Page 45 of Spicy or Sweet
“Well, the age gap part we can maybe help you with,” Rora reasons. “Don’t get me wrong, we’re in a great place,” she says, nodding between her and Uncle Henry, “but it’s not easy. You have completely different life experiences—you grew up in different eras. Not to mention, you have to plan for a future where you’ll be at different stages at times. And you have to think about how it feels from Shay’s point of view, too. She probably feels pretty shaken for being attracted to someone so much younger—right?”
She directs the question to my uncle Henry, who sets the last plate in the drying rack and turns around. “Oh yeah, it’s a lot to grapple with. It took me a while to believe that Rora could even be interested in me. You might just have to give Shay time and keep showing her that you are. But also, be ready for what happens after. We’re lucky. No one in our lives cares about the age gap, but you’ve seen what happens when we leave Wintermore. How often do people mistake me for Rora’s dad? Sunny’s grandpa? I imagine the comments would be ten times worse for a woman, considering society’s shitty double standards.”
“I guess I hadn’t thought about what it must be like day to day,” I admit. For me, it was stranger that Rora was dating my uncle than Rora dating someone so much older than her. We laugh and joke whenever someone mistakes her for his daughter—they look nothing alike—but I hadn’t considered the toll that might take.
“Don’t get us wrong; we wouldn’t change a thing about this,” Rora says as he leans down and kisses the top of her head, “but we came into this knowing we had a solid family foundation, and we were both ready for a big change in our lives. I don’t know a lot about Shay, but I know she and Nico aren’t close, and I knowshe doesn’t have a lot of people here. I’m guessing there’s some baggage there.”
“Oh yeah. There’s a lot of baggage,” I confirm. It feels wrong to tell them about any of the things Shay and I have spoken about. They’re not secrets—Georgie, her ex-husband, those things are public record, but I get the feeling Shay’s not usually as open about them as she has been with me.
“So, what, I just take it slow, hint to her that I want more, and hope she picks up on it?”
“That’s what I’d do. For now, anyway,” my uncle Henry says. “Y’all are going to be spending a whole hell of a lot of time together over the next few weeks. Use it. Get to know each other better and slowly build on things.”
“Patience isn’t my strongest attribute,” I admit. It’s an understatement, and they both know it, but neither of them calls me on it, and I appreciate that. “But I can try. Shay is worth trying for.”
“And other than Shay, you’re doing alright?” Rora asks, her gaze scrutinizing.
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just haven’t seemed… happy, since you opened the bakery,” she says, seeing through me as always.
“I’m just tired. It’s a lot of work.”
“I know, and you’re killing it,” Rora says, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “I’m just saying, it’s okay if the thing you’ve always dreamed about isn’t all you thought it would be.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I lie, knowing she won’t buy it. If my uncle Henry weren’t here, she’d probably push me further, but she just hums.
“Well, you’ve been happier this week. I assume that’s the orgasms.”
“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Henry says, shaking his head and pushing back from the table while Rora snorts, and I cover Sunny’s tiny ears.
22
SHAY
When I wake up on the anniversary of my sister’s death, the sky is crying. Thick raindrops pound against the windows, and I curse Mother Nature for making my life just a little more difficult on the day of the year that’s already the hardest.
I force myself through the motions of being a human: brushing my teeth, washing my face, pulling on crumpled jeans from the “they’re clean enough” pile in my closet. It takes all of ten steps to get from my front door to my car, but I’m soaked through by the time I’m safely inside my little Toyota Camry.
Driving up the mountain isn’t my favorite thing to do in the best of conditions, and this visibility is far from the best. Why the fuck did my brother have to move up here? Surely he could have hidden from the world at a more reasonable altitude.
The drive could take ten minutes or ten hours for all I know; I all but black out every time I have to drive up here.
Nico is waiting for me when I finally pull up outside his cabin, sitting on his covered porch with two giant piles of fluff that are more like wolves than dogs, and two thermoses. I didn’t tell him I was coming, but I didn’t have to. Not because of theweird triplet connection we have, but because I show up every year.
This day holds a lot of good memories, but every one of them died the second Georgie’s heart stopped.
I steel myself before climbing out of the car.
“Happy birthday,” I call, turning away to close my door so we don’t have to look at each other when we say it.
“Happy birthday, Shay.”
We’re both quiet for a second, leaving space for a third birthday greeting that we still can’t bring ourselves to say, all these years later.
Georgie was the best of us: the brightest, the prettiest, the smartest, the most liked. I don’t say it to be self-deprecating—it’s a fact. She grew into herself a little earlier than Nico and I did. It’s like she woke up at sixteen and had it all figured out, while we were still in the awkward teenage phase of our lives.
I’ve heard that some triplets and twins resent each other when they grow at different paces, but we never did. We looked at Georgie with pride, and we knew we had plenty of time to figure our shit out. Maybe, deep down, Georgie knew she didn’t have as much time as we did. Or maybe the world is just fundamentally unfair. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
