by Becky Monson
“Just a second,” I say to whoever is on the other side of the door. I take a quick glance at myself in the mirror by my door. Not pretty, but at least I took a shower this morning to wash off all of the makeup and hair products.
I open the door, not even thinking to peer out the peephole first, to find Jared standing there, holding a lunch-size plain, brown paper bag. I know immediately what that bag is, or rather what it has inside of it, without him even saying anything. It’s a bag of buttermilk donuts from Amerigo Delicatus, an Italian bakery not far from my apartment. The line there is always too long for me to go as often as I’d like, and Saturday mornings are the absolute worst. That means he waited in that long line on a Saturday morning just for me, so I could have these ridiculously yummy donuts.
I know what this means. He’s playing dirty.
“I brought a peace offering,” he says, holding out the bag of fried deliciousness.
My mouth waters, but I try not to let on. I stand there with my arms folded, my game face on. If he wants to play dirty, then let’s play dirty.
“And I’ll accept the peace offering,” I say, and completely abandoning my stance and game face, I reach out and grab the bag out of his hand.
Okay, so clearly, I don’t know how to play dirty.
“Can I come in?” he says, still standing in the doorway.
This is an awkward question because pre-conversation last night, Jared would have waltzed right in and made himself at home. He has a key, for heaven’s sake. But there is a different dynamic now. A stupid 1,800-mile one. I’m not even sure if New York City is 1,800 miles from Denver. Whatever it is, it’s a new long-distance dynamic.
Without saying anything, I pull the door open wide and step aside. He walks into the apartment and I motion for him to take a seat on the couch.
I set the donuts down on the counter, but then decide I should at least have one since they are still warm, so I get napkins from the kitchen and then sit down on the couch, not too close to Jared, because I don’t want him getting any ideas. I’m still mad, dirty-playing-donuts aside. We have things to talk about. And I don’t want to share.
“Listen, Jules, I’m an idiot.”
Well, that was a good start. I’d like to verbally agree, but my mouth is currently full of fried buttermilk awesomeness. So I just nod my head once.
“I should have talked to you first. It’s just that it was bad timing with you doing Cupcake Battles and all. I was really thinking of you, I promise.” He reaches over and puts his hand near me. Not on me, but close to me, as if he’s testing the waters to see how close he can be.
I finish my donut and put the bag down on the side table by me. It’s go time. Time for my speech. Okay, I don’t actually have a speech. I’m just going to say what I’m thinking. From my heart.
“I guess you made me feel unimportant-”
“What? You’re more than important to me, Jules,” he says, his brow furrowed.
“Yes,” I hold a hand up, “just let me finish.”
“Okay,” he says.
“This was a big decision in your life, and I know it’s not my life, but by not even asking my opinion, you made me feel like you don’t really care.”
“I’m truly sorry, Jules,” he says dolefully. “So then tell me, what do you want me to do?”
“Oh,” I say, looking away. I didn’t expect him to ask me that. But let’s be honest here, he’s just doing it to appease me. Too little, too late. He’s moving. We both know this.
“It’s too late to ask me, right? There isn’t any other option at this point,” I say. I glance at the donuts sitting next to me and want to shove another one in my mouth, but I’d totally be eating my feelings right now.
“I guess not. Not right now, anyway. But listen, Jules, I’m not selling my place here. I’m just going to rent it out. This job is just a pit stop in my plan. I want to end up here eventually.” He gives me a half-smile.
“Yeah, but how long will that be?” I grab the bag of donuts. I don’t care if it’s emotional, I’m eating another one.
He shrugs. “I can’t answer that.”
We sit in silence for a minute, me chomping on a donut and Jared twiddling his hands in his lap.
“This sucks,” I finally declare.
“Sorry, Jules.”
He seriously needs another line. “Sorry” just isn’t cutting it right now.
“So now what?” I ask, glancing at him.
“Now? I guess right now we just take it one day at a time. Me in New York and you here. I’ll come home as often as I can, and you can come see me. It will be hard, but it’s not like we haven’t been basically doing the long-distance thing this whole time anyway, right?”
“That’s true,” I say as I look down in my lap and start to fold down the top of the donut bag, making the crease deep with my nails. I have no idea why I’m doing this. I’m about three seconds from chowing down another one. “But I also knew that most times you would come home for longer than a weekend, and that this—that Denver—was your home. Now your home will be in New York.”
“No, my home is still here in Denver. New York is just temporary,” he says, reiterating what he said before. The look on my face must be saying that I’m having a hard time accepting that it’s just a “pit stop” in his plan. It doesn’t feel like it will be.
“It won’t be so bad,” he says. “We can talk on the phone, video chat every day. You could text me sexy pictures . . .” He gives me a cheeky grin, reaching over and poking me in the shoulder.
“Oh, no. I’ve tried that. I won’t be doing that again,” I blurt out, without thinking.
“Huh?” he asks, confused.
That wasn’t exactly a story I had planned on telling him, ever.
“Uh, nothing.” I try to take on a tone of nonchalance, but I’m probably failing miserably since I start to feel panic instead. “Do you think it’s going to work?” I say quickly, trying to steer the conversation away from where it was going.
