Temptation

by Kris Bryant

  “We’ll see.”

  I tried not to roll my eyes because that usually meant no. “I’m going to fix Noah a fluffernutter, if that’s okay.”

  Single nod. We were back to that. I made Noah a half sandwich and threw grapes and pretzels on the plate.

  “Hit pause and eat up while I show your mom how to play this game.”

  Brook had to tap him on the arm before he looked up at me and obliged. “This is what I was afraid of.”

  “Trust me. He’d be this way even if he was watching a movie. This is the attention span of a six-year-old.” I wasn’t one hundred percent sure about that, but it sounded good.

  “So, how do you play it?” Brook held the controller limply and pointed it at me.

  I sat next to her and held the other one. “You just have to learn what all the buttons do.”

  “Mom, it’s really easy. Just move the controller to turn. The buttons on the very top make you jump,” Noah said, his mouth full of peanut butter and fluff. Or that’s what it sounded like.

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Brook and I said at the exact same time. We smiled at one another.

  “Okay, let’s give this a try,” she said.

  I started a new game and was shocked by how horrible Brook was at it. Even Noah groaned at her lack of dexterity and how she couldn’t seem to grasp the concept. After ten minutes, I took the controller from Brook and handed it back to Noah.

  “And yet you close multi-million-dollar deals weekly.”

  “My skills are elsewhere.” Her eyebrow hitched ever so slightly, and heat blossomed all over me. I looked away. We hadn’t talked about the kiss. Not that we’d had time, but I was obsessing.

  “Five more minutes, bud. Then we have to go.”

  “Aw, Mom. Really?”

  “Yes. We have a few things to do, and I’m sure Cassie could use some downtime.”

  I hoped my disappointment didn’t show. It was nice to have them over, especially since yesterday had been such an emotional day. I didn’t want to sound needy, so I played it cool.

  “Life gets back to normal tomorrow. I’ll see you in the morning. I think I’ll head out and do a little holiday shopping alone, since you’ve told me a million times how you don’t like it,” I said.

  “Are you going to buy me something for Christmas?” Noah asked.

  “Noah,” Brook said.

  “What?” He looked so cute. “I’m going to get her something.”

  “Cassie does enough for you. And she let you play her games. She doesn’t have to get you anything.”

  I waved it off like it was no big deal, but I was touched that he was so thoughtful. “I’m sure I’ll find a little something for you.”

  “Okay, finish your game. We have to go,” Brook said. She took his empty plate back to the sink.

  I followed her. “So, do you think you’ll get him a gaming system? I could get him a few games I think he’d like.”

  “You really don’t have to get him anything.”

  “I want to. We spend a lot of time together, and I’m more than happy to give you suggestions,” I said.

  “Let me give it some serious thought, and I’ll let you know what I decide.”

  I leaned a little closer. “It’s inevitable. Every child in America has a system.”

  “Including you,” she said.

  “Ouch.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Are you done?”

  “Child, don’t push me,” Nana said.

  As much as I loved to shop, the stores Nana wanted to go to and the stores I wanted to go to were completely different. She liked yarn and material, and I liked clothes. I dragged my feet while we walked down the rows and rows of yarn. How many types and thicknesses does anyone need?

  “Eight pairs of knitting needles? This is like a lifetime supply for the old folks’ home.” I held them up, a rainbow of colors and different sizes, and dramatically rolled my eyes.

  “Please keep whining. That just makes me walk a little bit slower,” she said.

  “Turnabout’s fair play. You know how I normally just buy clothes? This time I’m planning to try on every little thing in the store. And make you wait.”

  She scoffed at my threat, knowing it would drive me crazy, too. I followed her with the cart, scrolling through my phone, checking text messages, hoping I’d hear from Brook. I should have been home studying, but I had too much energy to stay caged up in my apartment. She’d kissed me last night. Kissed me.

  “What do you think of this?”

  “Nana, they’re virtually the same color. Blue. We’re in a sea of blue.”

  “No. This is a deep blue, and this other one is a royal blue.”

