Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Kylie
Her sister Wendy watched with the same expression of wide-eyed awe she had when she was little as Kylie combed out her long blonde ringlets, the wet hair warm against her still-chilled skin. The gas stove was keeping her feet and shins warm but the rest of her was still desperately cold.
“I can’t believe you did that.”
“I know, right? Who throws their keys and phone in a stupid donation bin?”
“Not that! I mean that you let him get away!”
“Huh?”
“Kylie! You’ve talked about Luke Luview for years! He’s ‘the one who got away,’” she added, using finger quotes.
“Oh, stop.”
“Pfft. Please. I’m not the one who needs to stop. You wouldn’t shut up about him for two years after we moved.”
“You were little. How would you know that?”
“Because I lived with you. I might have been seven when we moved but my ears still worked just fine. Remember how Mom banned you from speaking his name in the car?”
“I–”
“And now he rescued you! That’s so romantic.”
“I was in the equivalent of a garbage bin, Wendy. It was anything but romantic.”
“You have to thank him.”
“I already did!”
“You know what I mean.” Wendy waggled her eyebrows.
“Wen! No! Not like that.”
“I thought you said he was cute.”
“He was! Is! But...”
“But what?”
“First of all, I'm not asking a cop out on a date after he rescued me from the most humiliating experience of my life.”
“That was not the most humiliating experience of your life.”
“Of course it was!”
“No. Choosing Perry definitely ranks higher.”
“Hey!”
“I never liked him. And he proved me right.”
“I know. And he sure did. This is all Perry's fault.”
“Yep.”
“And second of all, Luke’s married. To Amber McFarland.”
“Who?”
“You were too young to remember her.”
“I don’t remember life in Luview the way you do.”
“I wish you did. It was so wonderful.”
Wendy just shrugged.
“Okay. So the hot cop is married. You still have to go see Mr. Out-of-the-Box and thank him. Personally. Bring your pile-on brownies. Cops love baked goods.”
“That's a stereotype.”
“Doesn't mean it's not true.”
“He has a six-year-old daughter. Sweet little spunky kid.”
“Then you need to give her the full fairy treatment.”
“Ooooo.”
“Muffins and everything!”
“I haven’t made sparkle muffins in forever.”
“I know. Not since Perry left you.”
All the tension that had finally left Kylie’s body came roaring back, her efforts to relax completely useless. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“Oh, Ky, I didn’t mean to do that to you! I just meant some stress baking might be good for you.”
“I stress baked plenty after Perry dumped me.”
Wendy patted her belly. “I know.”
Kylie lifted her gaze from her hands to Wendy, then back. “I could make it a two-fer. A send-off basket for you, and a thank you basket for Luke and Harriet.”
And Amber, she thought.
“You’re giving me a full fairy-treatment basket? SQUEEEE!” Wendy screamed. “I would have moved out sooner if I knew I’d get that!”
Unexpected tears rushed to Kylie’s eyes.
As of Saturday at six a.m., Kylie really would be alone.
One hundred percent.
No boyfriend.
No sister.
No job.
No one.
For years, since her dad cheated on her mother and, in a fit of shame, her mom packed everything up in a single day and moved them to Indiana, Wendy and Kylie had been told over and over and over that you couldn’t trust anyone, and especially not love.
“Make sure you always have a career,” was their mother’s mantra. She’d been able to find clerical work as they settled into their grandparents’ house, and their dad was forced to pay child support and some limited alimony, but it was clear something broke inside her mother.
Something that never quite healed.
Kylie knew all too well from observing it, from being a victim of it, that when you relied on other people, relaxed, and gave in, they could betray you.
Independence was crucial.
And she’d made a huge mistake in over-relying on Perry’s world when she moved here. Having her own job hadn’t mattered, had it? He’d made a single phone call and poof! It disappeared.
It disappeared because his parents decided she was just a number. Something for human resources to handle. A tiny problem someone else could fix.
And now her mom was right. She was alone. No boyfriend. No job.
And soon, no Wendy.
Wendy stood up, oblivious to Kylie’s emotional turmoil, and rummaged through the somewhat bare cupboards. Wendy had been eating down her food, but the baking supplies were still in full force.
“Plenty of edible glitter. Natural food dyes. Powdered sugar. You’re good, Ky. You can do it, make this guy fall in love with you via fairy muffins.”
“Stop! He’s married.”
“If we'd stayed here when we were kids, bet he would have married you.”
“And if wishes were horses, I’d have a stable full. How about a counter full of fairy muffins instead?”
“Mmm. Now you’re talking.” Wendy wandered down the short hall to the small den where she’d been living these last few months. Fortunately, Perry had agreed to send his share of the rent through the end of the lease, so that was covered.
Which was great and all–he might have been “kind” to do that–but he clearly was also the reason she got fired from his parents’ chain of resorts, so what Perry giveth, Perry taketh away.
Fairy muffins were Kylie’s silly invention, something she’d thrown together her freshman year of college while working at a summer camp in Indiana.
Edible glitter had just become a thing, and between brightly colored frosting, the glitter, and a few secret ingredients that made her muffins sing, including wings made of spun sugar and little marzipan fairy figurines, her creations had become legend.
“Do we have marzipan?” she muttered to herself, combing through the increasingly empty cabinets. She was moving out in three months, the lease she’d signed with Perry last year coming to the end of its twelve-month term soon.
So much had changed in under a year.
Scratch that.
So much had changed in the last four hours.
Unlike Wendy, who retrieved ingredients as she went along, Kylie liked to line up all her ducks in a neat little ingredient row before getting started.
