Competition Sixteen Highly Commended: Salad Days by Chris Cottom

Easy Mediterranean

A week after A-Levels, I go for a trial at the new salad bar. Letty, the owner, is as lean as a green bean. She hands me a red onion and a shrink-wrapped cucumber.

‘Let’s see what you can do.’

‘Nicely diced, Tom,’ she says later. ‘You can stay.’

Apple and celery

‘I’m thinking big bowl,’ she says, as I slice an avalanche of avocados. ‘Maybe I’ll end up salad synonymous, like Wally Waldorf.’

‘Wasn’t the salad named after the hotel?’

‘College boy!’ she says, leaning across to thwack me with a bunch of curly parsley.

Butterhead and pistachio

She teaches me to toast nuts in a dry pan on medium-high, and how to de-seed a pomegranate. She gets me to plunge lettuce into icy water, and dry each leaf ‘with the tenderness of a lover’.

‘It bruises easily,’ she says.

Sun-blushed cherry tomato

I’m rough-chopping chicory when Letty invites me for supper.

‘There was someone,’ she says with a sigh, as she drizzles balsamic across a multi-seeded flatbread. ‘He made the zestiest honey-lemon dressing ever.’

‘You’ve, um, been in catering a long time, have you?’

‘I’m thirty-five, sunshine, if that’s what you mean.’

Later, as she bends her body over me, it’s obvious I’m as green as lamb’s lettuce.

Heart of Romaine

By September, everything’s wilting and it’s time for uni. She comes to the station to see me off.

‘Don’t break too many hearts,’ she says, handing me a carton. ‘I’ve tossed this in a lime garlic vinaigrette.’

‘Letty, listen. I’ll–’

‘And wrapped your croutons separately.’

‘I’ll come back at weekends.’

I step towards her, but she presses the salad against my chest.

‘I have to go, Tom. Enjoy this while it’s still fresh.’

Chris Cottom lives outside Macclesfield, UK. His stories appear in Agape Review, Apricot Press, Bournemouth Writing Prize, Cranked Anvil, Ellipsis Zine, Flash 500, FlashFlood, Hysteria, LoveReading, On The Premises, One Wild Ride, Oxford Flash Fiction, Parracombe Prize, Retreat West, Shooter Flash, Story Nook, Streetcake, The Centifictionist, and others.

@chris_cottom1

Photo by Petr Magera on Unsplash

SUBMIT / MAILING LIST / COMPETITION / CRITIQUE SERVICE / BOOKSHOP / TWITTER / INSTAGRAM / DONATE

*