She and Peter stood on Wendy and Mac’s porch, waiting for the door to open.
“I look okay?” he asked for the three thousandth time.
“It’s casual. Relax.”
His fidgeting with his hair and festive tie and hands in and out of pockets and on her back and back to tie then pockets was racking up her own nerves.
“I mean, it’s your boss. I want to make a good impression.”
Chloe tried to keep the wince off her face. They’d dated maybe four months? And even if it mattered to her that Wendy approved of her relationship—it didn’t; why would it?—Peter looked fine. Fresh haircut. Neat clothes. No visible gaping wounds.
She knew he was prey to imposter syndrome, maybe because of her profession. Or that was her best guess. When they’d met, he seemed solid enough.
It had been the first cool, crisp day, heralding a fall that was too long in coming after the August heat. She had the morning off, so she laced up and jogged along the St. Charles neutral ground towards the Milk Bar. She wasn’t the only one relishing the weather. Crowds at each streetcar stop sent her on little detours that more than once meant being bopped in the head by some of the Mardi Gras beads hanging year-round from the oaks along the boulevard. So when she got her milkshake she was a little sweaty and her hair was wonky and a stranger named Peter offered her a seat at his table since the place was, predictably, crowded.
He was cute. She was disconcerted by how cute, because mid-thirties men didn’t tend to bring the word to mind. His eyes sparkled, and his beard was short and sharp, and they’d enjoyed amiable chat for an hour before the social pressure to abandon the table for others got to them. He was headed as far as Hillary Street so instead of hopping a streetcar herself, they wandered along the avenue. Waving at tourists. Cheering for a wedding parade. Then dancing alongside them when it snaked around and they ended up shoulder-to-shoulder with the groomsmen for a block. He overshot his street, and sat in Audubon Park with her for a half-hour, watching dog walkers and zany squirrels and families with kids who chased each other with handfuls of Spanish moss.
The social anxiety didn’t show up until their third official date, when she’d asked him to Upperline. “I know you’re a doctor, but damn,” he’d said, after she’d recommended the restaurant’s tasting menu. “You must be loaded.”
It felt like a joke, until retrospect and a few other incidents reframed it. So she’d been considering it all. The barb-toned “Doctor Lee” greetings instead of “Chloe.” The fuss whenever she carried a bag or wore a pair of shoes he hadn’t seen before. Comments about Christmas gifts she bought for her nieces and nephews. As if having four brothers and sisters, three of them with children, was a thing only well-off people could handle in their lives. She bought the kids things she thought the kids would like, and she’d long ago set up a separate account to accrue their gift money throughout the year. It was part of her direct deposit. Sure, she also had a portion of her paychecks going to savings and charity and investing and retirement. She knew she was privileged to do so. But Peter managed the office of an oil and gas company, he wasn’t hurting. And even if he was, she didn’t need him making judgments about her choices.
He was good in bed, and seemed to give a shit about her happiness, other than the social anxiety-induced commentary, so she’d been giving him a chance. A lot of chances. And somehow he interpreted that so meeting Wendy was significant, and not just the kind of thing that happens when you date someone during the holidays.
She brushed a kiss to his cheek, and a fleck of dust from his jacket. “You’re handsome, and I don’t need you or Wendy to approve of each other, but I’m sure you’ll get along great.”
He let his tense shoulders drop and smiled as the door opened.
“Hey, y’all, come on in,” Mac said.
She made introductions, and the men were polite, and she spotted Wendy in the kitchen holding Penny—in a Christmas-hued tartan cape-coat this year—so she hauled Peter to her boss’s side.
Peter launched into a long explanation about the microbrewery where he’d picked up a growler for the party. Wendy was nodding along. Mac raised his eyebrows at her, and she stuck her tongue out. He disappeared toward the patio before his laugh could seem too pointed, thank goodness.
They were dancing when Peter bumped into a woman who looked familiar. Chloe knew she wasn’t one of the Wendy crowd—those people were all her crowd by now—but couldn’t place her as one of Mac’s many friends. It seemed the woman knew her, though. Chloe suffered through a dismissive sneer before the woman twinkled up at Peter. “Best to watch those dance moves, sugar, or you’ll find yourself in trouble some day.”
