Firefly Nights

by Katie Winters

  “I know. I’m just trying to pretend to be a good guy,” Zach returned.

  “Well, don’t. I can see right through it,” Christine said. She wasn’t entirely sure if she was joking or not, but Zach laughed anyway.

  “See you tomorrow, Christine. And the next day—and the next.”

  “What a life to look forward to,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Good night.”

  Chapter Ten

  For the big fifteenth birthday celebration, Christine decided to prepare a multi-layered French cake with magazine-ready frosting decorations and lavender lemon icing. It was a variation on a recipe she had made frequently at Chez Frank, one that had made Chrissy Teigen’s jaw drop with pleasure when she had come in for a visit. It had been featured on countless food and dining magazine covers and for a very brief amount of time, it had been called “Christine’s Creation in the Upper West Side.” When Christine had first created this cake, she had been in the prime of her life, happier than ever.

  Now, of course, she was a bit like a lost ship at sea.

  Regardless, she wanted to share this delicacy with her family and, admittedly, show off a bit. So, the day before the party, she found herself at the Sunrise Cove Inn itself, in a little lace apron, hovering over the counter at the bistro. It was an hour after the lunch rush, and Zach Walters was in a surprisingly good mood, making jokes with the busboys and servers and asking Christine if she needed anything.

  “Just a little more space, Zach,” Christine said, laughing as he hovered a bit too close to her.

  “We did fantastic today, Christine,” Zach said, seemingly not hearing her. “I came up with this new recipe for gazpacho and one of the guests actually ran in here asking if she could have the directions... she lost her mind when I said no.” He chuckled to himself, then rushed to the side of the kitchen, grabbed himself one of the IPAs they kept in the little back fridge, and popped the top. Christine kept her eye on him and, moments later, he performed the same action for her.

  “I know better than to drink in front of Christine Sheridan without getting her one,” he said, clinking his bottle with hers.

  “Brooklyn Brewing Company,” Christine said, analyzing the bottle. “I used to date a brewer there. That was a crazy time of my life.”

  “Did he have a full beard, and was he burly with tattoo’s like all the other brewers in the world?” Zach asked jokingly.

  “I guess. They’re all like that, aren’t they?” Christine giggled as she poured flour into a mixing bowl.

  Zach eventually left the kitchen that afternoon, as he had the evening off. Christine fell into a kind of daydream as she baked the cake: sipping her IPA, chatting with the waiters and busboys, occasionally checking on the food they had made and surprising herself with how much she respected the menu.

  “I’ve worked here about two years,” one of the busboys, named Ronnie, told her. “And Zach is seriously the best. I’ve tried almost everything on the menu, and I would die for all of it.”

  Ronnie was a red-headed seventeen-year-old with, it seemed, a lot of laughter, a lot of banter, and a lot of eagerness also, to taste the batter of her French cake. She clucked her tongue each time and said, “No, no. I’m not that kind of baker. I’m a professional. Go taste your mom’s cookie dough, and leave mine out of it.”

  Ronnie laughed. “You’re just like Zach. So serious about the craft, or whatever.”

  When the layers baked, Christine decided to taste-test some of the pastries and baked breads the bistro had on-hand, both for sale and awaiting tomorrow’s early-morning sale to various tourists, which they did through a little side window out of the kitchen. She was surprised to note how much they lacked in flavor, that the texture was almost soggy when it should have been flaky. For such a gorgeous bistro, with beautiful colors on the walls and stunning sea-side light and inventive recipes, it seemed a shame that it had such lackluster pastries.

  But did she dare say this to Zach?

  After the layers were finished, she stored them and returned back home for the evening. When she arrived, she found Lola in yet another frantic conversation with Audrey. She sat in the porch swing, her long hair up in a ponytail that was a tad haphazard, as she clutched her phone to her ear. Christine grabbed a glass of wine and sat with Susan and their father in the living room.

  “How is she doing?” Christine asked.

