“Copy,” Geraldine responds again.
I grin. “This is fun.”
Elliot grins back. “Very fun. Now get in here.”
He locks the door behind us, and I follow him to the back of the store. It looks so different after hours, less impressive. Without the display lights and hordes of shoppers, the products don’t have the same magical shine. And yet Geraldine trails around the rows of makeup with eyes glazed over like a kid in a candy store, or like a Geraldine in a makeup store. When she sees us, she squeals and runs over. “This is the coolest thing ever! And that includes the time Lucille Tifton’s friend liked my tweet about Lucille Tifton. Thank you for this most brilliant idea, my most brilliant friends.”
“It was all Shoshanna!” Elliot says.
“Nuh-uh,” I reply. “I’m not taking all of the credit. I mean, yes, I will totally take some of the credit because I am indeed an awesome friend, but this wouldn’t be possible without Elliot’s brave risk-taking.”
“It’s for a worthy cause,” he replies solemnly.
“Okay!” Geraldine claps her hands together. “I guess we should get started, then!” She flits around the store like an absolute pro, plucking mascara samples from one brand and concealer from another and lipstick from a third. Her fingers trail along the product options like they have a mind of their own. Once she has her artillery gathered, she organizes it all on the table for filming, while Elliot and I set up the backdrop from Once Upon. Then we even focus two of the store lights in Geraldine’s direction so it looks totally professional.
“Ready to start?” I ask, holding up her phone, prepared to film.
“Yeah!” Geraldine replies, face bright under the lights, but then her smile falters.
“Hey.” I put the phone down. “What’s wrong?”
Her burgundy-lacquered nails tap against a mascara tube. “I guess I’m nervous?”
That might be a first for Geraldine Castillo. I might be impulsive, but Geraldine has always been the daring one. In elementary school, when everyone else was scared of the long monologue, she volunteered to be the lead in the play. In middle school, we went to Six Flags, and she marched right up to the most extreme roller coaster, while the rest of us tested the waters with the baby rides. And last year when we attended a protest for gun reform, a reporter asked if any high school students wanted to be interviewed, and she stepped right up to the microphone, her voice not wobbling once.
It’s disarming to see Geraldine second-guess.
And it tells me how much this means to her.
“Don’t be nervous!” Elliot says. “No one will even see this!”
Geraldine’s face falls, and I elbow him in the side. “Way to be supportive, dude.”
“Well, they won’t,” he says.
“Yeah.” I pause. “I guess that’s true.” I walk over to Geraldine, put my hands on her shoulders, and stare into her beautiful brown eyes. “Geraldine, my best friend, you are smart and gorgeous and suspiciously good at liquid eyeliner, like obviously you made a deal with the devil to get a line that straight. This video is going to be a slam dunk, which is a sports thing that people say. And if somehow it’s not a slam dunk, no one will see it anyway, which sounds rude when Elliot says it but actually is a great reason to not be nervous, okay?”
She gives a weak laugh. “Okay.”
I pause, then inspect her face just to be sure and realize she has a little smudge on her cheek, maybe from her shift at Bo’s. I lick my finger and wipe at it.
“Hey!” Geraldine shouts.
“What?” I ask. “You had some schmutz.”
Now she’s laughing hard. “Okay, thanks, Mom.”
“You’re welcome, sweetie.” I return to filming position. “All right, beautiful. Let’s do this!”
* * *
The filming goes great. I don’t spot a hint of nerves on camera. It’s still wild to me Geraldine was unsure of herself for even a second, because she’s so freaking talented and personable. With her brilliant smile and soothing voice, she showcased a few makeup tricks, including how to apply lip liner without making it look like you’re wearing lip liner. Witchcraft, basically. She should really post the video so people can take advantage of her tips.
“Thank you, again,” Geraldine tells me as we walk to our cars. Elliot, who finds even a seventy-degree day chilly, sprinted to his mom’s car the second she arrived to pick him up. They’re idling in the parking lot now, making sure Geraldine and I get into our cars safely.
