Stir Me Up

by Sabrina Elkins

  “The breakfast? Will she buy that?”

  “Yeah, I think. She was still sleeping, so you tapped on my door.”

  “Right. Okay.”

  “You want me to get some food so it looks believable?” he asks.

  I start getting out of bed. “I’ll do it. I’m faster.”

  “Not for long you won’t be.”

  “Oh please. I’ll always be faster when it comes to food.”

  I throw on my clothes, race out Julian’s door—and voilà, there I am, standing red-faced, swollen-lipped, recently deflowered and completely besmitten before my fairly new and totally confused stepmother.

  “Cami? What are you doing? Where were you?”

  “I...” I say, brain faltering. “I...woke up early and thought I’d get breakfast.”

  Gulp.

  “In Julian’s room?”

  Okay, good point, why was I just in Julian’s room? Uhh... “I was seeing if he wanted me to get him something.”... Whew. Wait—does that work? Oh well, too late. “Do you want coffee?”

  “Sure,” she says suspiciously. “Do you need help?”

  “No, I’ll get it. They must have trays.”

  I race down to the little breakfast room and load three coffees, orange juice and sketchy-looking pastries onto a tray. Then it’s back upstairs. Deep breath. I knock on Julian’s door.

  “Here you go,” I say, handing the tray to Estella and taking my mug from it. “I think I’ll take a shower now.” I hurry back into our room.

  Not two minutes later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Julian. In his coat.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, a bit worriedly.

  “Relax. I told her I was going out for a quick walk.”

  He comes into the room with me.

  “I’m not sure we should be risking this,” I say.

  The door swings shut and Julian bolts it so Estella can’t get in with her key.

  “Safety first.”

  “Julian...”

  He backs me against a wall. “Two minutes.”

  “One. Do you think she suspects?”

  “No, why should she? Your bed looks slept in.” He looks at me thoughtfully. “Hey, you.”

  “Hi.”

  “Are your eyes blue or gray?”

  “Gray.”

  “And where did you get those dark rings around them?”

  He means around my irises. My eyes are the part of me I like best, because they’re just like my grandmother’s. “I ordered them from a store.”

  “You’re insanely pretty, you know that?”

  I roll my eyes at him.

  “You are. The first time I saw you I was like, holy fuck.”

  “You were so mean,” I say with a smile.

  “Well, like I said, you were this hot unattainable thing—baiting me.”

  “I wasn’t baiting you.”

  “You were too,” he says with a wicked smile. “Running around in your pj’s all the time.”

  “Listen to who’s talking, mister can you get me a water bottle out of that fridge.”

  He smiles but then his gaze grows suddenly intense.

  “What?” I ask.

  “It wasn’t just the frustration over not having you. It was also just everything. Everything used to irritate me.”

  “You mean when you first came to the house?”

  He nods. “All Estella would have to do is ask if I wanted lunch and I’d feel like ripping my fingernails out.”

  I think about this. “And now?”

  “It’s getting better.”

  “Good.” I hold him, rest my head on him. “So you don’t think Estella noticed I was gone last night?”

  “No, she’d have said something right off,” Julian says. “Are you going to shower?”

  “Yes, are you?”

  He looks warmly at me. “Is that an invitation?”

  “Um...”

  “Damn, I hate having such fucked-up legs.”

  “There’s no time anyway. You should go.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you snowmobiling again today?” I ask.

  “I haven’t decided. I’m a little sore, to be honest.”

  “We can just head home now.”

  “No. We have our plan.”

  He kisses me and leaves, and I go in and turn on the shower. Too bad he couldn’t stay longer. Still, it’s nice he came to see me. It’s like he wants to be sure I know he cares. I shower, dress and dry my hair, still thinking of him.

  “Finally,” Julian says when I go back and knock on his door again. “We thought we’d check out and then get some real breakfast.” He gives me a sly grin. “You hungry?”

  Estella is standing behind him and eyeing me.

  “For what?” I ask, hiding a smirk.

  “How about pancakes?”

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  He winks at me. “We’re off then. Ready, Stell?”

  We head out the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Breakfast is basically like torture where everyone acts as if everything is normal and fine and Julian and I pretend not to notice the fact that Estella’s taking angry little bites of her food. So much for not suspecting anything.

  “You up for this?” Julian asks me once we reach the lodge again. Estella’s gone to the bathroom.

  “I guess,” I say. “So long. Nice knowing you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Just that I’m fairly sure Estella’s out to kill me now.”

  “No, she isn’t.”

  “Yes, she is. You heard the run she’s taking me on.”

  “Just tell her no if it’s too challenging.”

  Speaking of challenging... I hope he doesn’t hurt himself if he goes snowmobiling again. “You’ll be careful if you go out today?”

  “No,” he says. “What fun would that be?”

  I shake my head. “Fine. Carve it up then.”

  “Okay. You carve it up, too.”

  “No, I only carve up things like roasts and turkeys.”

  “You’re a turkey.”

  Estella comes back over to us. “Ready, Cami?”

  “Sure. See you later, Julian.”

  “See you around three,” he says.