  I rolled my eyes at her and kept pushing the cart forward. I heard her scuffle behind me as she made her choice and tossed three rolls of yarn into the cart.

  “Are you working tomorrow?”

  “Of course. Do you need me to take you somewhere?”

  “So saving a child’s life is worth only one day off?” she asked. I could tell she disapproved.

  “We’re both fine. He’s going to school tomorrow, and so am I. Today was a perfectly acceptable day to play hooky.”

  “Well, I think you should get the week off. That water was freezing, and you’re probably working on catching a cold.” She mumbled something else, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

  “The pool was heated. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  “I’m glad you saw the little boy fall in. Brook’s very lucky to have you,” she said.

  I didn’t tell Nana everything. I left out the argument and the kiss. She didn’t need to know, and I didn’t need the third degree from her. “I’m happy I got to him in time.”

  “Look, honey, I know you don’t want to talk about this, but we need a plan for Christmas. You stood me up over Thanksgiving, and I really want the family together during the holidays.”

  I didn’t go straight to anger this time. My heart felt sad. Nana was right. This feud was futile. Secretly, I missed my parents—not because they were good, but because they were mine. “Let’s have Christmas dinner at your house. Neutral ground. I can agree to one meal for starters.”

  She stopped and cupped my face with her hands. “That makes me so happy. I promise it’ll be so much fun. Your mother will be on her best behavior. And stop rolling your eyes at me.”

  I broke free. “I can’t promise the same from me.”

  “You be you and things will be fine. Now let’s pay for this and get out of here before I spend all my money here.”

  “Admit it. You can’t wait to go clothes shopping with me.”

  I managed to dodge a swat from her right before I ran into a pole.

  “Karma. She’s a bitch and my best friend,” Nana said.

  Nana and I stayed out for five hours, then ended the evening with a nice Italian dinner. I ordered an extra set of breadsticks and sent the leftovers home with her.

  While we shopped, I found an antique pocket watch for my father, a bottle of perfume for my mother, and a very nice silk scarf that I told Nana was for Lacy, but was really for Brook. I thought she’d appreciate the colors. Nana was busy looking at other things and didn’t see how much I paid for it. I wasn’t even sure if I’d give it to her, given everything that had happened.

  I pulled up in her driveway and hopped out of the car to carry the bag of a zillion knitting needles and yarn to her door. She kissed my cheek. “Okay. Dinner will be on Christmas Day at five. Don’t be late. And don’t worry about bringing anything. I’m going to cook it all. Good luck on your finals. I know you’ll slay them.”

  “I’ll come over after I’m done with the semester, and we’ll decorate your living room.” I felt guilty that my only contribution this year was getting the Christmas tree down from the attic. Between nannying and studying, my free time was sparse. I still had to think about what I was going to get Lacy. There was a cool whiskey-of-the-month club I thought she might like, but th
at seemed overly adult. I signed up Nana to join the fruit-of-the-month club. Food and drink clubs were easy. Overpriced, but less for me to do.

  With Lacy on my mind, I decided to call her. We had to play catch-up for the last few weeks, and I knew she was off on Mondays. “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “I need you to come here and give me a foot massage. I’m dead. I can’t wait till the holidays are over. If I make it to the new year, it’ll be amazing.”

  “I just dropped off Nana. I can be there in fifteen. Need anything?”

  “Why was Nana with you? Didn’t you work today?”

  Lacy didn’t know about what happened. “Oh, there’s a story.”

  “Holy shit. Did you get fired?”

  “Uh, no. Thanks for thinking of the worst. We’ll talk about it face-to-face. I’ll see you in a bit.” I ended the call and wondered how much I should tell Lacy. By the time I pulled up to the condo, I’d decided to tell her everything except for the kiss. She would be totally judgy, and I didn’t need that. I knew such behavior wasn’t professional and that Brook and I had crossed a line, but I needed to know from Brook what it all meant. I didn’t want to share my crush with Lacy, have her scold me for something I already knew was wrong, and then end up purely professional with Brook. That was probably the most logical result, but I liked my fantasy. I knocked on the door and held up a six-pack so she could see it through the peephole.

