by Lisa Sorbe
A commercial flickers across the screen, and I focus on the harried woman trying without success to scrub a wine stain from her white carpet. “Gus keeps offering to pay for me to get my degree so I can get a paralegal certificate,” I say, like he hadn’t spoken. Like he hadn’t just opened up about someone he loved for the sole purpose of giving me a new perspective. “But the thought of actually going through with it and making law my life? All that legal jargon… My brain just doesn’t retain it.” I shudder, knowing I’m being dramatic and not caring. “It would be like spending every waking minute of the day walking around with a headache I couldn’t get rid of.” I tighten my fingers around my pop can, the metal crinkling and crackling under my grip, and look over at my best friend. “I don’t want that to be my life.”
“Well, doll,” he says, “there’s really only one thing you can do.” He nudges me with his foot. “You’ve got to get out there and grab that bull by the balls.”
Adair’s kitchen may be out of date, with a mustard yellow oven and pea green refrigerator, but the cheap laminate countertops designed to look like polished marble are wide and accommodating. In fact, his kitchen is so much larger than the tiny galley set up at my apartment that I should be able to do what I need to do in half the time it would take if I was back home.
“What in the world?”
Adair shuffles into the kitchen, his hair sticking up every which way and calloused fingers rubbing sleep from his eyes. His chest is bare, and I let my gaze linger too long near the dip where his pajama pants meet his hips before looking away. I twist around, taking in the two pies and dozens of cookies spread across the countertops and cooling on the kitchen table. It’s early—barely eight-thirty—and I’ve been working since six. Sleeping in is never something I’ve been able to do, a habit that more than likely has to do with my mother, who would chide me to no end those mornings I dared to stay in bed past eight. As a result, I’ve made friends with the dark hour before the dawn—which comes in handy on days like today, when I’m falling desperately behind.
Back in October, I signed up to provide the desserts for tonight’s Christmas Eve dinner at the soup kitchen, eagerly scrawling my name on the sign-up sheet with sweet thoughts of elaborately baked cakes and cookies and pies dancing in my head. But with everything that went down yesterday, I had completely forgotten all about it until last night when I was drifting off to sleep. Convenient, right?
Mutha Trucker!
I grab a mug and fill it with coffee as Adair slides onto one of the stools butting up against the kitchen island. He hunches over the countertop, the muscles in his shoulders flexing with the movement. Usually so manly, he looks like a little kid this morning, all squinty eyes and soft features, the dreams from the night filing down his hard edges.
He’s freaking adorable.
It’s all I can do not to wrap myself around him and hug his vulnerable little ass.
“The smell woke me up. I thought I was dreaming.”
He reaches for the tray of chocolate star cookies I’ve just pulled from the oven, and I slap his hand away. “Those are hot. Give them a minute.” I slip the mug into his grasp instead, successfully distracting him from the baked goods.
Adair brings the mug to his lips, moaning as he takes his first sip. He sets it down, tips his head back, and closes his eyes. His voice is gruff, a primal growl that pings off my bones and makes my skin tingle. “I think I’ll keep you.”
I laugh him off, brushing flour from my hands against the apron I tied over my jeans before starting this whole Betty Crocker endeavor. But when Adair levels his gaze my way, his expression is serious. The angles and hard edges have returned; he’s the sexy alpha that makes my knees weak again. Turning back to the counter, I grab an apple, slap it onto the cutting board, and start slicing. My lips press together, my awkward frog-smile slipping over my face as I toss out my go-to response. “You’re such a nerd.”
Adair just smiles, grabs a cookie, and takes a bite. “You love me,” he says, his voice thick.
I point my knife his way. “Don’t get carried away. Those aren’t for you.”
Gabe, who’s been patiently shadowing me since I started baking, nudges my shin with his nose. I pluck a slice of apple from the cutting board and bend down, holding out my hand. He takes it, soft teeth and gentle bite, and trots over to the rug by the door.
