Next Stop Love, #1

by Rachel Stockbridge

  Julian bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that, based on her own wardrobe, Beatrice was probably not most people’s first choice to ask for advice on outfit acceptability.

  Beatrice barely glanced at her brother, though. “It’s fine,” she said, brushing past him into her room again. “Have you seen my laptop?” she asked, her call accompanied by the sounds of rummaging.

  “It’s right here.” Nath picked it up from the coffee table and waved it over his head. “Ten seconds, then we’re leaving without you.”

  “Ha ha,” Beatrice said humorlessly, returning from the bedroom. She plucked the laptop out of Nath’s hand. “Good luck convincing Sasha to abandon me. Can you get the food, please? It’s on the counter.”

  Julian gave Sunny one last pat, stood, and grabbed his meager bag of Thanksgiving offerings from the table. Nath got the casserole dishes while Beatrice threw her coat back on.

  She checked her mittens were in the pockets and slung her heavy school bag over her shoulder. “I think that’s everything . . .” she said, patting herself down. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s go.”

  Beatrice herded them out of the apartment into the open air of the long balcony. The floor shook when she dropped her bag by the door so she could lock up. Julian felt like a jerk for only carrying the comparatively light grocery bag dangling from his own hand.

  “Can you hold this a second?” he asked, holding the grocery bag out to her as she pulled her keys from the door.

  She took it automatically, still preoccupied with whatever mental list she was double checking. “Sure, but why—”

  Julian slung her bag over his shoulder and started for the stairs before she could finish.

  “Hey,” Beatrice protested, hurrying to catch up to him.

  Nath laughed. “Oh, that was smooth. Did you see that, Bee?”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Beatrice said, ignoring Nath as she chased Julian down the stairs.

  Julian swung the bag out of her reach when she grabbed for it. “What do you have in here, anyway? Bricks?”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “You should think about getting a backpack,” Julian said. “They’re easier on the shoulders.”

  “All the cute ones are ridiculously tiny,” Beatrice complained.

  “You only need it for school,” Nath pointed out. “You could get a normal-sized, not-cute backpack.”

  “I happen to like that bag, thank you,” Beatrice said. “I’m used to it. I don’t want a stupid-looking backpack. I can carry it if you don’t like it.”

  “And let you throw out your back on Thanksgiving?” Julian asked. “I don’t think so.”

  “You both suck,” Beatrice said.

  “You’re welcome,” Julian replied cheerfully.

  Beatrice rolled her eyes as they stepped off the stairs, a small smile escaping from one side of her mouth. She led the way to a dinged-up minivan parked in the loading zone. She tapped on the window and waved to the driver, who had been frowning at her phone.

  The driver popped the locks, allowing Beatrice to swing the side door open.

  “Hey, Bee!” She turned the ’80s music she’d been blasting down to a reasonable volume. “Happy Thanksgiving!”

  “Thanks for the ride, Sasha,” Beatrice said. “You remember my brother, Nath, right?”

  “The bum brother?” Sasha said, grinning. “Sure. How’s things, Nath?”

  “Hilarious,” Nath said sarcastically, strapping himself into the back seat. “Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.”

  “Don’t be such a grump,” Beatrice said. “And this is Julian.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Sasha said, twisting in her seat so she could shake Julian’s hand as he climbed in after Nath. She was an athletic-looking girl with a kind of cheerful, wholesome Midwest look about her. “You’re the artist, right?”

  “Sort of,” Julian said, shooting Beatrice a what-did-you-tell-these-people look.

  “Yes, he is,” Beatrice said firmly, catching the expression and lobbing back a don’t-contradict-me look. “You’re too modest.”

  Sasha pulled out of the loading zone and edged the van to the edge of the parking lot. Her phone chirped from the cupholder where she’d stashed it. Sasha groaned.

  “Kinsey?” Beatrice guessed.

  “She’s freaking out about this turkey,” Sasha said, passing the phone to Beatrice. “Would you please explain to her that I can’t text her while I’m driving? You’d think she’d never seen one of those stupid PSAs in her life.”

