Bourbon Cookies
Dahlia
Staring at the clock worrying about Vex is going to drive me out of my mind. There are only so many times I can scrub the kitchen counter and make the bed, and I exceeded that number a half an hour ago.
What am I going to do to keep my mind occupied? Work isn’t an option. I’d just make a mess out of that. And there’s no way I could focus on a book, even if it was written by one of my favorite authors.
There has to be something…
Max. Before Vex showed up, I was going to make him cookies, get him slightly drunk, and then ask for advice.
The embarrassment alone from all of that will keep my mind off of Vex and the scary things that might happen after this so-called friendly-ish meeting.
Getting a man drunk to get the answers I want sounds wrong. I’ll only get him slightly drunk.
And warn him first.
That’s completely illogical .
All sense and logic left my brain when I met Vex.
***
This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done.
No, that had to be going to a club alone and getting drugged. This is just a little wild and impetuous. Hopefully, this doesn’t blow up in my face.
Hope opens the door with a huge smile on her face. “Prue! You came over to visit.” Her eyes move down to the plates in my hand. “And you made treats. Dad loves sweets. What are those?”
“Caramel pecan clusters on top of a butter cookie base.”
Her eyes go wide. “Are you sure you aren’t in love with my dad? He’d marry you for those.”
This isn’t an engagement brownie cheesecake, but they are exceptionally good. “I was wondering if your dad was around. I need to talk to him for a moment.”
“Is something wrong? Did someone try to hurt you again?”
She’s so much like her father, overprotective and sweet at the same time. “No, I’m fine. I just had a question I wanted to ask him.”
She raises an eyebrow even as a smile spreads across her face. “DAD! You have company!” Her blond curls bounce. “Can I have one of those?”
“Sure. This plate is for everyone.” I lift the non-alcoholic ones. “Would you bring these in for the rest of your family?”
“Absolutely, so you made a plate just for Dad?”
“Don’t get your hopes up.”
“I’m always filled with hope.” She winks. “You can wait for him in the living room. Or come with me to the kitchen.”
Once I make it into the kitchen, this will end up being a family discussion. I definitely don’t want that. It’s bad enough having to explain my nuttiness to one person. “The living room is fine. ”
Her grin gets even wider. “I’ll make sure you two have privacy.” She winks.
Privacy is good, but not in the way she means. “Thank you. I appreciate the fact that there won’t be any ears listening in to our conversation.”
“You’re no fun.” She pouts as she carries the plate into the kitchen, leaving me in the living room.
Why am I doing this? I’ve already dug myself a hole. Do I really want to dig it any deeper?
This was a really bad idea. I walk over to the couch, but I’m too antsy to sit down. Instead, I move over to the fireplace. There are family pictures covering it.
Love shines in every single one of them. One picture on the left-hand side of the mantle catches my attention. That must be Hope’s mother. She’s cradling her bump, while Max has his arms wrapped around her. They’re so young. Just children themselves.
What would have my life been like if I had a normal high school experience? Would I have found love, married my high school sweetheart, and had a bunch of kids by now?
They’d be in school by now. I’d be a soccer mom.
But that wasn’t how life happened. I can’t change the past. I can only live with it and try for a better future.
“Prue?”
I spin around. “You have a beautiful family.”
He tips his head to the side. “Thank you. But that doesn’t explain the tears in your eyes or the plate in your hand.”
“These are for you.” I hold them out to him. “They’re bourbon-soaked pecan clusters on a butter cookie.”
He doesn’t take the plate. “Why are you crying?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It certainly does matter. A woman doesn’t just randomly show up at my house crying.” He takes the plate and sets it on the coffee table. “Sit down and tell me what’s wrong. ”
I sink down onto the couch. It’s comfortable as well as aesthetically pleasing. But everything about this place screams warm family home. “I wasn’t crying when I got here.”
Max’s hand moves up to his head, yanking on a curl. “Why did you start crying?”
Because I’m still hormonal, and it makes me cry over stupid stuff. “The picture of you and Hope’s mom is beautiful and bittersweet. She was so young and so happy to be pregnant.”
“Ivy wanted to have Hope more than anything in the world, even her own life.”
I reach out and place a hand on his arm.
“Do you know there are days I’m still mad at her for choosing Hope over herself? Which is the stupidest thing because Hope is my life. I’d die for her without a thought. It’s not logical.”
