He pointed to where the skewer met the plastic handle. Then he handed the skewer to Blaze, and the little black bag as well.
Blaze took the skewer and hefted it in his hand, thinking it would have been a whole lot more fun to scrounge for the right-sized sticks and then to sharpen the ends with a pocketknife or something. But then, it should be remembered that this whole setup was designed to please very rich people who, while they might not mind a breeze wafting around their ankles while they showered, probably didn’t want any hassle when roasting marshmallows over an open flame.
“You could get some sticks, if you want.” Leaning back, still kneeling, Gabe reached into his left pocket to pull out, of all things, a shiny red Swiss Army knife. He held it out to Blaze like he wasn’t at all worried that Blaze would open it just to use it on him.
As if seeing Blaze’s hesitation, Gabe reached his arm out even farther. “I know you want to.”
Pausing, Blaze remembered his promise to himself. He hadn’t known Gabe very long at all, but everything he’d done and said so far had been exactly what it seemed to be, and not just a trick to mess with Blaze.
“Yeah, I do. Thanks.” Blaze took the pocketknife and hefted it in his hand as he’d done with the skewer. Right away, it felt better. In keeping with the setting. In sync with how a marshmallow roasting session should go.
He flicked open the blade, and studied the sharpness, thinking about how in his other life, he would have been tempted to steal the knife after using it. Say he’d lost it.
But he wasn’t going to, and he shoved away the memory of his mom, when the family had gone to a Denny’s and she’d told Blaze to steal the salt and pepper shakers.
Oddly, at the time, Blaze had refused to take those shakers, even though they probably only cost a buck each.
Once out in the parking lot, his mother had snarled at him that he was exactly like his Uncle Shawn, as if that were the worst insult she could think of. Blaze hadn’t seen Uncle Shawn in years, come to think of it, and his leaving had been quite the family scandal because Shawn, it seemed, didn’t want to be in on any of their scams.
Snapping the knife shut, Blaze nodded at Gabe, and went into the trees, foraging for likely looking sticks that might hold up to being held over an open flame. Instinct led him to picking up branches that seemed fresh, rather than the dried-out ones, and he felt good when he came back to the fire pit with a small armful of sticks.
The fire was going sprightly now, casting a golden glow over everything around it.
He laid his treasure of roasting sticks at Gabe’s feet and handed his knife back to him, as if it had never occurred to him to steal it.
“Ah, excellent.” With both knees in the dirt, kneeling, Gabe dusted his hands together and smiled up at Blaze like he was perfect just as he was and didn’t need to steal to be considered useful. He picked up a branch and got to his feet. “These are perfect. I’ll show you how to peel the bark off a little ways and how to sharpen them.”
While everyone else was seated in one of the Adirondack chairs, glassy-eyed and looking at the fire, Gabe grabbed the pile of sticks, pulled Blaze to one side, and sat on one of the logs on the outer ring of the fire pit. He gestured to Blaze to sit down next to him, snapped the blade out again, and demonstrated how to prep the stick for roasting.
“Like this and this,” said Gabe, peeling the bark back a little way, scraping the end to a point. “See? You can make room for more than one marshmallow, too. Like this.”
Blaze paid attention, rapt, enjoying the moment, fully inside of it, captured by the sight of Gabe’s strong wrists scraping each stick, the bulk of his forearm, the way his muscles jumped along his thigh as he leaned forward to grab another stick.
“Now you try.”
Gabe handed the knife to Blaze, handle end first, and didn’t lean away when Blaze started peeling the stick, doing it like Gabe had done. Rather, he leaned forward, unafraid, just like he’d been unafraid when Kurt had asked, all snotty, whether Gabe was worried that they’d attack him when his back was turned.
“Good,” said Gabe, calm as anything when he pointed out a rough spot in the bark. “You can trim that back so the marshmallow goes on easier. So it doesn’t tear.”
“And if it tears?” asked Blaze.
“Then you eat it,” said Gabe, his hands spread as he mock-scowled at Blaze as if that was the dumbest question he’d ever heard. But it was said with tons of good nature, with a teasing tone in his voice. “They really are better roasted than raw, though.”
They started roasting marshmallows even before it got fully dark, which was good because they were clumsy at it. At least Tom, Wayne, and Blaze were, having not been brought up in households that did this sort of thing. Del, Neal, and Gabe were either naturals at it or had gotten plenty of practice, and it seemed they made their motions slow on purpose so the parolees could copy them.
Not that roasting marshmallows was rocket science at all, no sir. It was just such an innocent thing to be doing, and a little hard, even still, to adapt to doing something wherenothing bad would happen. If prison had fucked Blaze up in other ways, that one was the biggest. To suspect disaster lurked around every corner, and that every person he met was already gunning for him even before they knew him.
The joy fully came over him when he’d assembled his first s’more and chomped into it, letting the gooey, hot mess melt on his tongue. And he couldn’t restrain a moan of pleasure, not even when Gabe’s blue eyes sought his, as if Blaze’s happiness only added to his own.
Without thinking, Blaze, licking his lip free of melted marshmallow, winked at Gabe, like he would have when a customer stepped up to the ring tossing booth with the audacious intent of actually winning the stuffed elephant. Only this wasn’t a trick or a con Blaze felt himself doing. It was different. Like an invitation of a sort. Only Gabe had already joined him in the moment, the simple delight of a kid’s fireside treat.
“Good, eh?” asked Gabe, and though he might have been asking the question to everyone in general, maybe he was asking the question only of Blaze. At least it felt that way.
So Blaze answered likewise, his voice low, his gaze focused on Gabe as he licked his thumb and attempted to remove a streak of fast-cooling marshmallow from his bare forearm.
“Yeah, it’s good,” he said.
Twilight was coming down all around them, pushing a breeze through the tops of the trees, sinking the air into coolness in a way that made them hustle into their denim jackets. Making the fire turn from pale orange into deeper orange and black as the logs settled into coals.
