Feels Like the First Time

by Marina Adair

  Breath left her body as her heart tried to adjust, to make room for the familiar ache of disappointment pressing in. Because there on the other side of the divider, with his pants around his ankles and another woman around his waist, was the man she lived with, the man she’d planned to spend the rest of her life with, executing moves with Gloria that told Kennedy this wasn’t their first tango.

  No, it appeared that Phil-ep was just exotic people’s talk for a cheating, rat bastard of a boyfriend, and suddenly the past few months made sense. His shift in schedule, his sudden interest in “extra” dance classes, the way he pretended to be asleep when Kennedy would snuggle up behind him at night.

  She didn’t remember making a sound, or maybe the blood rushing through her ears made it hard to hear, but suddenly Philip looked up—and froze. At least she thought it was Philip. Right height, right build, right piercing blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, but he looked different somehow.

  “What are you doing here,” was all he said. No “I’m sorry,” or “Whoops, I tripped and accidentally ended up having sex with another woman,” or “Please forgive me.” Just “What are you doing here,” as though this were somehow her fault.

  Maybe it was. What kind of woman didn’t know when her boyfriend was sleeping with someone else?

  The kind who puts all her eggs in the wrong basket. A trait that had been passed down from Sinclair mother to Sinclair daughter for five generations. A trait that Kennedy had spent a lifetime trying to overcome, without much luck.

  Until today.

  “You know what, Phil-ep? I have no idea what I’m doing here,” she said then stepped off the bench.

  Grabbing her purse, she walked out of the changing room, proud that she wasn’t toppling over in the heels.

  “Wait,” Philip said and she heard a lot of rustling of fabric from his stall, but she didn’t stop, refused to wait. She’d waited four years for him to pop the question, four years for him to take her on a vacation, to show her the world like he’d promised, and now she was tired of waiting.

  Only Philip had always been an efficient dresser and incredibly quick, as Gloria must already know, so he was out of his stall and in front of her before she could make her escape.

  “Let’s talk about this.”

  “I am a visual learner, Philip, I think I understand. Tab A, slot B, no further explanation needed.” Plus, there was nothing he could say that could make this any less painful—or more humiliating.

  “I didn’t mean for it to end this way.”

  Except that, she thought, her heart beating so fast she was afraid it would pop right out of her chest. He’d just broken up with her, in a public dressing room, with his fly down and his mistress listening to every word.

  Part of her wanted to ask why? Why did everyone else always seem to move on before she got the memo that it was over? And why, damn it, didn’t anyone ever think to get her that memo?

  “Well, it didn’t end ‘this way,’” she said. “Because I reject your pathetic breakup since I broke up with you the second you became Mr. Lo-bar.”

  He stuffed his hands in his pockets, only to remove them when he realized his fly parted. “I never meant to hurt you, Kennedy. It’s just that we’re so”—he looked at her starched pants and shirt and sighed—“solid.”

  “Most people would think that solid was a good thing.” It was one of her biggest strengths, right along with reliable, steady, accountable.

  The look he gave her said that he wasn’t most people; that he was no longer looking for solid. Maybe he never had been. Maybe she’d been nothing more than someone to fill the gap between life’s high points. A position Kennedy knew well.

  “It is, but we’ve become so predictable”—he shrugged—“boring.”

  “Excuse me?” she said, the words getting caught on the humiliation that was clogging her throat.

  “There is a color-coded, itemized itinerary for our Argentina trip on the fridge.” He said it like that was a bad thing. “With Gloria, everything is fun and unexpected and new. Exciting.”

  Kennedy wanted to argue that she could be fun and exciting, too, try new things. She was the one who submitted his application for Argentina—not that she was going anymore. She had signed them up for dance classes. But then she thought of Gloria and her Latin moves and impulsive tendencies, and figured Philip wasn’t willing to settle for classes anymore when he could have the real thing.

  “With her, I’m exciting,” he added.

  “Exciting?” she asked, heavy on the sarcasm. The man thought golfing without a caddy was living on the edge. “You need a humidifier to sleep at night.”

