Chapter 16
Marisa’s tired shipping label printer had just successfully spat out the last postage label of the evening despite its wheezing protestations.
“There. Done,” she said as she started gathering what was supposed to go in the order so Eden could pack it up. “Shop’s officially closed until after the holidays. Now I can finally focus on the goods for Monica’s event. I think I’ve got the recipes nailed down.”
“You freaking better,” Eden added from her place on Marisa’s living room floor as she grabbed the next bundle of orders and began packing them up. “I’m generally not one to worry for other people, but you’re not other people, so congratulations. You have my worry.”
“Thank you?”
“You are cutting things really close here. Like, heinously so.”
“It’s not heinous. It’s Hanukkah. This is all totally normal.”
Eden snorted and popped another sweet and sour gummy Christmas tree into her mouth.
“Could have fooled me.” The silence that followed lasted just long enough to tear Marisa away from her laptop screen and mark the track of Eden’s eye roll, which landed squarely on the saddest excuse for a Hanukkah celebration collecting dust on Marisa’s mantle.
“Pretty sure that menorah has more wax build-up than what an ENT sees when they go elbows-deep in an ear canal. It’s what, the third night?
Isn’t that thing supposed to be lit? Like, what the hell, girl?
I usually work any holiday that’s willing to pay me time and a half, and I can even manage to remember pulling out my tiny fake hot pink Christmas tree and setting it on my coffee table. ”
“I’ve had a lot on my mind, all right? At least I remembered to take the menorah out of the closet this year.”
Eden snorted around a mouthful of gummies. “Pretty sure that thing wanted to stay right where it was. Sterling silver can sense shame, you know.”
That was true, and Marisa’s weepy menorah was nothing if not judgmental about it.
The once-polished hand-me-down was from her grandmother, who loved to hoard shiny shit and made damn sure everyone in the family had an appreciation for her collection as well.
When Marisa went to college, the thing had been shipped off with her, along with a gleaming new bank account and a boatload of silent expectations.
She’d never asked for it and yet had been tasked with its upkeep, or, in her case, the guilt that came when she didn’t clean and polish it regularly. Or light it regularly to boot.
Her eyes fell on the sealed box of candles perched next to it. Shit. Forgot about those, too.
As far as her version of Hanukkah usually went, tarnish was just another word for tinsel and a far cry from the opulent splendor her Aunt Gail always insisted on showing off at every opportunity.
For Marisa, her lack of proper spirited fanfare, as her mother always called it, was a befitting image for the general dishevelment that had become her life.
Oh, she had every intention of doing the candle-lighting routine—minus the blessings, because who the hell even remembered those when not mumbling along with the rest of the crowd?
—but the Christmastime push her business seemed to always need tended to get in the way.
Along with the stacks of unassembled pastry boxes, industry-sized rolls of cellophane wrap in various festive colors, and a galley kitchen that had about four ovens too few and three cracked tiles too many.
And then there were the catering jobs she picked up as often as her bank account needed her to . . .
Bottom line: if it was winter, Marisa was working, though no one else in her family saw it as such. Even in her mind, she could hear Alec’s brogue-laced cursing, criticizing her, albeit as sweetly as the Scot could manage, for not taking the time to celebrate her holiday as she should.
“Fine, I’ll light the candles. The menorah doesn’t look that bad, though, does it?”
When Eden didn’t answer immediately, Marisa blew out the match, trying to make sure her temper didn’t spark too hotly and light anything else on fire.
“Not really, no.”
Marisa glared at her. “Then why the hell did you pause before you said that?”
Her friend’s poor attempt at tactical evasion did no favors for Eden’s authority.
“Because I’m still trying to figure out what your grand plan is, other than watching K-dramas with me and avoiding the fact that you told a certain Scottish rugby player, who you’re not really dating, mind you, that there would be more kissing in his future. ”
Marisa cringed and was a hairsbreadth away from banging her head against the mantle in frustration before she remembered the actively lit candles that seemed eager to see what she’d look like with less hair.
