Alice and I were wandering around Whole Foods, in search of ingredients for Christmas Eve dinner, which was being held at my house in a matter of two days. I was woefully unprepared, panicking at the prospect of my team and Emmett’s team coming over. Alice wanted to make a traditional family recipe for some fish salad. We were following Alice’s traditions and she was raised Catholic, like me. But, her mom was Italian and they served seven fishes on Christmas Eve.
“Do you know how to make squid?” Alice asked, reading from an email she’d gotten from her mom.
“Ewww, Alice. No,” I groaned. “Squid tastes like rubber bands and eating it without all the breading … that’s sacrilege,” I shuddered. “Nope. Nope. Nope. I’m drawing a line at squid.”
“But, that makes seven,” she pouted, thrusting her phone in my face. “It goes in the fish salad.”
I read the recipe, wrinkling my nose. “If we omit the calamari from the salad, we could replace it with linguine and clam sauce. I think I have a recipe from my grandmother on my dad’s side, who was also Italian. It’s really good … filled with a lot of butter and numminess. Served over linguine with some crusty bread? That sounds much better than mini octupuses. Octupi?”
“Okay,” she said. “I admit, the squid are disgusting. It was tradition, but I avoided them like the plague.”
“So, why were you pushing the squid?” I quipped, tossing in some lettuce, cucumbers and red onions into the cart. “What do you need for the fish salad? It’s not just fish, right? I only looked at the recipe to see that, in fact, it had squid in it.”
“Here,” she said. “How about we divide and conquer? I know we need to wrap presents for our significant others. Edward is over at my place with Jasper and the rest of the guys, invading my gift bag stash. Where’s your sister?”
“She’s spending time with Edward’s parents. They’re hanging out at the Christkindlmarket,” I chuckled. “Edward and I wanted to bring Katie there, but we never had the time. With his leave due to his car accident and trying to make up for all that lost time, along with my responsibilities at MAC, we haven’t had a chance. Hell, it was a miracle to get the decorations up this year.”
“Let me call Rose and David, see if they want to come over for some holiday cheer at your place, yeah?” Alice chirped. “We can wrap presents, eat some cookies, drink some nog and watch White Christmas.”
“Call your sister, too,” I grinned. “I’ll get the veggies and stuff for the fish salad. If you could get the fish?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Alice nodded, darting off to the meat department. I picked up the vegetables for the fish salad. I also picked up the ingredients for the clam sauce along with several bottles of wine, an expensive bottle of scotch for Carlisle and some items for Katie’s Christmas stocking.
Alice met me at the registers. “I’m going to have to take out a second mortgage to pay for all this fish,” she snickered, loading it onto the conveyor belt.
“But, it’s going to taste so good,” I smirked. “Tonight, we’ll have fun and tomorrow, you’re coming over to make this fish salad. Apparently, it needs to marinate or steep or whatever.”
“I also need to figure out how to cook crab legs,” Alice retorted, wrinkling her nose. “You’ll help me, right?”
“And by help, you mean do, right?” I teased as she swiped her credit card for the fish.
“Damn straight, bitch,” Alice grinned. “You’ve seen me cook.”
“No, no, I haven’t. I’ve seen you order a lot of takeout,” I quipped.
“Exactly,” she nodded.
