Dreaming in Chocolate

by Susan Bishop Crispell

  “Fresh out, I’m afraid.”

  Ella twisted around to look at him. “Next time, you should leave a pair at our house so my mom can bring them too.”

  He set her on the ground and leaned in so their faces were inches apart. “There’s not going to be a next time, remember? No more sneaking out to see me.”

  No more sneaking out period, Penelope thought. But saying that out loud would probably start her fight with Ella all over again.

  “I know. I just meant the next time we both go out and forget our mittens,” Ella said.

  Noah cocked his head to meet Penelope’s stare. “Hopefully your mom will be with us from the start next time.”

  “And then we’ll all just have to hold hands to keep warm.” Ella wrapped her mittened hands around both of theirs, her smile so bright it put the fire to shame.

  How could Penelope take that kind of sheer happiness away from Ella just to keep her own heart intact?

  Penelope squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Can you give us a minute?” she asked Noah.

  “Sure. I’m not going anywhere, so just come find me when you’re ready,” he said.

  The way he said it, the weight he gave each word, made it seem like he was talking about much more than staying at the festival. Like he was offering her the future she never thought she’d have, and all she had to do now was take it.

  “Okay,” she said, not certain what she was agreeing to. Then she led Ella away from the fire—and Noah—to talk without the distraction he was proving to be to both of them.

  With the entire town out for the festival, no place in the park was private. Penelope ended up walking the few blocks to the shop so their family drama wasn’t on display for everyone to see.

  Sabina had already closed up for the day. She had wanted to go out and look for Ella too, but Penelope convinced her to go set up the hot chocolate for the festival to keep the crowd from revolting. A trace of guilt seeped into Penelope’s thoughts for abandoning her mom at the last minute. Now that she had found Ella, she’d have to make it up to Sabina.

  “Mama, please don’t be mad at Noah,” Ella said once they were inside.

  Penelope hugged Ella from behind, curling her body protectively around her daughter’s. She pressed a kiss to Ella’s chilly forehead. “Maybe you should ask me not to be mad at you for leaving the house without telling me.”

  Ella’s shoulders slumped. “Am I in trouble?”

  “You probably should be, but right now I’m just happy you’re okay. But if you ever do anything like that again, I will—” The unfinished threat hung in the air. There was no punishment Penelope could think of that she would actually go through with.

  “I won’t. Noah made me promise too.”

  “Good.” Penelope relinquished her hold on Ella. “I know you want everything to be the way you want right now, but I need some time to figure out what’s going to be best for us where Noah is concerned.”

  “How much time?”

  “I’m not sure. But I promise you’ll be the first to know when I figure it out, okay?”

  Ella thought about it a moment and nodded. “Okay. But I’m still mad about my necklace.”

  Penelope fingered the compass she’d had in her pocket since realizing Ella was missing. “Sweetie, we don’t know how the necklace worked. For all we know, it was just supposed to point you in Noah’s direction. And once you found him it had done its job so it stopped working.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I found Noah weeks ago, and it was still working last night. When he tucked me in bed, it went nuts. Like it knew he belonged there with us. But then you made him leave. Noah said it was because you were scared of him breaking your heart again, but he won’t do that. He promised. But I think that’s why my necklace is broken too. So maybe if you let him un-break your heart, the necklace will be fixed too.”

  Was that really a promise he could keep?

  Penelope wanted to believe it, to believe him. But she couldn’t. Not yet. “Un-breaking a heart isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

  “It is if you use a magic recipe,” Ella said.

  She still had the recipe for curing a broken heart despite throwing it away half a dozen times. It always reappeared in the top drawer of her dresser where she’d first stashed it to put it out of her mind.

  Maybe the key to getting everything she wanted was within reach after all. She just had to be willing to take a risk.

  “Wait,” Ella said as they stepped outside to go back to the festival. “I forgot my mittens. Be right back.” She ran back in, disappearing into the dark store. She reemerged a minute later, mittens on and a mischievous glint in her eyes.

  * * *

  Tucker, Layne, and River had arrived at the festival while they were gone and were squeezed in around the fire with Noah, who, true to his word, had stayed. He smiled at Penelope, his surprise giving way to an expression she couldn’t quite place when she and Ella joined the group.

  Not just a group, Penelope thought. A family.

  Hers and Ella’s if she wanted it.

  Layne pulled Penelope into a hug and whispered, “Forget anything I ever said about Noah wanting to leave town, okay?”

  “I’m trying,” she said.

  The girls offered to hand out hot chocolate when word spread through the park that people were anxious to put the magic to the test. Penelope left them under Sabina’s supervision and—at her mom’s insistence—waited with the others in the line that snaked out from the table a few hundred people deep.

  Noah cupped her elbow and held her back when the line moved forward, putting a foot of distance between them and Layne and Tucker in front of them. “You and Ella work things out?” he asked, his voice barely audible over the hum of people in the park.

  She wrapped her fingers around the necklace in her pocket. The metal was warm against her skin. “We reached an understanding of sorts.”

  “No more running away?”

  “That and she has to be patient when it comes to what happens next.”