“Grief isn’t logical. Nor is pain. You’re entitled to feel hurt, angry, happy, sad. They don’t mean you love her or your daughter any less.” I give him a moment to process. “Now I’ve gotten you all emotional. Sorry about that. I meant to bring you a bribe and ask you a question.”
His head pops up. “What kind of question?”
“I got myself in a bit of a pickle, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
“And you came to me for help?” His eyes widen.
Don’t tell him that he’s your only friend and you have no one else to ask but your mother. That would sound particularly pathetic. “You seem to give good advice. And my question really needs a man’s thoughts.”
“Ask away.” He leans back against the throw pillows.
“Have a cookie first.” I grab the plate off the coffee table and hold it out to him again.
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
He takes one off and smells it. “Is the whole thing soaked in bourbon?”
“No…” I look down at the plate. “But I did soak the nuts for a very long time. ”
“Were you hoping to get me drunk?”
“Kind of.”
He laughs. “This must be really bad.”
“Kind of. Maybe you should take two.”
Max takes it from my hands and sets it down again. “Talk to me. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“Please eat one first.”
“You don’t need to be afraid.” But he takes a bite of the cookie, and his eyes roll back in his head.
Excellent. Hopefully now he’ll be too distracted to actually remember what I’m saying.
When he finally opens his eyes, Max asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to marry me?”
A small smile spreads across my face. “Positive.”
“Too bad. I’d give you a huge ring for these alone.” He takes another bite. “Perfection. They’re pure perfection. I wonder if I’ll be able to hide them from everyone else or if Hope has blabbed to the world.”
“Is that really a question?”
He laughs. “So, what’s your question?”
“It’s more of a problem I got myself into, and I don’t know how to fix it. Men don’t like to be cornered, do they?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Vex is going to be so irritated with me.
“Before you start getting all worried. Tell me what you did.”
“So a couple of days ago, I wasn’t feeling well, and I called in sick to work.”
“Are you feeling better? I can go get my mom.”
NO! “Thanks, but I’m fine now.” Well, mostly. The cramps are still there, but not intolerable anymore. “I’d made plans with a friend for after work and messaged him to cancel.”
“That all seems reasonable.” He crosses his legs and sets his ankle on his knee after reaching for another cookie .
Good. The plan is working. But Vex doesn’t do reasonable. “He kept pushing to bring a doctor over, even though I didn’t need one.” Wait, I need to change the thread of this conversation, or Max is going to ask what was wrong with me. “He finally decided to come over and—” Bring me the best period snacks ever isn’t the way to go. “—check on me. Which was incredibly sweet and thoughtful.”
“That does sound thoughtful.” Max has a strange smile on his face.
It must be the bourbon. “He decided to stay and watch a few movies with me.” The fact that we were on my bed isn’t necessary for Max to know, but the best part was cuddling with Vex and falling asleep in his arms.
“What did you watch?”
I don’t know if that is an important detail. “Pride and Prejudice and then some action movies. There were a lot of things blowing up.”
Max’s smile gets even wider. “Not your normal movie type to watch.”
“Not at all.” But it was surprisingly enjoyable with Vex. “Then it all got weird.”
“How so? Did he make unwanted advances?”
Vex? “No. He wouldn’t even kiss me.” I can’t believe I just said that out loud. A blush burns its way up my face. “Not that I wanted him to kiss me… or he even thought about it. We’re just friends.” I think. “I mean, he sort of asked me out, but I don’t think it was a real date. Just a friends’ thing, you know.”
“I know exactly what you mean. You two are just ‘friends’ and he didn’t kiss you. Noted.” That grin of his gets odder and odder. “What was the weird part?”
“My boss showed up at my door and my friend answered.” Vex so wasn’t happy about that.
“Your boss? Why would your boss visit?”
“To bring me a bowl of chicken noodle soup.”
“That does sound odd. Are you very close to your boss?”
Oh. “Um, no. But that wasn’t the odd part.”
“It sounds odd to me. Unless you’re related or dating, bosses don’t usually bring you soup. I’ve never brought any soup to my employees. ”
He wouldn’t have time to breathe if he brought soup to his thousands of employees. “It’s a small group of us.”
“Still seems odd.”
“Not odd. Adonis is just a thoughtful and caring boss.”
Max raises an eyebrow and pops what’s left of the cookie in his mouth.
“Really, he is. He brings soup to everyone. According to Mindy, it’s the best soup ever.” Why does it feel like I’m always putting my foot in my mouth? “Though I can’t confirm that because Ve—my friend slammed the door in my boss’ face. Wasn’t that odd?”
