“I actually brought some of Aunt Linda’s chicken salad.” He offered me a brown paper bag.
“So you show up unannounced with chicken salad? And you sent me carnations?” I didn’t have time to beat around bushes. Dakota wasn’t one for pussyfooting, either. He was always deliberate, never unsure, a trait that had served him well in life. He had never been one for ulterior motives or grand gestures. Not that carnations and chicken salad were grand. Quite the opposite, which suited me. And he knew that.
Yeah, thing was, Dak knew me.
“You always liked both.”
“I did.” And maybe I still do. So I took the bag because Aunt Linda’s chicken salad was a thing of beauty. She used Blue Plate mayonnaise, which was Louisiana’s answer to Duke’s. And in my opinion, a better answer. Linda chopped the celery fine and added toasted pecans from her prolific tree out back. She bought the chickens from a place out on Sentell Road—farm to table before it was a thing. And the combination of those things at her fingertips became a palate-stirring comfort food that was like southern gospel on the lips.
I took the bag to the kitchen and pulled out a plate, some club crackers, and the lemonade I had fresh squeezed yesterday. My gran always had club crackers and lemonade for visitors, which hadn’t seemed so weird until I truly thought about it. But old habits die hard even in a new generation, so I was set up for that chicken salad.
Dak had made himself at home on my couch. I placed the plate holding his offering on the coffee table atop some photography magazines and beside the bluebirds clustered on a branch that my gran had made when she took ceramics at the Mooringsport Baptist Church. We both tucked into the chicken salad in companionable silence, Dak sipping in appreciation at the homemade lemonade and me scarfing down half the chicken salad without so much as a how-do-ya-do.
“My stars and chickens, that’s some good stuff. How is she not rolling in the dough selling this? It’s the crack of chicken salads,” I said, leaning back on the couch, careful not to touch Dak as he polished off his half.
It was odd. For so many years we hadn’t spoken, and here we sat like two who’d never been apart. So unsettling, but at the same time, not as uncomfortable as it should have been.
He nodded. “You would think. But she says she only likes cooking for those she loves. Guess the rest of the world is SOL.”
I glanced over at the yellow carnations, and he caught me. I looked back at him with a question in my eyes.
Dak lifted one shoulder. “I just . . . Well, those others were the wrong flowers. That’s all.”
I made a moue with my lips, studying his discomfort. “What are you doing, Dak?”
He rubbed a hand over his eyes, for a moment looking quite tortured. “I don’t know, babe. I mean, sorry. Ruby.”
I sat like a statue, unsure how to proceed.
He dropped his hand and looked at me. “I don’t know.”
I counted off ten seconds of silence. “Okay.” And then I sighed, “Okay.”
And I didn’t know what I meant by that, but I couldn’t sit there and examine something neither one of us understood. We were getting nowhere. So I picked up the television remote. “The Cubs are playing. Wanna watch?”
“Nah. Water and bridges are things I sometimes don’t like to contemplate.” He clinked the ice in the glass, and I almost rose to fetch him more lemonade. But then I remembered that his hands weren’t broken. He cocked his head. “I think American Idol is on.”
“Done,” I said, clicking on the TV and finding the right channel. Dak settled back, crossing his feet shod in running shoes. He wore Adidas joggers and a short-sleeve T-shirt with some 5K ad on it. He sported a fresh cut and a tan from fishing. He looked good sitting next to me, and it didn’t escape my notice that I had invited Dak inside while I had sent Ty away. Of course, inviting Ty in pretty much acknowledged I would be having sex with him. But Dak was there for something he didn’t know he wanted. I understood that perfectly because that’s where I was, too.
So I sat beside my ex-love watching people yodel, bomb, and dazzle with their vocal abilities, deliciously full on chicken salad, with a check for $80,000 sitting not ten feet away.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CRICKET
The Channel Marker wasn’t exactly seedy. But it was a close second. And so I was pretty relieved to have grumpy Griffin Moon with his scowl and big clomping boots entering the joint behind me.
I glanced around for the perfect spot to spy on my husband.
The long, scarred bar with its fish netting and rusty barstools would have me too out in the open. Clusters of low tables, the kind men gathered around with cigarettes hanging from their lips to play card games, scattered the majority of the room. Maps of Caddo Lake interspersed with neon beer signs seemed the standard decoration for lakeside drinking. Behind the bar was a sign selling bait and a half wall covered with corks, hooks, and pocketknives. The place smelled of stale beer, cigarettes, and some faint funk that reminded me of a fraternity house.
“I’ll grab some beers. You may want to go to the restroom and . . .” He gestured at me, drawing his fingers up and down. My hands flew to my wig.
Thirty minutes earlier, Griffin had met me at his tow yard. Out in front of the freshly painted office with the blue-moon logo on the large plate glass sat a shiny Harley. Griffin came outside, waving farewell at someone behind the counter, and silently handed me a helmet.
“You’re joking, right?” I asked.
He made a face. “No. I thought we’d take the bike. The tow truck seems too conspicuous, and my regular truck is back at my place. It’s a nice day.”
“People die on these things, and besides, that helmet will mess up my wig.” I had on the same outfit as yesterday. The shirt with the rock band that seemed to enjoy death a lot, the ripped-up jeans, and the dark lipstick. Ruby had brought me a tattoo that would come off with baby oil to go on my wrist. It was a heart with a sword through it. She’d also brought me a denim shirt, which I put over the T-shirt since my boobs hadn’t magically shrunk overnight. I had wounds from the bobby pins Ruby had jabbed into my hair to keep the wig on.
“You won’t die. And I bet you the first round that you’ll like it,” Griffin said, holding out the helmet and waggling it. “Come on. Live like you mean it.”
I ignored his helmet and folded my arms across my chest, mad that he somehow knew what to use against me. Daring me to be bold. Tempting me with letting go of my mundane life that had led to my husband plowing the tennis pro. Standing up on a desk and dead poeting me into seizing the day. “Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
I inhaled and exhaled deeply. “Daring me.”
Griffin smiled something very devilish and unlike him. I felt it in parts that didn’t need to be feeling a dang thing. “Is it working?”