He laughed. “Your kind of trouble don’t seem like the type I’d be threatened by, darlin’.”
Oh, they were pouring on the treacle charm, were they? She was gathering up her own best Southern manners when her phone buzzed. It was the hospital. When she returned to Peter on the dance floor, he was still chatting with the rude woman. Gabe was behind her, hands on her hips, and she remembered who Rude Lady was.
Gabe dropped his hands and rounded Rude to give her a kiss, warm and firm on her cheek, a hand pressed to her waist. “Chloe. Merry Christmas.”
“Gabriel. Nice shirt.”
She couldn’t even spot her nail polish on it anymore, although he held up his cuff for examination. Greens and purples and way more oranges than she’d have guessed after seeing his canvases, splats and dabs and streaks sprinkled over the once-pristine white. It would make her giggle, if she were the giggling type.
“I had a feeling you’d appreciate its festive nature. Ivy here was of the opinion I wasn’t suitably honoring the occasion, but Wendy swore up and down you’d be here and she and Mac wanted to hear how you liked it.”
“You can report that I was overwhelmed by just how colorful you managed to make it.”
“Dance this way with me, and tell them yourself.”
“I can’t. I need to find—oh, there.” Peter was fussing with his tie just beyond her. “Hey, Peter. This is Ivy and Gabriel. Gabe lives in the outbuilding.”
“Guesthouse.”
“Garage, I think.”
“It’s a fully outfitted artist’s studio,” interjected Ivy. “And Gabriel is not a guest, he’s a tenant.”
“Well, you should check out his stuff if you can,” she told Peter. “There’s a spooky cypress scene in the dining room, or there was last time I was here. In Wendy's dining room, I mean. I don’t know what’s hanging in Gabe’s converted carport at the moment.” She shot a speculative look at him, making sure Ivy caught it, because the woman was plastering herself to Gabe’s side as if her thousand and three signals about the man being taken were unclear. Was she not there with a date of her own?
Speaking of whom. “So, listen, that was the hospital. I’ve got a little one fighting her food, and we need to figure her out before she’s losing more than is going in. I’ve got to take off. Can you get home on your own? Stay here for a bit, the band’s great.”
He nodded and looked around the crowds. She could hear his inner monologue, about gumbo and strangers and dancing—Ivy could lay claims on her man all she wanted; Chloe had seen the woman gyrating with Peter.
“It’s fine. I’ll stick here a bit.” He turned to Gabe and Ivy. “I’m going to grab a beer. Can I get y’all anything?”
She smiled like it was the most captivating offer she’d ever heard. “Aren’t you the sweetest? A glass of cabernet would be super, doll.”
“You got it.”
“Tell Mac and Wendy bye for me?” Chloe asked Gabe.
“You got it.”
“We’ll be sure to do that,” Ivy said. “You have a nice Christmas, now.”
Not to be out-done in the man-claiming department, Chloe planted a kiss on Peter’s lips and murmured that she’d call him later.
If Ivy thought that meant phone sex in between monitoring Baby Gloria’s stats, well, Ivy was an idiot. But that was no problem of hers.
“Dance with me, babe.”
Gabe kept his face at rest. He’d asked Ivy not to call him that, but she thought the rhyme with his name was adorable. It made him cringe. Darling, hon, cher, even baby: she could give him any other nickname, but she persisted with babe.
“Hang on a sec. I’ll go tell Wendy Chloe had to go.”
She slid her hand up his chest. “Oh, that can wait. It’s not like anyone needs to know where she is every second.”
It wasn’t a bad point. They danced for a few.
Mac and Wendy twirled by, showing off their two-step dip. Gabe lifted his chin at them, and when the song ended, led Ivy their way. After explaining about Chloe’s call, and reassuring Wendy that she hadn’t been wanted, he smiled at his date. “Wendy says Chloe handles the NG tubes better than anyone, but just watch, three minutes tops before she’s checking her phone for messages and calling into the nurses’ station just to check it out.”
“Well, maybe she doesn’t think Doctor Chloe Ice Maiden is all knowing after all.”