“Will what work?”
“Us.”
“Don’t you want it to?” A flash of anger goes across his face.
“Yes, of course I do,” I say, leaning back into the couch, turning my head toward him.
“Then that’s all we need, right?” He reaches over and lightly brushes the top of my hand with his.
“I guess,” I give him a tiny, closed-mouth smile. I don’t know if that is all we need, but I have to at least try, right?
I feel myself conceding, but I still feel mad, as well. I can’t seem to find any peace with it all. Not even a little. Maybe it will take time.
“You just . . .” he trails off.
“What?” I say, wanting him to finish what he was about to say.
“You have a little,” he scoots closer to me on the couch. “You have some powdered sugar on your face.”
“I do?” My hand immediately goes up to my face and I feel the heat wash over me as I blush.
“Yes.” He moves in closer. “Just right . . .” — even closer — “here.”
His lips move up to the side of my mouth, and he kisses me softly. “And here,” his lips move to the other side. “And right here.” He then kisses me behind my ear, just behind my lobe.
My favorite spot. I’m nearly positive I didn’t get powdered sugar there. But, mmm, holy wow does it feel good.
Abort! Abort! Must use all of my resources to stop this!
“And here,” he says, his hand moving up behind my head as he crashes his lips into mine.
Oh, screw it. I’ll just be mad later.
CHAPTER 16
“There she is, Miss Winner of Cupcake Battles!” Debbie exclaims as I enter the kitchen Monday morning at a most ridiculous hour. As much as I try, I’ll never be a morning person.
“Patti!” I say, giving her an irritated look—she knows we aren’t supposed to tell anyone about winning. I mean, I did tell Jared, but that’s the only person I told. Anna and Brown were both ti
cked that I wouldn’t tell them, although they pretty much guessed it. Jared was right. I have a horrible poker face.
“Well, how’d you ‘spect me to keep it from Debbie?” She puts her hand on her hip in full-on defensive mode.
“Well, obviously we had to tell Debbie, but you can’t tell anyone else, okay?” I shoot her a you-should-know-better glance.
“Well, of course I told my husband,” Patti says.
I give her a quick, evil stare. “Okay, fine. Nobody else, and definitely not any of our regulars. If they ask we’ll just tell them that the show will be on in a month and they can watch to find out.”
“Oh, this is so exciting,” Debbie says, clapping her palms together.
Patti and I look at one another and smile, knowingly. Penis-gate is going to be more embarrassing rather than exciting. That, paired with having to watch myself on camera, is making it so I don’t look forward to any part of watching it. But I will. My parents are planning a viewing party, and Jared said he will make sure he’s in town.
And so it begins. My long-distance relationship with Jared. I’ve moved from the anger stage of my grieving process and am now into sadness.
“Patti? That guy you were talking about when we were at the battles—was it Randall?” I reluctantly ask Patti as she adds ingredients to the large KitchenAid bowl. I’m reluctant because I don’t actually want to know what I’m about to ask, but I can’t seem to stop myself, either.
“What about him?” she asks.
“What exactly made you break up?” I ask. Even though she’s already told me the answer, I’m hoping it’s different this time.
“Oh, it was a lot of things, but it probably had a lot to do with him being so far away. Kinda hard to have a life together when you have separate ones so far apart. Anyway, it’s been my experience that distance does not make the heart grow fonder. I think it makes the heart wander,” she says as she adds blueberries to the bowl.
Oh joy, a rhyme. A rhyme about the probable destruction of my relationship with Jared. His heart might wander? I didn’t even think of that option. Not exactly what I needed to hear right now. There has to be someone with a different opinion of long-distance relationships.
“Debbie? Have you ever been in a long-distance relationship?” I ask, hoping she has some good news.
“Who me? I’m not in a relationship. Who said I was in a relationship? I’m not. Not me. Nope.” A red hue starts from the base of her neck and works all the way up to her forehead, practically matching her red curly hair that is pulled up and away from her face.
“Whatcha gettin’ all flustered over there for?” Patti points a measuring cup at her. “She was just askin’ ya a question.”
Debbie mutters something about the front of the store and leaves.
“Any clue what that was about?” Patti searches me, her eyes squinting, eyebrows creased.
“Not a clue.”
“Well, whatcha asking all of these questions about long-distance relationships for anyway? Somethin’ going on with Jared?” She furrows her brow even further.
“No, no. Jared and I are fine. I . . . I was just wondering,” I say not very confidently and then busy myself with the croissants.
I don’t really want to discuss this new wrench that has been thrown in Jared’s and my relationship. I’m sure they’ll say something like “You’re the exception to the rule,” but then behind my back they will talk about how we’re doomed.
That’s how I’m feeling about it. Doomed.
~*~
“Oh Julia, it’s not a big deal,” Lia says in her sappy-sweet voice, motioning for me to take a seat at the two person table where she always sits when she comes to the bakery. “Just let me give you a little card reading. Maybe it will make you feel better.”
She’s a tricky little witch. The Monday morning rush was over and I came out to check on how disastrous the front of the bakery was. Lia was sitting at her normal table, ready to pounce, apparently. She beckoned me over to her, under the guise that she needed more coffee, only to bamboozle me with her witchy nonsense.
