Chapter 21 - Maren
Maren
Steam rose from the aluminum trays like little clouds in the frigid November air, curling around the makeshift tables the guys had set up along the sidewalk.
I had my coat zipped tight, scarf tucked just under my chin, gloves thick enough to keep my fingers functional but not clumsy, and a bright orange hairnet stretching over my messy bun.
Ethan had given me a look when I walked in, one eyebrow raised, as if to say, Really?
“You look good enough to eat. So sexy,” Miles teased, though the warmth in his voice made the jab gentle.
“I look sexy in anything,” I shot back, teasing him with a wink.
He struck a dashing pose, snapping the elastic of his own hairnet. “Another thing we have in common.”
I burst out laughing, which brought Adrian closer in an attempt to quell his fomo.
“What’s funny?”
Ethan breezed by us standing in a line, his palm coming out to graze the small of my back. “What’s funny is how you three are messing around instead of working.”
We snapped to attention, Adrian going so far as to salute him with stiff, military precision.
The line of people waiting for the food snaked around the corner, a mix of families and single faces, grateful murmurs mixing with cold wind and laughter.
I handed a tray laden with soup and yummy holiday staples to a woman holding a toddler, and the little boy’s eyes went wide when he saw the mac and cheese.
“Thank you!” he shouted, making her laugh.
I smiled, caught in that simple moment of human connection.
When I’d woken up this morning, I’d felt a little down about missing Thanksgiving lunch with Liv and her family. She’d called, complained about missing me too much and never forgiving me. Unserious, of course, but the mild ragging was enough to make me feel even worse.
But as the day wore on, and our rag-tag group established a productive synchronization, I found I was enjoying myself.
Sadie stayed on my right so I could help her, then Emma, and Will on the other side of her.
To my left, the men took turns taking up the spot next to me, at one point playing a heated round of rock, paper, scissors to win the prized spot.
“You’re ridiculous,” I said with a soft laugh as Ethan puffed out his chest after his paper beat Miles’ and Adrian’s rocks.
He reached up, caught a stray piece of hair that had escaped my net, and tucked it neatly back under. His fingers lingered just a beat too long, and a trail of fire blazed across my cheek, down my neck and back, to settle between my legs.
“There. All fixed,” he said.
All wrecked, was more like it. The brazen move, in front of all these strangers, got my heart racing.
“Uh, Maren?”
I shook my head abruptly to clear it out, and looked down at Sadie. “What’s up, sweetie?”
She pointed at the stalled line of people in front of us, and I startled back into action. I grabbed another tray and inwardly lectured myself to keep my shit together. But every now and then, my attention flicked back to them and the effortless rhythm to how they moved.
A good chunk of line later, I felt another tug on my coat. “Maren?”
It was Sadie again, but this time she pointed to her sister. Emma was sulking again, arms crossed and lips pressed into a thin line.
“Everything okay, Em?” She gave no sign she’d heard me. “You’re holding up the line. Let’s go, let’s go.”
She huffed, backing off, and a twinge of frustration pinched in my chest. Always the best timing with this one. I’d promised to include her the last time we talked, and there wasn’t anything more inclusive than being in a production line at a soup kitchen.
And yet.
“We can’t do this without you, honey,” I said, my hands not slowing. I’d switched to serving two people at once to make up for Emma’s unplanned strike. “Remember how you promised to be my second-in-command today?”
That earned me a reluctant, tiny nod. Progress, even if slow.
“Watch it,” Adrian said suddenly, laughing as a gust of wind made a tray of rolls teeter dangerously.
He was the most recent winner of rock, paper, scissors, and grabbed for the tray at the same time I did. Our gloves touched, and that light contact was enough to make my stomach flip. He winked at me, then casually got back to what he’d been doing.
The line began to shorten, and Ethan moved out from behind the tables to talk to a woman holding a box of food.
He spoke quietly, but animated, and I saw her laugh.
At ease and confident, but with tenderness in the way he leaned in, a soft patience I’d seen only in flashes.
Warmth bloomed inside me, along with the slow realization that what I felt for him went deeper than anything just physical.
And as I forced myself back into action, taking up the slack with Miles and Adrian, I knew it was true about them too.
I handed Emma a small cup of cranberry sauce, and she peeked up at me, eyebrows furrowed. “I don’t like it,” she muttered.
“Try it anyway,” I said, nudging her gently. “You might like it.”
Emma continued to mope. She fussed with Sadie over how she handled the pies, yelled at Will about cranberry sauce, and aired her grievances without holding back.
“Next batch of soup,” Adrian called. “Let’s keep this line moving!”
And as I scooped another ladleful, with Emma reluctantly beside me and the crisp Boston wind biting at our cheeks, I thought, for the first time that day, maybe everything really was exactly how it was supposed to be. More importantly, maybe this was where I was supposed to be.
The walk from Boylston Street soup kitchen didn’t do much to temper Emma’s whining and for a second, I wished I had in fact taken up Liv on her offer to abscond from my job and crash her family lunch.
“Okay, enough.” Everyone stopped dead on the sidewalk. The men all looked at me as if they were the ones being called to the principal’s office. “We’re not going another step until we all get on the same page.”
“It’s just her,” Will mumbled.
“Not helping,” I said, and he slipped behind the protective cover of Miles’ body.
“Let’s talk about the page.” Ethan’s small show of support set the tone, and although Emma’s bottom lip was still pushed out, she didn’t say anything.
“Okay, the page,” I started. “It’s Thanksgiving Day. A day when we remember what we’re thankful for, and share that with people who don’t have as much as we do.”
Sadie brightened as she caught on to my train of thought. “Like with the soup.”
