Baby Makes Three

Gabe sighed and let his head fall back. He stared up at the elaborate cedar joists in the ceiling, imagined them with the delicate white Christmas lights he planned on winding around them.

The ceiling would look like the night sky dotted with stars.

It had been one of Alice’s ideas.

He and Alice used to talk about opening a place out of the city. A place on a bluff. He’d talked about cottages and fireplaces and she’d talked about organic ingredients and local produce. They’d been a team then, she the chef, he the consummate host, producer and manager. He’d felt invincible in those early days with Alice by his side.

But then the problems came and Alice got more and more distant, more and more sad with every trip to the doctor, every failed effort that ended in blood and tears and—Well, he’d never felt so helpless in his life.

“Lunch, boys!” Dad called from the kitchen the way he had since their mom walked out on them more than thirty years ago.

Gabe smiled and stood.

Nothing to do but eat a cheese sandwich and get to work. His dream wasn’t going to build itself.

THE HANGOVER POUNDED behind Alice’s eyes. Her fingers shook, so she set down the knife before she diced up her finger along with the tomatoes.

“I’m taking a break,” she told Trudy, who worked across from her at the long stainless steel prep table

Trudy’s black eyes were concerned. “That’s your second break since you’ve been here and it’s only three.”

“Smoker’s rights,” Alice croaked and grabbed a mug from the drying rack by the industrial washer and filled it with the swill Johnny O’s called coffee.

“You don’t smoke,” Trudy pointed out, trying to be helpful and failing miserably. “If Darnell comes back here, what am I supposed to tell him?”

“That he can fire me.” Alice slid her sunglasses from her coat hanging by the door and used her hips to push out into the bright afternoon.

Even with her dark glasses on, the sunshine felt like razor wire against her eyeballs, so after she collapsed onto the bench that had been set up by the Dumpsters for staff, she just shut her eyes against the sun.

The hangover, the sleeplessness, this mindless menial job that paid her part of the mortgage, it all weighed her down like sandbags attached to her neck.

Tonight no drinking, she swore.

She couldn’t change the fact that she’d fallen from chef and owner of Zinnia’s to head line chef at one of the three Johnny O’s franchises in Albany. That damage was already done and she’d come to grips with it.

But she could control the drinking.

A small voice reminded her that she made that promise almost every night.

Sometimes she wanted to punch the small voice, but instead she breathed deep of the slightly putrid air and tried to get Zen about the whole situation. She took a sip of her coffee, and listened to the sound of traffic.

The parking lot was pretty empty, but soon the hungry folks of Albany would be getting off work and looking for a sunny patio and drink specials and a lot of them would head to Johnny O’s. The kitchen would be loud and on fire for about eight hours and in those eight hours, while arranging plates of pasta and firebaked pizzas and grilling steaks and fish specials, she would forget all the reasons she had to drink.

Maybe she’d help the cleaning staff tonight. Work herself into a good exhaustion so she wouldn’t need the red wine to relax.

She tilted her face up to the sun and stretched out her feet, pleased with her plan.

A black truck, mud splattered and beat-up, pulled in to the lot and parked directly across from her. She thought about heading back inside, or at least opening the door and yelling to warn Trudy customers were arriving and the kitchen was on demand. But Trudy had been in the business as long as she had and could handle cooking for a truckload of guys.

But only one guy got out.

One guy, holding a droopy bouquet of yellow roses.

One guy, whose slow amble toward her was painfully, heartbreakingly familiar.

Coffee sloshed onto her pants, so she set the cup down on the bench and clenched her suddenly shaking hands together.

Spots swam in front of her eyes and her head felt light and full, like a balloon about to pop.

The man was tall and lean, so handsome still it made her heart hurt.

He stopped right in front of her and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head, displacing his dark blond hair. The sun was behind him and he seemed so big. She used to love his size, love how it made her feel small and safe. He’d wrap those strong arms around her and she felt protected from the world, from herself.

He smiled like a man who knew all the tastiest things about her.

That smile was his trademark. He could disarm an angry patron at four feet with the strength of his charming smile. He could woo frigid reviewers, disgruntled suppliers…his ex-wife.

“Hello, Alice.” He held out the roses but she couldn’t get her hands to lift and take them.

She left her shades on, so shattered by Gabe’s sudden appearance in front of her, as if the past five years hadn’t happened.

“Gabe.” Her voice croaked again and she nearly cringed.

He took a deep breath, in through his nose, no doubt hoping for a bit more welcome from her, some reaction other than the stoic front that was all she had these days.

His hand holding the roses fell back to his side.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She sounded accusatory and mean, like a stranger who had never known him at all.

And she felt that way. It was why, in part, the marriage had ended. Despite the late-night talks, the dreams of building a business together, the sex that held them together longer than they should have been, in the end, when things got bad, they really never knew each other at all.

“I could ask you the same thing.” His eyes swept the bench, the back door to Johnny O’s. The Dumpsters.

Suddenly, the reality of her life hammered home like a nail in her coffin. She worked shifts at a chain restaurant and was hungover at three on a Friday afternoon.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen, she thought bitterly, hating herself with a vehemence she usually saved for her dark drunken hours.

“I work here,” she said, battling her embarrassment with the sharp tilt of her head.

He nodded and watched her, his blue eyes cataloging the differences the five years between them had made. And behind her sunglasses, she did the same.

Gabe Mitchell was still devilishly easy on the eyes.

He’d always had her number. One sideways look from him, one tiny grin and she’d trip over her hormones to get into his arms. There was just something about the man and, she surmised after taking in his faded jeans and the black T-shirt with the rip at the collar, the work boots and his general allaround sexiness, there still was something about him.

But, she reminded herself, underneath that lovely candy coating beat one cold, cold heart. She’d learned it the hard way, and she still hadn’t recovered from the frost burn her five-year marriage had given her.

Call it fear of commitment, call it intimacy issues, whatever it was, Gabe had it bad. And watching him walk away from her and their marriage had nearly killed her.