The onions went into the oil. He held the wooden spoon while she adjusted the flame, then she took it back. This part was hers.
He started on the peppers. Green ones. She'd stopped buying red sometime around February and he hadn't noticed until April. When he did, he cut the green ones thinner, the way she'd always cut the red. He didn't mention it. She didn't mention it. The absence of the red peppers sat in the kitchen like a third person neither of them introduced.
She could tell when the onions were ready by watching. He could tell by listening — the sizzle dropped half a register when the water cooked out. They arrived at the same moment by different instruments and neither of them found this remarkable anymore.
He scraped the peppers into her pan. She tilted the board with two fingers so the last pieces fell. They didn't look up.
Eleven years of this. In the beginning they'd both reached for everything, a comedy of four hands and two spatulas and laughter that sounded like permission. The territories formed slowly. Not by discussion. By who flinched first, who cared more about the garlic being right. She cared more. He cared about timing. Between the two competencies, the meals got good.
She added the peppers to the onions. The sizzle climbed back up. He washed the cutting board. This had been his job since year two, when she'd pointed it out once, and now he couldn't remember not doing it.
The tomatoes were next. She reached for them. This used to be his — he was sure of it, could almost remember holding the knife, the seeds on his fingers — but at some point she'd picked up the tomato and he'd let her, and now the territory was settled. If he reached for it tonight she would notice. Not object. Just notice. And he would have to explain something he didn't have words for, which was that he wanted to cut the tomatoes not because it mattered but because the map of who did what had started to feel like the map of who they were, and he wanted to know if it could still change.
He set the table instead.
Two forks, two knives, two glasses. The napkins she'd picked out. The salt mill he'd brought from his old apartment, which she'd never liked but had stopped mentioning. Everything in its place.
She plated. Even portions, his plate slightly fuller because he ate more, a calibration so automatic it wasn't generosity anymore. It was just the shape of the groove.
They sat. He said it smelled good. She said thanks. The peppers were fine. Green worked. It wasn't that the red ones had been better. It was that neither of them could remember who had decided.