After a few trial sniffs, Greg sprinkled a little coriander into the yogurt and greens mixture and then poured it into the still uncooked sponge mixture.
“Crap!” His voice echoed about the silent kitchen.
He’d utterly ruined both.
Well, the oven now had plenty of time to reach temperature.
He scraped everything into the trash and started over on his second sponge base of the morning. He had plenty of eggs, but he was running low on yogurt and Tiffany’s was exceptional. It had a tang without being goaty that would make a fine match for the flavor profile he was after. He made a mental note to buy extra yogurt the next time she came down the mountain. And maybe this time he’d try chatting Jessica up.
Jessica?
He scorched the flour and butter roux that lay at the heart of the roulade past golden brown and well into molasses-brown.
How had Jessica gotten in there?
He poured in milk to try and rescue the roux and ended up scalding the milk. By the time he had dumped that out and scrubbed off the brown layer glued to the bottom of the pot, the air had come back out of the egg whites and the whole thing had to be trashed again. He’d made hundreds of roulade sponges over the years; this was Chef 101.
All he’d been doing was having a happy little never-going-to-happen fantasy about the local mystery girl, and Jessica Baxter had floated into the diner’s kitchen uninvited.
Greg glanced around, but there was just him and the second ruined roulade. With a sigh he started cleaning that one up as well.
Jessica had always been a knockout. He used to hide up on the dunes just to watch her run on the beach each afternoon along with the rest of the women’s high school track-and-field team—half a head taller than any others except her cousin and running as if born to it.
Out of goat yogurt, he substituted cottage cheese in the third roulade which completely ruined the balance of Parmesan and coriander. When he caught himself reaching for cumin, he knew he was losing his mind. With slow and methodical care, Greg scraped the third mess into the garbage. The smoked salmon that Ralph Baxter had sold him wouldn’t spoil. The scallops, still sitting in a bag in his seawater tank to keep them fresh, would live another day.
He needed air before he suffocated.
Out the back of the diner, he just started walking. It was early afternoon and his stomach growled to remind him that he’d missed lunch. He was almost to his destination before he figured out where he was going.
Greg was less than a hundred yards from Vincent’s place when he heard the shout.
“Your head is up your rear end, Vin. Go on! Keep it there!”
Greg hesitated for a moment and then kept walking forward, figuring he’d better go and see what was up.
Vincent McCall was standing like a cornered bull—or maybe a cornered bulldog…a puppy—in front of the rolled up door to his two-car garage turned woodworking shop. The space was so crammed with projects and lumber that Vincent had to pull his table and chop saws out under the eaves every time he wanted to make a new piece of furniture.
What had cornered him was Dawn McCall. She’d been hot since fifth grade when her body had decided she was done with being a kid. Now at twenty-nine the view of her back had gone from attention-grabbing to awesome. Two kids showed nowhere on her hips. It was the ultimate joke that the school’s soccer captain had become the stay-at-home dad and the girl that most had thought was the tramp of the school had become the most beloved science teacher at Puffin High. Of course it didn’t take much imagination to understand why the boys all loved her.
Vincent glanced in Greg’s direction in vain hope. No way was Greg dumb enough to take on Daw—
“And don’t think I don’t know you’re back there thinking thoughts, Gregory Slater!” Dawn didn’t even turn to glare at him.
He hadn’t meant to be thinking thoughts about his best friend’s wife; it was just hard not to. She was the antithesis to Jessica Baxter. Dawn’s curves just reached out and grabbed a man’s imagination. He’d bet that her thick brunette ponytail, sparkling blue eyes, and killer figure dumbfounded every teenage boy trying to focus on the equations behind electron orbitals or celestial spectra, or any of the rest of that stuff that she’d distracted him from when they shared those classes over a decade ago. Her looks were a hard slap whereas Jessica’s were a soft caress.
The funny thing was that Dawn’s personality was normally soft and gentle whereas Jessica’s was clearly pure osprey—one of the biggest and most dangerous predators of the coastal bird community.
