The sky overhead is awash in pastel colors, as if someone had taken to it with a paintbrush and over-enthusiastically daubed on broad watery brushstrokes.
This is her absolute favorite time of day: just after a sweaty run and a shower, but before cocktails or dinner, when the entire world seems to be taking a breath before nightfall. It’s not dusk that she loves, but the minutes just before it, when the sun is considering its descent but hasn’t begun, when the day is on the precipice of turning off the light but remains bright.
Happy hour is an apt phrase, she thinks, given that it’s one of her happiest times of day. Golden hour. Magic hour. Ahead there will be dinner and the delicious sensation of climbing into bed when you’re very tired, which is a small bit of pleasure that she almost can’t believe you get to experience every single day.
Of all the hours of the day, this is the one she wishes most to spend alongside him.
When she is old, she thinks, she’d like to be able to look back and measure out their life together in those slow, syrupy hours. They’ve spent plenty of evenings together in their respective towns, and scattered places in between, but she wants a catalog’s worth—no, a full travel magazine’s worth—of them.
She wants to spend exceptional evenings with him in places she loves: ordinary, unremarkable places like the backyard of her parent’s home, the sloping lawn of the park where she grew up picnicking on the 4th of July, the sun-warmed deck of a sailboat on Lake Michigan. And she wants to spend them with him in places she’s never been…yet: the Cornwall coast, a hot air balloon over Cappadocia, a taco stand in Bondi Beach, the lantern-lit streets of Hoi An.
Now her mind starts to loosen, the idea of each new place unspooling in her mind like so much silken thread. They take on shape and substance as she pictures them, coloring in the imagined details.
A hot tub on the deck of a small cabin overlooking the ring of snowy mountains above Lake Tahoe, their muscles sore and tight from a day of skiing.
The end of a twelve-hour hike in Padjelanta National Park in the northern corner of Sweden, edging towards Norway. Both of them collapsed into chairs outside their hostel in happy exhaustion, unshowered and sweat-stained, quietly marveling at what they had seen: glacial lakes of such a deep blue-green that they seemed superimposed onto the landscape, gently sloping fields dotted with wildflowers, a single reindeer observing them at distance, his antlers tall and regal.
Aperol spritzes while the sun sets over Lake Como on a terraced, manicured lawn set on a cliff. Their fingers slick with olive oil as they tear apart a fat rectangle of warm, pillowy focaccia bread dotted with ribbons of deeply caramelized onions, some amber, some almost charred. Old men playing bocce on a court behind them by a small, pretty stone fountain.
Late afternoon on Ambergris Cay. The sleek white patio of a luxury resort overlooking the beach. Polished teak chairs upholstered in crisp white cotton. The whole scene a study in blues and whites with splashes of color in the form of brightly patterned pillows — blue ikat, canary yellow stripe — and the resort’s famed bubblegum pink towels folded neatly by the side of the infinity pool below the bar. The luscious fuschia-orange of the glasses of rum punch brought around promptly once they sit, garnished with twists of crystallized lime peel and tiny crimson cherries (a specialty garnish the bar is renowned for: the bartender preserves them in a local guavaberry liqueur until they’re chewy and syrup-laden). Doors flung open to the restaurant behind them, and the faint sound of laughter and clinking glasses alongside the tink-tink-plink of steel drum music. She’s in a long dress with thin silk straps, the filmy material floating around her bare feet; he’s in a linen jacket, no tie, and a pale blue shirt unbuttoned just enough to set off the beginnings of a tan. After drinks, they walk down the sandy path that winds through groves of wild tamarind and palm trees, until the path ends at a ramshackle building painted pastel purples and pinks, all lit up with strands of tea lights. People spill out onto the porch. Inside, the floor pulses with the heat of bodies moving and dancing to the reggae music — the bar seems to act as a glowing magnet, as if every person on the island were drawn to the center of the dance floor by the hot, spicy smell of fish from the grill where two men work quickly filling hand-kneaded corn tortillas with mahi-mahi so tender it flakes apart at the touch, juicy jalapeno-laced pineapple salsa, and fistfuls of fresh cilantro. He orders two bottles of Red Stripe, the beers sweating in the heat.
Setting up camp alongside Kirk Creek in Los Padres National Forest just as the sunset starts to tint the forest that’s spread out below, tinging the edges of the evergreens a burnished gold, the ocean vast and endless before them. With their tent in place, he carries a blanket to the open area just above where the hill slopes steeply down, spreading it out and walking back to open his Osprey backpack to take out a flask (bourbon) and a plastic jar (hot cocoa mix) along with a pot and two enamel mugs while she searches nearby for kindling, then starts a small fire. He boils water, then stirs in the cocoa. He uses twice the amount called for in hers, such that a thick paste would settle on the bottom of her mug, just the way she liked it—and they nestle together, his arms draped around her as she leans back against his chest. They stay that way until stars appear, spangling the darkness overhead: so many stars out there in the wilderness that the sky seems to brim with them, like some might get crowded out and drift down to the ground like bits of craft glitter. He points out constellations to her, a skill he picked up as a ski instructor in Estes Park one summer after college. He roomed in a dusty, incense-scented apartment in downtown Boulder with an astrophysicist grad student named Colwyn Adams who was studying quasars and exoplanets at the Sommers-Bausch Observatory; sometimes they’d get stoned and lie out on the roof of their building and Colwyn would teach him basic astronomy. “My best party trick,” he whispers in her ear after showing her his favorites, words that sounded foreign and melodious, like the lyrics to some mystical song: Perseus, Cassiopeia, Aquila, Lalande.
