by Tawna Fenske
There’s no roommate here. Just five cats—Jessica, Sinbad, Raisin, Eloise, and Zinnia—lined up in a judgmental row as I walk into the kitchen.
“Stop looking at me like that,” I tell them as I pry the lid off the bubbling pot of chowder. Warm steam billows out, and I breathe in the scent of winter afternoons at my grandma’s place on the Oregon Coast. Red potatoes simmer beside bright bits of carrot and corn, swirling with plump, pink salmon chunks. I give the whole thing a stir before adding a pinch of salt.
I look up to see the cats still staring at me. “What?” I tap the spoon on the side of the pot as Jessica twitches her whiskers in silent judgment. “So I invited a guy over for dinner. I was just being friendly.”
The cats are unconvinced. Or maybe they’re hungry. But I fed them an hour ago, so I’m pretty sure they’re judging.
I focus on Jessica, mother and ringleader of the motley bunch. With her gnarled stump tail and scarred face, she holds the unofficial record as the world’s homeliest cat. Her massive polydactyl paws complete the picture of an animal raised next to a nuclear power plant.
She continues to stare, her eerie green eyes indicating she’s unimpressed by me. “He’s a friend of James and Lily,” I explain. “It’s not like I’m dragging a stranger home from the bar. And he’s nothing like Alastair.”
Like I’d know. I spent five minutes with Gabe. I’ve had longer interactions with the guy who writes parking tickets on campus.
Jessica sighs and closes one eye. Beside her, Zinnia twitches her tail and rearranges her body into a donut shape. Even Sinbad looks dubious.
“Oh, come on.” The words come out strangely shouty, and I tap the spoon on the pot again, spattering my hand with chowder. “It’s not like I invited him over to bang me on the kitchen counter.”
“Gretchen?”
I snap my head up, and there he is in the doorway. Gabe whats-his-name in all his six-two, red-scarfed, tousle-haired glory. He looks like the product of a cloning experiment between a hot professor and an underwear model, and I pray to God he didn’t hear those last few words.
“I’m sorry.” He’s frozen on the welcome mat, brown eyes wide with uncertainty. “I thought I heard you yell ‘come in.’ I can go back outside and—”
“No, no—it’s fine.” Heat rushes my face, and I wonder if I can blame it on the steam from the soup. I give it another good stir, needing something to do with my hands. “I was just talking to the cats.”
“Wow.” He surveys the lineup, and I watch the words ‘crazy cat lady’ race through his mind.
“They’re not mine,” I assure him. “They’re what happens when a soft-hearted humanitarian accidentally adopts a pregnant stray.”
He smiles, and I notice a dimple in his left cheek. “The soft-hearted humanitarian would be your brother?” He unwinds the scarf from his neck, which I take as a sign he plans to stay. “I’ve met Jon a few times. James said you’re pet sitting?”
“For a couple weeks, yes.” I nod to the hook beside the door. “You can hang up your coat there. Can I get you a glass of wine? I’ve got a Pinot Noir open, but there’s Pinot Gris in the fridge.”
He drapes his coat on the hook and moves to the other side of the kitchen island. His stride is long and confident, and I try not to stare as he folds his oversized frame onto a barstool and rests his hands on the counter. My gaze snags on his hands. They’re big and rugged, a contrast to his expensive shoes and a sweater that looks like it cost more than my last year of grad school.
I’m staring at his hands, wondering what he does for a living. I could ask, but it seems tasteless to interrogate the guy before the ice chips melt from his hair.
“Water would be great,” he says, reminding me I’ve offered him a beverage. “Or juice or soda or whatever.”
“Oh.” Shit. Did I just offer booze to a recovering alcoholic? Leave it to me to stick a foot in it with the first hot guy I’ve dined with since—
“Water, yes, hang on.” I look down and remember I’ve slopped soup over my knuckles. “Let me get the chowder off my hand.”
“I’ve got it.” He stands up, and for one absurd moment, I think he intends to lick soup off my knuckles. I’m good with that. “Which cupboard are the glasses in?”
My fingers sting from the heat of the soup, and my face burns from the shame of my own awkwardness. “Right next to the fridge,” I tell him. “Icemaker’s in the door.”
