Sweet Forty-Two

by Andrea Randall

  I did need. More.

  God it felt good. Amazing. His hands felt in my hair exactly how I wanted them to feel. His rough, tight hands over the back of my neck and up through my hair.

  No. I had to stop.

  Now.

  “Shit,” I whispered as I pulled away from his mouth. Hard and breathless.

  Regan’s lips remained parted, at the ready as his eyes opened.

  “Shit,” I said again, sliding off the counter and walking to the far side of it. “Sorry.”

  Regan looked around. Back and forth on the floor, to each window, the ceiling and the floor, and back to me. I bit my lip to take away from what the intensity of his gaze did to my insides. He looked fantastically deranged in his post-kiss glory. His hair a mess, half out of the elastic holding it away from his face.

  “Sorry? Sorry?” He was as breathless as I felt, though my own breathing was remarkably measured.

  My voice, though, shook from my error. Premeditated, maybe. But lots of premeditated things are errors. “I ... I’m sorry for ... I didn’t mean to just ... I got carried away.” My words spilled out like marbles on a tile floor.

  “Georgia...” The seductive Celtic caramel of his voice preceded him as he walked toward me in a hurry. His hands were on my face this time, and damn it if it didn’t look like he was going to kiss me.

  “What?” I said it inside of an exhale. A sigh and a prayer rolled into one.

  “What do you want?”

  You.

  “I ... I don’t ... what do you mean?”

  “I think you want to kiss me again.”

  I nodded. I’d completely lost any sense I had.

  He reached for my hands. His were clammy but strong. I let them hold mine.

  “But for some reason, you don’t want to kiss me again right now, right? Not yet?”

  It was like he was singing me a lullaby as he reached up and stroked my cheek with his thumb.

  I nodded again, undone were my defenses against him getting inside my head. He’d found an underground tunnel, the bastard. Probably through my tongue.

  “I want to kiss you again, too. I don’t know when, either. But you’re going to be the next girl I kiss. That ... that I do know.” He moved his thumb to my mouth, gliding the pad of it across my lips as if storing the address in his body’s GPS system.

  And, as if nothing happened at all, he turned and went back to the flours. To the chocolate chip cookies.

  And me? I was racing full speed away from the Red Queen. Screaming at myself to wake up.

  Regan

  She tasted exactly like I thought she would. Sugar. That’s not meant to be some cute sort of mental tie-in my brain made because we were standing in her bakery. Her lips were actually sweet. Dipped in nectar and pressing against mine.

  The look in her eyes before she kissed me did not lead me to believe that wrapping her arms around my neck was going to be her next move. Her nostrils flared and eyes widened like there was a giant spider crawling on my shoulder and she was about to brush it away. Instead ... the kiss.

  I hadn’t stopped thinking about what it might be like to kiss her since the day I almost had, several weeks ago. It was over so fast tonight that the only solution was to do it again. Not yet, though. It wouldn’t be fair to her or Rae if I went ahead kissing the hell out of Georgia the way I badly craved without first truly addressing the card from Rae. Making sure that what I was doing was kissing Georgia. Not Rae’s ghost.

  I finished in the bakery as quickly as possible, lying to Georgia that I’d received a 9-1-1 text from Ember and needed to get over there. The only 9-1-1 text was from me to Ember. Georgia didn’t question it, or seem weird about it, even though it was encroaching on five o’clock in the morning. She seemed just as desperate as I was to get into her corner and reassess what the hell it was that had just happened between us.

  We mumbled agreement to meet again the next night. I assumed she spent a lot of time with her mom during the day, though I knew talking about it was still really hard for her, so I didn’t push it. I had to record with The Six tomorrow, but wasn’t about to be a girl with Ember in front of everyone. I could do that just fine in private.

  “It’s been a while, Kane,” Ember mused as I let myself into her house. She was pulling a whistling kettle away from the stove. Two mugs were ready to go.

  “I just saw you today.” I hopped onto the barstool across from her.

