“See you tomorrow night?” Wendy asked as she packed empty lunch containers into her tote.
“With bells on.”
Wendy smirked, and Chloe added, “Not literal bells. I’m not that festive.”
“Shame. I’ve got a jingle bell collar for Penny. You could match her.”
Chloe smirked right back at her boss. “I bet that’s a relief for Mac, instead of the bow. Easier for those butterfingers of his.”
“Don’t you worry about Mac’s fingers,” Wendy said. “He does just fine.”
Chloe didn’t comment, because teasing was one thing, but Wendy was still her boss, and break room or not, they were still at work. Thinking of Penny’s slippery little bow, though, reminded her to ask, “Hey, do you still have that artist living in your back yard? Gabriel?”
“Gabe. Yes, why? Are you planning to give him lessons in dexterity?” The unsubtle resume of all things Gabe had petered out over the months, but her boss seemed poised to restart her matchmaking engines.
Chloe thought she just might not object. “No. I just have something of his.”
Wendy nodded, a slow nod that Chloe knew well meant skepticism.
“Stop it. He loaned me a shirt when dumbass Brandon spilled wine all over me. I need to return it.”
Wendy wasn’t even wearing a watch, and it had been months, not hours, since Gabe had stripped the oxford off his back for her. Twelve months, to be exact. So Chloe didn’t need Wendy's fake checking of the time to remind her how long she’d kept the man from wearing his shirt.
She’d intended to return it via Wendy after the New Year. Gotten it dry cleaned, no starch because to mess with the softness of the cotton would be a crime. And the day she’d hauled it in, crammed the wire hanger into her locker, Wendy went on vacation.
After a couple of days, the plastic bag encasing the shirt seemed like it was suffocating her, flapping out to grab staticky hold of her every time she changed, or stashed her bag. So she took it back home. By the time of the anniversary party, she’d fallen for Wendy’s hints, and returning it would have deprived her of an excuse if they’d hit it off and she wanted to pursue him without her boss’s direct supervision. The impulse died at the boil, and a few weeks later, a perfect storm of chaos hit her. Getting her house in order ranked lower on her list than sleeping, eating, and watching every breath of a twenty-eight week birth who refused to let the lung therapies help him thrive. Once he’d made it home and she’d slept a dozen hours, nothing she owned was clean and warm enough for the sudden cool front. So she’d worn the green shirt. Which meant it had to be washed again. Which meant it was sitting in her near-empty closet the next time she got caught in a chaos loop. She’d let herself get used to the sight of it, hanging there all bold and green, a spring leaf against the clouds of her white shirts.
So a year had passed, and she’d received the invite to Wendy and Mac’s holiday party, and sliding open her closet door didn’t reveal Gabe’s shirt as a pop of refreshing color, but as a pulse of accusation. Her excuses were no excuse. She would have to return it, and apologize, and take whatever comments he made about it.
But not whatever comments Wendy made. “So he still lives there? He’ll be at the party?”
“He will. You can bring back his shirt, with or without bells on. Are you bringing a date?”
Was she insinuating? Wendy’s curiosity about her dating life echoed that of her siblings and friends in long-term relationships. Avid, but with an underlying smugness that whoever Chloe was seeing, no matter how fun and well-suited, she was missing out on the intense connections that making a life with someone else builds.
She had a twin. She knew all she needed to about connection. Who was the first person Ben called when Tara agreed to marry him? Chloe. When their son was born? Aunt Chloe. She had in-jokes and daily messages and a place she could turn up in the middle of the night and her favorite beer would be in the fridge, not because he kept it for her despite their living hundreds of miles apart, but because her favorite beer and Ben’s favorite beer had been identical since they were teenagers. So she didn’t need smug marrieds acting like she was missing out on anything.
“No date. Not seeing anyone right now.”
“What happened to what’s-his-name? Bumblebee?”
“His name was Hornet, and if that’s your best joke about his name, I’m sad for you.”
“Wasn’t going to say anything about his stinger.”
“Wasn’t worth having anything said about it. He and I decided to part ways. He was in a fuss cause I wouldn’t take him back to Ben’s for Thanksgiving.”
“Didn’t you two hook up at a Halloween party to start with?”
“Yep.”
Wendy shook her head. “Presumptuous ass.”
“Yep.”
“Well, I can’t say if Gabe’s involved right now or not. Want me to text you if he’s single?”
“Wendy. Come on. I’m thirty-nine years old. Any notes I need passed to the cute boy in class, I’ll lob myself.”
Ivy took his hand and set off towards the back yard. “Hey, hold up. I want to introduce you to Wendy.”
She had this pursed lip thing she did. It was supposed to be a pout or a pucker, he thought, since she pulled the same face when flirting, but it always struck Gabe as petulant, not provocative.
“The band’s about to start,” she said.
“It’s just going to take a minute.”
The lips tightened and she blew out a thin breath. “Fine.”
