I headed back to my apartment as soon as I was done with work, the conversation playing over and over in my head. I really needed the quiet time now. I’d texted Simon and told him to meet me at my apartment right before the party. I didn’t mention anything about Rio; I wanted to see his face when I brought it up. I didn’t understand what in the world was going on.
I let myself into my apartment with a big sigh of relief, the sound escaping me before I realized it. The air was a little stuffy; it’d been a while since I was here. I cracked a few windows, running my hand along the deep windowsills as I did. Clive loved a deep windowsill. I looked around at the thoughtfully chosen knicks and knacks, remembering how I delighted in selecting all the pieces, the first apartment I’d ever had on my own. Through the kitchen doorway I caught sight of gleaming metal, all curves and heaven. My KitchenAid mixer.
I cracked my back, rolled my neck, and thought about all the cookies I was about to bake. I took off my heels; they’d been pinching my feet all day. And while I was at it, I took off my snug pencil skirt too.
I baked better when I was comfortable.
I had literally worked through every lunch hour and stayed late almost every day, just so I could knock off a few hours early and bake the cookies I’d promised Mimi. I’d tried mixing up a few batches of dough at Jillian’s the night before, but it wasn’t the same. Off-brand mixer. Subpar paddle. Eh.
Tuning my stereo to an all-Christmas station, I wrapped my apron on, pulled my hair into a bun on top of my head, and got to work. I stroked my KitchenAid, feeling the cool metal soothe my frayed nerves.
While Bing serenaded me, I scooped balls of chocolate chip and plopped them onto a parchment paper–lined cookie sheet. While Frank told me I’d better watch out and I’d better not cry, I mixed up a batch of snickerdoodles, rolled in extra cinnamon sugar. While Judy sang to me of having a merry little Christmas, I doused pecan sandies in powdered sugar, gently setting them to cool on wire racks that covered the dining room table. And when Elvis was blue, I was frosting red and green sugar cookies, cut into snowmen, angels, and evergreen tree shapes.
As I rolled and dipped, sugared and iced, my mind kept playing over the conversation with Jillian. Why in the world would Simon have canceled the trip without asking me? Maybe she’d gotten it wrong. Maybe she hadn’t heard Benjamin correctly. But why would Benjamin have gotten the idea that we were spending Christmas here?
I was irritated. More than irritated. If this was true, I was downright pissed. While there was no place like home for the holidays (thank you, Perry Como), and I wanted nothing in the world than to bring my boyfriend home for said holidays, this holiday I wanted Rio!
As I baked, I got more and more irritated. Adult Caroline said things like, “Just talk to Simon; find out what’s really going on.” Pissed Off Caroline was saying things like, “I already bought a new bikini, dammit, and I want to wear it!”
Guess which one was winning? By the time Simon came waltzing in, I squeezed a poor gingerbread man right where his gingerbread nuts would have been.
“Do you think this is what heaven looks like?” he asked happily. Simon, not the nutless gingerbread man.
“Cookie heaven?”
“No, my heaven: cookies and you in panties,” he replied, picking up a snickerdoodle and inhaling deeply.
I blushed. I’d forgotten about the panties. I turned around to grab the last round of gingerbread men from out of the oven. “So I talked to Jillian today. She said the funniest thing about—”
“You’re killing me, bent over like that, and with cookies! Dreaming, I’m dreaming,” he joked, coming up behind me and unexpectedly grabbing my hips.
Startled, I dropped the pan, gingerbread men spilling all over the floor and shattering. It looked like a disaster scene; legs broken, arms severed, even a few decapitations.
“Dammit!” I set the pan down a little louder than was necessary, then turned to face Simon with my hands on my hips, eyebrows arched.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, Caroline. I didn’t mean—wow. They’re kind of scary like that, aren’t they?” he said, looking around at my feet.
I took a breath, held it, counted to thirteen, then let it out.
“Did you cancel our trip to Brazil?”
“Brazil?” he asked, looking guilty.
“Yes, Brazil. When I talked to Jillian today, she told me about a conversation you had with Benjamin—that you’d canceled our trip. Did you?”
He was quiet for a minute, his eyes unreadable.
“Yes.”
He had. He really had.
“You want to tell me why?”
“I was going to surprise you,” he started, walking over to me, dodging ginger parts.
“Most guys surprise their girlfriends with trips, Simon—not the opposite,” I snapped, throwing the cookie sheets into the sink and squeezing soap all over them. I scrubbed at them furiously, splashing suds everywhere. “Why in the world would you do that?”
“I wanted to—”
“Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working? How much I was looking forward to that trip?”
“I know; I just thought that—”
“You can’t just up and cancel something like that without talking to me! I literally can’t believe that you—”
“Would you just listen to me for a second? Jesus!” he exploded, slamming his hand down on the counter, crushing more gingerbread men. “I wanted to spend Christmas with your folks, Caroline. I invited them here.”
The sponge fell from my hand. “You . . . what?”
