Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
“ O kay, these are super simple to make,” Tris said as they stood in the kitchen at the bed-and-breakfast.
Her mom had been fine staying at the desk, and if she wasn’t mistaken, she thought her mom might be happy that she was spending some time with Fisher. She didn’t know why, since Fisher was going back to his job and she probably wouldn’t see him again for another decade, but it was always nice to know that she had her mother’s blessing.
“I think that’s what you started out saying the last time you tried to show me how to make cookies. Only we were a lot younger.”
He was teasing her, and she smiled, but she said, “These are even easier than those, and I promise, we are not catching anything on fire.”
“Really?” He lifted a brow, and she was reminded of the moment in the parking lot where she had forgotten her own name.
“We’re older now. We’re not so easily distracted.”
Because that’s what happened. They’d gotten distracted .
She had special permission to be in the home ec room to make cookies for the school board meeting. The home ec teacher, Mrs. Becker, had told her that no one else in the school would have gotten permission, but Mrs. Becker trusted Tris.
Fisher had been just across the hall as an aid for Mr. Hart. Mr. Hart had taken the day off, and another teacher had taken his class, but Mr. Hart had neglected to give any assignment to Fisher, and he wandered across the hall, following his nose, as he told Tris.
They’d done exactly what she was supposed to do, made the cookies, but they had the last tray in the oven, and everything had been tidied up, and they were just waiting on it when…they had a moment similar to the one in the parking lot just a little bit earlier.
Only, he’d given her her first kiss.
The memory was still sweet. Mostly because he was not married and neither was she. If she were married to someone else, she would probably want to forget it. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who kissed a million guys and didn’t marry any of them. In fact, she had been sure, as only a teenager could be, that Fisher was The One.
Of course, they’d gotten so sidetracked that the cookies had not only burned but caught on fire, the smoke detectors got set off, the fire company was automatically called, since it was the school, and a fire drill had ensued, and there was genuine general pandemonium and chaos.
It was…embarrassing. Especially since Fisher and Tris had ended up in detention over it.
Their parents of course had been upset, and Mrs. Becker hadn’t talked to Tris for the rest of the year.
She’d had to drop home ec and take typing, which had served her well, but it had still been a disappointment.
“Tris?” Fisher said softly .
“Sorry. I was thinking about…everything that happened back then.”
“I’m sorry. I apologized to your mom, and I probably should have apologized to you too.”
“No. It’s a sweet memory for me. The kiss anyway. I… It was my first.”
“Mine too,” he said, and the thought made her smile. She hadn’t realized that.
He tilted his head. “Did you ever wonder what might have happened if that hadn’t blown up like it did? Where we would’ve gone, what we would’ve done?”
“Yeah. I have. I guess, I wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt your plans. You seem to be very happy in Richmond, and successful, and I don’t know that it would have been the case if we would have stayed together. Maybe we wouldn’t have made it.”
“No, I think we would’ve. I know there are some people who don’t, but you have a character that I can almost see. Just a determination to do right that I admire, and it makes me want to be better, you know?”
“That’s a huge compliment. I feel like that around my mom. She makes you want to be a better person. To be closer to the Lord and just develop a deeper relationship with Him, because she just exudes such joy and peace.”
“She does. But you do too. And you have a character that is unmatched, anywhere. But the thing I really noticed about you when I first walked in yesterday was your happy smile and the way there is no guile in you. You are just…you. Happy and kind.”
“Thank you,” she said, feeling her chest expand under his compliment. She supposed it was possible he was just saying it and didn’t really mean it. But she thought he did.
“All right. If you’re going to get me to win this competition, we probably ought to get started on these cookies, although I feel like maybe I should have gotten a package of Oreos as a backup. Are we really using soda crackers?”
“Trust me. It’s delicious.”
He still looked doubtful, but she just shook her head and got two cookie sheets out from the cupboard.
“Would you grab the aluminum foil out of that drawer?” she asked, pointing to the drawer that was right beside him.
He pulled it out and cut off a piece of aluminum foil to cover both cookie sheets.
“Now, you spread out all of the saltines on the cookie sheet. Just in one layer.”
“All right.”
As he was doing that, she got the butter and sugar and put it on the stove.
“If I’m going to mess something up, this is usually it. I either boil this too long or not long enough.”
“I see. Don’t the directions say?”
“It doesn’t give you an exact time, and I do better if I have an exact thing, rather than kind of looking at it trying to see if it’s right; it’s just a little bit tricky.”
“I thought you said this was easy.”
“Well, I messed up one time and cooked it too long, and it was kind of crunchy. But it was only once. And I’ve made them a lot.”
“We’re not losing a whole lot if you mess it up. These have to be the least expensive cookies I’ve ever made.”
“They are kinda cheap, aren’t they?” she said, laughing.
“You know, you wouldn’t be the same person if you hadn’t stayed here after high school.”
“You’re right,” she agreed, realizing exactly where he was picking up their conversation.
“And I think that if we would’ve been together, you would have at least gone with me, if not gone to college. ”
“I’d been accepted a couple different places, but… I didn’t want to leave Mom. She and Dad were having a rocky time, and not because of her, just to be clear. Dad was…not the man he promised her he would be when they got married.”
“Yeah. I think sometimes we allow ourselves to be blinded by infatuation.”
“What is that quote, ‘love is blind’?”
“I hate to call it love though. It’s more like you just kind of get enamored with someone, but it’s not really love.”
“The kind of love where you sacrifice for someone else?”
“Yeah. The kind of love that is deeper and more meaningful than just a surface attraction. I guess a lot of people say it’s boring, but true love doesn’t jump from person to person. It digs in and gives as much as necessary.”
“You better be careful with that. Because the world tells you that you shouldn’t give any more than what the other person is giving, or else you’ll become a doormat or something like that.” She was mostly joking, but it was true.
The butter and sugar had started to boil, so she set the timer on her phone.
He had almost all the crackers laid out and was gathering up the garbage to throw it away.
“I think that’s where the world’s wrong. But it’s the kind of love that sticks. You know, you make a vow, you keep it, and when you say ‘for better or for worse,’ you understand that there will be a ‘worse,’ and you stay anyway.”
“Yeah. It’s sad that a lot of people feel like ‘for worse’ means ‘get out and get something better for myself because this wasn’t doing it for me,’ you know?”
“Although, in your mom’s case, the Bible does give an out, if there’s adultery.”
“Yeah. I think she would have stayed in her marriage no matter what, because she made a vow.”
He nodded, and she figured that he knew that was the kind of woman her mom was. She knew it tore at her mom’s heart that her marriage had not lasted, and she often wondered if there was something more she could have done. But it wasn’t her job to keep her husband true. Or to make him keep his vows, or to make him not cheat. It was his.