“Can dogs have apples?” Adair’s face is pinched tight, his brows drawn, and I have no doubt that he’s remembering Gabe’s severe case of the hershey squirts that has, thankfully, abated.
“Yep. Just never grapes. It’s bad for their kidneys.”
Adair swallows the last of his cookie and grabs his mug, rounding the island to get a better look at the pies cooling on a rack near the stove. “So, what’s all this for?”
He’s so close. Even through my heavy sweatshirt, the quick brush of his elbow along my upper arm leaves a scorching tingle of electricity in its wake. “I’m doing the deserts for the soup kitchen tonight. And,” I say, taking a deliberate step away to check on a tray of thumb print cookies that don’t need checking, “I completely forgot about it until a few hours ago.” I flew out of bed this morning at five-thirty, twisted my hair up into a couple of messy buns, and raided the twenty-four-hour grocery store like my ass was on fire. “I have to have everything done and there by four.”
Adair nods. “Are you serving tonight, too?”
I shake my head as I roll out another circle of pie crust. “Nope. I’m just on baking duty this year.”
Adair snags another cookie when he thinks I’m not looking. “Can’t you just buy all this stuff pre-made?”
I shrug, brushing apple seeds from the cutting board. “Homemade is always better.” I nod at him, acknowledging the chocolate smudge on his lower lip that I sort of want to lick off. “Right?”
He just smirks before wiping his mouth with a paper towel.
Of course I could have just bought all the stuff, but where’s the fun in that? Every year I try to recapture the Christmassy feeling from my youth—the cozy, magical, anything-can-happen, it’s-the-most-wonderful-time-of-the-year feeling. Like everything’s right with the world and, just for once, everyone is happy and friendly and in good spirits. Foes are friends and families act like they love each other—at least for a few hours. As for me, I always get a too-big tree that cuts shallow scratches into the ceiling and walls of my tiny apartment, buy too many expensive gifts to put under the Giving Tree at the City Centre, carol at the two retirement homes in the area, and permanently set the radio dial in my car to the station that plays holiday music round-the-clock.
But this year, I haven’t done any of that. And I don’t know why, really. Maybe it’s because Clint has been around and home hasn’t really felt like home lately. Or maybe I’m just too old to enjoy the holidays the same way I did when I was a kid. Maybe it’s that.
Or maybe I’ve just finally given up.
Because every year, no matter what I do, the damn spirit eludes me. And by the end of Christmas Day, I’m left with a weight in my stomach that has nothing to do with my mother’s traditional meal of heavy turkey and stuffing and everything to do with disappointment, regret, and a longing for a nostalgia I can never seem to recreate.
I lost it somewhere around fourteen, and I’ve never been able to get it back.
Sometimes it’s just so hard to feel. The good feels, anyway.
“Too many people signed up to serve tonight, so there’s no room for the regulars,” I say, pressing the rolling pin into the dough. “Everyone and their dog wants to volunteer around the holidays.” I shake my head and huff a bitter breath. “Same goes for Thanksgiving. I suppose it makes them feel better about totally ignoring the helpless and downtrodden the way they do the rest of the year. Bunch of A-holes.” I mutter this last part under my breath. Picking up the crust, I push it into one of the flimsy tin pie pans I bought this morning and sigh. I swipe the back of my hand over my forehead, shoving a stray piece o
f hair away and turn to face Adair. “Sorry. I sound like a bitch, I know.”
“No, you don’t sound like a bitch.” Adair leans back against the counter, arms crossed and fingers wrapped around the mug’s handle. His face is thoughtful, his eyes kind. “You sound jaded.”
I think about this while I measure out flour, nutmeg, sugar, and cinnamon into a bowl. He’s right; of course, he’s right. I am jaded. World-weary. I try not to be, pretend everything is all right and that I’m a cheerful go-with-the-flow optimist who’s bubbly and agreeable and willing to take on the weight of the world so others don’t have to. And sometimes I even fool myself.
This is how people know me. This is the way—and, perhaps, the why—they accept me. And this is what I should want to be, deign to be, if only to make up for everything I’m not. It’s the only way I can accept myself.
