Twenty-Four. Christmas Comes Early
Twenty-Four
CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY
Despite our awkwardness, Grant and I manage to connect via text to come up with something to bake in the finals.
It’s a few hours after I parted ways with Allie, and I’m trying to heed her advice to not get in my own way, but even if I believe I’m supposed to get together with Corey, don’t I have to see the competition through with Grant as my new partner?
He and I agree to meet at the apartment on the top floor of the inn where Grant is staying while he’s in town.
As I arrive at the building, I have zero ideas for cookies.
Most of my mental energy has gone to wondering how much the apartment will resemble the place Grant kept above the bar—the place where so much of our relationship unfolded.
But those thoughts only serve to make me feel like I’m definitely getting in my own way, replaying scenes from my old relationship when just a few days ago I was sure I needed to go all in on Corey.
How can I tell what my heart wants when it’s so papered over with my constant wavering thoughts that I can’t hear whatever it needs to tell me?
Absorbed as I am by my ruminations, I don’t see that Fiona Leonard is literally in my way. I’m hurrying up the steps as she’s dashing down them.
We smash into one another, the top of my head ramming right into Fiona’s chin.
She must have been looking at her phone, because it launches from her hand and skitters down the rest of the steps.
“Oh my God! Sorry! Ow!” I clutch my skull and scurry to pick up Fiona’s wayward phone, noticing a text from Grant has popped up that says, Sounds good!
Totally innocuous, and yet what sounds good?
Could be anything. Could be Fiona’s offer to stretch her impossibly long legs up around Grant’s neck while he’s naked and she’s wearing sexy knee-high boots.
“Jill, what are you up to? Besides assailing me on the steps of this hotel?” Fiona asks. She rubs her chin with graceful fingertips.
Oh, nothing, Fiona—just thinking about you and Grant having sex that, in my mind, looks like a voyeur’s wet dream.
“I’m here to bake some, uh, cookies.” I tack a weird, nervous little laugh—to be honest, it’s the chuckle of a pervert, which I’m feeling like I am right now—to the end of this completely unfunny statement.
“Oh, Grant’s waiting for you. Well, he’s already starting because, you know, try to stop him,” she says.
I nod, knowing what she means. When Grant has a task in front of him, he gets very determined to nail it.
“Yeah, sorry I took your partner in this whole thing,” I say.
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I was just happy to help out since Grant was nice enough to invite me here.”
My stomach twists. Didn’t Grant say Fiona stepped up to help him? Was he lying? “Yeah, it’s nice you’re spending the holidays together.”
I’m so fishing for information. Maybe it was just a line when he said he didn’t feel about Fiona what he does for me. Or maybe he was hoping something would happen with her, and she rebuffed him after coming to Sweetville. Or, something did happen. She just admitted she’s leaving his apartment.
“Well, I’m probably more a pity case for him.
” Fiona huffs out a breath and nervously smooths down a small cowlick at the nape of her neck.
“It was this or sit in my shitty studio alone. I don’t exactly talk to my dad anymore, and my mom—oof; she’s friends with this woman she works with who’s, like, my age but I guess has this adorable family, so my mom is going to her house in Indiana for the holidays.
No big deal—it’s not like I’m full-on estranged or anything. Never mind. This is so weird of me.”
“It’s not weird at all,” I say. Even though it is very weird to see Fiona so uncomposed. In all the times I interacted with her, I only saw a preternaturally put-together person, and this woman is not that. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have really good friends. I’m so lucky I could hang here.
This place is so cute. And baking is a good distraction.
Especially when my mom keeps telling me how CeCe feels like another daughter to her, and I’m thinking, But you didn’t bail on CeCe for the holidays . Sorry. I so should get a therapist.”
She’s talking a mile a minute, which is not at all like the reserved Fiona I know.
Is it a Sweetville affectation, or did I just never try to get to know Fiona?
And why didn’t Grant mention all this? Though, given how I always was about Fiona, maybe he thought I’d take him knowing so much about her business the wrong way.
“It’s really nice of you to listen. I always found you so intimidating.” Fiona smiles now, and it’s her turn to give a nervous little laugh.
“Me?” My voice goes up to a pitch so high I’m surprised dogs aren’t barking.
“Of course. Grant always bragged about how you’re so self-possessed and how brilliant you were.
