"It's a flesh color, and I don't think you want that. Flesh colored is racist."

Missy met Max's eyes, and Gwen could see they shared a grandma amusement she was left out of. "Yes, Max, you don't want to be racist."

"No, I do not."

Ellen finished off her dessert. "No one does, but remember the crayons? Flesh colored. The flesh colored bandages? Whose flesh color?"

Gwen wondered if there'd been some sensitivity training at Bunco meetings.

Nicola forked another delicate smear of chocolate. "We love the Native Americans."

Missy looked up and down the table then tackled it herself. "Excuse me?"

"My country. We love the Indians. I don't know why."

Hayden jumped in. "Their language is beautifully complex yet earthy, and very few cultures have the kind of spiritual ceremonies that appeal to diverse groups. The sweat lodge shares a common ground with saunas, hot tubs even."

Gwen felt the heavy weight of guilt descend. They were all innocently discussing crayons and the love of Native Americans, and she was living a lie. She had succumbed, a couple of times, to her illogical, irrational attraction to Max during a difficult time in her life, and Nicola was clueless. That felt wrong and mean spirited. She'd never slept with someone else's man before. She'd hardly slept with her own.

She slapped her hands on the table, making her coffee cup clink against the side of her plate. She tuned out everyone but Nicola. "Alright. Look, I'm an honest person. I am. I never jay walk. I always drive the speed limit."

"Under." Ellen rolled her eyes.

Gwen pointed to her mother. Proof. "Under even. I put the stamp right on the envelope where it says put stamp here. But I have to tell you--"

She'd missed Max coming around the table, but he didn't miss her. She felt herself pulled out of the chair and hauled into the kitchen.

They stood toe to toe in front of the sink where he'd pinned her with his pelvis just weeks before, but she would not be swayed. "I'm telling her."

He leaned into her face. "She knows."

"She does not!"

"Does."

"How?"

"Told her."

"Did not." She watched his face. No flinch, no eye shift, no nothing. "My god, she knows."

He shrugged.

"But..." Gwen tipped her head toward the dining room.

He shrugged again.

"She's just so... so..."

"French?"

"Yes." Gwen couldn't believe the woman was so casual about it. Shouldn't there have been yelling, tears, outrage, at least a woman to woman scornful eye?

"Alright already." He put his hands on her shoulders, and his palms were warm even through her turtleneck. "I came back here to help my mom when she was sick and took the job at Belmar. Nicola needed to, well, leave Paris for a while. The cooking program hired her, and that's that."

She still couldn't imagine Nicola not feeling something pretty intense about Max and somebody else. She certainly wouldn't be all dress slacks and cool manners at a table he'd had crazy, hot sex under. Although the odds of Nicola knowing that detail were probably zero.

The truth was, when she'd left Belmar twenty years before, Max had been free to date all the women in the world. She didn't doubt he'd experienced many of them but wished it didn't make her feel a little ill. Maybe it was the lava cake.

"So," he squeezed her shoulders once and let go. "I've got a dinner party in there. And I did not invite Nicola to make you feel guilty."

"You invited her?"

He took a step back.

"You invited her?" He didn't want her to feel guilty, but he'd invited her? "You invited her why exactly?"

"Listen. We'll discuss this later."

"Uh, no. I don't think so."

"Oh, that's right. You don't talk after."

Her eyebrows came together.

"You just have sex with me. No talking."

She heard voices from the dining room. They'd probably already sent a scout to listen in. She grabbed Max's sleeve and pulled him out the back door and onto the deck. The cold took her breath away. Damn him for making her need to step outside in the first place. "I did so talk to you."

"Not about what we did on the floor and in my bed and--"

She put her hand out to shush him and glanced over her shoulder at the back door.

"God!" He yelled and then seemed to try to calm himself down, but his teeth were tight together. "You are the most exasperating woman I have ever met."

Right. She was the problem. "Oh, and Miss We-Love-the-Indians is so perfect."

"You are jealous."

"Was that your brilliant plan? Bring the well-dressed Frenchwoman, and god knows how many cashmeres had to die to clothe her, just bring her here where you are shacked-up with your old college girlfriend, and yeah, I mean old, and over dessert I'll be so jealous I'll talk to you the next time I fuck you under a table?"

"Maybe."

"Well it was a sucky plan."

"It had levels."

"Sucky levels."

"Nicola doesn't want to be with me. She just kind of forgot that, and I thought she'd remember and then clarify it for you."

Gwen stared at him.

"It was something. What's your plan? Is it to pretend you don't have any kind of relationship with the guy you fuck under the table?"

"I do so have a relationship with you."

"Really. Please define it because it is a fuckin' fucking mystery to me."