  “Audrey and Lola seem like the same person,” Susan said with a heavy sigh. “Both of them are very, very intelligent and very, very stubborn women.”

  “Sounds like all the Sheridan girls,” Wes said with a chuckle.

  “What’s going to happen?” Christine asked, arching a brow.

  “Audrey is going to come here, I think. Next week,” Susan explained. “She’s going to finish out her internship and then fly out. This house is going to be crammed full.”

  “The more, the merrier!” Wes said.

  “Scott’s already talking about building onto the place,” Susan said. “As if he didn’t have enough on his plate. He’s really taken to work at the Inn, though. I swear that man has more patience than God himself. Today, dealing with some particularly annoying customers, he calmed everyone down so much that he eventually went to lunch with them. They swapped numbers and might become friends! I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Dad, you were always like that,” Christine said. “With people at the Inn.”

  “It was my life,” Wes affirmed. “But to be honest with you, now that I have more time to myself, I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would.”

  “Scott and Dad and I went for a walk through the woods this afternoon,” Susan said. “Dad, you showed us that particular kind of bird. What was it again?”

  “Oh, right. A Killdeer bird,” Wes said.

  The following afternoon, Susan manned the front desk at the Inn as Christine entered to tend to the cake. Christine wore a pair of black flats, a jean miniskirt, and a tank-top that highlighted her long arms and shoulders. Susan seemed to study Christine for a moment before saying, “You look dressed up today.”

  “Just for the party later,” Christine said. “I know it’s not a Manhattan high-rise apartment, but it is family. I want to look nice.”

  “I see,” Susan said with a smile.

  “By the way, I wanted to say it’s incredible that Dad remembers that kind of bird, and not, like, where he put the keys or what year it is,” Christine said. “I don’t know how the mind is ordered, but it’s a strange thing, isn’t it?”

  Susan nodded. “He can whip out memories of us when we were little girls like it’s nobody’s business, but yesterday, he called me Kerry again. I don’t know what to do with him. The doctor said his mind is going to steadily float away from us like this.”

  “Strange,” Christine said.

  Scott entered the lobby area, coming out of the office where their mother and father had once operated on connected desks, manning the everyday happenings of the Sunrise Cove Inn. Now, the torch had been passed.

  “Hey, Christine! How you been?” Scott asked. He stepped behind the front desk and stamped a kiss on Susan’s cheek, making her blush.

  They really couldn’t keep their hands off one another. It was like they were teenagers all over again.

  “Just have to go finish up the girls’ cake,” Christine said. “Not every day you turn fifteen, you know?”

  Back in the kitchen, Zach was nowhere to be found. The lunch rush had already stormed itself across the kitchen, and the busboy, Ronnie, panted in the corner, giving Christine a bright smile.

  “Zach just took a walk, but he’ll be back soon,” he said. “We had some YouTube star in here this afternoon. I served her. She reviews hotels and stuff like that.”

  “Wow,” Christine said, pretending to be impressed. “That’s crazy.”

  She mixed up the lavender-lemon frosting lovingly, enjoying how it felt to do this same action again and again: the perfect twirling of her wrist, the feeling of the ingredie
nts coming together. She had always felt it was something like the maestro in front of the orchestra forcing all the separate “instruments” together to create a beautiful end result.

  Ronnie watched as she piled the cake layers high, smearing frosting on each layer as she topped it off. The cake was to be nearly two feet tall, the kind of thing her Aunt Kerry and Uncle Trevor would obviously brag about, and the kind of thing the girls would always remember. It wasn’t like Christine could give them second cousins to play with, but she would give them some damn good cake that they would both remember for the rest of their lives.

  Slowly, delicately, she began to form little flowers across the cake: keeping such focus, that she stuck her tongue out and bit down on it. Ronnie came in and out of the kitchen, complaining that the rush continued. At six, they planned to shut down the terrace-area to hold the girls’ birthday party. Still, they would keep some seats in the bistro open for stragglers.