“Not since your ‘friend’ is a guy.”
“Huh? What does being a guy have to do with it?”
Max leans forward. “You don’t date much, do you?”
Ever is more like it. I shrug. “Not really.”
“A guy doesn’t watch Pride and Prejudice with a woman unless he wants to be more than a friend.”
“Really?” I knew that… sort of… I think. “But why would he slam the door on my boss? If Adonis wasn’t a reasonable guy, I might have lost my job.”
“That was probably his goal. No guy likes another man bringing his woman soup.”
But he didn’t bring me soup because I’m a woman. “But that doesn’t make sense.”
“You need to learn this now. We don’t always make sense. And when we get jealous, we’re barely even rational. We blow up the world first. Then ask questions later… Maybe.”
“But Ve—my friend is a very reasonable and calm man.”
“Doesn’t matter one bit. When I thought someone was hitting my wife, all I could think about was murder. Violent and bloody murder. I was going to rip him limb from limb and that’s an edited version of what was going on in my mind. Reason didn’t exist.”
Who can be reasonable when someone they love is in danger? “Did you find the man? ”
His smile turns down. “No. We found out the bruises were from cancer. I would have given anything for it to be a man hurting her. That I could have fixed.”
I reach out and touch his arm again. “Being big and strong doesn’t mean you can fix every problem for the people you love.”
“It should.” He shakes his head like he’s clearing his mind. “But my point is, jealous men aren’t rational. Don’t try to make sense of his actions.”
Jealous? Could Vex like me enough to be jealous? “That would make what I did even worse.”
“What could you have possibly done?”
“Made plans for him to go to dinner with Adonis.”
Max’s jaw drops open.
“There was a good reason.”
“It better be a spectacular reason. Your friend is going to lose his mind.”
I wouldn’t call it spectacular. This is so not good. “Well. Kinda. Like I said, my boss is a really nice guy. Yesterday, he called me to his office to talk about my friend.”
There’s that eyebrow raise again.
“Adonis was concerned about me.”
“I bet,” Max whispers.
“Really. He was. We see a lot of women in abusive relationships…and Adonis was concerned that my friend might get abusive towards me. Which I assured him wasn’t possible. My friend is a very gentle man.”
Max snorts.
“To me he is. He would never hurt me.”
There’s that stinking eyebrow raise again.
“He wouldn’t. I need my boss to understand that my friend won’t hurt me.”
“What did you do?” Max asks.
“I… um… suggested that my friend join us at an after work dinner with my boss and some fellow employees.” Please tell me I’m—
Max bursts out laughing .
“This isn’t funny.”
“But it is. There’s going to be a bloodbath.”
Max is joking.
Max has got to be joking. “Um… you mean metaphorically, right?”
“Nope. At minimum, your ‘friend’ is going to punch your boss sometime during dinner. At worst, he’s going to need to find somewhere to bury the body.”
I knew this was stupid.
Really, really, really stupid. “I should cancel.” That won’t go well. Adonis will think Vex is afraid of facing him.
“Nope. But you need to tell me where and when so I can watch.”
“Has anyone told you that you’re twisted? And that isn’t helping me at all.” What am I going to do to avoid bloodshed? Maybe Max is being dramatic. Vex seems so calm. He isn’t going to punch someone at a restaurant.
“On occasion.” Max reaches for another cookie. “So I can expect that invitation.”
“Absolutely not.” There’s no way I want him sitting at a table laughing like a fool at the insanity of my life. “Should I cancel? I should, right? Who cares what my boss thinks? He isn’t going to fire me. That’s all that matters, right?”
“Take a breath. Or better yet, have a cookie.” Max nudges the plate towards me.
“I don’t drink.”
“This isn’t drinking.”
But it is. It really is. “Those are all for you. Though I don’t know if your advice was worth the effort.”
“Hey now, don’t be like that. You want real serious advice?”
I nod.
“Bring your friend to the dinner and see how he reacts. Then judge for yourself if he’s a man you want in your life. Because it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. If you respect and trust him, that’s all that matters.”
“You aren’t afraid he might be an abuser like Adonis. ”
“Nope. Because if he ever lays a finger on you, I’ll kill him. And before you get all huffy, I’d do that for any woman.”
Huffy. Okay, maybe I’d get a little huffy. Max and I agreed to be friends only. It’s nice that he respects that.