  “‘Come on, Todd,’” Beatrice said in a dramatic narrator voice, unlocking Sasha’s phone. She didn’t need to ask for the passcode, Julian noted, with a weird pang of jealousy that didn’t make much sense.

  “Oh man, I would really not want my last recorded conversation to be about a turkey,” Sasha said, turning onto the street. And then she winced and waved a hand at Beatrice. “Don’t tell Kinsey I said that.”

  “Way to blow what I was going to open with,” Beatrice replied, tapping out a text. “I’ll see if I can get her to text me instead, hang on.”

  Beatrice ended up on the phone with Kinsey for most of the ride, while Julian and the others got into a debate over whether ’80s music was better or worse than ’60s music. Julian didn’t participate much, not following the conversation very carefully. He couldn’t seem to stop listening to Beatrice patiently trying to talk her friend down from the brink of panic.

  It was . . . nice, watching her with these people she was so comfortable with. And it hurt, too, even though it shouldn’t. He ached from not knowing her as well as these other people. From being so far outside her orbit that he couldn’t reach all the light and warmth she radiated out to her friends.

  Well, he was here, wasn’t he? She had asked him to come. Maybe she wanted him in her orbit too. Not in quite the same way as he would like, but that was probably for the best. She deserved someone who could give her the world. Someone good, and kind, without the heavy drag of past mistakes threatening to pull him and everyone around him down to hell.

  Someone better than Julian.

  The dread in his gut flared, but Julian pushed it back down. It was just one dinner. Nothing bad was going to happen.

  Twelve

  Kinsey answered the door of her parents’ house in a miasma of soap-opera despair. “I hope you all like lasagna, because I’ve ruined the turkey.”

  Beatrice could tell Kinsey was playing her freak-out up for laughs, but her dark eyes were just a little too bright, and her eyelashes were damp. Beatrice would’ve given her a hug right then and there, but then Kinsey might end up crying for real. She knew Kinsey wouldn’t want to do that in front of guests. Even if half of them were her best friends.

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” Beatrice said, while everyone stashed their shoes against the wall in the entryway and hung up their coats.

  “Oh yeah?” Kinsey challenged. She wore a flour-smeared, pink polka-dot apron over her white blouse and flared, fox-print skirt. Her usually immaculate black bob was disheveled, a few flyaways sticking to her forehead. “Come and see.”

  She led them through the dining room of the colonial-style house into the spacious kitchen—which did smell a little singed—and marched up to the stove, where sat a large roasting pan covered with aluminum foil. She whisked off the foil with a morbid flourish. “Behold the atrocity that ruined everyone’s Thanksgiving.”

  Sasha made a horrified strangled sound before she managed to cut herself off.

  It looked like Kinsey had tried to cook the turkey with a flame thrower. Beatrice wouldn’t have believed it was possible to both overcook and undercook a turkey if she hadn’t seen the evidence with her own eyes. Half of the skin was charcoal black, and it was somehow still raw in the middle where Kinsey had cut into it.

  “Oh,” Beatrice said, searching desperately for something diplomatic and supportive to say. No one else seemed to dare say anything at all. “My,” she finally said.

 
; “You can all skewer me with pitchforks now,” Kinsey said, slumping into a chair at the small kitchen table and covering her face with her hands.

  “Don’t be silly,” Sasha said. “Where would we even find pitchforks on Thanks—ow.”

  Sasha rubbed the place where Beatrice’s elbow had just dug into her ribs while Beatrice pulled up a chair next to Kinsey’s.

  “You didn’t ruin everything,” Beatrice said. “We still have a load of side dishes. Nath and I brought potatoes and yams and green beans.”

  “And lasagna,” Nath drawled unhelpfully.

  Beatrice shot him a warning glare. She was trying to cheer Kinsey up, not imply that they had so little faith in her ability to cook a turkey that they’d brought an emergency backup lasagna. Even if the lasagna had been Kinsey’s idea in the first place.

  “And we’ve got corn pudding and bread,” Sasha put in. “And pie. Everybody loves pie.”