  Christine added the finishing touches to the cake and took a step back. It was absolutely glorious. Far better than anything she had crafted in Manhattan, something she almost wanted to snap a pic of to share with some of her online foody buddies. As she beamed at it, Zach entered the kitchen, whistling, wearing another pair of perfect jeans, his chest puffed out and his dark blonde hair swept back.

  “My God,” he said when he spotted the cake. “Don’t tell me you are the secret behind this, Christine Sheridan.”

  Christine laughed. “I am. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s absolutely extraordinary,” Zach beamed. His face fell as he wandered around it, analyzing it from all sides. “I’ve really never seen anything like this outside of Paris. Seriously—you could bake with the greats.”

  “That’s nothing on how it tastes,” Christine said. “It’s positively... orgasmic.”

  “What a word choice,” Zach said, his eyes flashing.

  Christine blushed profusely. She felt as though the ground beneath her was uneasy. Slowly, Zach reached for the base of the cake tray and lifted it. “I just want to see the detail,” he said. He stepped a bit to the side, tilting the cake, analyzing the little roses, the pivots within each petal. Christine was overwhelmed with pleasure at her work being regarded in this way.

  But suddenly, the swinging-door that burst out from the dining room and into the kitchen came open. Ronnie, exhausted and strung-out from his long day at the bistro, entered and immediately rammed into Zach. Zach’s lips burst open in surprise. The cake fell forward, as did Zach, as did Ronnie, smacking layer after layer across both Zach and Christine.

  Christine closed her eyes and fell to her knees. Devastation was the word for it— devastation and anger, and defeat. For the past twenty-four hours, all she’d done was put her heart and soul into this cake. And now, here it was: smeared across her and Zach and even partially on Ronnie.

  With her hands clenched, Christine stood there on her knees, her eyes closed and her tongue slowly licked the frosting on her lip. What was she going to do? The party was in three hours and the one thing she had wanted to provide was lying all over her and the floor.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Zach?” Christine said his name toward the ground, blinking so that bits of icing frosted her eyelashes. “Zach, I cannot stress this enough. What. Did. You. Do?” She let out a low sigh.

  Ronnie spewed, crying, “Oh my, God! I’m so, so sorry, Christine. I had no idea he was standing there, and I just... we have such a crowded floor right now and I...”

  The kid’s fear was palpable. Slowly, she lifted her head to peer up at both Zach and Ronnie, side-by-side. Both of them glowed with white light, due to the icing on her eyelashes. It looked like she was about to enter heaven. Ronnie’s face was absolutely petrified, but Zach’s? Zach’s made it seem like this was the greatest day of his life.

  She should have known that somehow, someway, he would find a way to ruin her. She just hadn’t assumed it would feel so personal when it happened. She pressed one of her hands to the ground and then lifted herself up by the counter.

  “Do you need help?” Ronnie said. He sprung forward, grabbing her elbow clumsily, which only ended up making it more difficult to stand.

  “Thanks, Ronnie,” she said. She splayed her hand across the counter and looked at the dead carcass of the cake between herself and Zach. It had landed across her face and upper body before smashing down head-first. Lavender and lemon frosting was smeared everywhere.

  Silence stretched between them. Christine swallowed the lump in her throat, shoving it down, and turned her gaze to Zach. She probably looked like some kind of maniac covered in frosting.

  “What on earth gave you the impression that you could just lift my multi-tiered creation into the air like that?” she said in bitter haste. She was at her wits’ end.

  Almost immediately, Ronnie had sensed that the blame hadn’t been cast on him, so he took a moment to shoot back out onto the busy floor leaving the two to battle it out.

  “You speak like you just painted the Mona Lisa,” Zach said.

  “It took me an entire day to make that cake,” Christine spewed. “It was once called the best piece of cake in Manhattan, and I wanted to share it with my family after so many, many years away from them.”

  “Now, you’re going to point the guilt of you staying away for so long at me, too?” Zach returned. His blue eyes were dangerously dark.