“I’m on it.” He moves around the counter and gets his own glass of water while I try to regroup. Stirring the chowder again seems like a good start.
“I’m not an alcoholic,” he says as he eases himself back onto the barstool. “I’m assuming that’s why you got all flustered?”
I got flustered because I don’t normally invite stupid-hot men to dinner, but I nod anyway. “Right. I mean—good. That’s good that you’re not.” Did that sound judgey? “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I work in academia, so not much shocks me.”
He stares at me for a long time. An uncomfortably long time, which has me stirring the soup harder. I glance down to see I’ve made a spinning whirlpool of salmon and potato chunks, and I order myself to put the spoon down.
“I’m driving tonight,” he says. “That’s why I’m not drinking. But you go right ahead.”
“Already on it.” I lift my glass in a shaky toast, then feel the need to clarify. “I’m not an alcoholic, either. Just killing the bottle before I leave.”
“You’re going somewhere?”
I didn’t mean to say that. It’s not smart to tell a strange man I’m en route to a remote cabin in the woods to work on my dissertation. True, we established he’s not a serial killer, but did Ted Bundy go around advertising it?
“My brother’s coming back,” I tell him, thinking fast. “They’re visiting our parents in Europe, but they fly home tomorrow.”
“And you go back to your place?”
I decide that’s a rhetorical question, so I’m not technically lying when I nod. “Soup’s just about ready. Oh! I forgot the bread.”
Gabe glances at the clock on the wall. “I could see if they have some at the lodge. They should still be open, and it’s just across the way.”
“No, I made sourdough.” I nod at the bread machine tucked next to the fridge. “Well, Giancarlo made bread.”
“Giancarlo?”
I ladle soup into bowls, careful not to splash my hand this time. “I name all my household appliances. It makes me feel rich and exotic to say, ‘Giancarlo is home baking bread,’ or ‘Louise made me this amazing pork roast.’”
“And Louise is?”
“My slow cooker.”
He laughs and steps around the counter to inspect the bread machine. After figuring out the latch, he pries out the sourdough and sets it on Jon’s battered wooden cutting board.
“All your appliances, huh?” He looks thoughtful, and I brace myself for an awkward vibrator joke. “How about your toaster?”
“Bob Marley,” I say without hesitation.
He laughs. “Toaster, toasted…stoner humor?”
“Right.” I wonder if I should clarify I’m not a pothead, but that seems like overkill. I settle for sprinkling dill over the bowls while Gabe slices into the bread, releasing a fragrant cloud of yeasty goodness. My stomach rumbles, and I’m not sure if I’m hungrier for food or for the man helping me prepare it.
“How about your laptop?” He frowns. “Or do you have one?”
“I’m a college professor. I definitely have a laptop.”
He smiles and keeps slicing bread. “Wasn’t sure if your TV aversion extended to all screens.”
“No, but I’m not on social media.” I clear my throat. “Steve. My laptop is Steve.” I can’t tell from looking if Gabe thinks I’m adorably quirky or insane.
“Steve Jobs, I presume?” He grins. “Which means you’re a Mac girl.”
I’m ridiculously pleased he gets it. “I am indeed.”
“I
like you even more than I did five minutes ago.”
For some reason, that perfectly platonic compliment sends a frizzle of joy through me. I keep my eyes averted, concentrating on getting out silverware while Gabe finishes slicing bread and loads it into the wooden bowl I’ve set beside the cutting board. I reach over to cover the bowl with a clean dishcloth, brushing his hand by accident. Sparks shoot from my wrist to my armpit, which is more pleasant than it sounds.
“I own both an ice cream maker and a milkshake machine,” I blurt to distract him from the heat in my face. “Actually, two ice cream makers. One for sorbets and one that’s the old-fashioned hand crank kind.”
“Now you’re just bragging.” There’s a teasing glint in his eyes, and his hand brushes mine again as he reaches past me for the butter dish. “Okay, if you were a movie girl, I’d be guessing names like George—for the scene in It’s a Wonderful Life where young George Bailey bonds with his future wife in an ice cream parlor.”
