Smart pivot.
“WHERE IS THE STAFF?” Mackenzie’s voice cuts across the beach like a foghorn with a grudge. “Bizzy! I need the café staff down here NOW to help crack lobsters. These women can’t be expected to do manual labor. We’re getting hungry over here.”
I resist the urge to point out that cracking a lobster is not exactly coal mining, and instead wave at Emmie, who’s already mobilizing her team.
The staff arrives with enormous pots—and I mean enormous, the kind you could bathe in—and they start dumping steaming contents directly onto the table in a glorious cascade of seafood chaos.
Lobsters cascade out in a red-orange avalanche. Clams tumble after them like edible afterthoughts. Corn on the cob rolls across the white linen. Baby potatoes bounce and settle into formation.
It’s beautiful chaos—steam rising, garlic and butterperfuming the air, my mouth watering despite the fact that I’m watching a social disaster in real time.
And there are no utensils in sight.
“WHERE ARE THE FORKS?” Mackenzie’s shriek could shatter glass. I’m pretty sure three seagulls just fled to Canada.
The staff scatters like they’re under sniper fire, sprinting back to the café while Mackenzie’s friends stare at the seafood pile like it just threatened their families.
“We’re supposed to just... grab it?” Kennedy asks, looking genuinely distressed. “With our hands?”
Blaire’s horror is palpable.
The forks arrive in record time, Nessa practically sprinting across the sand with a basket of silverware, and everyone claims their weapons like knights arming for battle.
The bibs are sitting at each place setting, white paper with monogrammed script that probably cost more than they should have.
Nobody is touching them.
“I’m not wearing a bib,” Tamsin announces. “I’m thirty-three, notthree.”
There’s a murmur of agreement around the table. Grown women, expensive outfits, nobody willing to admit they might need protection from flying butter.
Then someone—I think it’s Melissa, still riding her toast high—cracks into her first lobster.
The butter explosion is immediate and spectacular. It hits three people. Four, if you count Georgie, who’s technically collateral damage.
There’s a moment of stunned silence.
Then, without hesitation,everyone lunges for the bibs.
Watching grown women fight over lobster protection while trying to maintain their social superiority is exactly the chaos I needed today.
So much for sophistication,Sloane thinks, snapping her own bib on like she’s done this a thousand times.Though I suppose we’re all just animals when butter is involved.
There are no truer words.
The meal descends into beautiful carnage. Shells crack and fly. Butter goes airborne with alarming frequency. In fact, gel fingernails are flying, too. I’ve never seen more French manicures torpedoed about, not even in the nail salon.
Wine flows freely—rosé and craft beer and someone’s already on their third glass of champagne even though we’ve only been eating for ten minutes.
The pets have positioned themselves perfectly. Every time someone struggles with a particularly stubborn claw, a piece of lobster meat goes flying, and Sherlock’s there to catch it mid-air like he’s been training for this moment his entire life.
Which he has.
This is the best night of my life and I want to roll in it!Biscuit Gravy announces, snagging a clam that rolled off the table.
I’ve died and gone to seafood heaven,Sherlock adds, his face covered in butter.
Mom and Georgie are locked in a heated battle over proper lobster-handling technique.
