thailand they make it with limes but I like it better this way, ever since I discovered how good American lemonade is.” “Salted lemonade,” he announced, handing around the glasses. He brought out glasses to the grassy quad where they were all sprawled on towels, pretending to study but mostly gossiping and feeling generally hungover from the night before. The first time he made it was on an extremely warm May afternoon. What he loved best was her recipe for salted limeade - a drink popular in Thai street markets and cafes. She taught him to chiffonade a pile of Thai basil leaves into tidy ribbons, to knead dough for sweet banana roti, and to use his small fingers to thread skewers through cubes of meat for chicken satay. He’d spend hours sitting on a painted red stool in the kitchen watching her make spicy green papaya salad and mango sticky rice and curries laced with coconut milk and galangal. He was raised by a nanny who was, by his account, a Michelin-worthy cook. His father ran a real estate conglomerate she was his second wife, and she was relatively famous in the rarified, sparkling world of jet-setting fashionistas. ![]() Atid was extremely good-looking, and extremely nice: He treated her with a joking, brotherly attitude and sometimes when they’d brush arms while all piled on the couch watching Breaking Bad episodes, she’d feel an involuntary heat rise in her cheeks.Ītid told them stories about his mother: a gorgeous, dark-haired model who was rarely home except to drop kisses on his forehead before bed, always dressed in something sequined or flowing. The lemonade is something she picked up in college: Her sophomore year roommate in college had been dating a chemical engineer named Atid who’d grown up in Thailand.Ītid used to come over and cook them snacks in their miniature dorm room kitchen (a double burner and half-refrigerator, which was usually stocked only with hummus, Fresca, the cottage cheese her roommate ate late at night while studying, and the occasional leftovers from dinners in town). A bowl of sliced plums, ice cold and just on the firm side of ripe, sits next to a glass of fizzy salted lemonade. She sets her laptop down carefully on the patio table. The sun is watery but strong, filtering down through the canopy of dogwoods that marks the boundary between their lawn and the neighbors’. ![]()
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