  At one time Kennedy had thought he’d needed her, too. Just last semester he told her how he slept better, breathed easier, had less stress in his day knowing that she had his back at work and she’d be there when he got home.

  Every cell of Kennedy froze in sheer horror because—oh my God—she was his humidifier. Kennedy Sinclair, winner of Berkeley’s esteemed THE WORLD’S YOUR ABACUS award, was a certified life humidifier. Ironic because in that moment, with her whole solid world crashing down around her, she found it hard to breathe.

  * * *

  Whoever said one could never really go home obviously wasn’t a Sinclair, because later that night, with all of her worldly possessions in the trunk, a bag of mostly eaten cookies in her lap, and a light dusting of powdered sugar everywhere in between, Kennedy pulled into her grandmother’s drive. She’d made this journey a thousand times as a kid, the inevitable walk of shame to Grandma’s house whenever her mother’s world fell apart.

  Only now that she was an adult, making the same pilgrimage felt so much worse. Maybe because it was her world falling apart or maybe because instead of packing for her first big adventure—which didn’t come from a book or movie—she was once again packing up her entire life, forced to start over.

  It was as if Sinclair women were destined to wind up alone and displaced. A disturbing thought, since Kennedy had done everything right, everything in her power to avoid ending up like her mother. The right school, right profession, right man. Yet there she was, single, homeless, and as of tomorrow, unemployed.

  From a job she really loved. Balancing books at a culinary institute was the only way to blend her profession and her hobby—baking sweets.

  Shoving another cookie in her mouth, Kennedy bent down to pop the trunk, crumbs falling out of God knew where and littering the floorboard. Wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her hoodie, she stepped out of the car, grabbed her suitcase, and walked up the brick pathway to the modest-sized Queen Anne–style house.

  Even before her feet hit the landing, she knew Grandma Edna had stayed up and was waiting for her arrival. The “dreaming swing,” which hung in the corner of the porch, was moving idly. Perched happily inside with Amos and Andy, her two cats, was Edna Sinclair.

  All soft curves and frosted tips, she wore a teal house robe, matching crocheted slippers, and a warm smile. She also had a single sheet of toilet paper wrapped around her curlers and secured with bobby pins.

  “I’m home,” Kennedy said, dropping her suitcase on the welcome mat, which read, WENT BIG AND CAME HOME.

  “Figured it was either that or I was about to be robbed.” Edna glanced at Kennedy’s black hoodie pulled over her head and yoga pants. “Glad it’s you, seeing as I made cookies and the boys don’t like to share none.”

  The “boys” sent her their best disrupt our pet time and we will pee on your bed glare.

  “I made cookies, too.” She held up the bag, which was surprisingly light, and joined her grandmother on the swing. They both had to scoot down to accommodate Andy’s swishing tail. “Snacked on them on the way over.”

  “I can see that,” Edna said, brushing at Kennedy’s shoulder and unleashing an avalanche of crumbs onto Amos’s back. He growled, his little whiskers doing double time.

  “Chocolate butterball cookies.” Kennedy rubbed at a large cluster of crumbs that had co
llected in her cleavage, but it made only a white smear, so she shrugged and gave up. “They’re Philip’s favorite. I made a batch while I was packing.”

  “Did you leave him any?”

  Kennedy shook her head. “Just a dirty kitchen. And my resignation.”

  “That was nice of you.” Edna patted her knee and Kennedy’s eyes started to burn. “Most women would have assumed letting the air out of his tires was word enough.”

  Most Sinclair women would have shot first, asked questions second, and then let him pull up his pants after they felt they’d been properly heard. But Kennedy had always been the more reserved one in her family.

  “I wrote it in Sharpie across all of his dry cleaning that I had just picked up,” she admitted.

  “There’s that creative, passionate girl I know,” Edna said and an unexpected flicker of excitement ignited at her grandmother’s words. No one had called her creative and passionate since she was a girl. Instead of being embarrassed by her impulsive behavior, she gave in to it, surprised at how liberating it felt.

