Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Sometimes love is the antidote,
And sometimes it’s the poison.
It was the best and worst Christmas of my life.
We were in our sophomore year of high school.
Jamie and I were still best friends. Kayla and Lucas were still obsessive overachievers who profusely denied their feelings for each other, and all of us still spent a codependent amount of time together.
On the surface, everything was exactly as it had always been, but beneath all the late-night study dates and movie marathons lay a silent tear, a muscle strained past its limits, a constant ache reminding me that something just wasn’t quite right.
Since that first day of freshman year, Jamie earned the title of ‘brooding burnout.’ Everything had changed.
He spent half the day high and the other half getting wasted with the Donahue brothers.
He still always made sure to stay somewhat coherent when he was with us, but you can’t live in two worlds without crumbling.
No matter how many times I tried saving Jamie, every day would start and end the same, with him breaking and my heart shattering.
Freshman year was tough, but nothing could have prepared me for sophomore year.
Jamie skipped all his classes and vanished without a trace during the first week.
When he returned, I was livid and yelled so hard that I scratched my vocal cords, leaving me sounding like an elderly smoker for a week.
I wasn't angry that he left; I was hurt that he didn't take me with him.
Aiden and Dallas needed his help with a delivery to New Hampshire.
Jamie may have hung with the Donahues, but he wasn't one of them until that night, and I didn’t know if Jamie, my Jamie, would ever return.
That was, until Christmas Eve.
It was 5:00 p.m., and I had undercooked, overcooked, and lit three batches of Christmas cookies on fire in under thirty minutes.
All the while, Lucas and Kayla meticulously prepared gluttonous amounts of food.
Lucas had spent over a week preparing and prepping after convincing Mom to let him take over cooking that year.
He mumbled something about responsibilities and wanted to help out more, but I knew that was a pretty little lie wrapped in a tongue-tied bow.
The truth was that Lucas was a perfectionist, and he couldn’t stand the thought of another year with Mom’s dry-ass turkey and burnt stuffing.
“Why are there chunks of carrots in this batch?” Lucas questioned as he inspected the graveyard of cookie corpses to my right.
“Because you cut carrots for your satanic stuffing on the same counter I rolled my dough out on!” I barked back.
He cocked his head at me. “How is it my fault you didn’t wipe the counter? And my stuffing is heavenly, thank you very much.”
Kayla stirred an excessive amount of brown gravy in a lightly tarnished pot. “I second that. You’re stuffing is a religious experience.”
“Dude!” I threw my flour-covered hands to my hips. “Don’t inflate his already enormous ego!”
Kayla tossed her palms in the air in defense. “Sorry, sorry.”
I locked my eyes back on Lucas. “The carrots for your stuffing poisoned my only batch of cookies that didn’t burn or turn into mush, so yes, it will forever be satanic stuffing in my mind, and I will hold a grudge against that mushy bread until I am six feet under.”
Lucas moved to pick up a knife so big it could fillet a fish and an arm. “Issues. You have issues!” He waved the knife at me with each syllable.
Down the hall came shuffling footsteps.
“Hey,” Jamie said, leaning against the arch that bridged the hallway and kitchen.
He looked good—really good. And not in an “OMG, he’s so dreamy” kind of way, but like a functioning human being.
His hair was actually washed and combed, his clothes matched—from the oversized leather jacket to his favorite worn-in boots—and his eyes were open and bright, like he’d just woken up from a Disney sleeping spell.
I dashed from the counter and lunged at him, throwing my arms around him and squeezing until he let out a strained laugh.
God, he smells good. Over the last two months, he had started shaving, claiming it was needed despite having exactly two hairs that occasionally poked through his tanned skin.
But the best part about Jamie’s need to be a man was the aftershave.
Julian got it for him after Jamie’s first attempt at shaving left him with a face full of little dots of dried blood.
It smelled better than freshly brewed coffee on a fall day.
“What’s all this affection for?” My hair muffled Jamie’s chuckle as I squished the air out of his lungs.
“You look good,” I whispered into the collar of his black button-down shirt. “I miss this.”
