Chapter 6 #2
“Oh my god,” Diya says in recognition.
“From the girl who pretends the love of her life isn’t following her around like a puppy everywhere!” I shoot back. “Where is Seichi this morning, anyway?”
Diya gives me a Don’t start look.
“Well, we may not know her coordinates, but I think I know exactly where she’s living rent-free right now,” Cash says.
Diya taps my head, and I swat at her.
“Mmkay, that’ll do,” I say.
“So let’s just play the romantic detective for a minute,” Izaac suggests. “What do we know about her?”
“Yeah, what was she wearing?” Cash asks. “A letter jacket? Hoodie? Anything school-specific? I can’t remember.”
I shake my head. As Jolene delivers our dishes and we pass around silverware, I scan a mental transcript of our conversation, but it all seems pretty useless for tracking her down.
Even her name, Eve, is too generic to be a starting point.
I sigh, then begin to count off details on my fingers anyway.
“Well, she’s a Scorpio,” I start, and am quickly interrupted.
“Bosley, you got her star sign but not her Instagram?” Izaac says, closing his eyes in exasperation. “Lesbians…”
“Continue,” Diya says, ignoring Izaac’s remark and playing sexual identity Switzerland as the sole straight among us. She takes a bite of her vegan bacon and I grin at her.
“Okay… she has a younger brother who dresses like Charles Dickens.”
“It. Was. Fabulous,” Cash says, while Izaac looks perplexed.
“Her cousin runs a tree-lot-slash-taco-truck situation somewhere in Brooklyn and gets the trees from Cooper, which is why they were at the farm, apparently,” I say.
“Okay.” Izaac nods and pulls out his phone. “This is not nothing, keep going.”
My heart speeds up. I lean forward, combing my memory, but I’ve already given them the most salient details. Wait! No. Not all of them. I literally yelp as something dawns on me. I riffle through my bag, and yes, it’s there. The gift Eve gave me yesterday.
I peeked in the bag last night but decided to hold on to them to share with Diya, Cash, and Izaac as a breakfast dessert. They look like a lot of sugar cookies—kind of like shortbread texture—but they have this heady cinnamon aroma and are shaped like stars.
“She gave me these,” I say, handing one to each of my friends, then holding my own and imagining the moment Eve packaged them up herself on the other end, before she even knew I existed.
I have already wondered so many times who they were originally meant for, and at what moment she decided she’d rather give them to me.
“Nowwwww we’re getting somewhere,” Diya says. “What are they?”
“Ohhh!” Cash says. “We had a neighbor growing up who made these at Christmas. Her family was from Nuevo Leon.”
Cash rarely talks about his former life in Texas, but this time, he takes a deep inhale and smiles. Cookies. Always a reliable joy delivery system.
“Hmm,” he says. “Let me think what were they called…”
But before Cash can search the old people way—by sifting through his memories—Izaac has his phone in hand.
“Star-shaped Mexican cookies, Christmas…,” he mutters, typing. “Ah! Hojarascas,” he says a moment later, turning his screen around triumphantly.
There are dozens of Google images of the very same cookies.
“Okay,” I say. “I mean, cool, but there’s probably about a bajillion Mexican bakeries in Brooklyn selling these same cookies.”
“Is there a name on the bag?” Diya asks.
I examine it. “Just a logo, I think?” It’s a rubber stamp in the shape of a concha. “But it says ‘Established 1989.’?”
“Like Tay!” Cash says.
Before he can get those two syllables out, Izaac is typing furiously into his phone once more.
“Okay, Mexican bakery, Brooklyn, 1989…”
While Izaac does more digital recon, Diya inspects the cookie, sniffing and turning it over in her hands like a scientist, and Cash sits munching away happily on his.
“Let’s see,” Izaac says, turning the screen toward me. “Maybe we’ll find a sign here. Say when, if you recognize anything…”
He scrolls through Instagram posts of bakeries using the hashtag #mexicanbakerybrooklyn. Speed racks of colorful conchas, people mugging for selfies with pastries, and pan de muerto populate the feed from different geotags. But nothing familiar.
“This is insane, Z,” I say. “There’s no way—”
But then one shot catches my eye.