  “Yesterday.” She yawned, which reminded me that for Ember it was a new day. For me, it was a continuation of the last few hours.

  She looked up, a smartass grin bringing lightness to her face. “But, I mean since a 9-1-1 text. Or call, for that matter. You didn’t even send me one when, you know, you got mail.” Her eyebrow twitched like a period at the end of her sentence.

  I sighed. “Sorry. I didn’t know if I wanted to tell Bo ... and I didn’t want you to have to keep secrets from him, then you all showed up—”

  “At Georgia’s.” She poured boiling water over loose tea leaves. “You’re a grownup, Regan, but you didn’t have to hide that. If you’re hanging out with Georgia...” She shrugged like she couldn’t commit to the unspoken second half of her sentence.

  “It’s not like that. Well, it wasn’t. Wait ... back up.” I put up my hands then grabbed the steaming hot mug of tea. “How are you and Bo doing after ... the letter?”

  She smiled. The kind of smile she had while looking through little kid pictures of Rae before her funeral. A syrupy melancholy. “We’re fine. You’re adorable. How are you? I read the words, Regan. I remember you telling me you wished you’d said them to her.”

  She stood next to me and leaned onto the counter, our forearms touching and both of us looking at an imaginary spot on the counter. Ember had been excelling in her training in the art of talking about heavy things with guys. Eye contact is discouraged. Makes us feel naked. Which is only okay if naked is what we want to be at that moment.

  “It was like ringing the doorbell to hell, reading that card, Em. I couldn’t fucking believe I was staring at the words I’d forced myself not to say to her. I...” I put my chin in my hand and took a deep breath.

  Ember took a hand and ran it up and down my back, not saying anything for a moment. When she spoke, finally, her tone was thoughtful. “I’d ask if we could talk about Georgia later, but I feel like this is all kind of muddled together...”

  “Hell fucking yes, it’s muddled!” I stood with the growl of a tantrum-throwing teenager. Taking my tea to prove to myself I was well past those days.

  “Sorry...” Ember shrugged, facing me without leaving the counter.

  I paced the short length of the living room. “I was kind of liking Georgia, you know? She’s fun to be around and she’s also aggravatingly complicated, but she’s so ... raw. So real you couldn’t fictionalize her if you tried. She even tries, but it’s not ... she can’t...” I stopped to take a breath, feeling the sticky sweet wisp of her kiss on my lips.

  “Was?” Ember turned to face me, leaning against the counter.

  “Huh?”

  “You said you were kind of liking Georgia. What is it now?”

  I pursed my lips, looking at Ember and realizing I had to say it out loud. To someone. Before I exploded.

  “I really, really like her. I trust her. She’s trusted me with some really heavy shit, too. And then she said she wanted to open her bakery, and I said I’d help her, and then we kissed.”

  Ember’s eyes widened, a peacock-green billboard screaming, What the fuck did you just say? as her mouth formed a perfect “O.”

  “Say something.” I huffed and sat down, setting my mug on the dark wood of the coffee table.

  “Well ... I’m trying to read your reaction to see if I should formulate my supportive response or my rescue response. How was it? The kiss, I mean.”

  “How was it?” I curled my lip, having not signed on for this level of girl talk.

  “I mean, pervert, how did it feel? Em
otionally.”

  I shrugged noncommittally as I formed the exact opposite sentiment with my words. “Awesome. Seriously. It felt so good to have my lips on someone else’s ... to have someone’s hands in my hair and on my shoulders. Then she pulled away and it felt like a cold gust of Rae ripped across the back of my neck.”

  “Why’d she pull away?” Ember joined me on the couch.

  “I don’t know. She’s got walls built by walls designed by walls. She wants to do it again, though. So do I ... I think. I just ... if I hadn’t gotten that letter from Rae I might still be making out with Georgia in the bakery.”

  Ember laughed so loudly and suddenly that I jumped.

  “What?” I asked, incredulously.