“I wanted us to have a real Christmas this year, so I called your mom and dad and invited them to stay with us. I thought I’d surprise you. They’ll be here the day before we were supposed to leave. I know how disappointed you were when you couldn’t go home for Thanksgiving, so I thought they could come here,” he said. “I had no idea you’d get so upset, believe me, or I would have talked to you about it first.”
My thoughts whirled; emotions crashed and banged around inside. Touched? Overwhelmed? Surprised? My eyes filled with tears as I crossed to him through the gingerbread carnage.
“You really want to spend Christmas with my family?” I asked, taking his face in my hands.
“I do,” he murmured, his eyes full of something I couldn’t pinpoint. “Weird?”
“No, babe. So sweet,” I whispered, holding him tightly.
His arms slipped around my waist and he kissed the top of my head. “Are you still mad?”
“I was, but I’m not now,” I replied, leaning in closer to his ear. “But next time, just talk to me, okay?”
“Promise,” he whispered into my ear, then kissed me fierce. “I’m going to get us the biggest Christmas tree you’ve ever seen.” He grinned, his face full of excitement. Crisis over. He took off his jacket and surveyed the cookie damage. “Now, what can I do to help?”
“You can start by helping me clean up this mess. Then we need to get these packed up if we’re going to make it to the party before Sophia and Neil Round Three begins,” I said, handing him a broom.
He started to clean up, whistling along to “Frosty the Snowman.” I turned back to the soapy sink, wiping my tears away. One of them belonged to Rio.
? ? ?
The stage for Sophia vs. Neil Round Three (known in conventional circles as Mimi and Ryan’s Christmas Party) was set the second Neil showed up with a hot nerd. A hot nerd, you ask? Let me back up a bit . . .
Sophia had met a new guy at a symphony benefit. Bernard Fitzsimmons, associate professor of applied physics at Berkeley and vice president of the Bay Area Musical Appreciation Society, had the pleasure of meeting Sophia at a Music in Schools program fund-raiser she was performing at. Being incredibly talented as well as gorgeous, she was often called upon to perform at charitable functions, especially ones that were musically inclined.
They shared a cab and a kiss after the event, and Sophia invited him to the party. He was wicked smart and wicked cute, both attributes complementing each other nicely.
Neil got wind of this development, orchestrated carefully and quite purposefully by Mimi to be clear—“Oh, she’s going for the hot nerds now, huh?”—and he went on the hunt for his own Hot Nerd. He ended up meeting Polly Pinkerton, the head of a research lab at UCSF Medical Center, specializing in the effects of pesticides and insecticides on child development. She was appearing on the morning show on the local NBC affiliate, and Neil spent the entire time in the green room flirting with her over a pot of hazelnut French roast. Hopped up on caffeine, he saw her as the perfect Hot Nerd to bring to the party. But he also genuinely enjoyed her company, and had seen her a couple of times before the party.
They both brought nerds to an ex fight, and neither was ready for the outcome.
Bernard? Cute, yes. Smart, yes. Boring, yes. I’d been stuck in the kitchen with him and Sophia for almost thirty minutes discussing beige walls and their place in home interiors, because Bernard loved HGTV, don’t you know. Sophia had been giving me the “sorry” eye all night, but I understood.
He was what Carrie Bradshaw had called a “great on paper” guy. Unfortunately he was as dull as paper too. I was in the middle of discussing sand vs. stone and trying to stop myself from biting off my own arm so I had something to beat him with, when I heard Neil’s voice from the entryway.
Sophia froze. I froze. Bernard waxed poetic on the beauty of a periodic table painted in the softest hues of putty and bone.
“Putty and Bone,” I told Sophia, “what a great name for a—”
“Oh, shush with your great name for a band—here comes Neil,” Sophia hissed, wrapping her arm around Bernard, who was coaxed from his beige oration by very soft breasts pressed into his side. His eyes widened and he shifted his feet nervously. I almost felt a little sorry for him; the poor guy had no idea what he was caught up in.
“Putty and Bone is a great name for a band,” I mumbled to myself, taking my leave and a shrimp puff from the potluck table.
The party was in full swing; beautiful couples swaying to rockabilly Christmas songs on the stereo, hot toddies and spiked cider being poured generously by Ryan, while Mimi set out tray after tray of goodies.
As I shrimp puffed, I scanned the crowd for Simon. He was talking to one of Ryan’s friends from work. I caught his eye and pointed toward the hallway, where Neil was making his way to the kitchen. The girl he had in tow was darling; sharp eyes and a curious look on her face as she took in the crowd. They were on a collision course for Sophia and Beige Bernard. I stuffed another puff in my mouth and spy-walked back toward the kitchen, meeting up with Simon, who had also alerted Mimi and Ryan, around the corner.
“You know, this is getting ridiculous,” I said as we four took up a watch-and-wait stance, flanking either entrance to the kitchen.
“We’re just watching out for our friends,” Simon said, flattening himself against the wall. When did this become Mission Impossible?
Right about when Sophia and Neil laid eyes on each other for the first time since Game Night, and remembered that while Beige Bernard and Pretty Polly were fine and dandy, they weren’t ever going to blow their hair back. They were never going to be the “one.” But that didn’t stop them from trying.
“Sophia.”
“Neil.”