“You are more than welcome.” I wrap my arm around her shoulder and kiss her cheek, already chilled from the cold. We lapse into a comfortable silence the way only old friends can, and suddenly I feel a huge rush of gratefulness that I have Geraldine in my life. “Love you,” I say.
She glances at me, her eyes crinkling with warmth. “As much as mint chocolate chip ice cream on a hot summer day?”
I laugh, immediately flashing back to that day in fourth grade when Geraldine dropped her freshly scooped ice-cream cone on the ground. I’d saved my week’s allowance for my mint chocolate chip sundae and had a spoon full of ice cream and fudge poised in front of my mouth when her waffle cone cracked to pieces. Without hesitation, I locked eyes with Geraldine and solemnly told her, “Get an extra spoon,” and together we downed my sundae in under a minute, sticky faced and smiling.
“Absolutely,” I reply now.
She winks at me as we get to my car, then waves goodbye. I climb into Barbra and put my key in the ignition. All I want to do is get home, change into pj’s, and collapse into bed. But I think back to the tension this morning over an empty pantry and drag Barbra to the grocery store instead. It’s the grimy one that’s open late at night and always has products on the edge of expiration and at least two aisles with flickering fluorescent lights, like horror movie is the theme of the store or something. I walk down the rows of food with sore feet and fill the cart with bread and deli meat and eggs and Mom’s favorite pistachio ice cream even though it’s not on sale and that sugary-sweet orange marmalade Mama likes.
The cashier rings everything up to $27.42, and she kind of has to tug my debit card from my fingers. I’m sure my moms would pay me back for the groceries, but that means I’d have to tell them, and then they’d snipe at each other, and it would defeat the whole purpose. I’ll just put the groceries on the shelves and hope they assume the other bought them. No one will be fighting when there’s delicious marmalade and pistachio ice cream to be had.
When the cashier hands back the receipt, I stuff it into my pocket and push the number out of my mind. With my savings, holiday hours, and the bonus, I’ll still have enough to fix Barbra. Jake was messing with me earlier. There’s no way he could actually sell more books than me. I carry the groceries back to my car and take a deep breath, determined. That bonus is mine.
* * *
I fall asleep the second I hit my mattress. Heavy sleep. Drool-on-the-mattress sleep. So when a door slams open in the middle of the night, I snap awake, disoriented in the dark. Muffled voices seep from the hallway into my room. Fighting voices.
My stomach clenches as the voices grow even louder.
“Stop being dramatic, Alex.”
“It’s called caring, Alana.”
“You think I don’t care? You think I work fifty hours a week and do everything around this house because I don’t care?”
“Alana, you’re—”
“I’m not having this conversation again—” The voices become too muffled to hear. My heart thrums against my chest, so hard I can feel its beat in my ears. I clutch my blanket closer to my body, scared for some reason they might storm into my room, like I’ve done something wrong.
Then Mama’s voice appears again. “I’m going back to bed!”
“Fine!” Mom shouts.
Their bedroom door closes.
Silence.
I’m wide-awake now. Before I can think about why, I’m sliding out of bed and creeping over to my door. My pulse ra
ces as I crack it open. Mom is there, in the hallway, her feet shoved into her sheepskin loafers. She turns at the noise and startles when she sees me. It takes her a moment to adjust, almost like she forgot I lived here. She blinks twice. “Shoshanna.” The skin under her eyes is dark, either from lack of sleep or rubbed eyeliner. “I’m sorry. We woke you?”
My throat feels scratchy as I take in her shoes and the sweater draped over her arm. “Where are you going?”
“Just… out to pick up milk.”
“I got some,” I say, blowing my cover. “I went to the grocery store.”
“No, I think you forgot milk.” Her eyes don’t quite meet mine. “It wasn’t in the fridge.”
I forgot milk? “Oh,” I say. “Sorry.”
Mom pulls on her sweater and looks toward the staircase, away from me, as she says, “I’ll be back soon.”
“I could come with you.…” I offer despite the fact it’s god knows what time in the middle of the night, I’m wearing pj’s, and I have a full day of work tomorrow, but Mom’s shaking her head before I finish the sentence. She doesn’t want me with her, doesn’t want to spend time with me. I can feel it, deep down in my knotted stomach.
