Page 63 of The Holiday Whoopie
Bootsteps scuff behind us. Jack and Portia reappear, cold-pink cheeks and a fresh phone photo held up like a prize.
“Triple-net with ‘extraordinary maintenance.’” He says it like we should all know what he means before pocketing his phone. “Eli’s going to love that little landmine.”
Portia wiggles the student-hours flyer. “And I found a potential afternoon counter-helper for the shop.”
Amanda—previous concern over my not-so-hidden reaction forgotten in the face of, well, Portia’s—wraps her arm around her not-so-hidden love interest. “My toes are staging a coup. Let’s get to your place before they defect to frostbite.”
We do the goodbye shuffle at my door—hugs over puffy coats, promises to ‘see you soon’ while I keep my bakery-bright smile in place.
“Rest that voice, superstar,” Portia calls to Jack as she and Amanda back away, already linked, wobbling and laughing.
“Hardy har-har.” Jack snorts, his smile wide as the two disappear into the halo of the streetlights, their silhouettes folding into the soft, slow snow starting to sift down.
The night hushes. Jack stands beside me, hands deep in his coat pockets, eyes on the frosted glass of my door, his humor resolving into something else. Something hot but also wary. “Go in?” His look is searching, like he’s checking a pressure gauge.
My key is already in my hand.Stop this now, a voice suggests, the practical one that balances books and cleans mixers and knows better. Another voice—the one that still tastes cinnamon and his kiss—asks for one more night of pretend. One more hour where I don’t count costs.
I turn the key. “Yeah, let’s go in.”
He smiles, relief flickering and heat taking its place.
Nothing wrong with having fun, I tell myself as he follows me inside.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
Jack
The bellover the door gives a polite jingle, and then the dark swallows it. The bakery is all silver edges and soft shadows—the glass case reflecting a sliver of moonlight from the street, stainless counters gone black, mixers hulking like quiet animals. The air smells like citrus cleaner and tastes like sugar and something warm I can’t name without saying her.
Audrey doesn’t flip on the lights. Her fingers find mine in the dark and squeeze once, quickly, like we’re crossing a street. The lock clicks back into place behind us; the world narrows to the sound of our shoes on the mat and the hush of a building that knows her better than anyone.
She leads me through the kitchen by memory, her hip brushing against a table edge, a laugh under her breath when I stumble into a stool. My hand—flung out on cool steel for balance—finds the softer give of her waist.
I expect her to linger there, to press back. She doesn’t. She keeps moving.
Up the back stairs, the wood beneath us is the only sound, creaking like it’s telling secrets.
More time for my inner thoughts to amplify—like how she was quiet at the end of caroling too, a little absent in the crowd even after my attempt at a festive off-key act. And on the way back, when she wasn’t intertwined with Amanda, her hands were jammed into her coat pockets so I couldn’t give her mine.
Top of the stairs. She keys the apartment door by feel and pushes it open.
The living room is darker than the bakery—only the streetlamp leaking around the edges of the shade and the faint pinpricks of the Christmas tree, not lit but catching whatever light there is like a constellation that refuses to die. The soft shape of the couch. The empty hook where my scarf hung earlier. Her hand leaves mine to flick the bolt, then removes her coat.
Following her lead, I hang mine beside hers on the rack, the fabrics whispering against each other. She steps out of her boots; I slide out of my poor-choice loafers,both pairs making soft thuds on the mat. The sounds are so domestic my chest aches, Audrey’s silence so loud it’s deafening.
I should ask what’s wrong.
Instead I replay the gathered evidence. At the square, she laughed at Amanda’s joke and said all the right things and gave everyone—including me—the bakery smile she gives customers who ask if they can pay with Canadian cash. When I asked, ‘Go in?’ she paused half a beat too long. It was all there if you knew which lines to read.
“Hey.” My whisper carries over the room. “We don’t have to?—”
She pivots like a dancer, a neat little half-moon that lands her in my space, and kisses me. Not cautious. Not questioning. Heat, direct and uncomplicated, like turning an oven from off to on without testing the pilot.
The sentence I was building fragments. Her hands slide up the front of my sweater and fist there, pulling me down. She tastes like winter air and the last of the snow drop taffy Portia bullied us into eating. Like a decision already made.
“Okay,” I breathe against her mouth because I am a simple man with a complicated brain, and both parts are very easily convinced by this woman. My palms bracket her jaw, thumbs grazing the warm hinge of it, the place that always goes soft when I touch her. As it does now. Just like my doubts.
We take two steps sideways, shoulders brushing the coat rack, and the back of my knees find the couch. She pushes me down with both hands on my shoulders and follows, knees to either side of my hips, sweater rucking up as she moves. When her hair slides forward over my cheeks, theworld reduces to the sound of her breath and the slow, patient click of snow against the window.