Not holding true at the moment. Vincent was looking at him wide-eyed and desperate. Dawn didn’t have much of a temper, but when it did cook off, it could be lethal. She was way smarter than either of them separately, but sometimes when they joined forces they could get around her. Vincent had pulled his behind out of scrapes often enough, so Greg took the risk and stepped forward.
“Sorry, Dawn. Sometimes I just forget what a lucky devil Vincent is that he married you.”
“Remind him of that,” she pointed an accusing finger at her husband. “I’m going to pick up the girls at Mom’s and we’re out of here.” The twin girls were the perfect second-grade spitting image of their mother, who had been vivacious even before her body had developed. The town’s seven-year old boys were already in twice as much trouble as he and Vincent had gone through with Dawn. Good luck, little guys.
Dawn stalked over to her SUV and roared off in a flurry of dirt and gravel, which was particularly messy after last night’s rain storm. Greg ducked too late and was spattered with mud right along with Vincent. Her tires jumped from driveway to paved lane with a jerk and a sharp squeak of rubber that left a dark black stripe on the wet pavement and had old Mrs. Winslow checking out her window to stare at the two of them for a long moment. There was the other side of second grade, Dragon Winslow had been the terror of every seven-year old in town since before the dinosaurs had walked the earth.
Greg decided that he’d harassed Dawn and Vincent recently enough about living across the street from their old terror of a second-grade teacher to let it go this time. Besides, standing here beneath the Dragon’s evil eye, it felt as if she’d somehow know if he did.
Greg brushed at his clothes. Between Jessica and her syrup and ketchup plate down his pants and Dawn’s muddy departure, he’d definitely have to do a load of laundry sooner rather than later.
“What the heck, buddy?”
“Sorry, Greg. The woman works like a demon for nine months of the year and then once school lets out she expects me to take time off during my busy season to go to a movie and shopping up in Newport. No notice on a family outing…that she insists the girls told me all about last night. The two girls talk so fast when they get going in unison that I don’t catch half of what they’re saying no matter how I try. Dawn also wasn’t too pleased about the Kriegson’s place.”
“The Kriegson’s—” Greg had to do a real brain shift to navigate that turn in the conversation. “You got the contract?”
Vincent nodded sadly.
“But that’s huge! Shouldn’t be surprised, because you’re the best custom furniture guy around. You figured it would go to that those guys out of Portland. So why the sad-dog face, Dawg?”
“The timeline. These summerfolk want everything by yesterday. It’s enough money to carry me right through the winter and shove a chunk into the twin’s college fund, but…” he waved a hand at the stacks of lumber in the garage.
Greg finally focused on what was crowding the shop. It wasn’t local pine with a bit of oak trim. It was oak, maple, and cherry.
“The trim is all exotics and won’t be here for another week. It’s going to take the guts out of my summer with the girls and even worse, delivery is right when my folks are visiting and you know the Kriegsons are going to want a thousand little changes that they claim will only take a minute.”
“Okay,” Greg knew enough about Dawn and her mother-in-law to feel Vincent�
��s pain; without Vincent available to act as a buffer between the two women it was going to be ugly. “I’m already dirty. Let me give you a hand.”
“Oh, dude!” Vincent held up a fist in thanks.
“Dude!” Greg replied with a fist-to-fist punch hard enough that they were both shaking their hands in pain. It wouldn’t be his pal Vin if it didn’t hurt.
They picked up the first big board, Greg’s hand still zinging a little, but it made up for not teasing Vincent about Mrs. Winslow.
Vincent maneuvered his end over toward the sawhorses. “You know, I saw Jessica Baxter driving into town with her mom this morning.”
Greg dropped the board and barely managed to rescue his toe before it hit.
The end of the board bounced off a concrete block and the end of it split.
“Oh dude,” Vincent said sadly, clearly not referring to the dropped board. He was the only person Greg had ever told about his teenage crush. Though of course everything Vincent knew, Dawn knew as well. “You’re so pitiful.”