“Wait—stop!” I grab the phone.
I jab a finger toward the center of the screen. It’s a pastry I’ve never seen before. But the hand holding it up for display is one I’m sure I’ll never forget.
“Holy shit, Z. You did it.”
“It’s her?” Cash asks.
“How do you know?” Diya asks.
“This birthmark,” I say, my eyes fixed on the screen. “I saw it yesterday. It looks like a fleck of chocolate…”
Cash is grinning at me with powdered sugar in his mustache (a recent addition to his face that Izaac cannot stand), and my eyes have probably gone hazy, remembering the way she smelled of cinnamon and spices, and those sparkles in my stomach…
“Panadería Amado,” Izaac says, noting the geotag and snapping me out of it. “Case closed.” He drains his orange juice, then slams the empty glass on the table like it’s a shot of whiskey.
I lean back. “Wow. You’re kind of terrifying.”
“Right?” Cash beams and rubs his boyfriend’s back proudly.
“So, now what?” I ask, eyeing the cookie in front of me. The way the sugar glitters in the diner’s fluorescent light, it looks a little like the surface of snow on a sunny morning. I’m reminded again of the sparkles when I first laid eyes on Eve.
“I don’t know; you’re the filmmaker. What would happen if this were a Christmas movie?” Izaac asks.
Diya beats me to the punch.
“Well, obviously she’d show up to the bakery, fresh strudel in hand,” Diya says.
“Like a Christmas cookie Cinderella,” Izaac says.
“Yessss! And Eve would see the cookies, recognize Bennie, and realize it was true love.” Cash clasps his hands over his heart and closes his eyes.
“And our Bennie would finally have her first kiss,” Diya says, throwing an arm around my shoulder.
“Must we?” I ask. The reminder that I’m so far behind in my romantic life is still painful sometimes. Even Diya had some summer fling when she visited her uncle in India sophomore year. I’ve been holding out for perfection.
“But that’s endgame,” Diya interjects. “There would be obstacles first, of course.”
“Big ones,” I say, deflated. “Like the fact that she lives in New York, and I live here.”
“Come on, B,” Cash says. “That’s child’s play and you know it. Plenty of movies have the bird/fish scenario and end with an HEA.”
“Bird/fish?” Izaac asks.
Diya sighs deeply. “A fish and a bird may fall in love, but where will they live?”
Izaac cocks his head quizzically. “I have more questions.”
“Better questions include: What if she’s not there? Not interested?” I chime in.
I want to rely on my signature sunny outlook here, but my self-confidence and optimism have taken a hit over the last year, and I’m having more moments of doubt than I’d like to admit.
“Based on the way she came hunting you down with a cider yesterday, I’d say she was pretty interested,” Diya says, and my heart flutters.
“And anyway, what is there to lose? At the end of the day, even if you don’t find her, you and some friends get to have a Christmas adventure in the Big Apple,” Izaac says.
“Friends?” I ask.
“Yes, obviously. We can’t send you into this quest without supporting characters. We’ll make a day of it.” He looks at his screen. “The bakery isn’t far from Audra’s, actually.”
“Ohhh, Audra!” Cash says, looking up from his phone, which at some point returned to his hand. “Let’s go see her!”
Izaac has visited his sister a few times and come back mostly rubbing it in about the bagels and coffee.
“It would be so great to see her for Christmas,” Diya adds.
But after our conversation yesterday, I wonder what’s going through Izaac’s mind. Is he thinking what I’m thinking, that maybe we could convince her to come home for Christmas? Then he wouldn’t be alone with his parents, and his family would be together.
I bite my lip. When I was alone in my room last night, scheming about how to connect with Eve on my own, something like this never even crossed my mind.
Then I overhear the table behind us talking about the weather with Jolene.
“Saying up to two feet… biggest storm in years…”
… Which snaps me back to reality.
“You hear that?” I say, jabbing a thumb back toward the table. “Must I point out that we’re expecting a major blizzard?”
“Does that mean Naomi’s moon gave you an affirmative for a snow forecast?” Diya asks.
“Oh, you know I don’t moongaze and tell,” I say. “It’s against the rules, like giving away your birthday wish.”