Chapter 4 #2
Cruz’s eyes do the soft thing they do when he is pleased with the world. “Bring her in before she freezes,” he says. “I mean you, not the stollen, although I respect both.”
I step into heat and cinnamon and woodsmoke.
It smells like a home I did not know I was allowed to want.
Deacon is in the hall with a clipboard and a pencil, reading the labels on the carriers as if he is inventorying me along with the food.
He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and looks exactly like a problem solving itself.
“You did not need to come yourself,” he says without hello, then he meets my eyes and adds, “I am glad you did.”
“I accepted the job through the app,” I tell him. “I didn’t know it was you.”
“We did,” he replies, which is strictly true if you take the long way around.
Cruz laughs and the sound fills the doorway like warmth. “Someone may have used the third party to save you from the decision where you pretend we are strangers,” he says. “Consider us your holiday act of fate.”
Roman appears then with a movement I can feel before I mark it.
He steps out of the shadow into the threshold of the kitchen, and the light takes him in with suspicion and then approval.
He looks the same and he looks different because it has been a year and I have filled in the blanks with texts and photos and the way a man can become larger in your mind when you are careful not to tell anyone he lives there.
He sees the carriers and then me, which feels like being counted and then being named.
He does not smile.
His eyes slide down to my mouth, then return to my eyes like a rule he keeps even when no one is watching.
“You are late,” he says. His voice is dry. His mouth does not betray him.
“For what,” I ask, because I like to pretend I do not understand him. It gives me a second to breathe.
“For the coffee we are about to argue about,” he says, and the corner of his mouth lifts a fraction before it corrects itself.
The kitchen is as I left it in my mind.
Same old enamel stove that smokes on the back burner but makes the best cornbread.
Same long table scarred with knives and laughter.
Same chalkboard grocery list with more bacon underlined twice.
A thermos sits on the counter with condensation on its side.
Roman looks at it like a man considering whether to banish a sinner.
Deacon unscrews the lid with a reverent calm and pours.
The smell of cold brew climbs up.
Roman makes a sound between a sigh and a prayer for patience.
“You do this to punish me,” he says.
“I do it because you are predictable.” Deacon sips without blinking.
“Blasphemy,” Roman replies.
“It is coffee,” Deacon answers, his voice mild enough to be a blade. “We are not at Mass.”
Cruz leans against the counter, sets Isla on a stool with a promise of cookies to come, and opens the carrier with a flourish. “She brought the good potatoes,” he says. “You can smell the rosemary from here.”
“I also have braised beef, spiced carrots, and a salad that wants to be taken seriously.” I set the containers out. “Please pretend you do not see the extra tray of bourbon pecan bites.”
“Never pretend we do not see bourbon pecan bites,” Cruz says solemnly.
He tilts his head toward the pantry with exaggerated casualness. “There is nothing behind the third brick on the left, and if there were, it would be mine, and if I tasted cinnamon that was not mine, I would pretend I did not.”
“I do not know what you are talking about,” I say, equally solemn. “I would never adjust a man’s secret recipe on moral grounds.
However, if a person were to balance the cinnamon by a whisper, that person would be correct.”
Roman watches us and the storm in his eyes settles by a degree.
He looks down at my hands as if counting the small tremors then looks away not because he does not see but because he does.
Deacon ticks off the containers on his clipboard with pleasure he does not announce.
When he gets to the stollen he pauses.
“This belongs on the cover of something,” he says.
“It belongs in your mouth,” I answer. “Then on the cover.”
We work in a shared quiet that holds jokes like marbles in a pocket.
I arrange the buffet, Cruz sets plates like a man who can make a table into a welcome with two gestures, Deacon adjusts the chafers and pretends not to smile when Isla steals a carrot and calls it practice, Roman moves the things that are heavy without being asked.
People from neighboring cabins come in with cheeks red from the cold and kisses that land on foreheads.
Someone plugs in a string of Christmas lights shaped like tiny motorcycles and the kitchen forgives them for the kitsch.
I do not mean to stay.
I tell myself I will leave after the trays are empty and the last person licks sugar from a thumb.
I tell myself I will drive back to my apartment and sleep with my phone facedown.
I tell myself I am sovereign and practical and will not lean toward anyone who could keep me.
Then the snow decides to become an idea, not just weather.
It thickens and begins to fall in a way that narrows the world.
Deacon watches the porch and tilts his head the way he does when he is reading a roofline.
“The road will ice after five.” He says it like a fact that is already on the ledger.
“We can get you to the highway,” Cruz offers, a fingertip under Isla’s chin as he ties her scarf with the gentle competence of a man who has tied a thousand small knots.
Roman shakes his head.
He does not make problems into promises. “If she slides, the highway is a bad place to learn to pray,” he says. The line is simple. It is care disguised as a lecture.
I am too honest with myself to play the part where I protest with logic.
I want to stay.
I want to see night fall on the pines and wake up to the smell of coffee that tastes like a fight I can win.
I have an overnight bag in the car because after the fight with Nico I did not want to sleep under the same roof as my own anger.
The convenience of this fact embarrasses me for exactly one second then does not embarrass me at all.
Deacon says there is a small room on the second floor that is easy to heat.
Cruz says he will bring extra blankets that smell like cedar and old winters.
Isla tells me my braids should be tighter if I want to be fast in a snowball fight.
Roman does not say anything at all.
He stands with his hands in his pockets, and I can feel the yes he will not force me into.
I nod, and it is not a small nod.
It’s a nod that opens a door inside my chest and lets the cold in there meet the warm from here.
“Let me get my bag.” I head for the door before I change my mind in some smaller way that would make me wish I had been braver.
Outside the air bites with clean teeth.
The lot is already a shallow white.
My breath lifts and breaks.
I open the hatch and grab the overnight bag I threw in this morning when I thought I might need distance from my own kitchen.
The zipper catches then obeys.
I walk back in through a curtain of snow that makes the porch look like a stage with bad special effects.
Inside the lodge is dusk and gold, the light moving across the walls as if someone has told it to be kind.
Voices drift from the kitchen, low and good.
I can hear Deacon insisting on the right number of blankets for a room that has a draft I will not notice.
Cruz laughs as if the draft and the blankets and the cookies are all part of the same plan.
Isla sings something that rhymes cookie and rookie and makes Roman say “God help me” under his breath.
I carry the bag down the hall that remembers my footsteps.
I tell myself it is just until morning.
I tell myself the sentence is useful and not a lie.
I can leave with my head high and my heart intact if I use a door instead of a window.
Roman appears as I turn the corner, stepping into the narrow hall at the same time as me.
He is close enough that the breath I just took cannot be fully mine.
He smells like smoke and something warmer, like cedar after rain. The light makes his eyes an alloy I cannot catalog.
He takes in the bag and the way my hand tightens on the handle before I can make it pretend.
His voice lands low, as if he can’t believe I’ve made up my mind about this. “So this time, you really are staying?”