“Tell me about it.”
And like a true friend, Vincent ignored the wry tone and began to do exactly that, fully relishing every dumb detail Greg had ever admitted to.
Jessica could have spent the entire day simply standing with her feet planted in the sand of the main beach, except she’d forgotten how cold the coast could be on a summer day.
Freshwater runoff from last night’s rain was slipping to sea just below the surface of the sand, rapidly turning her feet into ice cubes. A thin fog was sneaking over the water and toward the beach. The inland Willamette Valley on the other side of the Coast Range must be heating up to drag the fog in off the water even at midday. And then the first wave of the rising tide reached her ankles and she yelped. The Pacific Ocean was shockingly cold.
She scooted up the beach to get clear of the next wave. Her mother was wisely back at the car, well clear of the rising tide. She’d also pulled on a light jacket the color of their eyes. Jessica might have to steal that one. It was irritating, useful but irritating, that her mom had better taste in clothes than she did. And she’d have to steal it soon, the fog wasn’t put off by her Second City Improv Annual Revue t-shirt.
Even fifty feet from the beach the air was warmer, but not enough. As they got in the car, her mother spoke the old mandate, “Sand stays…”
“…outside the car. I haven’t forgotten.” Jessica did her best to dust off her feet but they were wet and sandy to the ankles and most of what she brushed off stuck to her hands. Soon it was like one of those oozing metallic encapsulations in science fiction movies, where the heroine barely has time to scream before becoming completely covered.
Her mother sighed when Jessica gave it up as a bad cause and pulled her feet aboard.
“Just like always, we’re going to have to hose you down when we get to Gina’s.”
Jessica no longer felt twelve. The shift had occurred when…she was sparring with Greg Slater. Handsome men did have their uses, even when they were from Eagle Cove.
Her mother drove them up the winding lane toward the last house in town. A pair of massive Victorians dominated the south end of the beach before it was completely bookended by the rocky prominence of Orca Head. There was the Judge’s place and then Aunt Gina’s massive Lamont B&B.
“What’s his story, anyway?”
“Whose, dear?”
When an eye roll didn’t elicit any better response because of her mother’s depressing habit of looking where she was driving, Jessica finally spoke his name.
“What about Greg?”
“Now you’re being obtuse on purpose, Mom.”
“Me?” She offered in a sweet tone that was so innocent that Jessica almost believed it. It was a tone from her childhood that Jessica had never been able to cultivate despite a fair amount of practice.
“Mo-om!” She said in her complaining teenage voice and they both had a laugh over it. “Did Greg even make it out of high school? Can’t he do anything more than wait tables for his dad? How lame is that.”
“Greg is—” Her cell phone rang. Her mother slipped it into the no-hands rig even though they were on a country lane moving about ten miles an hour.
“Hi, honey,” Dad’s voice boomed enthusiastically out of the speaker. “Is our little girl here yet?”
“Hi, Daddy,” Jessica called out.
“Hey, Squirt!”
If she’d been twelve before, now she was feeling five and waiting at the dock for her father’s boat to come back in.
“We’re just on our way to Gina’s now.” Classic Mom didn’t accelerate on the straightaway past the Slater spread.
Jessica stared at it as they slid by. The main house was almost as much of a monster as her family’s home. When she was a little girl Judge Slater had added a mother-in-law unit that mirrored the grand house in miniature: a complete match down to small turrets and impossibly steep conical roofs. It had always struck her as so cute and cozy, even though she’d only been in it a few times during Grandma Slater’s last years.
“I caught a monster halibut,” her father’s big voice filled the car. “Sold half to a customer who got skunked. Just got close enough to shore for the cell to work and called Greg. Must say that he sounded pretty relieved when I reached him. Any idea what that’s about?”
“No idea at all,” but her mother eyed Jessica as if she was somehow the cause.