Are. He still talks about you. I mean, I know you’re not together anymore, but whoa…
” She lets out a long whistle. Of course she can whistle perfectly.
“Literally woe to the woman who tries to follow you.”
“He’s just a good guy.” I want to know if she’s trying to follow me, but given how much she’s opened up to me in the last three minutes, maybe I can let Fiona off the hook as my romantic adversary for a bit.
“The best,” Fiona agrees. “I’ll let you get up there. He’s waiting for you.”
“See you later,” I tell her. And maybe I see her more clearly now.
Grant, when I arrive, has an intense air about him.
When he opens the door to his place, his black T-shirt is coated in flour, and he wipes his hands on his apron before taking my coat and hanging it on a rack near the door.
He might think baking is beneath him, but winning a competition isn’t, and he’s radiating passion. It’s incredibly sexy.
“Just playing around with some textures,” he says with no preamble. I sort of love the Grant that’s in the middle of a project. His beautiful gaze turns inward, like every bit of his focus is trained on solving the problem at hand. “I think Christmas cookies are too dense a lot of the time.”
“Dense isn’t so bad,” I say. “They’re meant to hold you in place until the worst of the holidays is over.”
“Jill! So cynical about Christmas.” He steps back from the doorway and leads me inside.
I’m still a little awestruck by the kindness he offered Fiona and that he’s not a guy who’ll brag about how he came through for a friend on the outs.
I’m similarly awestruck by the familiarity of his apartment.
It’s warm and inviting, with a lived-on brown couch and a soft cream rug that covers a large portion of the worn wood floor.
The exposed-brick walls are the same as the ones at his apartment above the bar in Powell Park, but here he has a much larger picture window that overlooks the town green.
The massive sparkling tree seems brighter than ever on our moonless night.
“I will be open and willing to whatever Christmas cookies satisfy whatever culinary high bar you’ve set for us,” I say. “Even if I think you’re a snob.”
Grant’s mouth hovers on the brink of a full smile, like he’s tickled by my noting his high standards. “Good. I thought we could do something airy. The kind of thing that feels like a suggestion of a classic but different.”
“You sound like such a chef right now,” I say. He sounds, I think, like himself . The lines between Sweetville and Powell Park feel like they don’t exist at all when I’m with Grant.
He raises his eyebrows. “Yes, it’s a little evil to bring a chef’s brain to a baker’s competition.”
“You really are never going to stop hating bakers, are you?”
“We can’t all enjoy their company,” he says suggestively. I know he’s talking about me and Corey. Whose company I do enjoy. And who doesn’t leave me with my mouth hanging dumbly open like mine is now.
“Okay, so what are you thinking?”
“You’ve heard of struffoli, right?”
“I grew up near Amano’s, so yes.”
“So, I love that they’re deep-fried and the center is like the puffiest of clouds.
But they’re almost too simple and maybe not sweet enough for a Sweetville contest. So, I thought…
” He raises a hand as if he’s rolling out a new iPhone in front of thousands of rabid fans and he wants them to hold their applause.
“What if we could do a gingerbread struffoli?”
“I think you mean what if you could, because I don’t know if I can do anything better than slice and bake. And even that’s iffy, since I tend to eat as much dough as I bake.” I consider his idea. It’s very Grant. And to be honest, I can see he’s excited about it. “But I think that sounds lovely.”
He claps his hands and does a little jog to the other side of the island to show me what he’s been playing with.
“So, this is the basic dough,” he says, turning a cutting board holding strips of dough.
He pulls another cutting board closer to him.
This one has a mound covered by a cloth.
“But this is a variation where I spiced it up with everything you’d get in a gingerbread.
But we’ll drop it in there”—he points to a pot on the stove that’s filled with a few inches of oil that’s just starting to bubble—“deep-fry, and voilà.”
“So, baking wasn’t bad enough? You’re going to make me work with molten-hot oil?”
He slices two of the bars of dough into smaller pieces and drops several of these into the sizzling oil. “Yes.”
“I can’t take credit with you, though; you thought of all this.”
“But you’re good at the words part.” It’s so similar to what Corey said. I wonder if it’s true that Corey and Grant see me as talented or if they simply both like making me feel useful. “So, try this and tell me what you’d say about it. Use snobby chef words, please.”