  “And cranberry sauce and cupcakes,” said Julian, his shoulder against the doorjamb. He seemed unsure where he was supposed to fit. He hadn’t even removed his coat. As though he expected to be kicked out into the cold at any moment. He’d gotten along with Nath and Sasha in the car, but even then, he’d been quieter than usual. It made Beatrice nervous. She really, really wanted him to like her friends. And she really, really wanted them to like Julian.

  “Cupcakes?” Kinsey echoed, peeking through a gap in her fingers to shoot Julian an incredulous look.

  He shrugged. “I’m not a pie person.”

  “Heathen!” Sasha exclaimed with a melodramatic gasp.

  Julian snorted, lifting an eyebrow at Sasha, who shrugged a cheerful apology.

  Kinsey’s head went down on the table, among the mess of dirty mixing bowls and utensils that she and Sasha must have used for the pies and bread before Sasha left to pick the rest of them up. “It doesn’t matter,” she wailed, her voice muffled. “You can’t have Thanksgiving without turkey. Everyone knows that.”

  “Vegetarians don’t eat turkey on Thanksgiving,” Nath pointed out.

  “I don’t even like turkey that much,” Sasha said.

  “That’s a lie, and you know it,” Kinsey said. “Nothing matters if you don’t have the turkey. And I ruined it.”

  “I don’t know,” Julian said. He wandered over to the hideous turkey and prodded at it with the carving fork Kinsey had left out. “I think this might be salvageable.”

  They all turned to stare at him as one, disbelief written over every face.

  “I’m not saying it’s going to be the quintessential, Norman Rockwell, entire Thanksgiving bird you were expecting,” Julian said, rolling his eyes at them. “But I think it can be made to be edible.”

  “Setting our expectations high,” said Sasha in grand tones. “But can he follow through?”

  “I’m not promising good when I haven’t done it before,” Julian said, shedding his coat and throwing it over a kitchen chair. “But don’t throw the lasagna in the oven until I’ve given this a shot, okay?”

  He wasn’t wearing his usual sweatshirt, Beatrice noted with some surprise. Instead, he wore a cream-colored sweater over a red-and-black checked flannel shirt. He pushed his sleeves up, revealing the start of that tattoo that always peeked out of his collar. A slim black point on the inside of his left wrist that twisted around his forearm. Beatrice’s eyes followed the lines as it began to plume before it disappeared under his sleeve.

  “Where do you keep your saucepans?” he asked.

  Beatrice realized she was staring and turned back to Kinsey, hoping no one had noticed.

  “Who cares,” Kinsey said, setting her forehead down on the table again. “It’s not like it’ll make any difference.”

  “I’ll show you,” Beatrice said, patting Kinsey on the head as she got up to help.

  Sasha took over the task of cheering Kinsey, scrubbing her back and claiming that no Thanksgiving was really Thanksgiving until some horrible fiasco happened. When Kinsey didn’t believe her, Sasha launched into a long story about the year when one of her uncles tried to deep fry a turkey and ended up setting his wife’s rhododendrons on fire.

  Beatrice pressed Nath into service manning the oven and juggling kitchen timers, and set to work getting all the food in the oven and helping Julian save the turkey.

  “Aren’t guys supposed to watch football on Thanksgiving?” Nath complained as he set a timer on his phone for the potatoes.

  “Not when they’re busy saving the day,” Beatrice said, taking a peek at Julian’s progress with the turkey.

  He had cut the entire thing up, putting the worst of the raw pieces back in the oven. The dry, overcooked parts—the ones that weren’t blackened and useless—were simmering on the stove in a can of gravy.

  “That certainly smells amazing,” Beatrice said.

  Julian shrugged. “It’s a little leftover-y, but it’s turkey and gravy. And it shouldn’t give anyone fatal food poisoning.”

  “Again, with the grand promises,” Sasha said dryly.

  “Hey, I’m doing my best here,” Julian said, laughing. “You think you can do better?”

  “She can’t,” said Kinsey, wiping her nose with a napkin. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, grabbing a few dirty mixing bowls from the table. “She’s a worse cook than I am.”

  “Uh, rude,” Sasha said, though she was laughing herself.

  “The leftovers are the best part, anyway,” Beatrice said, relieved that her friends were all getting along.

