“I haven't been to a crawfish boil since I moved back,” Chloe said, handing over her buttermilk pies. “Happy anniversary!”
Wendy lifted the foil to take a peek. “Thanks. Wow, these look scrumptious.”
“They are. My auntie taught me well. Also, don't laugh: the pie pans are your present. They're aluminum. I know they look basic, but they're sturdy and conduct heat really well.”
“Just like our marriage,” Mac said, kissing Wendy first, then, far more chastely, her.
“I look basic?”
“You are anything but, my beautiful bride.”
Wendy gave him a dismissive wave, but also blushed. “Hey, can’t help but notice—after the last party here, you wore white again?”
She shrugged. “It’s cotton. It'll bleach.”
“You know crawfish is the messiest of finger foods, right?” Mac asked, skeptical as his wife about Chloe's t-shirt and twill shorts.
“Don’t you worry. I can suck lots of heads just fine in this,” she said.
Wendy laughed. Mac swiveled, pretending not to. And Gabe, who she hadn't noticed behind his broad-chested friend, choked on his beer. His hair was shorter, but it hadn’t affected how hot he still was.
She reached for a longneck of her own, doing a damn fine job of not picturing him when he stripped down to save her modesty a few months earlier. She'd debated wearing his shirt to the party, instead of her standard white, but it was a more provocative move than she'd been willing to make.
So was the innuendo-laden comment about the mudbugs, which she’d intended only for her friends’ ears.
Best laid plans. Not that her plan was to get laid. But now she was rid of Brandon, she'd remembered those sparks between her and Gabe, and wondered. He must be a good egg, or Wendy wouldn’t have him living in her back yard. She’d taken to dropping the odd factoid about him: divorced, lovable, sensitive, peaceable. The catalog left off his examining eyes, his lean strength, the gallant nature paired with humor and respect for others.
All things in his favor, or at least not to his detriment. Whether he thrilled to the idea of casual good times, she didn’t know. His marriage lasted eleven years, but relations since then weren’t serious. It boded well.
Gabe’s throat was flushed under the patio’s fading light. He cleared it. “We’re boiling.”
So the heat between them affected his blood, too. Comforting. Intriguing. She took in his worn jeans, his shirt bearing a bar logo, the paint flecks on his well-muscled forearms. His smooth jaw. His gaze, flicking between Mac and a point over his shoulder. Not a single indication he was aware of her.
Mac lit up. “Why didn’t you say so? Not long now, folks,” he said to the party at large, heading over to the pot set up over a whooshing propane flame in the middle of the brick patio. They’d clearly gotten all kinds of prep done out there, based on the worktable with empty potato sacks, discarded jars of seasoning, and garlic and onion skins scraped into a pile beside an oversize cutting board littered with lemon seeds and the remnants of a head of celery. They were soon surrounded with people craning to watch Mac and Gabe tilt wriggling crawfish into the redolent boiling water.
She was no fool, so she kept the worktable between herself and the splashes as the crustaceans hit the surface and started cooking. Mac beamed as he stirred the mixture with his wooden paddle. Gabe stood by with the lid, and Wendy made note of the time on a small whiteboard.
“You’re being very precise there, boss.”
“Don’t call me that. And of course I am. Do I want rubbery tails? Don’t I want firm, juicy heads?”
“You calling me, cher?” Mac asked.
“In your dreams, sugar.”
“You got that right.” He set aside the paddle and draped himself over Wendy. “That’s what I’ve been telling you for ten years now.”
“You two are nonsense,” Chloe told them, but she was as charmed by their sweetness as everyone else there.
As the cooking contingent fussed over the rate at which the pot was boiling and when to add the frozen corn to cool everything down and if the bugs had sunk far enough down and if the baby potatoes were too big to cook through and every other intersection of chemistry and flavor in the several gallons of boiling water, she helped herself to a couple of hush puppies and went to help a few others from the hospital secure newspaper over the tables. The tables were, in fact, the four-foot by eight-foot sections of painted and reinforced plywood that had served as a dance floor during the Christmas party. Mac must have attached legs to the undersides, and once they were covered with disposable tablecloths and the newspaper, they served this dual purpose. Wendy joked about his penchant for organization and planning, and it seemed it wasn’t just a skill he used in his photography business.
