Page 43 of Spicy or Sweet
“Hmm?”
“If this is what going with the flow feels like, I think I like it.”
Her answering laugh makes my heart stutter.
Oh god. I am so fucked.
21
NOELLE
“Howshitgonwarinwishay?”
I stare at my brother, simultaneously disgusted and confused.
“Hell, Felix, maybe try swallowing before talking,” my dad chides, pinging him in the ear.
We don’t usually do family dinners on Wednesdays, and this one was purely accidental. Shay and I have a day off tomorrow—she’s going to visit Nico and is going to be working all weekend to make up for it, so I figured I may as well take the same day off.
Today was draining, but productive. We spent the day prepping and freezing pretty much everything we could, and we’re so far ahead of schedule that we could probably take this upcoming weekend off, too, if we wanted to.
I had planned to spend my night lazing around watching TV, but Felix asked if anyone was free to help unpack the first Christmas delivery for The Enchanted Workshop, and I figured I had nothing better to do. Neither, it seemed, did my parents, Rora, or my uncle Henry, who wore Sunny in a baby carrier and almost succeeded in stopping her from putting tinsel in her mouth. Baby girl is already as Christmas-obsessed as the rest of us.
Between the Stanley-Whittens, Abigail, and her brother Quinn, we had everything unpacked and stored away by dinnertime, and my dad promised everyone his famous chili and margaritas as a thank you. No one ever says no to my dad’s margaritas.
Felix finishes chewing his cornbread and swallows. “I said, how is it going working with Shay?”
Just the mention of her name has my cheeks heating. “It’s going fine,” I say, trying to be as vague as possible. “Better than I expected.”
“Shay’s so nice,” Abigail says with a warm smile.
“It’s good to see her a bit more involved with the community,” my mom chimes in. “And I imagine you both have a lot to learn from each other in the kitchen. What’s she like?”
“She’s pretty fun, actually. And she’s great at what she does. Messy, though. A little loud, but she has good taste in music, at least. She loves ABBA. And she has a cute cat—Croissant.”
My mom gasps. “I love ABBA! You know, maybe I should ask her to go for coffee or something. I think we could be good friends.”
Yes, because that’s exactly what Shay needs: more friends. Granted, she probably could do with a few more friends in town, but I’d really rather my mom wasn’t one of them.
“You know, Mom, I’m not sure that would work well, the two of you,” I stammer, and my mom pouts.
“How come?”
“Um… Well…”
Rora snorts, and I look over to see her nudging my uncle Henry. “Told you so.”
He sighs. “You did, sugar.”
However Rora has figured it out, and I’m not surprised because she always does, I would prefer it didn’t become a topic of conversation at the dinner table.
My parents are both looking between me and Rora, confused, but everyone else seems clued in.
“It’s not that I don’t think you and Shay would get along, Mom, it’s just that she’s so busy right now with the baking, you know? But I’ll mention that you’re interested in getting coffee,” I say as diplomatically as I can.
This placates my mom, and Rora does me a favor when she immediately changes the subject, asking my parents if they still have a specific photo album from a trip we all took with Rora’s parents when we were kids.
My mom ropes my dad into helping her check the attic because she’s scared of spiders, and the second they leave, Rora leans forward.