“I’ll be back soon,” she repeats.
“Okay.”
And then she’s gone, and the house is once again quiet.
I stand there in the hallway for a long moment before returning to my room. Dread tightens around my spine. And my pulse is racing too fast, no chance of falling back asleep now. Who gets milk in the middle of the night? What were they fighting about? And why does it seem so much worse than before? In the dark, I slip under my covers and unlock my phone. My hands are shaking, and I close my eyes and take a breath. What if… what if things are worse than I thought? What if they get a…
My brain shuts down at the thought of that word.
No. It’s not possible. The women who moved in together five months after meeting, the women who raised me in a warm cocoon of finger paints and oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, the women who, without fail, go to their favorite restaurant for Thai food, split two bottles of prosecco, and call in “sick” to work the next day every year on their anniversary, those women do not get a divorce.
I swallow hard.
It feels like I’m rocking inside of a house that’s perfectly still.
I just want to help. I want to fix it. But I don’t know how. I start scrolling through my phone, trying to numb the thoughts with one-shot fanfiction and memes. My eyes grow heavy and my head drowsy as I eventually make it to my camera roll and watch the video we filmed with Geraldine earlier. It’s so good. She’s so good. I hate that she doesn’t feel self-assured enough to post it. I want to load her up with a thousand pounds of confidence, want her to realize her incredible talent, want her to believe in herself as much as I do. But, the thing is, sometimes we need outside validation as well, validation outside of friends and family. Geraldine deserves all the validation in the world.
If I can’t figure out how to help my moms, at least I can help my best friend. Before I know it, I’m signing up for a YouTube account and uploading her video. My brain buzzes with the potent mix of adrenaline and sleep deprivation. Once it’s live, I copy the link to the video and tap from one beauty YouTuber to the next, commenting on how great their videos are even though I haven’t watched them, and saying, “Hey! Have you checked out this new girl Geraldine? She’s pretty great too!” I try my best to play six degrees of separation so it doesn’t look like I’m spamming feeds.
After sending the video to a dozen people, my eyelids take control and dip closed, and I fall back asleep. But I don’t sleep well. I toss and turn. I hear doors open and close. And then, when I do stay asleep, my dreams are scattered, tense, and as I drowsily roll over for the hundredth time, I remember something—
I did buy milk. A whole gallon of 2 percent.
Chapter Seven
I’m early for my shift, and Once Upon won’t open for another fifteen minutes, but I couldn’t stick around home this morning, waiting to see if fighting would erupt again. Something is broken. Cracked. And I don’t know how to fix it.
Soft acoustic rock plays from the store speakers, and only half of the lights are on, but I can tell from her open door that Myra is already hard at work in her office. “Shoshanna!” Daniel’s voice calls out to me as I step farther into the store. “Help us decorate the tree!”
I turn a corner to find Daniel wrapping a strand of twinkle lights around our artificial tree. I hesitate when I see Jake working next to him, blue-and-green flannel sleeves pushed up to his elbows, exposing his forearms as he positions the lights just so. Really? He’s in early too? Home is so tense. I don’t want to keep my defensives at Once Upon as well.
They finish with the string of lights and then sit on the floor, surrounded by more lights and tins of popcorn. “Sit. Help.” Daniel pats the floor. “Please?”
I rock back on my heels. “Yeah, I’m Jewish.”
Daniel laughs. “I’m aware. And, hey, Jake is Jewish too.”
So that’s confirmed. I glance at Jake and his brown curls, while he untangles lights with impressive intensity. Jake Kaplan. Jewish boy. Attractive Jewish boy. Rude, attractive Jewish boy untangling lights for a Christmas tree.
Jake glances up at me with a half smile. “Maybe we can find a Star of David to put on top.”
I waver. His smile seems genuine, and it’d be nice to sit with my work husband and a bunch of shiny baubles and lights before the store opens. I could use the peace, the comfort and calm. I twist my necklace once before relenting with an “Okay.” The back of my neck heats as I sit down next to Jake, acutely aware his knee is a mere inch from mine. I could scoot over, make more room, but Jake might laugh—and also, I don’t want to scoot away from his knee.