Clinking highball glasses of yuzu, soda, and vodka on the rocks with their shoes slipped off and toes sinking into the white sugar sand at Galley Beach on Nantucket. The sun melting into the horizon over the ocean in front of them, the sky darkening and dripping in candy pinks and tangerines. When the sun disappears, she looks for the green flash—a bit of science trivia her uncle Sumner explained to her when she was six, which has stuck with her ever since—as the tables around them erupt in applause (half polite golf claps from the older set dressed in Tory Burch and Hermès, half rowdy whooping from the overgrown frat boys three Scotches deep in their Smathers & Branson needlepoint belts).
Walking in bare feet on the worn grassy path of a flower farm in Vermont in peak summer, the sprawling porch of a white clapboard restaurant visible in the distance, where they later sit together for dinner. They eat grilled sourdough toast topped with garlicky ricotta and a tangle of savory greens she can’t quite identify until the server explains. “Sauteed ramps tossed with crispy shoestring potatoes.” He orders fresh linguine strewn with lumps of fresh crab in a lemon cream sauce; she gets the swordfish seared in a cast iron pan until golden and crackling, alongside blistered sugar snap peas and an impossibly good fennel salad, done three ways: raw and thinly shaved mixed with fried fennel and topped with lacy fennel fronds. (He leans over and solemnly whispers, “A study in fennel,” and she laughs out loud.) Dessert requires some debate, and all three are flawless. The first: a small glass bowl of panna cotta—its creamy top firmly set and wobbling ever so gently upon contact with a spoon—tinged pale pink with grapefruit zest and Campari, alongside a single tidy rectangle of thyme-flecked shortbread. The second: a crostata, the pastry folded rustically and burnished with raw sugar, with a filling of rhubarb and blueberries, a scoop of vanilla cardamom gelato melting onto the warm fruit. And the third: a small precise circular chocolate tart with a sandy, barely sweet dark chocolate crust and a chocolate filling so luscious and rich that each bite requires an accompanying spoonful of mascarpone creme anglaise.
They get three instead of two because she hesitates and agonizes over which one to order, and when it comes time to decide, he grins at the server and orders all three. He looks at her seriously after and says, ”Joy is not made to be a crumb,” which is a line from a Mary Oliver poem that she’d once told him—in that hushed quiet confessional dark that only happens just after having sex—that she always halfway considered getting tattooed on very top of her hip. That would be another moment in a string of shimmering bead-like moments where her heart is lit up by how much she loves him.
Her imaginings are so vivid that what’s real and what isn’t begins to seem like some illusory trick of the mind. She can almost taste and smell and feel them; she can practically hear their conversations in each place. They would be older, and would have grown used to each other’s presence — the novelty of seeing him undressed, or lying next to first thing in the morning, having passed with time.
But she suspects that even with weeks, months, and years of routine time together, she will never tire of seeing him pulling his shirt over his head before a shower. That the delighted way he looks at small children and very small dogs will, in turn, still delight her. That the way he tugs at his tie will always thrill her. That if he cups her face in his hand, or absent-mindedly runs his thumb down the inside of her wrist, she will always feel a hot flush of desire, even when he’s done it a thousand, two thousand, even three thousand times.
Caramelized Onion Focaccia
For the dough
100g (1/2 cup) olive oil, divided
350g (1 1/2 cups) warm water
2 teaspoons salt
420g (3 1/2 cups) all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon instant yeast
For the onions and topping
2 medium yellow onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
pinch of kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon minced fresh rosemary
flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
olive oil, for drizzling
For the dough: Drizzle 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a 9” x 13” pan.
Mix together the remaining olive oil with the rest of the dough ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix for about 5 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth — it will be very sticky.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rest at room temperature for 1 hour.
While the dough rises, make the onions: Heat the olive oil and butter in a heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and stir, then turn the heat down to medium-low and let them cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
Stir in the salt and sugar, and continue to cook for another 20 minutes, or until a pale amber color, adding the minced rosemary when the onions are just beginning to take on some color. If the onions look dry at any point, add a splash of water to the pan.
Transfer to a plate and set aside to cool while you finish the dough.
Transfer the dough into the oiled pan, gently stretching it to fit the pan, and dimple it all over deeply with oiled fingertips.
Let the dough rest for 20 minutes while you preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
Just before baking, spread the caramelized onions evenly over the dough and sprinkle with a bit of flaky sea salt. Drizzle a generous tablespoon of olive oil over the top.
Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, or until nicely golden brown.