She’d met his sister at the holidays, and they fell into a conversation that kept them side-by-side as the cooks dumped baskets full of crawfish and vegetables over the prepared tables. Chloe tucked a length of paper towel into her collar and passed the roll to Delaney.
“Your brother thinks I’m a fool to wear white to a boil.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything. But I’m impressed by your bravery.”
She lifted a shoulder. “Well, it’s more convenience than anything else. Shopping’s fast if I eliminate everything but white clothes. And when I get a three in the morning emergency call, I know I won’t be showing up all mismatched to work. Besides, I think it signals confidence.”
“Well, it looks sharp on you, whatever else. Even if I do think it’s not so very sensible for today’s event.” Delaney scooped a pile of boiled crawfish towards herself. After glancing at the red spices already staining her hands, she waggled her fingers at Chloe. “Dig in.”
Lifting her chin in mock-regal splendor, she pulled a crawfish apart and sucked in the head’s juices. Delaney and the rest of the crowd were slurping and moaning along the tables. Pinching the critter’s tail, she slurped up the rest of her first crawfish and discarded the shell, dabbing her mouth with a paper towel and gesturing to her pristine self. “What’d I tell you?”
“Anyone can stay clean for the first one. Just you wait.”
She grinned, and snatched up a corn cob. Looking across to the next table, she caught Gabe watching their banter. Sure the serious expression in the set of his mouth wasn’t her imagination, she turned to ask Delaney if she knew anything about the man.
“The elusive Gabe? Sure.”
“Elusive?”
“Back when he first moved over here—maybe two-three years ago? DeAndre and Wendy set in to telling me about him at every turn. He’s got this good heart, sis. He’s so generous, sis. Great cook, great partner, what more do you want, sis?”
Upside of it sounding all too familiar? She knew they thought Gabe worthy of a beloved sister. Downside? She asked, “So, you weren’t into him, or what happened?”
Delaney glanced around. “We snuck off on a date once. Figured he had to be hiding some redeeming stuff somewhere, to make my brother all positive about him. Boy calls me picky.”
“Well, Wendy’s a good one.”
“Don’t I know it. She and he make me believe in true love. But none of that romance showed up with Gabe. Don’t let on we went out. It’s not worth the interrogation and the awkward.”
“He’s not worth it?”
Delaney shot him a dirty look. Chloe had all the confirmation she needed from his abrupt turn and retreat. “First thing he says when we’re alone is he doesn’t want me getting upset but he’s not the long-term type anymore. Did I propose we elope? I’m not down on bended knee before the drinks even arrive, so what’s with the preemptive strike? Ridiculous.
“So what’d you have to say to that?”
“Hell, girl, I walked out. What else?”
They clinked beers. She had half a mind to ask more, but Mac claimed their attention. “Say cheese.”
They smiled, obedient, brandishing pink-orange-red crawfish, and being blinded by his flash in return.
“DeAndre McCann,” complained his sister.
“Art comes at a price.”
“I think the artist is the one meant to suffer, you brat. Not your poor subjects. You know how close I was to rubbing my eyes after that flash?”
“Don’t do that. It would be a bad idea.”
“No shit,” she said, but without too much venom in her voice. “You’re a menace to your entire party.”
He took his cameras off to capture others bright smiling against the backdrops of dusky sky and colorful food. “I can see us being turned into tourist postcards as we eat.”
Delaney snorted. “With a caption like: Crawdads in the Crescent City.”
“N'awlins Nightlife.”
“Laissez les bons temps rouler,” Delaney said, and they drained their beers before shouldering their way through the guests to grab more food.
She ate her fill and kept herself from coming over all spice-rubbed, but never did manage to find out if Gabe’s antagonism with Delaney meant he just didn’t feel it with her, or if he made it a point to pick over every woman his landlords tossed his way like so much seasoned seafood.