Page 74 of How to Say I Do
We did much better together. I was less panic-stricken. Peanut was more patient.
Wyatt’s smile stretched from ear to ear.
The second night, Wyatt brought out a lump of meat from his fridge with a “Ta-da!” and a big smile. He told me he was going to teach me how to smoke a pork butt.
The only way his words made sense were if he was about to bust out some rolling papers and a roach clip and show me a new Texas kind of marijuana. But that was a chunk of meat he was holding, easily the size of a bowling ball, and he was singing to himself as he slapped salt and pepper and brown sugar on the outside. “C’mere, I’ll show you how to rub everything in.”
He showed me how to pour the sugar on and watch it crystalize, how to fill up the grill with charcoal lumps, and how to lay chunks of soaked applewood on top of the charcoal so the wood would smoke up and season the pork with flavor. He had me light the charcoal and watch the temperature rise—“One-thirty… Oh, it’s one-thirty-one now, Wyatt. One-thirty-two! Is it going too fast?”—until everything was just right.
Then it was my job to transfer the pork to the grill, which felt like carrying a brain. I made squirmy, retching noises, but Wyatt said I’d done perfectly.
He closed the lid and told me we’d come back and take it off in twenty hours.
“Like, tomorrow? We’re not eating that tonight?”
“Nope. You smoke low and slow. If I do this right, it’ll be the best meat you’ve ever had in your life.”
I threw him a single arched eyebrow and a pursed pout, looking him over from his hat to his boots.
Thatwas the fastest I’d ever seen him pink up. He went neon, clearing his throat as he stared out over the yard.
“We’ll see,” I singsonged.
Oh, but he was right.
By the next evening, every insect, bird, and mammal in the county seemed to have shown up to catch a whiff of what Wyatt was smoking. The smell of slowly-caramelized pork soaked into my sleep, and my dreams was filled with a menagerie of banquets and buffets, dancing pigs, and brown-sugar snow that I caught on my tongue. I woke up drooling, and before I’d even had a sip of coffee, I asked him, “How much longer?”
When he finally pulled the pork off the grill, I was following him around like a puppy, watching every move he made as I gnawed on my bottom lip. My mother’s insistence on finishing school saved me from barbarism, and I remembered to ask him how I could help before I dropped slobber across the front of my Prada t-shirt.
He asked me to set the table while he shredded the pork. I had to hold myself up by the back of a chair.
He fed me by hand, little shredded pieces of the sweetest, most savory, most melt-in-your-mouth meat I’d ever had between my lips. I groaned with every bite, and tried to suck on his fingers to chase the flavor. Low and slow, little bit of salt and pepper, and some brown sugar? Fucking divine.
I told him, with my mouth completely full, “This is thebestmeat ever. Absolutely. Sorry, hon.”
He grinned. “Just tell me I’m number two. I can live with beating myself on my own grill.”
I pretended to think about it, and he slowly pulled the plate away. “You’re one-point-five,” I said in a rush. “In fact, what if we combine the two—”
“Uh-uh. No teeth.” God, his smile was gorgeous.
“But maybe if you, like,rubsome of it—”
“Noël!”
I still had to work, even in Texas. This wasn’t a vacation. The arrangement was, since I was out of town, I would handle the bulk of the week’s logistical arrangements while Dinah took over in-person responsibilities. AKA, she got to go out every night, and I dealt with the details.
His dining room table became my office. I spread out my laptop and my tablets and my notepads helter-skelter, then spent half the day calling, emailing, confirming, coordinating, soothing, appeasing, and ego stroking.
An A-list VIP guest for one of our club openings needed their flight changed because they were no longer coming into New York from Los Angeles. They’d spent the weekend in Barcelona on a whim, and they needed to switch their departure from LA to Spain.
A movie premiere’s red-carpet opening needed to be redone because the two stars that had been Hollywood’s hottest couple during filming were now definitely not speaking. They needed separate arrival times, exclusive windows on the red carpet with guaranteed no surprises—such as their ex popping up unannounced—and brand-new table seatings at the after party. Oh, and separate limos from now very separate hotels.
A society-pages mother wanted to throw her son an engagement party at the poshest restaurant in town and didn’t understand that reservations there had to be made eighteen months in advance.
A sports star we’d signed last year had been caught in Atlantic City doing very indecent things, and their public image was in meltdown.
Just a day’s business.