  Estella is silent as we wait in line for the lifts. “You’re not speaking to me?”

  “No, I am,” she says. “I’m just tired.”

  Hmm... I’m not sure I believe her, but it’s our turn to get on, so I just try to forget about it. Estella’s picked out what is a very difficult trail for me, the easiest of the black diamonds. There’s a laugh. I’ve only been on a black diamond once before, and that was by accident when I got myself turned around on the wrong side of the mountain, and it was a disaster. So I’m pretty much scaring myself shitless between the idea of this run and being on the lift when suddenly we stop unexpectedly midway and our chair is jerked around. Why does this happen sometimes? I don’t know. I think it’s because someone falls off. Ugh.

  We get off the lift and at first things are fine. Estella’s considerate about staying near me. Panoramic view off to my right, snow-crusted evergreens on the left, pretty because of last night’s snowfall, but I notice them only quickly and focus instead on not breaking my neck. The trail is wide and I’m going fast but doing all right. Then my brain trips and I start thinking about Julian and sleeping with him and how Estella suspects and if she’ll tell Dad and why she seems so pissed and suddenly I’m veering into the trees. I make myself fall, but hit ice or something and lose control, twist my skis and land hard on my right side, face in the snow. Estella skis over. My right knee is throbbing.

  “Are you okay?” she asks. All heart.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  I get up and finish the run in a fair amount of pain. “Estella,” I say once we reach the bottom. “My knee really hurts. I think I’m done for the day.”

  “Okay,” she says worriedly. “Do you want to stop at the i
nfirmary?”

  “No, I just need to sit down.”

  I hobble over to a bench and prop my leg up on it. Poor Julian—if this is what a bad fall feels like, I can’t even imagine what he’s been through. Is he snowmobiling again, I wonder? Will Estella realize he’s gone? I manage to convince her to leave me and go back out and make a few more runs on her own. I tell her I’ll text Julian to see where he went.

  SO HOW WAS SKIING? Taryn texts me.

  Good. Of course I fell and hurt my knee. Stupid. I must be worn out from skiing yesterday.

  OH NO! SORRY!!!! :( WAIT, YOU THREE STAYED THERE LAST NIGHT?

  Yep.

  OH HO!!! AHEM! AHEM! HOT SKI LODGE! HOT JULIAN IN WHAT I’M GUESSING IS THE ROOM DOWN THE HALL??

  You seriously need a boyfriend, T.

  I DO! I KNOW I DO! WAAH! :P

  By the time I finish reading her text, Julian is walking over to me. He’s getting around so much better now with his cane. “Sorry, my phone was off.”

  “Did you go today?” I ask.

  “No.” He sits down next to me. “I’m a little too sore. How’s your leg?”

  It’s okay—not great. Julian insists on hearing what happened and getting ice for it. About an hour later, Estella comes back over to check on me. My knee is swelling, my head is aching. Most of the ride back to town pretty much sucks, though Julian does hold my hand near the door side of the car where Estella can’t see.

  “Look, before we get home,” she says suddenly, “I just want to say I know you two have something going on here.”

  My heart drops. Julian releases my hand.

  “I’m not asking for an explanation,” she says. “I’ve seen this coming for a while now. I realize there’s nothing I can do to stop it or change it, and I’ve decided I’m not opposed to it. What you two do together on your own is your business. But—I don’t want Chris to know.”

  “Right,” says Julian.

  “I’m not saying I’m an advocate of hiding things from Chris. I just think fathers, when it comes to their daughters, don’t really need to know everything. And in this case, if Chris did find out, he’d probably insist one of you would have to leave.”

  “Understood,” says Julian.

  “Understood,” I repeat. And the conversation is over.

  We make it home and I limp from the car up to the house and into my alcove. I take more aspirin, prop my knee up on a pillow and fall dead asleep, only to be awakened several times during the night in pain. On about the third time this happens, I suddenly feel a bag of ice pressed to my knee. I gasp.

  “Shhh...” Julian whispers.

  He sits on the edge of the cot icing my knee and then I tug on his arm and he comes silently up against me.

  I hug him to me and say nothing, for fear of how close we are to Dad and Estella. He kisses and holds me and frets over my knee, icing it and elevating it. I snuggle deep into his chest and then lose myself in his arms.

  The next morning, I awaken to find him gone. The stealth warrior left as silently as he came, and considering how creaky some of those stairs are and that he’s still using a cane, that’s saying something. Leave it to him to sneak right past Estella and Dad. Twice. I try not to think of what would’ve happened if he’d been caught and just focus on how nice it was for him to risk coming upstairs for me at all.

  * * *

  “Let me tell you something you may not know about being a chef,” Dad says the following Tuesday. Yes, we’re arguing about college—and taking a trip up to Burlington to see the college—again. Estella has gone shopping. Because she insists on staying out of it. “It means you’ll never have a weekend with your kids. It means when your kids come home from school, you’ll have just gone to work and won’t be home again ’til they’re asleep. It means you won’t be there to enjoy holidays with them.”

  I’m slumping down onto the kitchen table. From having to hear all this again. “You’ve said all this to me before, Dad. Is this really about me, or are you just lashing out because you’re upset Georges is quitting on you?”