She had mentioned the kissing thing, hadn’t she? When she replayed their coffee-date-thing-whatever over in her mind, all she came away with was one glaring set of ground rules between them: kissing. And more of it, please and thank you.
“I can’t believe I said that,” she muttered, grabbing her laptop and plopping onto the floor next to Eden. “It just sort of fell out of my mouth.” Her embarrassment had been a tangible thing, so solid that even Eden couldn’t refrain from flashing her a sad look of commiseration.
When Alec had presented her with his plan for a staged outing, the entire situation had run away from her before she’d even had the opportunity to deploy logic. Instead, her other senses had elbowed their way into the picture, not giving a rip just how messy the situation was.
He’d been honest with her, laying out his vulnerability like a grocery store birthday sheet cake about to be cut up and obliterated by a pack of wild five-year-olds, and he’d done it before she explained her take on the Kiss.
Because she did have a thing or two to say about it, all of which stemmed from the way her skin tingled when he held her flush against his body.
Or how everything in the room had shifted from a crisply focused picture to an amorphous blob of heady happiness.
Vaguely, she recalled lights and people and murmuring, but mostly, she just remembered a viscous amount of Alec stealing her breath while she resisted the urge to rub herself all over him like a scent-marking cat.
“Oh, please.” Eden swiped a dismissive hand in front of her face. “It hardly sounded like you both weren’t thinking the same thing.”
“That’s the problem. We’re not supposed to be thinking that.”
“And why the hell not?”
“Because this is not real. None of it is. It’s all an act. And he’ll be heading back to England, if all goes well. It’s a sort of business agreement, I guess you could call it.”
“Wait. He’ll be leaving if all goes well? Really? That sounds like the exact opposite of well.”
Marisa folded her arms across her chest, uncertain where her indignation was coming from but feeling the need to defend it, nonetheless. “It’s just complicated. It’s hard to understand.”
“Damn right it is, but that’s hardly your biggest problem.” Eden swept her arm across the living room floor, which was nearly bowing from all the packages that needed to get sent out. “When are Manic and Sid showing up for all this crap?”
Marisa sighed, grateful for the change in subject, though only slightly, because the next object of her mangled life seemed to be in similar shambles.
“They said they’d be over around nine. They’re letting me use some of their warehouse space tonight to store everything, and then Captain’s taking it to the post office in the morning. ”
“That’s awfully nice of them. How much did that cost you?”
“Manic wants some of my homemade Red Hots, Captain asked for a gift card to the movie theaters, of all things, and Sid made me promise to watch the entire original Baywatch series with him so he can accurately judge the remakes.” Marisa pinched the bridge of her nose.
“That’s going to be brutal. There are eleven seasons, and because they originally aired on network TV back in the nineties, each season has, like, twenty-two episodes in it.
I don’t know where I’m going to find that kind of time. ”
Eden smirked. “Ah. The things we do for love.”
“I guess.” She sighed and lifted her laptop onto her crossed legs.
“As for what I’ll be serving at the Ball, here’s what I’ve got for the lineup.
I’m going with classic gingerbread but infused with Jamaican ginger.
It’s way more potent and punchy than the stuff most Americans are used to, and I’ve found, especially at this time of year, that people are a tad more willing to try something new and interesting if it looks and feels like what they’re familiar with. ”
“Like blow-your-ass-off spicy gingerbread men that’ll have people running to the bathroom all night?”
“No. The eggnog will do a fine job of that, I imagine. I’m talking about a traditional gingerbread man, a Christmas staple with the royal icing eyes and everything, but with the bolder flavors of the West Indies.
It’ll be comfortable but memorable. I got the idea after you and I were in the city for the West Indian Day Parade over Labor Day weekend.
You remember the Jamaican bulla cakes we tried? ”
A fond recognition crept over Eden’s face. “Oh, those were so good.”
“Exactly. I think it’ll be a hit, and it’s something I can easily and quickly make in large quantities with smaller cookie cutters. Besides, thanks to Alec’s lovely lip-locking-session-turned-social-media-stunt—”
“Which you ate up. Literally.” Eden’s smile invited an argument Marisa was just not in the mood to have.