  They shuffled a few feet forward. Noah shifted his hand from Penelope’s arm to her back, leaning in close so his breath rushed over her neck. “So, where does that leave us?”

  Nothing had changed since they’d argued the night before. Figuring out what role Noah would play in their lives wasn’t a decision she could make lightly. Stepping forward to break their contact, she said, “I don’t know yet. Ella’s obviously willing to fight for you, so you don’t need to worry there.”

  “Which means you still don’t trust that I’m in this. What will it take to convince you?”

  Penelope turned to face him, well aware that so many pairs of eyes were on them. “Honestly, I don’t know. Can’t we just leave it alone tonight and watch our kid having a good time?”

  “Anything that means I still have a chance, I’m all for.”

  “I’m not making any promises.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll make them for both of us.”

  She closed the gap in the line. When they reached the front, Ella grabbed a full cup from the table behind her and handed it to Noah.

  “Why was it sitting over there?” Penelope asked.

  “I made it a few minutes ago and saved it for him,” Ella said, sharing a guilty look with River.

  River gave her a not-at-all-subtle thumbs-up. “Yeah. We were making them for all of you but then we got busy and had to stop. That one’s yours.” She pointed to another cup set apart from the rest.

  “Right,” Penelope said. At least they were bad enough at lying that it was easy to spot when they were. Turning to Noah, she said, “Don’t drink that.”

  But the cup was already pressed to his mouth.

  He licked the chocolate foam from his top lip and said, “What’s wrong with it?”

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  “Nothing’s wrong with it,” Ella said. She handed the other cup to Penelope and wat
ched as she took a sip. “Sheesh.”

  Penelope held the hot liquid in her mouth, identifying each flavor to make sure the girls hadn’t doctored the drink. It tasted exactly as it should. “Okay. It’s fine. Drink away.”

  She still didn’t know if the hot chocolate would allow anyone to alter their fate, but when it was her turn to write down how she wanted her life to turn out and toss it in the fire along with the rest of the town, she looked at Ella and Noah beside her and couldn’t think of anything she wanted more than a long, happy life with them both.

  36

  Noah called Penelope the next morning, asking her and Ella to meet him at the school playground after breakfast. He led Penelope to the swings while Ella and River ran to the merry-go-round and latched on to the handles without stopping. Their momentum set the ride in motion, and after three spins, they both jumped on, wrapping their legs around the blue metal bars and dipping their heads back into the wind. Penelope sat on the cold, curved rubber. Nerves danced in her stomach and she kicked the gravel beneath her to get moving. She slid her eyes to him and quickly looked away, unsure of how this conversation would go.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I had a dream about you last night. I mean, it didn’t feel like any dream I’ve ever had before, but it wasn’t real either.”

  She spun around to face him. The swing swayed beneath her, and she grabbed the chains to keep steady. “What did you dream about?”

  “You and Ella.” He walked backward a few steps and swung out in a slow arc. He kept his legs straight in front of him, the heels of his boots scraping a trench in the pebbles beneath him. “We were having breakfast in your house, except it was our house because we were married. Ella was a few years older too—not quite a teenager yet, but so damn close—and she was walking her little sister around the kitchen in circles, the baby clutching her little hands around Ella’s fingers for support. It was just this normal, everyday kind of breakfast, but it was perfect. And I woke up with this absolute certainty that that was where my life was headed.”

  She’d hoped so long ago that he dreamed of having a future with her. But now, it seemed, he’d done it in a very literal sense.

  Goose bumps that had nothing to do with the weather crawled over Penelope’s skin. She toed the ground, drifting a few inches back and forth but not actually swinging. “The hot chocolate Ella gave you last night at the festival, was it hot? Like spicy peppers hot?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Was it not supposed to be?”

  “No, it should’ve tasted like lavender and dark cocoa.” She focused on the ground instead of him, staring at a heart-shaped pebble with a deep crevice down the center. She couldn’t tell if it was dirt or just the light that made it look black in the center. She flipped other stones on top of it until she hid it. There was no room for broken hearts in this conversation. “Ella must have given you our Corazón hot chocolate to make you dream of your true love instead of the Kismet hot chocolate we use for the festival.”

  No longer kicking, he gradually slowed. “Wait. What are you saying?” he asked and rested his forehead against the thick chain.

  It was almost too good to be true. But she said the words anyway, hoping that would somehow make it true. “I think your dream was real. It just hasn’t happened yet.”

  Noah’s laugh vibrated in the air between them as he drifted past her. When he walked his feet back to gain momentum, his smile was wide, delirious. “So that was our future? We get married and have another baby and Ella is still with us years from now?”

  Penelope twisted her swing so she could watch him. His leather jacket hung open, revealing the toned muscles in his chest that strained against his cotton tee as he leaned into the movement. “If that’s what we want, we could make it happen.”

  His shoes scraped the ground as he slowed again, spitting pebbles over their feet. He turned to face her and hooked his fingers around the chains of her swing to pull them closer. One knee slipped between her legs while the other pressed against the outside of her thigh. Her breath caught at his closeness. All she had to do was lean forward and their lips would touch.

