“Gabe!”
She might not have blurted out his name, sounding to her ears way too excited to see him, if she weren’t so surprised. Not that it was all that surprising, to see Gabe in her grocery store. Outside her grocery store. Laden with two full cloth bags of ingredients that didn’t look at all like they were full of convenience and preservatives. Good thing she hadn’t gotten her own groceries yet. She didn’t need to feel bad about her diet on top of sounding like a squeaky fool.
“Oh, hey there, Chloe.” He hitched one of the bags of health and freshness onto his shoulder. If seeing her in this sun-dappled parking lot on a February morning was surprising to him, nothing about his slow-spun voice gave it away.
Naturally.
“So.” Not a squeak in sight. Casual. “I haven’t seen you making groceries here before.”
“Nah. Usually I’m over to Tchoupitoulas Street, but you know how that gets with the tourists.”
She nodded. Mardi Gras redirected normal traffic patterns for New Orleans residents, even the ones not right up on top of the French Quarter. Made tons more sense than him showing up at her local with the idea of running into her. She nodded a second time. “Listen, I was sorry to hear about your dad. How’s he doing?”
She knew the man had spent a couple of weeks in recovery and gone back to work after the holidays, with a modified schedule. She knew he’d been looking for someone to take over so he could retire, and that Gabe worried he would be asked. That Gabe was trying to hold out, to stick with his goals for his painting career. That his dad claimed to believe in him, and dismissed any suggestion by the rest of the family that he would give up on New Orleans and move back to spend the rest of his life cooking at the roadhouse.
He was still in town, though. She’d known that. Known he hadn’t moved for good, at any rate. Wendy would have said something, even though she didn’t say just tons about Gabe anymore. Not since learning their history at Christmas.
“Yeah, he’s better. Going strong. Stronger. I went up there last week and he looked almost back to normal.”
“Great. Good, that’s good.”
“And how about you? Everything right in the world? The babies behaving themselves?”
She smiled. “We have some fighters in now. It’s nice to see. Helps us all sleep at night.”
She had no control over her tongue. And even less over her autonomic responses, so she was left hoping he didn’t notice her blushing about just barely referencing her bed. What was she, fourteen again?
It wasn’t as if she’d been celibate since they’d had sex. She had a first date scheduled for the next night, one of the oncologists. Nice guy. Hot, in that silver fox way. Not as hot as Gabe, whose hair flashed white and gold in the sunlight, but hot.
“So, I have some cold stuff here. I should get it home. It was good to see you, Chloe.”
“Right. Sure, yes. Happy to hear your dad’s doing well. See you at Christmas.”
He tilted his head, eyes crinkled and teeth gleaming. “That you will. If not before.”
He worked on reminding himself why he’d given up on calling Chloe. There’d been a reason. Something to do with her snap judgments, and that way she had of reducing a guy to one or two things instead of letting him stay complex and layered.
She was terrible at apologies, he remembered that part clearly. Mac’d said something—not said so much as alluded—about her opinion of Penny’s Christmas outfits that had sent Gabe off to get the pup a heart-laden neckerchief for Valentine’s Day. Not that he’d admitted to the reason.
It wasn’t his watch-out to soothe over Chloe’s wrongs, just on account of them sleeping together once. No matter how hot an idea that had turned out to be in the moment.
No matter how good she looked, all flustered and eyes darting between him and the store and his chest and the street and back to him, as if she wanted and didn’t want at the same time. He wanted to capture that kinetic staying still turbulence in...something. Overlapping acrylics and spray paint on glass? He mulled it over as he strolled homewards.
So maybe he would call her. He’d see what Mac had to say. See if she was really as much trouble as he remembered. See if she was worth it despite that. He’d give it a couple of days consideration, because it had taken him a bit, but one thing he did remember about Chloe Lee. Making that snap decision to haul her fine ass into his bed had been a mistake. He’d snap-opted to propose to Heidi when she pressured him one too many times. He’d snap-resigned from the community college when he’d gotten the commission on the bridge art.
He’d felt himself pulled to snap-move when Mom made those Mom Expects Filial Duty eyes at him in the hospital. Another minute under the weight of her expectations and he might have done it; Chris had blown into the room in a most fortuitous manner, stopping him from committing to the roadhouse. He’d stepped back, and Chloe was the first place his thoughts had latched firm in the swirl of worry about Dad. He remembered that snap-fuck. He remembered the aftermath. He remembered that he needed to check and balance and pro and con his life, instead of snapping it.
So he’d talked about getting into the group show. And shown Dad pics of the hospital mural. Dad made him text them, and spent every nurse check and rounds passing his phone around to the Baton Rouge ICU folk. “They deal with annoying patients all the time,” Dad said every time he protested. The medical people tended to nod over-seriously in reply. It was sweet, in a way. Except for the part where it felt just like when Dad framed his middle school artwork and made them hang it all over the restaurant. With labels the manager printed out, explaining who he was. And that his perspective studies weren’t for sale. “Just in case someone asks,” Dad had said when he groaned and asked why.
The provisional nature of that comment, making it clear no one had even come close to asking, was worse than Dad framing the work in the first place.
So he’d learned a lesson, sleeping with Chloe. He’d also had a damn fine time. And she’d done something edgy and cute with her hair. It all meant it was worth considering, so he could make a solid decision.