She poked him in the chest. "We're friends."

"I can't believe you said that."

"Why? You seem to be pretty friendly with the woman you're supposedly over. How hard can it be to be friends with me, huh? You and Nicola are awfully chummy, cher, why is that?"

"I owe her."

"Oh, this will be good. Priceless. You owe Nicola because... just jump on in and fill in the blank, mister."

"It's my fault her family kicked her out."

She took a step back. "That's pretty good." She considered the possibilities for a moment. "Ewww, do not tell me there's a sex tape."

He took a deep breath like he was trying to stop himself from telling her again how exasperating she was, like anybody used a word like exasperating anymore. "Nicola created a recipe for her parent's restaurant, a big seller, very popular. And I'd been traveling so I hadn't been in Paris for a couple of months. The night I got back I ate with her folks at Applaudissements, one of their restaurants. I had the dish and just mentioned that it reminded me of a meal Nicola and I had eaten in Brazil."

"They kicked her to Belmar for that?"

"It's very serious business to accuse a chef of, well, plagiarizing. And I didn't really know if the dishes were the same. I'm not a chef. I caused a serious fight with her and her family, and then I had to come back here to help my mother, so Nicola's family made arrangements for her to come to Belmar."

He shrugged. "They're famous chefs, and it could only be good for the reputation of the new program to have her here. I'm just helping her out until she's on her feet again and can straighten things out with her family. She'll go back to France probably at the end of the school year. She'd tell you the same thing."

She studied him, all earnestness and sincerity. She hadn't been wrong about him the first time, but maybe, just maybe, the Max in front of her had grown up as beautifully as she'd once hoped he would.

Chapter Twenty.

Cucumbers have a cooling effect on any dish.

Gwen's Journal - September 29th, Sunday 1990

The semester started just a couple of weeks ago, and it already sucks. I thought summer sucked. Ellen brings home new boyfriend number nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine. A guy who does seat covers for cars, whole town calls him Upholstery Pete. She won't end up marrying him, thank god. She'll want to so he can take care of things, as if he even could, he can't put the toilet seat down. But he'll be gone before I go back again, which will hopefully be never.

And the stupid, stupid, stupid P.E. class I have to take for my degree where we play dodge ball? As if I'm going to be a P.E. teacher and even if I did I would never, ever, ever make kids play a game where getting hit in the face leads to you getting kicked out of the game, and the kid who nailed you is the winner. What is that? Lord of the Phys. Ed. Flies? But the running we're doing, I'm probably not used to the exercise yet, but I think it's screwed up my system or something.

Gwen's life the day before...

The field lay empty in front of her, all the players gone along with the band. She did love a good piccolo player, but even he was probably off at some party. It seemed everyone had left her there in the stadium. She could see the sun head down the sky, orangey and warm, like it also needed to remind her the day was over.

She'd sit on the hard bleachers all night. She was already numb to them. A month back at school and she should be at a party. It should feel like a beginning, but that was last year, wasn't it? Maybe they called it the sophomore slump for a reason, but what she feared the year would bring made a slump sound inviting.

"Gwen." She heard Max, knew his voice at a distance, in her head, in her dreams. She looked toward her feet where the bleachers ran in strips and saw Max standing beneath her. "Whatcha doin' up there?"

She wanted to ask him what he was doing underneath where it was nothing but shadows and gum and whatever else people threw away on purpose or accidentally.

"Gwen?"

She heard the click of his camera, knew he could wait her out if he wanted to, or worse, he'd get distracted taking shots and wander off before he remembered to come back to her.

"Are you mad at me, again?"

God, was she? It seemed like she'd been mad since he'd said goodbye in June and not missed her as much as she'd missed him. "I'm fine."

"You know, I'm beginning to think that when girls answer a question like that, they don't say what they really think."

All guys knew that, didn't they? Duh. Not that she was going to tell him he'd gotten it right. She tried to see his face in the gaps of the bleachers but only heard his camera clicking below. He was so talented that he'd be gone the day after they graduated and so handsome he still took her breath away even after a year.

"Gwen? Don't get mad, well, madder, but I think if you had, you know, more to do you'd be more okay with the time the newspaper's taking. I know I'm in the darkroom a lot lately, but you know..."

So she just didn't have enough to do? That was her problem? "It's not like I'm not taking eighteen credits, Max. You're not the only one going to school."

"I know. It's just that elementary ed. doesn't really seem like it's your thing."

"What do you mean by that?" She'd passed every class, every class so far, even the really stupid ones.

"It's just that ed. majors are, well, especially the ones teaching kids, they're so, you know, psyched about it. Remember that assignment with the marbles and the molding clay? You gotta admit that yours didn't really look like the solar system."