Chapter 28 Night and Day
NIGHT AND DAY
MABEL
I could say chestnut with honey blonde streaks. But that won’t help.
I think back to the way he talked about the lavender frosting—like a pre-dawn sky. Then, to the mural, when I said the teal was the shade of a tropical lagoon.
My hair though? I’m not sure how to describe it, but I want to try. I twirl a strand of the brownish shade around my finger, considering. “It’s chestnut, like a rich, warm wood. It’s like…you drink coffee, right?”
His smile is clever—hopeful even. “You know I do.”
“It looks the way that first sip of coffee tastes. Strong. Dark.”
“Perfect,” he says, then gently moves my hand aside and runs his fingers along the light streaks in my hair. “And these? Are they sunlight coming through the window, bright and warm on your skin?”
My heart jumps, and I nod vigorously. “Yes.”
He dips his face into my hair, inhaling me. “Mmm.”
I shiver in a whole new way, feeling adored. Savored.
When Corbin lifts his face, he says, “So your hair is like nighttime and morning all at once?”
My chest warms. My heart pounds. This man is making me feel things I have no right to feel. “I suppose it is.”
The way he’s looking at me now, like he’s memorizing every detail, makes my breath catch. There’s something different in his eyes, something deeper. But riskier too.
He doesn’t say anything for a bit, just studies my face. “Your eyes are the same color as your hair.”
“They are.”
He looks down at my breasts. A bead of sweat slips between them. “And these are a perfect shade of pale.”
“You did say you could see white. Your girl is very, very pale.”
Then I blink. I just said “your girl.” Fine, I said it the way we often talk to friends. Still, it doesn’t go unnoticed.
His lips quirk up, saying he likes it. So do I, being his, but I should move on. I reach for his hair, a mess of brown waves. “Yours is lighter than mine. More like a latte.”
“Enough about me. Let’s talk about…” He stops talking and drags a finger down my chest to my right breast, tracing a circle around the nipple.
It pebbles under his touch. “Dusky rose? Soft brown? Pale pink?” But before I can answer, he drops his face to it, sucking on it, and drawing out a needy gasp from me.
He smiles against my skin, murmuring, “Yes. That color. Mmm. The color of mmm.”
I swat his hair. It’s playful, then it turns urgent as I drag my fingers through the strands, tugging him closer. As he sucks on my nipple, tugging it between his teeth, I’m trembling all over again.
He cups my breast like he’s weighing it as he sucks, and I drop my head back, basking in the sensation of his attention.
Soon, he lets go, then says wolfishly, “I could make you come again.”
My god, is he insatiable?
“Corbin…?” There’s a question implicit in the way I say his name. What are we doing?
He drags a hand down his face. “I know. We can’t keep doing this.”
It hurts to hear, but it’s a relief too, because someone needed to say it. Even though he’s now running a hand gently down my arm.
“We can’t,” I agree, also trying to hold firm. Ironic since I’m naked on a makeup table, having been fucked hard and good by my brother’s best friend, who’s also my business partner. “There’s so much we have to do. We just opened today.”
“I know.” He gets it, even as he steals one last touch. Then, he lets go. “We need to focus on the business.”
I scoot off the table, grab my clothes, and tug on my panties and bra. “This place deserves our full attention. So it can be the success we want it to be.”
“Sex is a distraction,” he says, hunting for his shirt and finding it on the floor behind us.
I grab my dress, pulling it on. “It will complicate everything. Remember when we painted the mural and you said you made a promise to yourself not to touch me again?”
“Yes,” he bites out.
“I made a promise too. To put romance aside for a while. To focus on myself and on this business. To give it the attention it deserves.”
He’s quiet for several seconds, as if he’s letting that register. “I get that. You don’t want to lose sight of the goal.”
That’s so him, putting it in hockey terms. “Yes. I’ve wanted this for too long, and I don’t want to get…distracted.”
He nods. Vigorously. “Building something lasting takes focus.”
I’m glad he sees it the same way I do. “And we can do that. Hell, we did it with this opening. We had a great day. We can keep having them.”
“This has to be a one-time thing. It was inevitable, but it’s done now. And we can go back to how we were before.” It’s like he’s trying to convince himself, but I get it. My heart hurts, but it’s truly for the best. “We need to…” Corbin snaps his fingers. “Code-switch.”
A laugh bursts from me. “What do you mean?”
“It’s when you switch from the way you talk at work to the way you talk with friends.”