There’s a wrongness in me, which I so desperately want to make right.
These last few months, though, the mask has started to slip. I’ve felt it sliding away, little by little, bit by bit, like melted wax dragging my features down, down, down. A subtle pull that makes me feel like I’m constantly falling forward, gravity’s tight tug tripping up my balance.
My shine…. It’s… It’s starting to dull.
Adair’s my best friend. And he knows more about me than anyone. Aside, maybe, from our mutual friend Miles, someone I met when we were both going through a similar juvenile delinquent phase in high school that landed us knee deep in volunteer work at The Rothchester House (which happens to be home to the soup kitchen I still volunteer at today). But he has new commitments now, and this past year we haven’t been as close as we’ve normally been. And I’m thrilled for him, I am. But it’s left me sort of…stranded. His absence has only served to bring Adair and I closer together.
Still, regardless of how much Adair knows about me, he doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know the way my stomach binds up when I’m in the middle of a crowd or the numb way I float through my relationships with men—hell, sometimes even my relationships with my friends. He doesn’t know there’s a part of me that I hold back from everyone, including him.
Mostly him.
My cheeks inch up, stretching my lips wide across my face. It’s a perfect smile, perfected over the years, and perfect for every occasion. It’s a submissive gesture, a promise to whoever I’m flashing it at that: yes, I’m perfectly compliant and no, you won’t get any trouble from me, dude.
But I can’t act like my little lapse of geniality didn’t happen. Adair’s no idiot and denying my crabbiness would just be an insult to his intelligence. “Maybe a little jaded,” I say, politely mulling over his observation while not exactly admitting to it.
I scoop up the apple slices from the cutting board and mix them in with the flour and spices. “Honestly, I really think it’s just the holidays. Do you know I didn’t even decorate this year? It’s the first year I didn’t feel like bothering with a tree. And you know how I’m usually all Mother Christmas and ho-ho-ho to the point you want to puke, right? But this year, I’m just not feeling it. I tried, but… You know what? It doesn’t even matter. Plus, this thing with my apartment being totally unlivable for the next couple of weeks is completely throwing me off. My landlord is out of town until after the holiday, so he can’t work on tearing up the carpet until he’s back. I guess the pipes that burst were so corroded he has to do some major work with the plumping system before we can turn the water back on.” Grabbing a wooden spoon, I start stirring. A twinge shoots up my wrist, and I realize I’m gripping the handle way too tight. “I told him I could try and do it—the carpet, not the plumbing—and that Clint would probably help. But he wouldn’t hear of it. Said he’s been wanting to install hardwood floors for a few years now, maybe renovate the whole place, and this gives him the chance. He wants it all done by a professional. Which,” I ramble, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice, “is probably going to make my rent go up through the roof. But at least he’s not charging me for the weeks I won’t be there. Generous, right?” I laugh at my own joke, the sound more of a high-pitched cackle than my regular throaty chuckle.
Adair doesn’t laugh. I don’t even chance a glance at him.
“And then,” I continue, stabbing the spoon into the apple slices, “I’m supposed to meet The Clint for lunch—which I’ll probably end up paying for—so we can spend some time together and exchange gifts before he heads up to Minnesota for the holidays. Do you have any idea how much he wants me to shell out for that stupid game console thing? It’s, like, insane. But totally beside the point, because I don’t even have time to meet him because I’m the dumbass who volunteered to make twelve dozen cookies and twenty pies for people who just might be better off than I am!” My hand trembles, and I realize I’m close to hysterical. And how did this happen? One minute I’m baking pies and cookies, just a tiny bit frazzled but nothing I can’t handle; I mean, I’ve handled worse with much more grace, to be honest. But the next minute? I’m completely off my rocker.
My crazy is showing. My crazy is showing and my insides are spilling out—all of the nasty thoughts and stresses and emotions I keep locked away because no good ever comes from expressing them. I’m losing control. And in front of Adair, of all people.
Well, hot stuff, here you go. Here’s your crazy friend. Real and uncut.
