Page 85 of The No Touch Roommate Rule
When she pulls back, her eyes—the same blue as Parker’s—study my face for a long beat. Whatever she sees makes her nod.
“Yep. This’ll do nicely.” She loops her arm through mine, steering me toward the house. “Come on, babies. Let’s get you fed. Parker, go grab y’alls bags. I’ll see how many embarrassing things I can tell Makena about you before you get back.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he says, shooting me a look that saystold you soandyou okay?at the same time.
I nod, letting Nana lead me up the steps. And there, draped over the porch railing like the world’s most inappropriate welcome mat: a massive, rainbow-colored crocheted penis.
“That’s Herbert,” Nana says conversationally. “He usually lives on the wood stove in the summer, but I like to air him out every now and then.”
I nod. “Of course you do.”
“See?” She pats my hand. “I knew you’d fit right in.”
The inside of the house is even better. Walls painted colors that shouldn’t work together but do—coral and turquoise, butteryellow and plum. Art everywhere: sculptures made from more kitchen utensils, paintings of nude women eating cake that I instantly want for my food truck, and a mobile constructed entirely from vintage bras.
“So, Parker said you were a chef?” Nana says, leading me through a living room where every surface holds something strange and wonderful. “Thank goodness. Maybe you’ll finally get that boy to eat a vegetable.”
“He’s very open to vegetables,” I say, still taking it all in. A papier mâché armadillo wearing a tutu stares at me from a bookshelf, and I decide I might need one of those, too. “He has a garden in his backyard, my friend Charlotte is watering for us while we’re gone and everything.”
“Oh, that’s good to hear. Good to hear.” We enter the kitchen—olive green cabinets, checkered floor, herbs growing in mismatched pots along every windowsill. “Now, pimento cheese sandwiches. You know how to make a proper one?”
“I’m from New Orleans, too,” I say. “We know our way around mayonnaise.”
She cackles. “Oh, I like you. Parker, get over here and grab the good cheese from the fridge. We’ll whip up something tasty to take the edge off before supper.”
What follows is one of the best cooking sessions of my life. I’m not usually a fan of sharing a kitchen, but we move around each other like we’ve done this a hundred times, chatting and laughing, blending ingredients like magic. It’s warm and easy, and the tomato Nana grabbed from her own garden this morning smells like a spicy piece of heaven.
“Out to the porch,” she commands once our sandwiches are assembled. “It’s too nice to eat inside. Makena, grab that pitcher of sweet tea. Parker, the bourbon’s in the sideboard.”
“Bourbon with lunch?” I tease.
“Honey, I’m eighty-two. I’ll have bourbon with my cereal if I please.”
The porch wraps around three sides of the house, furnished with mismatched wicker. We settle around a circular table with vintage erotica shellacked onto the surface, and I fall a little deeper in love.
“Now then,” Nana says, splashing bourbon into our tea. “Tell me how you two finally got together.”
Parker launches into the story about the wedding, the flood, the rescue, and the decision to be roommates. “And then I charmed her panties off,” he finishes with a wink my way that makes me blush.
I laugh. “He did. I was helpless to resist.”
“As you should be.” Nana takes a bite of her sandwich, humming her approval. “Though I have to say, it took you long enough. He’s been mooning over you since October.”
“Hush,” Parker says.
“What? It’s true,” she huffs.
“Thankfully, I came to my senses in the nick of time,” I cut in, saving Parker from further embarrassment.
After that, the conversation flows like bourbon-spiked tea—loose and easy and occasionally wild. Nana tells us about the time she hit a handsy sculpture professor with a stale baguette (“Gave him a lump the size of my fist. They don’t make bread like they used to.”) Parker shares some of our stories from the road, including our brave, witching hour battle with Crawford the crawfish. Then, I tell Nana about the restaurant, the issue with my flood insurance, and my mixture of excitement and terror at the thought of starting over.
She listens with her whole body before reaching over to pat my hand. “Starting over’s not the worst thing. Did it myself in my fifties. That’s when I met Dorothy.”
“Nana’s second marriage,” Parker supplies. “After my grandpa passed.”
“Oh, yeah?” I fight to hide my surprise, but my brows must have slid up a little.
Nana pats my hand again, assuring me, “Don’t worry, honey. I’m used to it. Not many bisexual women in my generation. Not many who were open about it, anyway. I didn’t think I was open to it, but then Dorothy walked into one of my shows with silver hair down to her ass, looking fabulous in the world’s ugliest pantsuit.” Nana sits back in her chair, glancing up at the leaves with a wistful expression as she adds, “She told me my nude series was the first time she’d seen ‘a female gaze that was genuinely feminine, not a male gaze living inside a woman gazing at a woman.’ I said, ‘Lady, I just like painting tits.’ Then she laughed, and it was…the best sound I’d heard in a long time.”