  “Get in here right now,” she said. She grabbed the beer, tucked it under one arm, and hugged me with the other. “Tell me all the good things. And why did you spend the afternoon with Nana?”

  I shrugged off my coat and sat on the couch. “Where’s your roommate?”

  “Who knows? She’s never here. She has a boyfriend I hate, so they always stay at his place. Come on. Tell me what’s up.”

  “I got in this massive fight with Brook.”

  “Shut up. You really did get fired.” Her eyes were so big I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “No. We argued about, get this, me dating Noah’s teachers.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. You’re dating Noah’s teachers? Plural? How many gay teachers are there at his school?”

  I held up my hand to stop the barrage of questions. “I only know of one. His homeroom teacher, but his violin instructor is also a lesbian. Both are cute, but I’m not dating either of them.”

  She opened two bottles and handed me a beer. “So how did the conversation come about? Like I saw you staring at his teacher. Stop it?”

  “Well, I did meet his homeroom teacher for drinks that night at the Pearl when I barely saw you, but nothing happened. That was a get-together to talk about the fall festival. Brook said it wasn’t a good idea for Noah to see me with his teacher in case things didn’t go well. One breakup was hard enough on him.”

  “Hold up. She has no right to tell you who you can date.”

  I held my hands up in frustration. “Exactly my point. That’s what the whole stupid argument was about. I told her she had no right, but it didn’t matter because nothing would happen with his teacher. And then there was his violin teacher.”

  “She’s gay, too, right?”

  I nodded. “Anyway, Noah overheard us arguing and Brook sent him upstairs, but instead he went outside. I stormed off and saw him by the pool from my window. One minute he was there, and the next he was gone.”

  “She doesn’t have a cover on it?”

  I nodded. “She does, but the corner was loose. Noah said he was trying to fix it and fell in. He can swim, but he panicked because of the cover. Plus, he was wearing a heavy coat. He couldn’t get out. So I jumped in and pulled him out. I had to resuscitate him.”

  “Oh, my God! You saved him.” She squeezed my arms. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s perfectly fine. Like nothing happened. But it scared the shit out of me.”

  “Yet you didn’t panic. Come on, Cass. Your parents have to hear this story. And I’m pretty sure you’ll never get fired. I’m so proud of you. You saved somebody’s kid. That’s amazing. When did this happen?”

  “Last night, so we all got the day off today. Brook made breakfast and invited me down. Noah and I played video games until Noah’s other mother showed up yelling at everyone. Brook tried to call her last night to tell her what happened, but she didn’t answer her phone.” I helped myself to a bag of cheese curls from Lacy’s pantry. Even though Nana and I had just eaten, I needed something to nibble on. A lot had happened over the last twenty-four hours, and I had nervous energy to expend. My favorite activity was eating.

  “She sounds like a total bitch.”

  “Totally,” I said. I shoved more into my mouth before I continued. “It was so awful I had to leave. I took Noah upstairs, and we played games.”

  “All of this is so crazy,” Lacy said.

  “I know. Oh, and also I’m having Christmas with my parents.”

  “You’re fucking amazing.”

  I gave her a toothy smile full of cheese curls and orange teeth. “Don’t forget irresistible.”

  * * *

  The rest of the week proved to be just as normal as the other weeks. Brook never mentioned the kiss. If anything, she was even more standoffish than usual around me. I got the normal head-nods daily and a “good luck on your finals” Friday night. One of my finals was Saturday, and the rest were during the following week. I spent the weekend studying everything from the textbooks, my notes, and even reading journals from the library’s database to clarify things I wasn’t a hundred percent on. I was overprepared. Saturday’s test was easy, so I doubted everything and overthought each question. I barely finished on time.

