Labor of Love Read online

  “Hey, Bubba Gump Shrimp Company,” Amber said, pointing to a restaurant. “I love the Forrest Gump movie. Let’s eat there.”

  “Works for me,” I said.

  We walked inside. To the right was a bar area and to the left was a gift shop with all sorts of Bubba Gump restaurant and Forrest Gump souvenirs. RUN, FORREST, RUN signs. DVDs of the movie. A suit that Tom Hanks had worn in the movie was on display.

  “Three?” the hostess asked.

  “Yeah,” Jenna said.

  “Please come with me.”

  We followed her through the crowded restaurant to the back and up a set of stairs into a smaller dining area. Booths rested along the wall and tables were in the center. We were the only ones sitting up there.

  “Wherever you want,” the hostess said.

  We took a square table near the window, with Jenna and me sitting on either side of Amber.

  “The server will be up in a minute. Enjoy.” The hostess walked out of the room.

  “Do we stink or something?” Jenna asked as she opened the menu. “That we have to be isolated from the other customers?”

  “Well, we have been walking around most of the afternoon,” Amber said.

  “Still.”

  “I like being up here,” I said. “It’s quiet, and we can hear ourselves talk. It seemed kind of noisy downstairs.”

  “It was noisy because people were down there. Maybe we’d see something interesting.”

  “Are you saying we’re not interesting?” I teased.

  “We’re away from home. It just seems like we should meet other people, experience things.”

  “You’re still thinking about that tall guy,” I guessed.

  “Yeah. Missed opportunity.” Jenna sighed. “So, okay, I’m fine now. I’ve vented. What are y’all gonna order?”

  That was the thing about Jenna. She never stayed angry, never held grudges. She probably would have even forgiven her boyfriend if he had ruined her prom night. I was discovering that I held a grudge awhile longer. I wasn’t certain if it was an aspect of my personality that I really liked, but at the same time, I thought being too forgiving could be a fault, too.

  I just really didn’t understand where I went wrong with Drew. We’d always gotten along. We’d never fought. We’d never gotten on each other’s nerves. I’d thought he was the one…until he wasn’t.

  “Well, duh?” Amber said. “Shrimp. We have to order shrimp. Boiled shrimp, fried shrimp, sautéed shrimp, shrimp scampi, shrimp cocktail, butterfly shrimp—”

  I laughed. “Enough already. We get it.”

  We heard the footsteps echoing on the stairs.

  “I think we’re about to have company,” Jenna said.

  “Unless our server is an alien with multiple legs,” I teased.

  “Very funny.”

  “Well, at least putting us up here wasn’t personal,” Amber said.

  The hostess walked into the room, three guys following behind her.

  “Hey, we know them!” the tallest guy said.

  Amber gasped. I felt my mouth drop open. Jenna’s eyes widened.

  They were the guys from the bakery.

  Chapter 3

  What were the odds? That with all the different restaurants in New Orleans, they’d pick the same one as us?

  Astronomical.

  The hostess told them the same thing she told us, to sit anywhere they wanted, and I halfway expected them to say they wanted to sit with us. They didn’t. They took a table at the far end of the room. Once they started talking, we could hear only a low rumble.

  “Bummer,” Jenna said under her breath. “I thought maybe they’d ask to sit with us. Maybe we should—”

  “Are you ready to order?”

  The server stood there, and I hadn’t even seen him come in. I’d been paying too much attention to Red Cap and trying not to freak out. Maybe they were stalkers. Maybe they’d been following us all along and we’d been too distracted looking at petunias on balconies to notice.

  “Who wants to go first?” the server prodded, obviously in a hurry. He crouched down, put his pad on the table, and started tapping his pencil impatiently against the pad.

  We each ordered fried shrimp. When the waiter walked over to the guys’ table to get their order, Jenna leaned in. “What do you think it means?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes to the side, toward the guys. “That they’re here.”

  “Either they like seafood or they’re huge fans of Forrest Gump.”

  “I think it’s a sign,” Amber said. “We should have done a tarot reading. Then we’d know for sure.”

  “You don’t even believe in stuff like that,” I reminded her.

  “Maybe I’m starting to believe. You have to admit that Saraphina got more things right than she got wrong. I mean, really—did she get anything wrong?”

  I wasn’t exactly sure how we could judge that. We were assuming a lot of things…like this Red Cap was my Red Cap. Maybe he wasn’t.

  I jumped when I heard a chair scrape across the floor. I’m not usually easily spooked. Nerves of steel, like Superman. But, okay, maybe I was just a little unsettled by how our day was going.

  I looked over. The server had left. The guys walked to our table.

  “We were wondering,” Tall Guy said, looking at Jenna as he spoke, “do you know how much a polar bear weighs?”

  Jenna looked at us, looked back at him. “No.”

  “Enough to break the ice.” He grinned, and Jenna grinned back at him.

  The other two guys were shaking their heads.

  “Seriously,” Tall Guy said. “We were talking. We’re new to town, don’t know anyone, and fate seems to be working here. Three of you, three of us. Running into one another again. What can I say? It seems like destiny.”

  Did he really say destiny?

  “So what say we share a table,” he suggested.

  “Okay,” Jenna said, nodding so rapidly that her head was almost a blur.

  The guys moved a chair out of the way, then shoved the closest table against the empty side of ours. Without hesitation, Tall Guy sat next to Jenna. No surprise there. Red Cap and the remaining guy exchanged glances. Finally Red Cap sat next to me, which left Amber sitting across from the third guy.

  “I’m Tank,” Tall Guy said.

  Jenna released a laugh, then slapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. It’s not a funny name. It’s just, were you—are you—in the military or something?”

  “Nah, not even close. It’s just a nickname, better than Theodore.”

  Her eyes widened. “Your parents named you Theodore?”

  “Yeah, what were they thinking, right? Family tradition. You gotta hate ’em, though.” He pointed to Red Cap. “That’s Brady. And Sean.”

  Jenna introduced our group.

  Looking at me, Brady touched the brim of his cap. “Like your hat.”

  “Like yours, too.”

  “I thought I noticed you looking at it earlier. You a Chiefs fan?”

  I shook my head. “Texans.” I wasn’t really into football, but I believed in hometown loyalty.

  “You from Houston?”

  “Yeah. Well, actually, Katy, but most people don’t know where—”

  “We know where Katy is. We go to Rice.”

  Okay, so they were college guys. Rice University is in Houston, and Katy is about thirty minutes west of Houston.

  “Talk about your small world,” Brady said, smiling.

  “Yeah, really.”

  He looked past me to Amber. “You know, we should change seats. That way you can talk to Sean.”

  Amber looked startled, probably because Brady had already stood up.

  “Oh, yeah, sure, okay, yeah.”

  Brady dropped into the chair that Amber vacated. Jenna didn’t even seem to notice that she had a different person sitting on the other side of her. She and Tank were talking really quietly, with hushed voices. It wa