He slung an arm around her. “Nah. Wendy says Chloe’s hyper-dedicated. She has a way of fighting for those preemies, kind of encouraging them along somehow. I had no idea before talking to her about it how tenacious those little ones can be.”
“I suppose Chloe says the same?”
He shrugged. “Never talked to her about it. But Wendy says Chloe’s family lost a preemie when she was a kid, like ten or so, and that’s what got her interested in neonatology to start with.”
“Sad. What else does Wendy say?”
He looked down at her, but she made sure to appear captivated by the rhythm of Manny’s strummers on the washboard and wouldn’t catch his eye. “It is sad. I mean, damn, Ivy, we’re talking about a dead baby here. What’s eating you?”
By dint of flicking her head, she managed to be looking his way even less than she had been. He leaned in to catch her words over everyone’s applause for the final song. “Wendy says Chloe is smart. Wendy says Chloe is compassionate. Wendy says Chloe has a sob story from her childhood.”
He was nonplussed. “I mean, that’s just what she told me. I’ve got no reason to doubt her.”
Ivy’s head flick this time ended with her direct stare at him. “Why are you wearing that ridiculous shirt? Why are you running off to tell Wendy the second Chloe gives you a message? How is it that every third thing you’ve said to me tonight is to relate some fascinating tidbit about Chloe that Wendy told you?”
He coiled in his temper, set it to settle so he could think about his answer. Drawing her towards his door was easier now that the band had packed it in; five minutes earlier she’d have planted her feet on the patio, and not for nothing but Ivy had talked up seeing them perform tonight so much that he’d put off the break-up conversation they both knew was coming. “What I talk to my friends about is the real problem here, or is it something more?”
“I think you were looking forward to seeing Chloe tonight.”
“That’s a crime, to have a female friend?”
Ivy snorted. “She’s no friend to you. No matter how many things Wendy told you about her, you’ve only seen her four times in your life, and half of those you were with me.”
“You’ve been taking quite the inventory of my interactions with her.”
“It seemed like it was my business to do so. Unless you have something to hide.”
“One thing, I’m always honest with you, and you ought to know that by now. And another, if you can’t trust me so much that you’re checking up on someone I’ve met a handful of times, I don’t guess you trust me in the least. So that cheapens all that honesty I’ve laid at your feet.”
She stomped one of those feet. They were pretty feet, and they danced real smooth, but he wasn’t going to keep chasing after them. “Okay. So. I can trust you, and no matter how obviously you pant after someone else, I can’t be bothered by it? Because you’re honest about your intentions towards her?”
“I have no intentions towards Chloe Lee. I’m with you, ain’t I?”
They’d made it inside his place, which was good because the raised voices weren’t so conducive to a fun holiday party. Also because when Ivy shook her head to deny their relationship, he could sink into his own familiar sofa and clam up like a mule. She clattered upstairs to grab her stuff from the loft, and he just watched as she retrieved her vodka from the freezer, dropped her toothbrush in the trash, disentangled her headphones from his sound system. It would be easier to paint without her singing sotto voce to whatever was thumping in her ears.
“Okay, Mr. Gabriel Babineaux, I trust you’ll run off to make my goodbyes to Mac and Wendy with as much fervor as you did for your dear-heart Chloe the White. Tell them thanks for inviting me, and maybe I’ll see them around.”
“You can tell them yourself, if you want. Go enjoy yourself, have some catfish and gumbo. I won’t follow you around.”
“Oh, we all know you’ll hide here in your cave now I’m gone as well. You have yourself a merry little solitary lonely Christmas, Gabe. Thanks for not pitching fits and making this drawn out.”
He shrugged. “Same.”
She stared at him like she expected more. Tears or negotiations or the suggestion of goodbye sex. He wasn’t in the mood for any of it.
Tossing the spare key towards his lap, she rolled her eyes, pivoted, and went right out the door.
Once he had some time to think it over, he figured he’d work up some sorrow. Until then, he stared down at his arms crossed in front of his chest, tracing mental dot-to-dots on the paint and nail polish splatters on his once-white shirt.