He lightly pulled away, his hands traveling down my sides and landing on my hips. “Oh, come on, with these cheekbones, we both know I look good daily.” His smile was cocky, but his cheeks were flushed red.
“You know what I mean,” I said back. “You look … I don’t know … sober?” He lowered his head and bit his lip as if I had embarrassed him. I placed my finger under his chin and tilted his gaze back to mine. “I just like seeing you like this. That’s all.”
Jamie pulled me closer, oblivious to Lucas and Kayla's eavesdropping.
“I figured your parents wouldn’t appreciate me slurring my words through dinner.
” His dark eyes locked with mine as the corners of his lips morphed into a cheesy smile that sent butterflies from my chest to my toes.
“And I know that Christmas Eve is your favorite day of the year.” He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear.
“I guess I just didn’t want to miss any part of it.
” His eyes moved to my cheek and then my chin before stopping on my neck.
“Why do you look like you lost a fight with a baker?”
I had completely forgotten that I was covered in flour and egg. “Lucas is forcing me to bake the cookies this year.”
Jamie grimaced at Lucas as he retracted his hands from my waist and put them in his pockets. “Lucas, I thought you said you wanted this dinner to be perfect?”
I gasped. “Hey!”
Lucas removed the turkey from the oven and sucked up a substantial amount of dark liquid from the roasting pan into a syringe before inserting it into the turkey’s thigh.
“I am trying to cook Christmas Eve dinner for six notoriously picky eaters. The potatoes are not boiling, the stuffing isn’t crisping, the sweet potatoes that Kayla insisted on are not sweet enough, apparently, and Dad's loaded French Fries are not cheesy enough, according to him. I am making four different kinds of potatoes for you tyrants!” He sucked up another syringe of over-salted turkey water and plunged it into the bird’s other leg.
“All I asked was for Alex to take over the cookies so that I could concentrate on the main course while Kayla worked on the sides, but no, that was apparently too much responsibility, and thus, now I’m left with babysitting a cookie killer!
” The volume of his voice grew with each word as the tone heightened to a pitch I swear only dogs could hear.
“Okay, okay, dude, I hear you. I’ll help Alex with the cookies. But you need to breathe before that vein on your forehead explodes.”
Jamie followed me to my slaughter table and began pouring new flour into a giant blue bowl. “You do realize that cookies are only like four ingredients? How in the world did you manage to burn through three dozen?” His eyes glazed over the mounds of misshapen sugar.
I lightly pushed his shoulder. “Less judging, more working.”
“Yes, ma’am. Or should I call you Betty Crocker since you’re such an expert at this?” His cheeks were decorated with a slap-worthy grin.
“You think you’re so cute, don’t you?” I playfully rolled my eyes as I retrieved the eggs from the fridge.
“I think I’m adorable,” Jamie corrected.
Ignoring Jamie’s remarks, I lifted the egg to the rim of the blue bowl, feeling the cold shell against my fingertips.
I tapped the egg on the side and peered inward to watch as the yolk slid out of the shell and landed in the flour.
Jamie reached over and grabbed the tin measuring cup filled with white sugar, and with a quick flick of the wrist, he dumped it into our mixture.
The sweet aroma filled the air as he poured in milk and a dash of vanilla extract.
“Time for mixing.” I rolled up my sleeves.
Jamie moved his arm over the bowl to stop me. “Wait, you have to add baking powder.”
“Why?”
There was a loud gasp behind me that sounded like my overdramatic brother, “You weren’t adding baking powder to the cookies!?”
“Why would I need baking powder? What even is that?” This is just one of many examples as to why Lucas should never have put me in charge!
Lucas threw down the baster he was using to coat the potatoes in a thick layer of melted butter. “You are the reason I have migraines.”
I gave him a thumbs up covered in flour. “Love you too, bro.” It wouldn’t be Christmas Eve without it ending with Lucas wanting to kill me.
Jamie poured a tablespoon of baking powder into the mixture and plunged his hands into the unmixed dough, combining all the ingredients until it formed a single, giant ball of ooey, gooey cookie dough.
“Grab a baking sheet and butter the surface so the dough doesn’t stick.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”