  “Does this mean you’re back to not hating me? ’Cause I’m about to kiss you, and it will work out much better if you don’t want to punch me in the face.”

  She dipped her head forward, resting her forehead on his, and laughed. While his hands still held her swing in place, she shoved her fingers into the hair at the base of his neck and brought his mouth to hers. His breath was hot and sweet against her skin, his scratchy stubble scraping against her chin.

  The first thing she noticed when she pulled away was that her feet weren’t touching the ground. Noah had pulled her so close she was practically sitting in his lap. The second was that the playground was silent. She whipped her head to check on the girls. The merry-go-round was still, and they lay with their feet pressed against the center post and their heads under the handlebars, oblivious to Penelope and Noah’s kiss.

  He eased her back into her space, but didn’t let go of the chains. He played with her fingers, loosely threading his with hers and rubbing his thumb over the space between her thumb and forefinger. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  Noah traced the tattoo behind her ear with his fingertip like connect the dots. The touch was light, but she felt it all the way to her toes.

  “A constellation?” he asked.

  “How can you tell that? It’s just dots.”

  “But they’re strategically aligned dots.” He laughed when she rolled her eyes at him. “I don’t know which stars they are, but I know you. Fate, astrology, horoscopes. It all kinda fits together, right? Seems like if you were going to get something inked into your skin, it’d be something you love.”

  “It’s Pisces. Ella’s zodiac sign.”

  “I didn’t peg you for the tattoo type,” he said, trailing the path of the tattoo again. “Even one as subtle as this.”

  She shivered again. “Yeah, well, I’m full of surprises.”

  “Got any more?”

  “Tattoos or surprises?”

  “Either. Both.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” She grinned at him then pulled him down for another kiss. “What about you?” she mumbled against his lips.

  Noah broke their contact and braced his feet in the gravel to keep his swing from moving too far away from her. He lifted his shirt and exposed his ribcage. The face of a compass was drawn in black and gray across his skin. A larger version of the one on Ella’s necklace, covering a space the width of her hand with her fingers spread.

  She pressed her shaking fingers to his warm skin, and his muscles contracted. Touching the N at the top of the sharp point, she had a quick flash of it meaning Noah instead of North. That Ella’s compass was somehow tuned to him, pointing to him because he belonged with them. Her breath hitched, and a wave of heat washed over her.

  “When did you get that?” she asked, her voice nothing more than a whisper.

  “A few years ago. Why?”

  Penelope dropped her hand, curling her fingers into her palm to keep from touching him again. “Have you seen the necklace Ella found? The one she says is proof that you belong with us?”

  “Not really? I mean I know she’s been wearing one, but I haven’t gotten a good look at it since it’s always clamped in her fist so you don’t take it away from her.” Noah inspected his tattoo as if trying to see whatever she had, then, finding nothing that explained the change in subject, he smoothed his shirt back into place.

  “It’s that, Noah,” she said and pointed to his side. “Exactly that.”

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “You mean it’s a compass?”

  “No, it’s this compass. The size and shape of the starbursts in the background and the style of the letters and the words between the cardinal points, whatever language it is. All exactly the same.”

  “It can’t be the same. This is based off of a photograph of a compass my great-grand
father had custom made. There was only one, and it’s been lost for half a century.” Noah took her hand, opening her fist and linking her fingers with his. He pressed their joined hands to his chest and smiled when she lifted her gaze to meet his. “Do you know what it says? The lettering?”

  Penelope shook her head.

  “When it is love you seek, keep this close to your heart—”

  “And love will reveal itself,” Penelope finished for him.

  His eyes widened in surprise. “How do you know that?” He lowered their hands but didn’t let go.

  “It was on a note that came with Ella’s necklace.” She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. “Did your great-grandfather’s compass work like a normal compass?”

  “Yeah, I think so. He was a fisherman so it was as much for practicality as it was my great-grandmother’s way of reminding him she loved him while he was gone.”

  Penelope’s fingers itched to touch his tattoo again. To trace that part of his family’s history permanently on his skin. But her hand was still locked in his. “Why’d you get the tattoo?”

  “Why’d you get yours?” Noah countered with a half smile.

  “I asked first.”

  “Okay. I got mine because I missed my family and home and just fucking everything. Tucker was so damn happy about starting his life with the girl he loved and I guess I wanted that too. Not like I was ready to settle down, but I wanted to know that I could, that there was a girl out there I’d want that with. An uncle or someone had mentioned the compass and what it said in a toast at Tucker and Layne’s wedding and it stuck with me. So I asked my dad about it and he said it had been lost after my granddad’s death but he had a picture of it. And, I don’t know, it just felt right making it a part of me. Now, your turn.”

  She glanced at Ella, her throat tight from all the things she wanted to say. After a moment, she settled on the simplest, yet truest, explanation. “I needed something that would always be with me even after she’s not,” she said.

  “If my dream was really what’s in our future, that means she’s not going to…”

  “Die?” Penelope finished when he didn’t. “That future’s not a guarantee. If we make different choices then what you dreamed might never happen.”