Flour. Baking powder. Sugar. Butter. Salt. Vanilla. As she assembled everything on the counter, the recipe she created years ago thoroughly memorized, she let herself think about Luke’s embrace, his strong grip telling her, wordlessly, that he would keep her safe.
That he had saved her.
Fifteen years, half a continent, and what seemed like a lifetime had passed since she’d seen him last. Yet there he was, her knight in shining armor, just when she needed him most.
The opposite of Perry.
“Snake,” she hissed as she creamed butter and sugar together, imagining she was whipping his head to pudding.
The rhythm and flow of baking took her out of her thoughts, making the world nothing but grains, fats, sugars, and… glitter.
By the time she popped the two muffin tins in the oven, Wendy was back, yawning, holding up two sundresses.
“Which one is more likely to help me land a hot, rich French guy who will propose within a week and whisk me off to his chateau in Monaco, where I’ll live like a queen?”
Kylie pointed to a yellow dress with roses all over it.
“And the one that gets me laid more?”
“Oh, the red spaghetti strap one. Definitely.”
Unable to decide, Wendy finally said, “I’ll squeeze them both in.”
“You have no room in that cargo container you call a suitcase.”
“I can leave my deodorant here.”
“Just don’t leave your birth control!”
“If I did, it’s not like you’d use it.”
“Hey!”
“Hey right back, Ky. You’re not dating,” she said reproachfully.
Leave it to a twenty-two-year-old sister to find five months of celibacy a bigger sin than edible glitter.
“I told you, he’s married!”
“Who? Oh, Luke?” A sly grin made Wendy look older. “You are thinking about him, aren’t you? Knew it.”
“Of course I am.”
“You’re no fun–can’t tease you when you admit stuff.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“What did he smell like?”
“Smell?”
“You said you hugged him.”
“He smelled like married.”
Married to her old friend Amber.
A rush of excitement shot through her, warmth following as she realized she could see Amber again. Yes, some piece of her was still attracted to Luke, but Kylie had to tamp it down.
Hard.
Because he was married, for goodness sake.
That didn’t mean she couldn’t reach out and reconnect with her old best friend, though. She and Amber had been so close when they were young, and surely Luke would tell her all about finding her in the metal bin.
If nothing else, little Harriet would natter on about Kylie the Trash Witch.
“Ha ha. I’m not suggesting you make him break vows. Just curious.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t touched a guy in five months.”
“You keep mentioning that,” Kylie said through gritted teeth. “And besides, I didn’t smell much other than the musty, rotten odor of the inside of that donation bin and humanity’s careless depravity.”
Wendy’s giggles got the better of her. “I still can’t believe you climbed in like that.”
“What was I supposed to do? You weren’t picking up my telepathic cry for help.”
“Sorry. My new earbuds blocked the signal.”
They smirked at each other.
“I’m going to miss you,” Kylie blurted out. “You were always such a pain-in-the-butt little sister, but having you live here these last few months really helped me.”
Tears filled Wendy’s eyes. “Mom told me I was crazy to come out here. Said you were silly, too, moving back to Maine.”
“Mom’s idea of how the world should work doesn’t exactly align with mine,” Kylie said tactfully.
“Hah! How do you think she feels about me going to France?”
“I know how she feels. Our monthly phone calls are nothing but ‘Wendy’s too young’ and ‘You need to talk some sense into her’ and ‘What’s that backwater town like now?’”
“She hates Maine because it reminds her of her marriage falling apart.”
“That was Dad’s fault,” Kylie said tightly. They weren’t talking about it openly, but there it was. The real reason Mom gave them twenty-four hours’ notice that they were moving when they were eight and fifteen: Dad had cheated on her during a business trip to Chicago.
And had said something at the local watering hole while he was drunk. Once you said a word at Bilbee’s Tavern, there was no taking it back.
She was humiliated. Small-town gossip is like lighter fluid on a bonfire when it comes to affairs.
And when you live in a place where love itself is a product, you’re damaged goods when your own love breaks in two.
So they moved to Indiana to live with Grandma and Grandpa until she could “get on her feet.” Three years later, just as Kylie was leaving for college, Mom found her feet.
Six feet, in fact, when she married their stepfather, Tom.
Until Perry did almost the exact same thing to Kylie on his Thailand adventure, she had hated her mother for the move. And until five months ago, that resentment had been at the center of her relationship with her mother.
Now, she knew.
Knew that humiliation was like an outside layer of skin forced on you.
“I know it was Dad’s fault,” Wendy said.
“I don’t remember it all like you do, Ky, but I get it.
He’s, well… he’s Dad.” Their father lived in Belize now, with the woman he cheated on their mother with.
Kylie couldn’t quite bring herself to refer to Pauline as her stepmother, but stepmonster worked just fine.
Their dad had a condo in South Carolina and a place in Belize, and considered himself retired at the age of fifty-three.
Pauline came from money, some sort of old shipping fortune.
“I know. Dad is Dad and that’s life.”
“You going to Myrtle Beach for Christmas?”
“Without you there? Heck no.”
Wendy snorted. “I hope to be in Germany for the Christmas markets. Or Paris on New Year’s Eve, watching it light up.”
“You realize being an au pair is work, right? Forty to fifty hours a week of watching actual children. It’s not just a way to see Europe.”
“Duh.”
Kylie grabbed the butter, powdered sugar, edible glitter, vanilla, and some cream and got to work on the frosting, the mixer soon chugging along, doing its job.
“France has everything you could ever want,” Kylie said wistfully.
“No.”
Surprise made her look up to find Wendy’s eyes filled with tears again.
“France doesn’t have your fairy muffins.”
Another hug, more crying, and soon the room smelled like golden sweetness.
But tasted like bittersweet goodbyes.