He drew her closer, making a slight face over her head at Mac, who pretended not to have overheard her.
“Ivy, meet Mac and Wendy.”
She shook hands like she was royalty. Her whole arm lifting for the greeting. He’d first noticed her for the self-possessed and confident way she moved through a crowded gallery. Turned out she’d done some modeling when she was younger.
“Great to finally meet you, Ivy,” Wendy said. “We’ve heard such nice things.”
“Sure. Your house is beautiful. Gabriel told me I would adore it.” He wasn’t sure where the “finally” came from, since he’d first mentioned her that morning as he was growing the roux for his gumbo.
“Thank you.” Mac stepped in to give his show-off tour. He was proud of the way he’d decorated, but tended to downplay his work—until they were faced with someone who assumed that the high-profile hard-working head of neonatology was the one who’d, because she was the female, picked the paint colors.
It always surprised Gabe when one of their friends displayed gender essentialism. He and Mac were artists; oughtn’t people expect their aesthetic points of view to be on display?
Ivy brushed off Mac and began to tug him towards the patio again, but Wendy had his other arm and was laughing up at her friend Chloe.
Like last year, she was a vision in white. This time, it was a denim wrap dress, heavy enough to preserve her modesty no matter how many glasses of wine it absorbed. Wendy tapped at the jingle bell earrings Chloe wore. They chimed and the women grinned. Over Wendy's head, Chloe met his eye, and her cheeks reddened. It was cute. Festive. She lifted a gift bag festooned with crawfish in Papa Noel hats. “Merry Christmas, Gabe.”
“For me?”
“It’s fifty weeks overdue, so I thought the least I could do is make it festive.”
He extracted himself from between Wendy and Ivy, and checked in the bag. His shirt was folded neat as if it was fresh off the department store shelf, atop something else, something soft wrapped in red tissue paper. He disentangled it and felt a wide sweep of a smile brush across his face. It was a white shirt, a nice heavy cotton, and as he shook it out to show Mac, he laughed.
“I didn’t have any paint, but I figured nail polish was as good a way to start destroying it as any.”
He glanced at Chloe’s hands—her nails were the same wine-dark red as the three dots of color marring the cuff of the pristine white shirt. “It’s perfect. It’s like blot work—I’m going to use it as a trigger to treat this like a canvas. Thanks.”
She shrugged. “Least I could do, after you came to my rescue last year.”
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Mac said. “Put it on, then you can be her knight in white armor.”
His laugh was cut short by the sharp bite of Ivy’s fingers on his arm.
“Let’s go listen to the music,” she said. “I don’t want to miss them.”
He’d warned her that Lassiter’s trio had another gig to get to, so fair enough that she was eager for the sets they’d play at Mac’s party. He nodded down at her and tucked both shirts back into the gift bag. “Thanks for this. I look forward to destroying it,” he told Chloe, who nodded and followed Mac towards the kitchen. As he and Ivy headed towards the patio doors, he caught Chloe’s exclamation. “Oh, that’s fabulous. It’s new?”
“From our artist in residence program,” Mac said. “Gabe painted it.”
Ivy led him outside so he didn’t hear anything more about the bayou landscape that launched his newest series.
After Lassiter’s band left, he carried the shirts to his place. Ivy trailed after him. “So, who was the ice princess?”
“The what?”
“Your princess in white, the one you go around rescuing all the time.”
“Aw, Ivy. You can stop playing jealous dragon in need of slaying. She works for Wendy, I only met her at some parties here. Her date spilled wine on her shirt, so I loaned her mine.” He knew better than to mention that he’d stripped off right there on the patio.
“And that’s it?”
“Yep. Took her all year to get my shirt back to me, that’s why she gave me this other.”
She snugged against him for a kiss. “Okay then. But Princess Ice’s gonna have to let me be the one to make your holidays extra festive.”
“Sounds promising. And anyway, she’s not a princess. She’s Goldilocks.”
Ivy looked up through her lashes to look up through them. “That girl’s got blacker hair than mine, and that’s saying something.”
He should stick with the staying silent plan. “That’s right. I’m the only Goldilocks around here. Want to come up and see if my bed is just right?”
Ivy’s smile and eyes widened. “You don’t need to get back to the party?”
He shrugged. “Naw. I showed my face, and got a dance with my gorgeous date.”
“And ate your shrimp pistolette.”
“And ate some good pistolette and maque choux. All I need now is a little alone time.”
Her hands slid around him like she intended never to let go. “As long as your alone time includes me.”
Strict truth didn’t advance his need for peace to decompress. But a party of two outranked the party of dozens. Besides, being out there might lead to encounters with Chloe, leading to jests from Mac, leading to the reawakening of Ivy’s green-eyed demons. He’d hit his limit on managing Ivy’s insecurity for the night. He locked the door and said, “Now, why would I have it any other way?”