“I’m fine, Lia,” I say, readying myself to about-face and walk away.
“No. You’re not,” she states. “Your aura says otherwise.”
My dang aura. Always giving me away.
I have to admit, part of me is curious to see what she says. The other part of me thinks this is all a bunch of hokey crap and why waste my time? Plus, heaven knows I’ll end up with a card that depicts the grim reaper, and that will mean I’m dying. I mean, if I bought into any of this.
“Don’t worry. I won’t be able to tell if you’re going to die,” she says as she mixes up the cards.
“How did you know—“
“That’s the one thing everyone is afraid of when I do a reading.” With her plump hands, she fans the cards out, face down on the table.
“Okay, fine,” I say, plopping down in the seat across from her, my curiosity winning out as it usually does. “What do I do?”
“Just pick three cards,” she says, motioning to the cards.
I stare at the cards all fanned out in front of me. Without thinking it over too much, I pick out three cards and give them to her.
“So we have the Two of Cups, The Judgment card, and the Three of Swords,” she says as she lays them out in front of her in the order that I gave them to her.
She might as well have just read the ingredient label on my shampoo bottle. I have no idea what any of those mean. But the pictures on the front are slightly daunting. One of them is a drawing of a heart with three swords piercing it. That can’t possibly bode well.
“Interesting choices,” she says as she studies them.
“What do they all mean?” I ask, my heart racing slightly. My, how quickly I’ve been sucked in.
“Well, the Two of Cups has to do with relationships. Often it’s about a person that you have a special connection with, a soul mate perhaps. But it doesn’t always have to do with soul mates. It could just be someone you love.”
I perk up. A soul mate? Jared, maybe? Okay, this might be more interesting than I had envisioned it being.
“The next card is the Judgment card,” she says just as I was going to ask her. “Judgment often says that a major change is headed your way.”
“Oh, my gosh, someone is going to die! Is it me?” I blurt out, panic taking over in my chest. I know fully well that she said she couldn’t predict death, but I also know that she could have said that to trick me into this.
She lets out a little, high-pitched laugh, a witchy one, actually. Does she practice that?
“No, Julia, Judgment is not destructive change, it’s more like change that is under your control—one that you can even turn your back on if you wish.”
I take a big gulp. “And the third one?” This is that card with the hearts pierced by three swords. I’m not sure I want to know what this one means.
“Ah, yes, the Three of Swords,” is all she says.
“What does it mean?”
She adjusts herself in her seat, opening her mouth and starting to say something, and then shutting it as if she can’t find the right words to say.
So clearly, this is a bad card.
I must remember that I don’t buy into any of this, so why does the look she has right now make me want to cry and/or rip up these stupid cards?
“The Three of Swords,” she finally says, “can often serve as a warning sign that something painful is possible.”
“Painful?” My eyes widen as I picture myself being impaled by a knife or smashed in a head-on collision.
“Not painful as in actual pain. I mean heart pain. Things like heartbreak, separation, rejection,” she says, looking down at the cards.
“Oh,” is all I say.
“So putting these cards together, as I see it, there is a relationship in your life that will be going through a major change that could end in heartbreak.”
“Oh,” is all I say, again.
&
nbsp; My heart sinks. Relationship. Major change. Heartbreak.
That’s just too weird, right? I mean, if I’m not buying into this crap, then what do I think about this? Lucky guess?
“But listen, Julia,” Lia says in soothing tones, possibly after seeing that I’ve gone completely pale, or perhaps my aura has changed to whatever color means “holy crap,” “the Three of Swords can also be helpful.”
“It can?” I brighten up with a little hope.
“Yes. By preparing for the possibly emotional blow, you can lessen it or even prevent it entirely.”
I sit there for a bit, feeling a little cold, like my blood has run thin. Do I actually buy into this? I mean, yes, it’s very . . . timely. But also, it’s just a deck of cards, a deck of stupid, spot-on, I-want-to-put-them-in-the-blender-and-rip-them-to-shreds cards.
I should never have sat down in this chair. Even if this is a bunch of malarkey, it will now sit in the back of my mind, repeating itself, eating at me. This and so many other things that I had been trying to put out of my mind.
“Well, this has been fun,” I say, standing up, wanting to go back into my office and shut the door so I can work on blocking out the past ten minutes of my life.
“Julia,” Lia says as she starts putting the cards back into a pile. “All things happen for a reason. I do believe that.” She gives me a small smile.
With that, I turn around and walk toward the back.
“What’s the matter with you?” Patti says as I walk into the kitchen. “You look like ya’ve seen a ghost.”
“Uh . . .” I shake my head and close my eyes, my mind feeling a little jumbled. “Lia was just reading my cards.”
“Oh, whatcha letting her get into your mind for? That girl’s as lost as last year’s Easter egg. Don’t you go believing anything she tells ya, got it?” She points her finger at me, one hand on her hip.
I give her an appeasing nod and hope she will drop it. Normally I’d say she was right, because I’ve never bought into that stuff, either. But she has no idea what Lia just said, nor does she know that Jared is leaving and moving far away.