“I actually have seen that film, but no.”
He looks pensive as he carries the bread to the table and returns for the napkins and silverware. “Wait, no—you’d be more into 1979’s Mad Max when Max’s wife fights off a bad guy with an ice cream cone and a knee to the nuts.” He snaps his fingers. “Jess—I think her name was Jess.”
I’m not sure what to make of the fact that he thinks of me in the same vein as a knee to the nuts. I decide to take it as a compliment. “Never saw that one.”
“Okay, I give up.” He scoops up the soup bowls and carries them to the table. “What did you name your ice cream maker and milkshake machine?”
I smile as I finish tossing the arugula and pear salad. “You’re actually not that far off with the pop culture stuff. The ice cream maker is Sarah.”
“Sarah?”
“For that Sarah McLaughlin song from the nineties—the one about your love being better than ice cream?”
I realize before I’ve gotten the words out that I’m inching into flirtatious territory. I didn’t mean to, but I can’t help noticing my heart swaying to the beat of that sappy love song. I’m grateful his back is turned as he arranges the bowls on Jon’s blue and white placemats.
“And the milkshake maker is Kelis,” I add, averting my eyes as I pile the salad onto two plates.
“Ha!” He claps his hands together, striding over to grab salt and pepper and butter knives, all of which I probably would have forgotten. “For that hip-hop song by Kelis—‘Milkshake,’ right?”
“Right. I played it once for Jon’s niece.”
“Libby, right? Mark’s girl?”
I’m surprised he knows this, since Mark and Chelsea have been together less than a year. Gabe must be closer to the Bracelyns than I realized.
“James keeps me up to date on family news,” he says, reading my thoughts. “I haven’t actually met Libby yet.”
“Right. Anyway, I made a milkshake for Libby, and she went straight for the front window.”
He laughs. “Was she disappointed not to see boys in the yard?”
“Not really.” I pick up both salad plates and hand them to him. “Boys have cooties.”
“So I’ve heard.” His eyes crinkle at the corners, and I notice they’re the most delicious blend of amber brown.
I’m a sucker for brown eyes.
I concentrate on inventorying everything on the table so I don’t give in to the urge to wrap myself around him like a python. It’s been more than a month since things crashed and burned with Alastair. I’m sex-starved, that’s all. Nothing I can’t solve with a few minutes alone with my other favorite appliance.
As soon as we’re seated, Gabe spreads his napkin over his lap and dives into the meal. “So tell me about this cinematic aversion of yours,” he says. “Is it a hard and fast rule against all television and movies, or what?”
I swallow my first bite of chowder and wash it down with the ice water that magically appeared on my place mat. Gabe sure made himself useful.
“I guess it started in grade school when I saw Bambi.”
“And it scarred you for life?”
“Sort of,” I admit. “When you read a sad book, you can prepare yourself mentally. But movies just hit you square in the face with dead deer. I couldn’t handle it.”
I’m aware that I’ve just confessed to a total stranger my tendency to bury my head in the sand instead of dealing with uncomfortable truths. Or maybe he didn’t hear all that, what with me blathering about Bambi.
“Anyway, I never really got into visual media after that,” I say. “TV and movies just took time away from studying anyway.”
“And you’re a researcher,” he says.
How much do I love that Gabe pays attention?
“Wildlife biology is my specialty,” I tell him. “I’m researching Sierra Nevada red foxes. They’re a rarely seen subspecies recently found to be roaming in the Oregon Cascades.”
“Not just the Sierras?”
“Nope.” I blow on a spoonful of chowder. “Fewer than one hundred live in Northern California, and they’re on a waiting list for protection under the Federal Endangered Species Act. But these Oregon sightings are a game changer. No one has any idea how many there could be.”
I realize I’m starting to sound geeky. Gabe’s probably used to women adept at discussing the latest indie films or pop culture references from TV.
But he just grins around a big bite of salad. “That’s really cool. I can see why you’d pick that over being glued to a screen.”
“I do have a lot more time in my day than folks with a nightly TV habit.” I dab my mouth with the napkin, hoping I don’t have chowder on my face. “But a lot of friends’ conversations go right over my head. Someone will quote a movie or start talking about the latest season of some hit show, and I’ll just be nodding along going, ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’”
He laughs and polishes off his last bite of salad. He wasn’t kidding about being hungry. “You’re not missing much. Trust me.”
