9. Bea
9
Bea
When my sisters and I come upstairs, my mom is in the kitchen, making herself tea. Mom is tall, like Yvette, and has closely cropped white hair and glasses. Instead of a chain or some such, Mom’s glasses have a no-nonsense paracord strap, which currently allows her glasses to rest on her boobs.
“There you all are,” she says, putting her hands on her hips. “Who wants to go for a walk with me?”
Behind her, Naomi closes the fridge door quickly and gestures wildly at me, complete with a hand slicing across her throat, No .
Huh, that’s weird.
Kayla says she’s going to go back to bed, and Mom fusses over her for a minute, which lets me weigh my options. I work out almost every day in the city since Heartly has a great fitness center in the building. And while I would love to be completely lazy this week, I know I’ll feel better if I get out and move, even if it’s just a walk around the block with my mother.
“I’ll go,” I say, and Naomi rolls her eyes.
Mom lights up. “Wonderful. Give me fifteen minutes to finish my tea and we’ll go.”
I need to change out of my pajamas so I trudge up the stairs with Naomi at my heels. “What was that about?” I whisper.
“Oh you are in for it,” she says, almost cackling. “Mom isn’t just walking. She’s power walking. She’s going to leave your ass in the dust.”
That’s fine, I can power walk. I run five miles on the treadmill frequently.
My sister leaves me to my own folly and I dig into my luggage to find my sneakers and some yoga pants, when something glittery spills out onto the carpet.
It’s a necklace, with a silver box chain that’s smooth on my fingers when I pick it up and a pendant that’s elegant and simple, a small round-cut diamond. It’s not a great-quality stone, but I like the simplicity of it.
I’ve hardly ever worn it because Charlie gave it to me. It was the last present I got from him, a Christmas gift just weeks before we broke up.
Since Charlie wasn’t going to be here this year, I thought it would be good to pack. My family probably doesn’t remember this necklace, and it’s the kind of jewelry I love—it goes with everything. It’s not too extravagant but also not costume jewelry.
For now, though, I pick the jewelry up and set it back in my luggage. Now that Charlie’s here, I’m not sure I’ll be able to wear it.
An hour later I’m huffing and puffing my way back up the hill toward the house. Mom’s ahead of me, arms pumping in perfect rhythm with her feet as her hips and shoulders swivel.
She’s looped back a few times, shouting instructions at me as if I want to learn how to power walk. “Keep your shoulders back!” and “Really feel it in your pelvis!”
Mom’s pace is in this weird middle ground where my run is too fast and my walk is too slow, so one of us is always struggling to keep up with the other. I don’t have the heart to tell Mom that I’d rather run ahead or fall behind, so I give it one last attempt and make it up to the house.
Mom, who has literally power walked in circles at the top, high-fives me. “Good job, honey.”
“Thanks, Mom. Do I get breakfast now?”
Indeed I do. Yvette and Lance are in charge of food this morning, and there’s yogurt and granola fixings out on the counter. Everyone’s downstairs in various stages of breakfast, including Charlie, whose hair Mom ruffles as she passes.
It gives me a pang in my chest. Charlie’s sitting next to my dad and they’re engaged in deep conversation about 401(k)s, I think?
Mom and Dad always treated Charlie like one of their own and when we broke up, it hurt them too. Susan and Gary had been their best friends ever since they’d moved in next door to us in Mobile. They’d watched each other’s kids, swapped parenting advice, and, when we were old enough to take care of ourselves, went on double dates.
The first October after Charlie and I had broken up, my parents had come to me asking if I wanted to do something different for Christmas. It meant so much to me that they would offer, but at that point I had just moved to New York and had enough change in my life. While it was occasionally awkward, I look back now and can see that all four parents had run interference, distracting us with different activities just to make it through the holidays without a meltdown. And it had worked.
I don’t enjoy being around Charlie, but I do it for my parents.
“Morning, Lance,” I say, plopping down next to him at the dining room table.
He gives me a small smile. “Good morning.” Lance and Yvette met during their flight attendant training and after a year of commuting to see each other, Lance moved to Chicago to live with her and proposed in June. I like Lance—he’s quiet but steady, and tolerates Yvette’s pessimism with a grace that I can’t manage most of the time, which is what probably makes him a good flight attendant too.
We chat—one-sidedly, but still—over our breakfast until Dad clinks his empty coffee mug with a spoon to get everyone’s attention. “All right, team. As much as I love a lazy morning”—I check my watch; it’s ten thirty already—“this to-do list isn’t going to tackle itself.” Dad holds up a stack of notebook papers with Mom’s small, tidy writing on it. “Now, who wants to pick up the food?”
We split up tasks and divide and conquer. I spend the whole day making trips to the grocery store with my mom and Gary. Jasper joins us for the first one but then we leave him at the rental to bake cookies and banana bread, his wife as his assistant, while we make a second run. Then we have to do a third run because my spoiled-chef brother-in-law tells us we bought the wrong type of flour and not enough butter, and we comply because somehow in the two years that Jasper has been in our family, his pain au chocolat has become a tradition and it won’t be the holidays without it.
Honestly, I’d forgotten how exhausting it is to haul groceries. In the city, I live two blocks away from a market and if I need groceries, I pick them up on my way home from work. More often than not, I order out or Brin brings home food from work. I also can’t find the yogurt I like or the coconut sugar I normally put in my coffee.