  The rest of my finals were more straightforward. My last one was on Friday, but Noah’s school let out early, so Brook arranged for her mother to pick him up. Brook texted right before my test that I had the rest of the time off until the twenty-sixth at noon, but I felt deflated. I was hoping for a quick Christmas celebration with them. Brook had never said whether she was getting Noah a gaming system, so I ended up buying him a three-wheel scooter. Their driveway was huge, so he could learn to use it there before I took him out to the park.

  I called Nana before I headed to her place to help decorate. “What do we need?” The tree was done, but I wanted to hang lights and have fun things around. When Papa died five years ago, Nana stopped over-decorating. I couldn’t handle going from one extreme to the other so I always made time to help her set up the nativity scene and the Christmas village, hang a garland across the fireplace, and dig out the stockings. This was the first year I wasn’t excited to hang them. It was sad Papa wasn’t around, and I wasn’t on speaking terms with my parents.

  “Maybe more cotton for the village? I can’t seem to find it.”

  “No worries. Snow. Got it. What else?”

  “Those Italian cookies for Santa.” Nana said it so quickly that I laughed.

  “Okay. Cookies for…” I paused for effect. “Santa. What else? Do you need milk?”

  “I have everything else. Just get over here. Bring your pajamas in case you get snowed in,” she said. We were expecting four to six inches of snow. As much as I wanted to be at my own place, I knew Nana missed me, and it wasn’t fair that I didn’t spend a lot of time with her.

  “Will do. See you within the hour.”

  I hung up and shoved some clothes and toiletries into a backpack. I only planned to stay one night but packed for two, because I knew how convincing Nana could be. She could lay a guilt trip on me faster and better than anyone else in my life. I headed to the local Walgreens and bought three bags of artificial snow and three cans of spray snow. It was a bitch to clean up, but I liked to frost Nana’s windows. It made it seem more grandmotherly. I stopped at the grocery store for the cookies and texted Lacy to have a safe trip with her family.

  Nana opened the door and took the grocery bag from my outstretched hand. “How did your finals go?”

  “I’m pretty sure I aced them all. I’ll check later. I got an A-
minus in Toxicology 431, and that was the class I was worried the most about.”

  “Straight As this semester?”

  “I think so. It’ll be nice to share that fact with the parental units.”

  “Just so you know, they’re very excited that we’re all doing Christmas together.” She wasted no time in opening the cookie packages.

  “Hey. I thought those were for Santa.”

  “You’re looking at Santa, kiddo.”

  “What? All this time?”

  She pulled me into her arms for a hug. “I really do miss you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Uncomfortable wasn’t really the right word to describe Christmas. My parents were their typical stoic selves. My father avoided eye contact for the first ten minutes, and my mother sighed a lot and tried to make small talk. It was funny how suddenly they didn’t have power over me anymore. I poured a glass of wine and offered it to my mother. My father declined a glass. Still no eye contact.

  “Thank you, Cassandra. I trust you are doing well.” My mother was talking to me, but she was concentrating on the wine. It wasn’t what they were used to, but it was something I liked and cost less than twenty bucks.

  “I’m doing really well. I have a good job, my own car, and school is everything I’d hoped it would be.”

  I didn’t need to throw that zinger in about school, but it gave me a few moments of victorious pleasure. I hid my smile as I took a sip.

  “How’s babysitting?” Mom asked.

  I’d forgotten how callous she could be when she wanted. “Well, nannying is a little bit more complex than babysitting, but the Wellingtons are a wonderful family, and I really love the kid.”

  “Don’t you just pick him up from school and play with him until his mother gets home?”

  “Ruth.” My father finally spoke up.

  “What? It’s a legitimate question. I just thought ‘nanny’ was a formal way to say babysitter.” She shrugged and poured more wine into her glass.

  “I do more than that, but it works with my school schedule, and I get paid well. Now I can get the degree I’ve always wanted, pay off my loans, and have a decent car to drive.” I looked at Nana and smiled. “No offense.” I’d fixed the heater in her car, but the dripping oil was there to stay. I couldn’t afford a new transmission yet, but I carted her around on weekends whenever she asked.