Asean was the tallest man in the project, but Izzy was the tallest woman, so it wasn’t as awkward as it could have been. They leaned into each other, embracing. It felt nice to be held, Izzy could at least admit this. She remembered how Asean had told Izzy how, his entire life, coaches had tried to recruit him for football, and how he had always declined the invitation. “I don’t want to hurt anybody,” he told her. “I like putting people together more.” He had instead become the team trainer in high school, learning how to wrap an ankle, when to apply ice and when to apply heat. She imagined the strange sight of Asean, taller and more muscular than anyone in pads, jogging onto the football field during a time-out, picking up an injured player and carrying him easily back to the sidelines. She thought of what he had said, not to hurt, but to put back together. He was good at it, he had assured her.
She then tilted her face toward his and they kissed. It could have been two seconds or two hours. Izzy had no concept of time in this moment. She simply kissed Asean and was amazed by how easy it was. Then she became terrified; it was so easy. She pulled away and Asean nervously rubbed her shoulder. Against their better judgment, they looked toward the other corners of the room and saw each couple kissing, hesitant and slow, but most definitely making out.
“Let’s just wait for them to finish,” Asean whispered, and Izzy agreed, though she could easily have been convinced to do it again. She found that the kissing had burned out every drop of alcohol in her system and already, holy shit, she could feel the hangover rattling around in her empty head.
Finally, the other couples finished, and they all sheepishly moved back to the middle of the room. They smiled, awkwardly shifting their feet. “Does anyone want another drink?” Benjamin asked.
“It’s late,” Callie said again, and she pulled on Jeremy’s arm, who nodded and walked out of the room without another word. David silently followed them out.
Ellen looked at the rest of them. “Was it bad? Was that a mistake?”
“Maybe,” Asean offered, his voice so soft it sounded like a lullaby.
“Well, that’s the nature of this project,” Ellen admitted. “It’s how life works in general. You only know after the fact whether or not it was a good idea.”
Alyssa and Ben stayed with Ellen to straighten up the room, and Asean and Izzy walked out together.
“I wish I hadn’t done that,” Asean said.
“I know,” Izzy replied.
“Not because of you, you know?” Asean corrected himself.
“No, I know.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted it to be anyone else,” Asean said.
“Thank you,” Izzy said, unable for a few moments to meet his gaze until, finally, she looked at him. He was so handsome, so gentle, the kind of partner she’d hoped for. And here he was, in front of her, living with her, sharing the same spaces. But these were the limits of the project, no matter how much they talked about being a singular family. Asean was not hers and, even if they wanted each other on some level, they could not have each other. Izzy found herself less sad about this than she expected. She was okay with limits, some boundaries. If there would always be this strange electricity between herself and Asean, so be it. It would not ruin them.
“I better get back,” Asean said. He offered his hand to Izzy, and she awkwardly shook it, as if he had just sold her a very generous life insurance policy. “Good night,” he said.
“Good night,” Izzy replied.
Back in her house, under the covers of her bed, knowing that she would not sleep, she kept wondering if Asean, with Nikisha staying in the children’s room that night, would find his way back to her house, knock on her door, and whether she would let him in. She hoped, a million times over, that he would not, that nothing would ever come of this night. She wished so hard that her head ached and ached, but by the morning, she found that perhaps the mistake had been so small, so much a dream, that it would never matter, that nothing had changed or would change.
She added the buttermilk mixture to the bowl and stirred until everything looked correct; she kept glancing at Chef Nicole, but she was reading a magazine, her feet propped up on one of the prep tables, either confident in Izzy’s abilities or wanting to disassociate herself from the entire enterprise. In the courtyard, a whole hog was cooking in the smoker that Gerdie Kent had, without batting an eye, rented for the occasion, a Meadow Creek smoker on its own trailer, so big it looked like a submarine from the Cold War. The pig had been bought from a local farm, a perfect specimen, another miracle on Gerdie’s part.