Instead, I grab a tin of popcorn and string. I stare at the items and then up at Daniel. “Um, yeah, I have no idea what to do with these.”
“It would be weird if you did.” Daniel grins and then grabs the popcorn and passes me some knotted lights instead. “My grandma had me stringing popcorn when I was seven, so now I’m a board-certified expert with over a decade of experience. Can you untangle lights?”
“I can certainly try!” I reply.
I focus on the lights, and for a few minutes, we all work in comfortable silence. An acoustic version of a Beatles song comes on, and I hum along, grateful for the break from Christmas music. I even notice Jake tapping a foot next to me as I pull out one knot after another. The task is nice, satisfying, and tension eases from my shoulders.
“Blech! Gross!” Daniel coughs into his hand.
My eyes go from him to the tin of popcorn. “Did you just eat that?” I ask.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to eat the popcorn,” Jake says. And then he catches my eye, and there’s this spark as we both laugh, and my stomach swoops with the pleasure of it. Jake’s laugh is like snow in Georgia, so rare you can’t help but stop and pay attention to it.
I look back at Daniel with warm cheeks.
“I was hungry.” He shrugs. “I’m a growing boy.”
“Tell you what,” Jake says. “I have a killer salted caramel popcorn recipe. I’ll bring some in for y’all.”
For y’all. Jake Kaplan is going to bring me popcorn? And he says y’all? Oh geez. The stomach swooping intensifies because apparently my body hasn’t picked up on the message that we don’t like this particular Southern Jewish boy. I keep my eyes on Daniel and ask, “Where’s the popcorn from?”
“Myra gave it to me.” He scratches the back of his head. “A week ago. And then I forgot to decorate the tree, which is why we’re all doing it this morning so, you know, she doesn’t fire me.”
“Please,” I say. “Myra would never fire you. And she definitely wouldn’t fire you during the holidays.”
“Maybe you’re right. We’re too busy to lose staff right now.”
I glance around. Since the store isn’t open yet, it’s s
till empty in here, but soon a rush of customers will fill the aisles. “Definitely,” I say. “Especially after a quiet year.”
“Yeah, it has been empty lately.” Daniel shakes his fist. “Damn you, online retailers.”
I snort. “You were just talking about how much you love the Avengers shirt you ordered online.”
“So, I’m a Marvel-loving hypocrite, whatever.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, now concentrated back on my lights. I’m faced with a particularly difficult knot and can’t seem to get a grip on it. My fingers feel as graceful as meat cleavers. “Grr.”
“Here, give it.” I glance up to find Jake looking at me. His eyes are soft and a bit amused, and this time my stomach doesn’t swoop—it freaking flutters. Jewish god damn it. I shrug and pass him the lights, ignoring the tingle I feel when our fingers brush together. In three deft pulls, Jake has the lights untangled. His self-satisfied smile is both attractive and annoying. The duality of man. “You’re welcome,” he says, passing the lights back to me.
“Thanks.” I force a grin. “Nice to know you’re good at something.”
“Oh, I’m good at a lot of things,” Jake replies. The look he then gives me should be R-rated for mature audiences only. My skin flushes, and I swallow hard as he picks up another knotted string and untangles it with his dexterous fingers in seconds.
“Guys…,” Daniel says. “C’mon. Play nice.”
“We are playing nice!” My voice comes out both an octave and a decibel too high. “I was complimenting him on being good at something, since, you know, he’s not very good at selling books.”
“Wouldn’t be so certain about winning that bonus if I were you,” Jake says.
I narrow my eyes. “Is that a threat?”
He shrugs, totally cool and calm. “Maybe.”
“Maybe. What does that mean?”
“You’ll find out later today.”
“Like you could really—”
Suddenly the soft acoustic music shuts off and is replaced by “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” blasting at top volume. The blaring jingle disarms me, and I lose focus on what I was about to say.
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