Pushing aside the salad plate, he picks up his soup spoon. I wonder if it’s an etiquette thing, the ritual of polishing off one course before starting another. Maybe it’s a family routine. Or maybe I should stop obsessing about the man’s eating habits and focus on my own dinner.
He takes his first bite of soup and groans like I’ve given him a hand job under the table. “Oh my God.” He slumps his shoulders, eyes glazed with pleasure. “This is amazing. Holy crap, you made this?”
I laugh and take another bite. It is pretty good, if I say so myself. “My grandmother used to cover it in hot sauce,” I tell him. “I never realized that was weird until I got to college and tried it without. It was like a whole new world.”
He laughs around another big bite of chowder, then takes a swig of water. “When I was growing up, my grandma used to eat mustard as a snack.”
“Mustard?” I frown, trying to picture it. “Like on crackers or—”
“Nope, just mustard. She’d sit there with the jar of Grey Poupon and eat it by the spoonful.” He shudders and eats another bite of chowder.
I file away that information, curious about his upbringing. My middle-class brain pictured a plastic squeeze bottle of French’s, but Gabe grew up with Grey Poupon. That makes sense if he went to school with James. My own brother, Jon, spent his school years in fancy private academies, courtesy of his father’s money.
“Do you have a big family?” I ask.
He blinks at me, visibly startled. “Why do you ask?”
I shrug and lace my fork through the leafy fronds of arugula. “Just a guess. You jumped right in and started helping in the kitchen. Kids who grow up in big families tend to do that.”
There’s the tiniest hint of wariness when he nods. “Yeah. Three brothers, counting me, and three sisters. How about you?”
“I’m one of six sisters,” I tell him. “Plus Jonathan, who had a different dad and a zillion half-siblings on the Bracelyn side.”
“And you’re not related to them.” He’s connecting the dots, or maybe he already knew the details. “But you seem close with the family.”
“The Bracelyns kinda adopted me when I visited last fall and stuck around for the teaching position. They’re totally different from my family, but amazing.”
“What do your parents do?”
Is it just me, or is Gabe hell-bent on peppering me with questions so he doesn’t have to talk about himself? I don’t mind, but I file the observation in the back of my brain.
“My mom’s a retired nurse, and my dad’s a retired Coast Guard Admiral,” I tell him.
He takes another bite of soup and the bliss on his face leaves me tingling in spots I shouldn’t think about at the dinner table. Or while talking about my parents.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known a Coast Guard officer,” Gabe says. “What’s he like?”
I search my brain for another example of family quirks. Something to accompany my grandma’s hot sauce and his grandma’s mustard. Something to give Gabe a sense of my father’s unselfconscious, easygoing nature. “When my mother would make navy bean soup, my dad would pass around the bottle of Beano like it was a condiment.”
“Beano?”
Heat creeps up my throat, but I refuse to be embarrassed by introducing flatulence to our dinner conversation. “It’s supposed to prevent gas,” I tell him. “I never realized other families didn’t do it until college when Jon invited me to this fancy dinner hosted by his brother, Sean.”
“That’s the Michelin starred chef brother, right?”
“Yep. And guess who has two thumbs and asked for Beano at a fancy eight-course meal?” I plant both elbows on the table and gesture to myself, earning a laugh from Gabe.
“That’s awesome,” he says, still laughing. “If it makes you feel better, I never knew other families watched movies in silence.”
“What do you mean?”
There’s that flash of wariness again. Like he’s replaying his words, trying to decide if this story is okay to tell.
He seems to decide it is and keeps going. “Growing up, my whole family would sit around dissecting movies while we watched. There’d be this running commentary about the costuming or the casting choices or whether the director should have cut away a few seconds earlier.” There’s a light in his eyes, a warmth that tells me he’s close with his family. “Anyway, I thought that’s just how people watched films. I was sixteen before a friend invited me over for a Star Wars marathon and had to tell me to shut the fuck up halfway through the first film.”