  Almost as powerful an emotion as the choking fear of not knowing what was next. Of how she was expected to pick up and move on—again.

  Torn between laughing and crying, Kennedy settled on staring out at the Georgia sky and letting the gentle evening breeze be her guide. Like Kennedy, Edna lived in the greater Atlanta area, which meant that the city lights snuffed out most of the stars, leaving an inky blanket over the city. But tonight, there were a few bold ones whose twinkle was bright enough to break through the night and be seen. And for some reason that made Kennedy smile.

  “I miss that girl,” Edna said, wrapping a pudgy arm around Kennedy’s shoulder and pulling her close.

  “I do, too.” Without hesitation, Kennedy snuggled in deeper, wrapping her arms around Edna’s middle and breathing in the familiar scent of cinnamon and vanilla and everything that was safe. One sniff and Kennedy felt her smile crumble and the tears well up.

  “They were doing it during the light of day against the wall of a dressing room,” she whispered. “With their shoes on. He’s never asked me to keep my shoes on.”

  “Of course he didn’t,” Edna cooed. “You’re a respectable woman who knows the value of a good pair of shoes.”

  Oh God. Even her grandmother thought she was respectable, and everyone knew that respectable was just another word for boring. And boring people wound up living in their childhood bedroom at thirty with the neighborhood crazy cat lady as their roommate. “What if I wanted to keep my shoes on?”

  “With what he’s been stepping in lately, you should count yourself lucky,” her grandma cooed.

  “Gloria’s the lucky one. He’s taking her to Argentina next week.” And there went the tears.

  She tried to hold them back, but sitting there in her grandmother’s arms, once again being the one snuffed out by something—or someone—bigger and brighter, brought back every time her mom had taken off with some guy on some other adventure, leaving Kennedy at home.

  “He’s the one who cheated, the one who lied, and he still gets to go teach in Argentina, and cross something off his bucket list. And I am stuck in another life time-out.” A realization that not only sucked, but also challenged every belief she’d ever held dear. Including the belief in herself.

  “That just means you get to check something off your own list now.”

  “That was my list. Argentina was my dream.” Then it became their dream, and somehow Philip would get to be the one to live it.

  “Ah, child, then find a new dream, something fun that doesn’t include listening to all that wheezing the jackass does when he gets excited,” Edna said, stroking Kennedy’s hair.

  Kennedy chuckled. “One time he snored so loud, our neighbors thought we were doing it all night.”

  “Probably thought he’d taken one of those blue pills,” Edna said in the same tone she’d read a bedtime story. “Philip doesn’t strike me as the most resilient man.”

  He wasn’t, but Kennedy hadn’t been interested in sprinters; she was looking for someone who was slow and steady. Only her best chance at going the distance had handed his baton to another woman.

  “How can I have fun when I know he’s out there living his life, having shoes on while making whoopee, and tangoing all over my future?”

  A future Kennedy had worked so hard to make safe. With a man she thought she could trust.

  Edna tsked. “Even as a little bit of a thing, you were so busy making checks and balances, you let the fun pass you by. Maybe this was God’s way of saying you need to let go of the future you planned, and take some time to taste the icing.”

  The size of a large child, Kennedy still was a little bit of a thing who didn’t know the first thing about life’s icing. Hadn’t had the luxury. Between her unstable childhood then working toward gaining fiscal stability, she hadn’t had a lot of time for dreaming, let alone something that whimsical. Sadly, the closest she’d ever come to eating the icing was a fun four years working the morning shifts at a little bakery near campus to put herself through business school.

  “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she admitted, her voice thick with emotion.

  “How about with one of these?” Edna pulled an old journal out from beside her and set it on Kennedy’s lap. It was pink, pocket sized, had a well-worn spine and a picture of a cupcake with sprinkles on the cover.

  The hurt and disappointment had settled so deep inside, it had turned into aching numbness by the time she’d walked out of her downtown loft for the last time, so she assumed any more pain would be impossible. Yet as she clicked open the gold-plated latch, which was rusty from years of neglect, and saw the swirly handwriting at the top, her chest tightened further.