  “I mean, part of the reason I did stay away from this island for so long was because of people like you,” Christine spat. “Self-righteous Vineyard people who think the entire world revolves around them.”

  “You’ll really never get over that, will you?” Zach said with an obnoxious laugh.

  Christine sputtered. They hadn’t talked about what had happened all those years ago yet, not really, and this was his second or third mention that he remembered it in any kind of detail. She smashed her arms over her chest and crossed them in frustration.

  She should just go back to the house, shower off, and head back to New York.

  She could crash at a friend’s place in Brooklyn until she figured out what to do next.

  Audrey and Lola, Amanda and Susan, Scott and Zach and everyone else could go on living their lives. All of them happy— so sure of themselves and their future.

  All she’d wanted to do was make the perfect cake for her niece’s.

  “You’re impossible,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat.

  Before she knew what he’d done, Zach drew a line down her cheek, through the icing, and then dotted the lavender lemon icing across his tongue. Christine’s lips parted in shock. Suddenly, however, the darkness behind Zach’s eyes cleared. He arched his brow and said, “Is that lavender lemon?”

  Christine’s heart thumped. She could feel her anger rising with each second that ticked past. “Yes. Of course, it is. What else would it be?”

  “No, no. I know. It’s just so unique. I’ve had these flavors together before, but this... it really does taste every bit as good as something I’ve had in Paris or Rome or Stockholm.”

  “Now you’re just bragging about all the places you’ve been,” Christine said.

  “Maybe a bit. But really, Christine. This is extraordinary.”

  Christine was a bit shocked at how genuine he sounded. She grabbed a paper towel from the counter and wiped it across her face, forehead, and bits of her hair, then dropped her hands to her side.

  “Listen,” Zach tried. “Why don’t we bake something up really quickly? Something a bit smaller, a bit less complicated, but no less delicious.”

  To her intense humiliation, a tiny tear dropped out of the side of her eye and skated through the leftover icing.

  “Seriously,” Zach said. “I’ll help you every step of the way.”

  Somehow rejuvenated, Christine stepped into the little bathroom connected to the kitchen. She looked at herself in the mirror and scrubbed off the remaining bits of icing from her face, clothes, and hair. She then added the tiniest bit o
f lipstick and eyeliner, blinked at herself, and told her racing heart to calm down. That is was an accident and everything would work out just fine. However, she felt like she was still going to have a breakdown right there on the spot.

  By the time she returned to the kitchen, the cake had been removed and the floor scrubbed. Zach stood, cleaned up, with a fresh apron, and passed another one to Christine. Ingredients were placed out on the gleaming countertop, and a radio in the corner played a soft rock song.

  “You’ve really set the mood, haven’t you?” Christine said, surprising herself with her ability to laugh.

  “Baking is a delicate thing,” he said with a wink. “You can’t make a cake while angry. It’ll turn out stale.”

  “That sounds like witchcraft to me,” Christine said, drawing her hair into a messy bun and diving toward the flour.

  Very quickly, they prepared a simple vanilla cake. As it baked, Christine stirred up another batch of lavender and lemon icing and made little flowers to be put on top of the cake. Although it would only have two layers, it was certainly big enough for the twenty guests who would be in attendance. The fancy French icing would assuredly make a good impression, as well.

  About a half-hour before six, Aunt Kerry and Uncle Trevor arrived to start the decorating process out on the terrace overlooking the water. Christine finished the last detail on the top of the cake and walked out to greet them and help them blow up and tie balloons to picnic tables. Throughout, Aunt Kerry and Uncle Trevor bickered slightly about where to put which decorations, how to assemble the tables and chairs. It was oddly adorable, if only because this bickering represented how much they cared for their granddaughters.

  The guests began to arrive a little after six. Abby and Gail wore matching blue sailor dresses and wore their hair long. They stood near the entrance to the terrace and greeted everyone with a hug, accepting presents and cards and then helped place them on a little table. As guests arrived, they ordered drinks from the bistro bartender off to the right, who had been hired for this exclusive party for the night.