Ain’t that just the mutha truckin’ goddamned cherry on top of the freaking cake?
I still haven’t looked at him, am still massacring the poor apple slices who haven’t done a darn thing except happen across my path. Isn’t that how it goes, though? The things you take out your frustrations on are rarely the things that aggravated them in the first place.
It’s always the innocent that suffer.
An image of a cartoon apple squeaking, “No, no!” because a cartoon Betsy is beating it to a pulp suddenly flashes across my mind, and I start laughing so hard I drop the spoon and grip the counter because my legs have gone all limp and rubbery and, oh my god, that’s funny, too.
Adair’s mug hits the counter, a hollow thud against the old laminate, and a second later he’s at my side. He hovers for a moment, probably uncertain about how to handle this crazy woman who, up until now, has always been his perfectly rational, agreeable, drama-free friend.
This, for some reason, makes the crazy woman currently inhabiting my body cackle harder, a lunatic who doesn’t give a damn about appearances, composure. Just gives in to her emotions and who the hell cares who sees?
A stitch erupts in my side, and my breath catches.
Adair swoops in during my moment of silence. One strong hand grips my elbow, the other slides along my back and circles my waist, and he steers me to his vacated stool while muttering something about me being off my head. I think that means he thinks I’m crazy, and I can’t even be mad at him for the assumption. But I refuse to admit to it, and when he gently pushes me onto the seat, I immediately pop back up. “I’m not crazy, Adair. Geeze, I just flipped for a moment. I kinda have a lot going on right now, ya know? I’m totally fi—” I make a move to shove past him, but he snares me by the waist and plops me back down on the stool. I stare up at him in shock, the force from my butt hitting the stool snapping my mouth shut.
“Sit,” he commands, enunciating the word, “your arse down. Now.”
I feel like a kid being put in time out, and I act like it, crossing my arms over my chest and pouting. He moves back to my bowl, stares at my poor little apples slices for a moment, and then looks back at me. “This goes into this, right?” He points at the tin with the pie crust in it, and I nod. Grabbing the wooden spoon, he tips the bowl and starts spooning the mixture into the pan. The curve of his back—the way his upper torso narrows to meet his waist, a sloping arch that draws my eyes down, the flexing of his forearms and shoulders drawing my gaze all the way back up—strikes an ache in my chest, clenches it tight. This feeling is anything but sexual; instead it’s a longing for something I’ll never have. I
realize, and perhaps have always known, that this is how I want to see Adair, all the time, every single day. In this setting right here, with the morning light filtering in through the windows and his pajama pants hanging casually around his hips. His hair mussed, head bent over some mundane morning task, a side of him that’s intimate and observable only to the woman who gets to share these precious, private early hours of the day with him.
I’ve always loved him. As a friend. Of course, the attraction has always been there—he’s wonderful and gorgeous and funny and charming and smart—and I’ve never been able to shake the crush that developed when I met him all those years ago. He took my breath away that night, and I’ve been struggling to catch it ever since. The air always seems thinner when I’m around him, like he’s on some higher plane that I can never quite get comfortable on, if only because I don’t deserve to be there.
I fell the night I met him, and I’ve never quite landed.
But now, for the first time, I can see myself loving him. Loving him in such a raw, intimate way that the thought alone makes my heart ache. It’s a desire that has nothing at all to do with the warmth that pools in my lower abdomen but, rather, has everything to do with the fire in the center of my chest.
My vision blurs, so I turn my head and stare out the window, letting the white light bouncing off the snow clear up the wetness. One tear manages to break through, and I swipe my hand against my cheek before Adair can see it.
“This is what’s going to happen.” Adair scrapes the sides of the bowl, sets it down, and taps the spoon against the edge before smoothing it over the apple filling in the pan. “You’re going to finish this,” he points at the pie and then moves toward a cupboard, pulling down a bottle, the amber liquid sloshing against its sides, “after finishing this.” He swipes a clean glass from the dishrack, dribbles a shot-sized amount into it, and then pushes it my way.