  This disappointment felt different, as though it originated from someplace old and forgotten, and it packed the kind of punch that made speaking impossible.

  Kennedy wasn’t sure how she managed to let herself stray so far from her life’s goal. She hadn’t felt the kind of hope and excitement that was apparent in the words she’d written since she discovered that while most people were looking for a copilot to happiness, not everyone had what it took to be more than just a brief stopover. Sadly for Kennedy, she’d figured out early on which category she fell into.

  “‘Life’s short so eat the icing first,’” she read as her finger traced lightly over the words on the first page. Edna had given it to her the summer she’d turned thirteen, when Candice Sinclair had taken off with a truck driver from Ashland, leaving a brokenhearted Kennedy behind with her grandmother.

  Kennedy was still naive enough to believe that one day her mother would take her along. That one day the two of them would see the country together like Candice promised. By July, Kennedy had realized that if she were going to live an exciting life, then she’d have to make it happen herself. And she took the icing first rule to heart and entered an apple and rhubarb pie in the State Fair. She’d found the recipe in an old cookbook, and Edna had spent hours with her in the kitchen helping her perfect it. Her entry won third place in the junior category, earning her two tickets to the theater in Atlanta. Something she’d always wanted to do, but her grandmother could never afford.

  “Look at you, set to take on the world,” Edna said, pointing to a photo of Kennedy as a teen. She stood in front of a table filled with winning cakes, lanky and still finding her feet, but the smile she wore was so bright, it burned Kennedy’s heart.

  She was wearing her favorite blue summer dress that her grandmother had bought especially for the fair, and pinned to the front was a third place ribbon.

  “I thought I lost this recipe,” Kennedy said, looking at the swirly writing on the adjacent page. She’d also forgotten how excited she’d felt when she’d won that ribbon. It was as if she’d finally found some kind of tangible proof that maybe she was special.

  Kennedy turned the page and a watery smile spread across her face. There was a photo of her grandma dressed like th
e queen, wearing pearls, white gloves, and a hat fit for a royal wedding.

  “I borrowed the pearls from Pastor Cunningham’s wife, and the gloves from Mabel,” Edna said, nostalgia lacing her voice.

  “You made me that dress,” Kennedy said. She’d loved that dress, wore it until it went from midi to mini, and Edna said she was giving too much away for free.

  “It’s still in the attic.”

  Beneath each photo was the sweet creation that made that moment possible. A three-tier coconut cake, a recipe straight from her grandmother’s Southern roots, that she made the following year. It took second place and she won high tea at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta.

  It was her fourth attempt, though, a perfect Southern apple rhubarb pie with a Georgia pecan crust, that took first place, then took her on a six-week Down Home Sweets journey at the local culinary school, cementing her fascination with small-town living, Southern eats, and a deep love for baking.

  Kennedy carefully thumbed through the pages of photos capturing some of the most precious moments of her childhood, the respective recipes that made it all possible. Ignoring the photo of her and Edna cooking snowball cookies in their pajamas on Christmas morning, since that recipe would now forever be connected to that rat-fink lo-bar and his pathetic “Uh” in the throes of passion, she stopped when she found what she was looking for. At the back of the journal was an extensive and itemized list she’d assembled, her LIFE’S ICING list, which indexed every recipe she wanted to try, every competition she wanted to enter, and every goal she wanted to accomplish, complete with coordinating check boxes.

  Not a single one was marked off.

  With a shaky breath, Kennedy flipped the page and scanned each item, stopping midway through when her heart gave a little stir:

  39. Make a Rogel with dulce de leche.

  She wasn’t sure that she had quite mastered the flair for creating the soft, but crumbly texture of that variation of dulce de leche in the Confections of South America class she took over the summer. Let alone something as intricate as the layers of puff pastry required to make one of Argentina’s most treasured desserts. But since Philip had robbed her of checking off the first and most important recipe on her list, a Five-Tiered Wedding Cake, she was taking what she could get. Because somewhere along the way she had forgotten that she needed to be in charge of her own destiny.