Moving to a small town would take some acclimating. Who knew the city was spoiling me?
I don’t see Charlie all day, and when Jasper banishes me and my sisters from the kitchen so he can make fried chicken in peace, we watch Elf in the basement. There are new decorations in the house, though; paper snowflakes that hang from the tops of the windows and a yule altar in the living room next to the fireplace, which all have the distinct stamp of Susan on them, with Charlie’s help, probably.
At dinner, Charlie and I sit at opposite ends of the table. There’s not a lot of talking because Jasper makes his fried chicken with buttermilk and Cajun seasoning and it’s become one of our family’s favorite dishes.
Afterward, though, while we’re sitting around finishing our wine and barely making a dent in the cheesecake we bought at the store, Yvette disappears from the table and returns with a handful of envelopes in her hand, plus four gift bags, one black and three purple. She stands next to Lance and clears her throat. He rises and puts his arm around her waist.
“So,” Yvette begins, a huge grin on her face. “We’ve picked a date.”
My dad whoops and the rest of us laugh. Yvette passes out the envelopes. “We know it’s soon,” she says. “But no one had any conflicts when I asked about your schedules so...”
She hands me an envelope that says:
Beatrice Cummings and Guest
I hold back a snort. And who, exactly, would I be bringing?
I tear open the envelope and read the card.
Susan gasps. “Oh, it’s at Magnolia Meadows! I love that place.”
That’s a small farm outside Mobile. I quickly scan the card. April 27, a Sunday wedding. Four months away.
“There’s one other thing,” my sister continues, and then she nudges her fiancé, who blushes, and hands him the black gift bag.
Lance walks around the table and sets it in front of Jasper. Jasper’s eyes widen and he looks at the bag in confusion.
“Open it,” Lance says.
Jasper dives in, pulling out tissue and a black box, which he sets on the table and opens. His eyes dart back and forth, reading, and then they widen even further. “What?” He jumps up from the table. “Really?”
Lance laughs and nods, and Jasper wraps him in a big hug, lifting him off the floor and swinging him around. Mom leans over to look in the box and coos. She lifts it to show the rest of us: there’s a flask, a bow tie, and cuff links, with a card that says, Will you be my groomsman?
Lance’s feet are back on the floor now, though he and Jasper are still hugging, but now it’s the back-slapping, quietly happy kind, instead of Jasper’s unbridled exuberance.
“So, now that the cat’s out of the bag, ” Yvette jokes, and places the three remaining bags in front of me, Naomi, and Kayla. Inside are more flasks, earrings, and a set of crystal hairpins with the card.
There’s more squealing and smiles and laughter. The four of us hug, and I catch Susan wiping her eyes and Mom and Dad hugging.
Kayla peppers Yvette with wedding-related questions, and after a few minutes, we start to clear the table. I go back for another load of dishes and I catch sight of Charlie’s invitation, still in front of his chair. He also gets a guest.
Something tugs at me uncomfortably. Charlie had RSVP’d to Kayla and Jasper’s wedding last year, but then he’d had to back out at the last minute. I think he’d been ill.
I don’t talk to Charlie at all after dinner and don’t even see him go to bed. Which is fine by me, but when I get woken up the next morning, it’s not by Naomi’s alarm. Her bed is empty, and my phone says it’s 7:38.
It’s a rhythmic buzzing through the wall.
At first I think, Ew, one of my sisters is using a vibrator. But then I remember it’s Charlie on the other side.
I get up, throw on a bathrobe, and tiptoe out of my room and to Charlie’s. I attempt to knock lightly, but his door creaks open under the pressure.
“Charlie?” I whisper.
He’s asleep on his back, one arm stretching out from under the comforter and his face relaxed.
“Charlie?” I say louder.
He mumbles and turns onto his side. The bedding is up to his chin and I have to admit, it’s adorable how tucked in he is.
I stand by the side of the bed and lean over, placing a hand on his torso. The quilt is lavender and silky under my palm.
Charlie still doesn’t wake up, but I nearly jump out of my skin when his hand hits the back of my knee.
“Mmm,” he grunts. “Come back to bed.”
I freeze. Who does he think is waking him up? My heart, the stupid, careless thing that it is, aches. Just because Charlie didn’t bring anyone to Christmas doesn’t mean he’s not dating or sleeping with someone...or multiple someones. Charlie is objectively hot, and women love tech bros—just look at my boss, who was often on hottest-bachelor lists—and I’m sure he’s had plenty of sex since we’ve broken up and it’s too early in the morning and I’m unprepared to think so much about Charlie’s sex life before I’ve had my coffee and?—
“Bea,” Charlie says, louder this time. “Come back to bed.”
His hand slides up the back of my thigh, beneath my robe, almost to my butt, and squeezes the muscle there.
Me?
I look down at Charlie. His eyes are still closed, and the fingers wrapped around me relax as he falls back into sleep.
Why would Charlie say my name?
His phone, which had stopped buzzing on the nightstand, starts up again.
I shove his arm away and then push his shoulder hard enough to flip him to his back and jolt him awake.
He blinks up at me in surprise.
“Charlie, your phone’s ringing,” I snap.
I turn and stomp out of the room, mad at myself for getting so flustered over something so stupid.