  Kinsey finished clearing the dishes and put on one of her famously eclectic playlists. This one seemed to lean heavily into classic Motown and selections from the ’40s, peppered with songs from obscure musicals. And then, declaring she didn’t trust herself in the kitchen, Kinsey volunteered herself and Sasha to set the table in the dining room. Nath floated off after a few minutes, playing some game on his phone, no doubt to disappear until the second food touched the table.

  Only Julian and Beatrice remained in the kitchen, falling into an easy rhythm as they negotiated the counter space.

  “Where’d you learn to cook?” Beatrice asked, during a lull. She stood near the oven, with her hip pressed against the counter.

  “My mom,” Julian said, hooking his thumbs in his pockets and leaning against the counter on the other side of the oven. He lifted his shoulders in a half shrug. “She thought cooking was an important skill. I’ve never been able to get her kimchi recipe right, but I can heat things up without burning down the house.”

  “Kimchi is some kind of Korean pickle thing, isn’t it?”

  “Sort of? It’s fermented vegetables. It tastes better than it sounds.”

  “Fermented vegetables?”

  “Yeah. It’s like—You know sauerkraut?”

  “Sure . . .”

  “Fermented cabbage. It’s basically the German version of kimchi. Not exactly—kimchi usually has radishes or other vegetables in addition to the cabbage, and I don’t think you put fish paste in sauerkraut—but it’s the same idea.”

  “I’m not actually German,” Beatrice blurted.

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Everyone thinks I’m German because my last name is Bauer, but I’m not,” she said in a rush. “Just my step-dad. My mom is Welsh and Irish and French, and my birth dad was English and . . . something. I forget.”

  “What happened to him? Your birth dad? Or should I not ask?”

  Beatrice shrugged, taking a sudden interest in the narrow chalkboard by the kitchen door that Kinsey’s mom used for meal planning. “Last I heard, he was living in some compound in Arizona.”

  “You don’t talk to him much?”

  “I used to get cards from him on my birthday,” she said, trying to steer away from the obnoxious self-pity. Julian didn’t have either of his parents, and his step-dad sounded like a grade-A jerk. She shouldn’t have brought this up in the first place. Telling people about how much simmering anger she had towards her birth father didn’t tend
to go over too well. “I’m pretty sure it was just my mom buying cards and disguising her handwriting so I would stop crying, though. It’s not a big deal,” she added quickly, seeing a flash of sympathy in Julian’s eyes she wasn’t sure she wanted. “He was supposed to be a jerk, anyway.”

  “Still sucks,” Julian said.

  The way he was watching her was making her nervous. The whole point of this dinner was to not mope about absent relations. But if he kept looking at her like that, she was going to end up sobbing in the kitchen and ruining everyone’s evening.

  “I’m just a little stunned by how much you know about fermented vegetables,” she said, in one of the most awkward conversational course-corrections she’d ever made. “It’s not normal.”

  “Stunned?” Julian asked, one side of his mouth quirking up. “Or impressed?”

  She smiled, thankful at how quickly he jumped back to their old conversation. “Try ‘appalled.’”

  Julian pressed a hand over his heart, failing to keep a straight face. “You wound me.”

  Beatrice snorted, wrinkling her nose. “You’re ridiculous.”

  “One of my better qualities.” He reached over and squeezed her shoulder as the timer on the oven went off. It was such a simple gesture, but Beatrice felt some of the threatening darkness lift. She felt like she could breathe again.

  She rocked off the counter to pull out the sweet potatoes. No more pity parties, she decided. Her family might be a complicated mess, but she was surrounded by people she cared about, and she was determined that all of them would have a good time.

  While she was spreading a nice thick layer of mini-marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole, Rosemary Clooney came on singing “Come On-A My House.” Beatrice, unable to help herself, started dancing, bouncing from one foot to the other in a weak approximation of the Charlie Brown dance.

  Julian glanced over and broke into another grin, shaking his head. “You look like a nerd.”

  “A nerd having fun,” Beatrice retorted. Impulsively, she dropped the bag of marshmallows and grabbed his hand, pulling him away from the stove. “Come on, you have to dance to this song.”