I roll my eyes. “I know what code-switching is. Remember, I’m younger than you.”
“As if I could forget,” he says. “Anyway, it’s what my daughter says she does when she comes home from school. She code-switches. That’s what we need to do. We need to code-switch from whatever that was to reading the letter as business partners, as friends.”
I don’t think he’s wrong, even though part of me wants to ask him a million questions. You’ve really wanted me for seven years? How often did you think about me? And did you feel the same way I did that time we met right here in this firehouse? But the parallels are almost a little too much.
“Let me just clean up, and then we’ll get the letter.”
He grabs the tissue with the condom. “I’ll do the same.”
Nothing like tossing a used prophylactic into the trash to kill the mood.
After I pop into the restroom and freshen up, I smooth a hand over my dress, pick up my apron from the floor, and fold it. I set it on the makeup table—the scene of the crime of passion.
He folds his apron too. Puts it next to mine.
They’re symbols of our new resolve, somehow.
We stand there for a beat, dressed again, hair smoothed over, trying to pretend the last hour didn’t happen.
That he doesn’t think of me as his. That I didn’t ask for and get everything I wanted in bed and more.
So much more. My heart is still jittery from the way he talked to me, the things he told me, how he opened up. But it’s time to ignore all that.
With a moving-on nod, I head to the kitchen cupboard where we keep the letters and ask, “Ready for another cookie?”
“Ravenous.”
I grab the step stool, but before I can climb it, he sets a hand on my arm. “I can get it.”
“Show off.”
“Well, I’m presuming my ability to reach the top shelves is why you like me.”
“Who said I like you?”
He shoots me a salacious look. “The way you come.”
“Shut up. We said it was a one-time thing.”
“True. But, Mabel, I have to acknowledge that you come so fucking beautifully.” He turns around, reaches for the ceramic container, and leaves me with that dirty, delightful thought, which I know I’ll hold onto for a while.
Once he has the strawberry jar, he hands it to me, and we head to the front of the bakery.
I pull the blinds down. I’m not sure I want any Cozy Valley-ites who happen to be walking by to see us in our closed shop, reading a love letter.
They’re personal. And they’re special, so once I put the jar down, I say, “Hey, want to have a cup of tea? Or a glass of champagne as we read?”
“We have champagne here? Young lady, do you have a liquor license?”
I laugh. “Nope. I got it for you as a little opening day gift.”
“Really?” He sounds like he’s not used to someone giving him things.
“Does no one give you gifts?”
“Does my daughter sneaking stickers onto my water bottle count?”
“Of course that counts,” I say, then open the fridge up front that we use for drinks and grab a demi bottle of champagne.
“How did I miss that?”
“I hid it,” I say.
“Sneak.”
I grab some of the mismatched porcelain cups with delicately painted roses on them, pour two cups, and usher him over to a table by the window.
I lift one. “To Afternoon Delight.”
“To evening delights.” He clinks back, his words sending sparks down my spine.
I’m the evening delight, even though I can’t be one again. Shame. But I shove that wish aside and focus on our partnership and the bakery.
I drink some champagne, and it tastes like winning must feel. It does feel as if we won today. Our receipts seem to agree.
I look around, resetting to friendship once again, then I take out the stack of letters, touching the delicate corners, feeling the soft edges of the old pages.
He put the last one—the one we read in the flower and plant shop—back so they’re in their proper order. That’s so very him. Neat and organized.
I flash back to what Russ wrote to Harriet: Save that part just for me.
With that in mind, I unfold the letter the rest of the way and read.
Dear Russ,
You’re right. (You like hearing those words, don’t you?) Things at work are getting a little easier.
Not all the way. Not yet. But better. Thank you for encouraging me when I needed it, and I sure needed it.
Can you believe we saved a kitten from a tree today? It’s the proverbial firefighter cliché. But it really happens, and I’m pretty sure that little silver tabby was grateful.
But what’s not a cliché is this—when it was just us in the kitchen this evening making roast chicken and veggies for dinner, cooking together and talking about the kitten, and where we’d most want to travel, and what’s the one thing that can make the day better, I nearly forgot we were co-workers.
I feel like we’ve connected on another level. A deeper level. And that makes me happy each day as I come into work.
Your friend,
Harriet
My heart thumps, but it aches too. “I want to know what his response was. I want to know what makes his day better, and if it’s her,” I say, both sad and happy as I meet Corbin’s eyes and process this next chapter in a love story from the last century.