  “Your honesty when you’re tired is priceless. Anyway ... did Rae’s letter change your feelings about Georgia?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did they change your feelings about Rae?”

  My eyes stung, but I shook my head, again.

  “What’d they change?” She put her hand on my knee like she could read my goddamn mind.

  “They changed,” I managed through an uneven voice, “how I feel about my healing. I thought I was done with that part. I want to pursue things with Georgia, but I don’t want to cheat her out of a real relationship if I can’t even give her a real person. But ... I feel like Rae’s letter reminded me that I haven’t come to terms with those things undone. You know? Like ... things I can do absolutely nothing about. I can’t tell her I love her and have her hear me and smile back and tell me she loves me, too...”

  Ember squeezed my knee. “You’re rambling. Slow down. First of all, you are a real person capable of a real relationship. Second of all, I don’t think any of us will ever be done healing from Rae’s death ... she’ll kind of flow through our lives like that gooey stuff in a lava lamp, filling in empty spaces, but never creating more emptiness. But I want those little holes, you know? For her to fill. And last of all, it definitely sounds like you need to find a way to tell Rae you love her.”

  “Loved ... right? Loved?”

  Ember shook her head. “No. You love her. I love her, Bo loves her, we all love her. She’s just not here.”

  I nodded, swallowing the jagged edges of she’s not here one by one.

  “So ... what will you do? Just for Rae, just between you and Rae, find your way to say goodbye to her that doesn’t involve a funeral, doesn’t involve hiding in Ireland for three months. Tell her you love her, Regan.” She leaned into my shoulder, her head tilting down and her hair falling down my arm.

  I wrapped my arm around her. “You’re smart, you know that?”

  “I had stuff I wasn’t able to say to her, too, you know...” Ember didn’t look at me, she kept looking forward.

  “Like what?”

  She sniffed, but made no move to wipe away the present tear. “Like that her brother and I finally got our heads out of our asses.” Ember chuckled a little at the tear-pinched end of her sentence.

  I squeezed her into me as her shoulders shook. “So what’d you do?”

  She sat up, finally wiping under her eyes. “Bo and I wrote her letters, then made a bonfire, and burned them, sending the spirit of the letter into the universe.”

  I laughed. It was completely inappropriate and poor timing, but I laughed. Then Ember smacked me.

  “Don’t be an asshole!” she shrieked playfully.

  “I’m sorry. I just ... was that your parents’ idea?”

  She laughed and pressed her forehead on my shoulder. “Yes!”

  I kissed the top of her forehead. “Did it work?”

  She nodded. “We felt a lot better after it.”

  I bit another smile away. “Is it okay with you if I ... don’t do that?”

  “I hate you,” she growled into my shoulder.

  “I know.”

  She sat up, cheeks rosy from laughter and tears. “Do something, though. I don’t care how looney it might seem to me or Bo or anyone else. Do something.”

  “First,” I yawned as I stood, “I’m gonna go home and go to bed.”

  Once I was at the door, Ember tugged on the back of my shirt.

  “Regan?”

  “Yeah?” I turned around to find her smiling softly, mostly with her eyes.

  “I like what Georgia’s done to your face.”

  I pulled my eyebrows together and Ember reached for my cheeks.

  “The smiles. The reddish color that rivals your hair. If she does that to you, then she’s okay by me. You don’t need my opinion, and you didn’t ask ... but I want you to know that I see the life in your face again. And I’ll kiss her for it someday.”

  I grabbed Ember into a tight hug. “I love you, Em.”

  “I love you, too. Now ... go tell Rae the same thing, okay?”

  “How?” I asked as I backed away.

  She shrugged. “You laughed at my idea,” she teased. “Seriously, though ... you’ll figure it out.”

  The truth was, I thought as I drove away, I knew exactly what I had to do.

  Regan

  So, over the next couple of weeks, I started. I started working on my final love letter to Rae. In between recording with The Six, which was only going to last another few weeks, and helping Georgia with the bakery, I worked on my goodbye.