  Dad looks shocked. “It’s not about Georges quitting. He told me about that months ago. This is about you, and your future, and my point is you haven’t thought about this maturely, from a parent’s point of view. It’s long, demanding work, usually for little pay.”

  “I know this.”

  “It’s the main reason your mother left. It’s why she was so unhappy. Because I was never home.”

  Huh. Dad usually doesn’t talk about Mom.

  “Then when she left, you became my sole responsibility,” he explains. “It felt wrong having to leave you with sitters all the time.”

  “That did suck.”

  “So, I started bringing you to work with me. I liked having you there. I gave you little jobs, nothing too difficult. There was the sofa in my office for you to sleep on.”

  He did make me sleep on the sofa—with blanket and pillow—when I was younger. Little chef-me, crashing on Dad’s sofa. He’d pick me up and carry me to the car.

  “Yes, you have talent. You could be a chef. But the question isn’t if you could, it’s if you should, Camille. Cooking is laboring work, difficult still for women. Kitchens can be nasty places. Men have sick minds. You’re protected from it here as my daughter, but a kitchen isn’t always a safe place for a young woman to be.”

  “Yeah.” Not to be mean to my dad, but this, I think, is a bit sexist and old-fashioned of him. It’s possibly still somewhat true, but there are also hugely famous female chefs now. There were even when he was younger.

  “If you go to college, you can get a degree in anything you want. Earn enough to support yourself and your family and still have time to raise your own children and be with them. Just wait until you’re a mother and you hold that brand-new baby in your arms. Suddenly, you won’t want to go back to work in a few months. Suddenly, you won’t want to work eighty-hour weeks. Your whole life will change. If all you have is a cooking background, you can work part-time maybe for very little money. If you have a degree, on the other hand, you can work in an office, teach, be food and beverage director of a hotel. Don’t discount this opportunity. It’s one I never had. I had to start work at fourteen.”

  I close my eyes and decide to switch to French, which I don’t often do. Like I said, I save it for emergencies. “Je sais...” I know.

  Dad sighs. He looks tired, his eyes are kind of bloodshot. He rubs them. “I never should have let you into that kitchen.”

  “Oh, Papa...” I go to hug him. I hadn’t realized, I guess, how much this meant to him. I mean, I knew, but I sort of didn’t know also.

  “If you really want to be a chef,” he says, his voice broken. “And your heart is set on it, I can get you a job in France.”

  Oh my God. He’s never offered this before, and I know Dad has some really famous Michelin-starred chefs for friends. “Thank you. I may take you up on that. But, for now, I’m still deciding.”

  “Deciding what? The whole of France is no good for you either?”

  “No, I just...”

  “What? Just what?”

  “I don’t know!” I cry, and I leave.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Dad does what he always does when he’s upset. He goes to work. Even though it’s his day off and the restaurant is closed. Fine, Dad. Whatever.

  As soon as I’m sure he’s gone, I slip into Julian’s room. We’re always so busy skirting overly-sullen Estella and unaware Dad these days, moments like this—where we’re truly alone in the house together—are really a treat. But unfortunately I’m in a terrible mood.

  Julian’s in bed using his laptop. I see a flash of an article on wheelchair basketball before he minimizes the screen. “Hi,” he says. “How’d the fight go?”

  “Perfect. I got upset and Dad ditched me for étoile, same as always.” I climb into bed next to him. He sets the computer aside and slides down so I can move in against him.

  He wraps an arm around me and
says nothing.

  “Why? What’s your opinion?” I ask.

  “I think you should tilt your head up a little.”

  Towards him, he means. “No, I’m serious. College or cooking? What do you think?”

  “You need to decide that. Not me.”

  I turn to him the way he wants, and he starts kissing my temples and cheekbones. “I don’t want to go to college.”

  “You want to stay at the restaurant?”

  “No. I don’t want to stay at Daddy’s restaurant. And I’m not sure I want France. Just France. Why does it always have to be French food, goddamn it? Would you stop that?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  Julian loves my face. He’s always touching and kissing it. Which is...kind of nice actually. “Hmph...” I grouse, and he returns to his little expedition. “Do you always like doing this to your women?” I ask. The question irritates me. Because I’m fiercely jealous even at the suggestion he ever had another girlfriend. Which of course he did. And maybe he did kiss their faces.

  “You are in a bad mood.”

  “Do you?”

  He bites my ear a little.

  “Ow.”

  “See how you feel right now? Imagine what it was like for me seeing you with Luke all the time.”

  “You’re the one who’s slept with other people. Not me.”

  He blinks and looks at me. “You have nothing to be jealous of.”

  “Did you sleep with the one you took to the prom?”

  “Yes.”

  I turn away from him.

  “Cami...” he urges.

  “No.”

  “It was years ago. I’d never even met you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Why don’t we talk about what’s really bothering you.”

  “No.”

  He starts rubbing my back. “Come on. If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?”

  “Kill your prom date.”

  “You know, your extreme jealousy is kind of hot.”

  “Grrr.”

  He chuckles. “What else would you do?”