“He took the other half,” her dad announced.
“Wonderful. I’ll get word out.”
“Can’t wait to be married to you again, honeybunch.”
“Last time, I promise, Ralph.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” her father’s oversized personality shifted to a soft caress over the airwaves, making it a private joke. One so intimate that Jessica could feel herself blushing for overhearing.
“Still a couple hours to dock,” his normal boom was back. “I promised the tourists I’d swing them by the puffin nesting grounds out at Chickadee Rock.”
May through August they were thick with a hundred or more foot-high birds with brilliant orange beaks. Right now the pufflings were fledging and the parents were scrambling about the sky and diving hundreds of feet into the ocean to keep them fed. It really was a grand sight.
“I’ll come and fetch you both as soon as I’m ashore and cleaned up. Bye, my honeys,” and he was gone.
“What does Greg Slater have to do with Dad catching a halibut?”
“He—” Then her mother actually looked away from the road even though the last curve was close ahead. She looked straight at Jessica for a long moment.
“What?”
Then her mother offered one of her radiant smiles. “You want to know what Greg does? Fine. Keep your questions until tonight and they’ll all be answered.”
“I don’t want to know that badly.”
“Oh, Jessica. Of course you do.”
Greg’s level of distraction was high enough that he wasn’t sure who was more relieved by Ralph Baxter’s call about the halibut, him or Vincent. He hadn’t dropped or damaged any more boards, but he’d knocked himself to the ground twice by catching his foot on the sawhorses. And he’d spent twenty minutes trying to round up the box of screws he’d knocked onto the garage floor. They were stainless steel, so he couldn’t even use a magnet to gather them back up out of the sawdust. The sharp points pricked like blackberry thorns as he scrabbled about in search of them.
And every dumb thing Greg did, his best friend had just rubbed it in more.
“Give me a break, Vincent. I don’t even know who Jessica Baxter is anymore.”
“Oh, like you knew so much then. But you’ve been pining after her for every one of the fourteen years she’s been gone.”
“No, I haven’t!” Yes, I have. “How do you know she’s pretty? You said you just saw her drive by.”
“Because she was awesome in a slim girl way when she was eighteen and you’re way distracted now, dude.” Dude had gone out of fash
ion when they were in middle school, so it had become their trademark greeting. Their theory had been that they were both out of the mainstream anyway, so maybe they’d become cool for being so far out of it. It hadn’t really worked out that way. Though some part of it must have worked for Vincent, he’d married Dawn after all. By the end of high school, she wasn’t just the hot chick, she was the hottest “get” as well. Beauty and brains joined together in a female Puffling. And despite all of the rumors, she’d been super picky—even if she had been dumb enough to pick Greg’s best friend.
There’d never been heat between he and Dawn. Plenty of admiration, he had been a teenage boy after all and Dawn had been, well, daunting. But the connection had always been as friends. Vincent had fallen under her spell early and never recovered, though he had been slow on the uptake. He didn’t figure it out until Dawn had asked him to the Senior Prom, then he’d never looked back.
Greg had taken Vicki Highland, who had the romantic soul of a razor clam. After the prom, when everyone had been headed to a beach bonfire in tuxes and gowns, she’d asked for a ride home. “I’ve seen a bonfire beneath the stars before,” she’d kissed his cheek and gone inside leaving him dumbfounded on the porch. She’d married an accountant in Salem and worked as his assistant and business manager. About right.
By the time Ralph Baxter’s call came in, he and Vincent both decided that it was a saving grace that there was now a massive piece of fish coming into dock.
Greg called around. Dawn and the twins often helped him when he did one of his “Irregular Friday Dinners at The Puffin.” Even at seven years old, the girls already could do a fine job of setting tables or making sure a pot was well watched; he could trust them with most of the stirring on a risotto now, though they’d have to trade off a couple times because it was a long process. But they were out of town. He sent Dawn a text to be sure to be back in time to eat and got back a thumb’s up emoticon.
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