  It wasn’t ready yet, and I hadn’t really thought through what I was actually going to do with it when I was done, but the working on it was enough for now.

  In the post-kiss atmosphere of Georgia’s still unnamed bakery, I was thankful for her gritty ability to compartmentalize her life. There were no awkward pauses in conversation or bizarre back and forth dances trying to pass by each other as we moved around the kitchen. We seemed to only be seeing each other in the bakery these days, and that was a lack of sleep well worth it.

  We were both exhausted from the hours we’d kept over the last two weeks since I started helping her, but according to Georgia, it was working. She’d had business cards made, with just her information on it, since the bakery had no name—a fact I mentioned to her whenever I could—and she would deliver her baked goods to local businesses and set up stands at various farmers’ markets, too. Her phone had been buzzing like crazy with people telling her the things they liked best, placing large orders for private parties, and asking, of course, when she’d be open for business.

  “I just need to get people in here on a regular basis, now.” She spoke in the middle of a train of thought I wasn’t riding. She caught on to my confusion. “Sorry ... I was thinking it’s one thing to have people know where you are, but you need to get people into the habit of coming to your place, to put it on the maps in their brains and make it part of their daily or weekly routine. Sure, they can place orders and pick them up, but I want people, like, here, too.”

  I gestured to the large windows that butted up against the booth. “At least you have the location working for you.”

  She shrugged and tilted her head side-to-side like she was half disagreeing. “The vista works, right? But ... this is a back street in a largely residential neighborhood. There’s a boutique on the north side of the street, but this part of the road looks like a long driveway. There’s not a ton of foot traffic ... almost none, really. And very little through traffic.”

  “Okay,” I sighed, putting my hands on my hips, “time to get some traffic, then.”

  She looked up, biting her lip. “How?”

  I wandered into the dining area and took a few laps around the space, willing an idea to come to me. I looked back at Georgia, who was watching me closely through the large cut-out in the wall. It was as open a kitchen as the space would allow without completely removing a weight-bearing wall. It was a fantastic space. Warm, open...

  “Classes!” I shouted with a loud clap of my hand.

  A clearly exhausted Georgia felt the volume all the way to her bones, it seemed. She jumped half a foot back. “What the fuck is wrong with you!”

  “Sorry,” I exagge
rated a whisper, “classes.”

  She flipped me off, and whispered back, “Explain.”

  “You could offer baking classes here. For one, people love to say they’re taking classes of something that sounds fancy. That’s just how people are. Throw the gluten-free angle into it and you’ve got something. People want to learn how to bake G-F stuff whether they need to, or not. And, if they do need to, you’ll be doing them a huge favor. You could charge per class or per session ... like ... I don’t know, you could either have a course, so people could learn to make cookies, cupcakes, breads, whatever all in a week, or you could have cookie week...”

  I trailed off as Georgia walked into the dining area to meet me toe-to-toe. My tattered six-year-old Converses against her ancient combat boots whose scuff marks were colored in with black permanent marker.

  “What? Too much?”

  “No,” she blinked like her lashes were the fluttering wings of that rocking horse fly, “it’s fucking brilliant!” A rare wide smile crinkled her eyes as she leaped from her spot on the floor and wrapped her legs around my waist.

  Instantly it reminded me of the day I’d met her and she’d greeted CJ that way. It seemed like forever ago, but I know that there was no way back then that I was thinking I’d be in his position someday. The recipient of Georgia’s full-body experience hug. I crossed my arms under the full curve of her hips and circled us around once before setting her down.

  “Jesus, Regan, seriously!” She squeezed me one more time before running into the kitchen and returning with a calendar and a notebook. “That’s brilliant. I had so many people this week saying, Oh I wish I could bake like this. I could teach them, and they might do it a few times to impress people or when they’re feeling down, but we know they’ll still buy from the bakery. People know how to cook but still order out, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  For the first time since I’d known her, Georgia’s Eastern Massachusetts screw-you accent slipped from her mouth.