The Sweetness in the Leaves

Sunrise spread slowly over Sun Moon Lake, bringing one mountain ridge after another out of the blue. From the terrace of her small hotel in Shuishe, Grace could see mist drifting through the folds of the shore, loosening and closing again as if the hills were breathing beneath it. She had come down with a book she did not intend to read. At thirty-seven, after finishing a degree she had studied for in evenings and on weekends, she was practicing the unfamiliar pleasure of having nothing due. The lake seemed an excellent place to begin. Then the man at the next table lifted the lid of a teapot, and a faint smell of cinnamon reached her through the cold air.

There was no breakfast service yet. He had brought a little teapot, a flask and two cups on a wooden tray, setting them out with the care of someone performing a task he enjoyed. Grace recognized him from the previous evening, when they had waited together for the hotel's lift. He had held a bag of oranges; one escaped, and she caught it before it rolled beneath a sofa. The incident had produced a brief, pleasant conversation and no sensible reason for her to remember his smile quite so clearly.

He looked up now and asked whether she would like tea. She hesitated only because it was so early to begin being conspicuously interested in someone. Then he lifted the unused cup, making the invitation practical and easy to accept. Grace moved her chair to his table. His name was Adrian, he reminded her, and she told him she had remembered. That admission changed his smile in a way she found encouraging.

The tea was a clear, deep amber, warm enough that she held the cup between both palms before drinking. Cinnamon arrived first, followed by a cool trace that reminded her of mint. She asked what he had added. Adrian shook his head. Only water. The leaves came from nearby Yuchi, he said, and the tea was called Hong Yu, or Red Jade. A seller had let him taste it the previous afternoon. He had bought the tin because he could not understand how a leaf could carry so many flavors he had never expected in tea.

Grace leaned toward the open tin. The leaves gave her little help. She was accustomed to identifying ingredients, to arriving at an answer she could defend, and the taste refused to simplify itself. Adrian watched her investigate with obvious amusement, but without the impatience of someone waiting to deliver a lesson. He was new to this too. They had the same question, which made the little table feel companionable almost at once.

The terrace door opened, and a silver-haired man with amber eyes and a cobalt-blue scarf stepped out to look at the lake before settling at a distant table. Somewhere below, a chair scraped across a floor. Grace watched a strip of peach light widen between two ridges. She had imagined celebrating the end of her studies with noise and friends and an extravagant meal, and she had done those things. This quieter morning felt like an additional present she had not known to ask for.

Adrian was forty-two and had come to Taiwan to visit an old university friend. His friend was working for a few days, so he had taken himself inland with a small bag and a regrettably ambitious list of places. By the second afternoon he abandoned most of the list. He wanted to stay beside the lake long enough to recognize how it changed. Grace liked that answer. She had spent years fitting pleasure into spare hours and was discovering that she preferred a place once she stopped trying to finish it.

He asked about her degree. She told him it was history, undertaken for the simple reason that she wanted to know more. People often expected a practical explanation, a promotion or a new career. Adrian asked what had surprised her most. She found herself talking about the private decisions hidden inside large public events, and then about a professor who could make a roomful of tired adults argue enthusiastically at nine in the evening. Adrian laughed at the right details. He was listening to her as though her pleasure in the subject was itself interesting.

When he poured again, a drop ran down the side of the pot. They reached for the cloth at the same time, and her fingers brushed the inside of his wrist. It was a brief touch, barely worth noticing, except that both of them did. Adrian let her take the cloth and rested his hand on the table, near enough that she remained aware of it while she spoke. The air was growing warmer. She no longer needed to hold the cup in both hands, but she did so anyway, unwilling to reveal how pleasantly unsteady she felt.

The second cup tasted different, softer to her, with the coolness more apparent as it lost heat. Grace asked to see the label. Adrian passed the tin, and they read it together: tea leaves, with no cinnamon or mint among the ingredients. On the other side, the maker's description named both scents as part of the variety's natural fragrance. The little mystery had an answer after all. She found it oddly satisfying that the tea had not been hiding an extra ingredient; she had simply been meeting something unfamiliar.

Adrian said he would never have picked out the cool note if she had not mentioned it. Grace looked up from the tin and found his face nearer than she expected. The sunlight had reached his cheek, revealing a scatter of freckles she had not noticed in the lift. For a moment neither returned to the subject. He glanced at her mouth, then back to her eyes, and the question in that movement was far more interesting than anything printed on the label.

She asked what he was doing later. He had thought of taking a boat once the morning services began, but had made no firm plan. Grace suggested they choose a crossing together. She liked the fact that she said it directly, and liked even more the way he accepted without disguising his pleasure. They looked at the day's options on his phone, their shoulders touching as they compared places and times. By the time they chose, the arrangement already felt less like sightseeing than the beginning of a date.

Before going inside to fetch their bags, they stood beside the terrace railing. The mist had thinned, and the lake looked broad and unmistakably blue beneath the mountains. Adrian rested his hand beside hers. Grace turned her palm upward, and he took it, his thumb settling softly against her fingers. She felt the small thrill of a gesture that could still have been avoided and had been chosen instead.

“I would like this morning to last,” he said.

She told him they had made a reasonable start, then stepped closer. He asked if he could kiss her. Grace said yes, smiling as his hand rose to her cheek. His lips were warm, and when he began to draw back she followed him just enough to make her answer unmistakable. The next kiss was slower. She held the front of his jacket lightly, aware of the quiet terrace around them and of how completely her attention had narrowed to the man beside her.

They separated reluctantly, making an exact plan to meet in the lobby in half an hour. Adrian began packing the tea things, then paused over the tin. He offered to leave it with her for the rest of her stay. Grace shook her head and placed it in his bag herself. He would need to bring it when they met again, she told him. His smile made her glad she had found such a transparent excuse.

Upstairs, she put her unread book away and chose a light jacket for the boat. From her window the mountains were clear now, their earlier uncertainty lifted. She checked the time, though she was already ready, then laughed at herself and went downstairs five minutes early.