The Cookout, and excerpt
fiction by Laura Gabel-Hartman

The day of the cookout Dan had a list of projects he was supposed to attend to, including hanging a spice rack in the kitchen and cleaning the grill. Instead he was defrosting the freezer. Texanna looked at the pyramid of frozen foods on the counter and took a deep breath. She stacked magazines on the coffee table. She moved her guitar from the couch to the corner. She’d never had a case for it and didn’t plan on investing in one now that Gwennie was the only one to take it out and pluck it. She used to enjoy guitar, before she got busy with motherhood. She used to have calluses. She’d even written a few songs, including one in college about a guy she had a crush on: “Conversations About Big Ideas,” which relied heavily on G chords. The guy had played guitar himself, which was one reason she got interested in it. He had very little body hair except for his head, where it frizzed and puffed out spontaneously. His personality matched his hair. That was after she had scared herself with the realization that sex could keep her in the white trash category, especially if she got pregnant. She tried something new with the college guy, waited for him to make the move on her, for an old-fashioned, slow-to-develop teen relationship, like a good girl would have. He never said he liked her—she had the sense she wasn’t sophisticated or deep enough for him—but her roommate dated his roommate, so sometimes they ended up together by default. The song was about the night they lay in his bed, waiting for their two friends. The hairs on Texanna’s arms stood straight out when they got near his hairless ones. Then there was the one she’d written before Gwennie was born called “Bad Habits Under Cover,” about how early in relationships, bad personal habits were concealed, and then later on, they weren’t. Lately she didn’t find that funny like she used to.