“Exactly.” I squeezed her cheek. “What else do we think Thanksgiving Day is about?”
Adrian’s hand shot into the air. “Oh, oh, I know. Pick me.”
“Yes?” I smiled softly.
He scooped Emma up under her arms and raced a few yards down the sidewalk where he’d have more space, then twirled her round and round until she shrieked with laughter.
“UFO rides!” Sadie clapped her hands with uncontained glee. “Me next, me next!”
The spinning went on a little longer, and when Adrian finally put Emma back down, they were both out of breath and dizzy with it.
“Thanksgiving isn’t about UFO rides,” she said, her cheeks shining with delirious joy. She tried to match that same tone of defiance from before, but it was hopeless. He’d cracked her resolve.
“No,” he replied, already picking up Sadie, who’d run over for her turn. “It’s about having fun with family.”
“Wheeeeeeee!” The ruffles on Sadie’s skirt billowed as he spun her round.
“But I wasn’t having fun at the soup kitchen,” Emma said when she’d come back to where we were standing. “I want to play and hang out with you guys.”
“Me too,” Miles said. He brought Will out from hiding and slung a lazy arm over his shoulders. “But sometimes doing all that boring stuff, knowing there’s gonna be loads of fun after… Well, that just makes the fun even better. Don’t you think?”
She gave a half-hearted shrug. “I guess.”
“My turn!” Ethan broke into a sprint.
Adrian’s eyes widened in alarm, and he ran for it, breaking down the sidewalk with Ethan chasing him.
That did the trick, and all the kids descended into belly-rolling laughter, forcing us to pick up our pace and catch up.
By the time we reached the house, Emma’s mood had done a complete one-eighty, and everyone was ready to settle calmly into the best part of the day.
We made blueberry pancakes together and with several rounds of hot cocoa to wash it down, played a tense game of Monopoly until Sadie literally dozed off on her side of the board.
“I think that’s your cue,” Ethan said, reclining on the living room carpet, hands behind his head. The movement made his shirt ride up just enough to show the pronounced lines of his obliques, and I averted my eyes.
It felt like we were all caught in that in-between space after the holiday high, where the world went quiet but something else pulsed beneath it.
There was something in the air between us that hadn’t been there this morning.
Or maybe it had, and I’d been too busy to notice.
Either way, when Sadie’s head lolled against my shoulder and her tiny hand went slack, I was grateful for the excuse to stand, to move, and figure it out without the men staring at me.
I gathered the kids’ blankets, whispered promises of more pancakes tomorrow, and led the three of them upstairs.
No resistance. No bargaining. Just heavy limbs and sleepy nods as I tucked them in one by one.
By the time I switched off Will’s lamp, all I could hear was the steady rhythm of his breathing…
and my own heartbeat. Still too attuned to what I’d left behind in the living room.
Downstairs, Miles and Adrian were sprawled across the three-seater couch, casual and relaxed, the faint glow of the floor lamps catching their hair. I dropped onto the edge next to Miles, letting him hand me a glass of wine.
“That was fast.”
“I can say the same,” I replied, and clinked my glass against his, the weight of the day sliding off my shoulders a little.
“We survived,” Miles said in the form of a toast.
Adrian lifted his glass. “Barely.”
I laughed, swirling the wine before taking a sip. Ethan hadn’t moved from his spot on the floor, and now watched me closely, a wistful smile on his face. I wasn’t sure if it was from the wine or just me, but it made my face flush with heat.
“So how did we hold up?” Adrian asked. “Was this your best Thanksgiving ever, or what?”
“Don’t answer that.” Miles sat forward to place his glass on the coffee table, in the middle of the Monopoly board that was still set out.
“Why not?” I asked with a shaky laugh. He had that look in his eye that I’d come to recognize, and my body betrayed me by responding before my mind could.
Ethan moved and was hovering over me in a flash, his mouth a breath away from mine. “Because it’s not over yet.”
I swallowed, heat rising, and leaned into him, pressing a kiss to his lips.
It wasn’t soft or hesitant, but full of the day’s exhaustion, the thrill of being here, and the way my chest felt as though it had been holding something in for too long.
His hand came up to cradle my neck, tilting my face into his.
The kiss deepened, his tongue rolling over mine with long, purposeful strokes.
My fingers tangled in his hair, letting the quiet charge of the room take over me.
I pulled back just a fraction, and Ethan’s hand lingered on my jaw. “I’m glad you didn’t take the job.”
I forgot how to breathe. He wasn’t supposed to say that. Not after pushing me toward a life somewhere else and pretending like he didn’t care either way.
“You are?” I searched his face, half-convinced I’d imagined his moment of unguarded vulnerability.
The answer was in his eyes. Staggering honesty. And when his thumb brushed the corner of my mouth, I knew whatever this was… it wasn’t pretending anymore.
He leaned in, but the kiss my lips tingled for didn’t happen, because the abrupt thunder of footsteps on the stairs made us all jump.
I whipped my head around, tension snapping into stark awareness.
Miles shot off the couch, his hands covering the telling signs of a bulge in his pants while also trying to come off totally natural as he leaned against the doorframe.
Adrian chose to stay seated, and pulled a scatter cushion into his lap instead.
I hadn’t moved yet, heart hammering, skin tingling with the memory of Ethan’s lips against mine.
“Why are you out of bed?” Ethan asked, voice still thick with a trace of lingering lust.
Will took a second to catch his breath, then said, “Emma’s not in her bed.”
“What?” It couldn’t have been more than half an hour since I’d tucked them in.
He shook his head. “I went to the bathroom and the door to their room was open, so I saw her bed when I walked past. She’s not there. Or anywhere upstairs.”