Waiting for December, page 19
twenty-five
HAVING ZOE AND Grace help Jesse and me the following day is amazing—not because we need the extra hands but because having them around makes it easier for Jesse and me to act normal around each other. Without them, we’d probably have to talk more about what happened last night. Or I’d avoid him again until I had more time to process my feelings. But their presence allows us to focus on showing them a good time, and consequently we get back into a comfortable rhythm. In fact, today I feel I have my third best friend back, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
This makes me really wish Jesse and I could go back to just being friends. Wouldn’t that be the best of both worlds? I could be with Sky, hang out with Jesse, and not have to lose either of them.
But as the day goes on, I come to understand that even if I could shake my romantic feelings for Jesse and kept working at the inn beyond December, the dynamic between us wouldn’t stay the same. Because if Sky were to become a more prominent part of the picture, I would devote most of my free time to him, not Jesse. And, in time, Jesse would meet someone else, and that woman would consume a lot of his time. I know I wouldn’t like that. The extent to which I know I wouldn’t makes me think my feelings for Jesse are here to stay. And I hate that realization because it means there is no best of both worlds.
“Do you want to join us for dinner?” Zoe asks Jesse after happy hour ends. “We’re making salad and pasta.”
Jesse poked his head into the inn’s kitchen to check on us just as we started cooking. I should have been the one to extend the invitation, but since I wasn’t, I reiterate Zoe’s invite so he knows he’s welcome.
“Sure.” He shrugs now that he knows I’m comfortable with it. “Why not?”
He offers to help cook, which is nice because it makes the process go by quickly and gives us all more time to stand around and talk while we wait for the lasagna to bake. Jesse seems to enjoy Zoe and Grace’s company as much as I do, and the feeling on their part appears mutual. Several times, my mind jumps ahead and pictures all of us hanging out years from now—here in this kitchen and in Atlanta at Grace’s house or Zoe’s. I don’t know if this will happen, but I can see it so clearly.
I feel bad then that Sky hasn’t had the opportunity to meet my friends. I know they’d like him too. He’s such a natural charmer that I can see them laughing alongside him.
But Sky isn’t here.
And he hasn’t been here.
Just the idea of him has been here. But that was my decision, not his. And even with his absence, even with our pause, he’s a damn good idea. So good that even though I’m feeling the way I am about Jesse, I’m still hanging on to the promise of a someday with Sky.
Ugh! I’m so tired of not knowing what to do.
Once the food is ready, we carry it into the parlor and take a seat at one of the tables. Jesse and I sit opposite each other, and Zoe and Grace do the same. Jesse reaches for the bottle of wine at the center of the table and takes the liberty of filling all our glasses. Once he’s finished, he surprises me by getting to his feet and raising his glass.
“I’d like to make a toast,” he says. Jesse isn’t one for speeches, although he did give quite the speech at the fire last night. I push that out of my mind and refocus.
“To Zoe and Grace,” he begins, smiling at them both. “I’m so glad you’re here and that I’ve had the opportunity to meet Harper’s closest friends. I hope you two know you always have a free place to stay whenever you want to make the trip.”
I feel a flutter in my chest. Being nice and inclusive to a girl’s friends isn’t a love language, but if it were, it’d rank high on my list.
“And to Harper,” Jesse says, turning his attention across the table to me. My heart begins pounding in earnest as I wait for him to say more.
But he doesn’t.
I’m not sure if he was planning to and lost his train of thought or if saying my name was all he could say. It doesn’t matter. Because somehow the way he said my name seems to affect me as much as—if not more than—it would have had he used all the words in the English dictionary.
—
“That man is in love with you,” Grace says once we’re in bed with the lights out following dinner, dessert, and a fifteen-minute stint at the fire. (Zoe and Grace joined Jesse and I this go-round, although begrudgingly. They did not see what the hype was about and voiced several times that our plan was crazy.)
“I think you might be right,” I say. I haven’t had a chance today to tell them what happened at the fire last night, but I share the details now.
Once I finish, Zoe reaches for one of her pillows and throws it at me. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us this sooner!”
“I’m sorry,” I say, dodging it. “I was processing.”
“That was very selfish of you.” Grace throws her pillow my way too. “Next time process your thoughts out loud. Because we are here for these Jesse details.”
“But what about Sky?” I groan.
“I’m here for those details too,” Grace says.
“Yeah, I definitely haven’t minded those either,” pipes in Zoe.
“So what should I do?”
When neither of them responds, I throw their pillows back at them. “If you want me to process my thoughts out loud, you need to weigh in on my dilemma.”
“I wish we could,” Grace says with a sigh. “But we can’t answer that question for you.”
I moan and roll away from them, feeling even more lost. I was really hoping for some guidance.
“What I can say,” she continues, “is that I’ve known you most of my life, and I’ve never seen you more lit up than you were today. I don’t think it’s because of either one of these men, Harper. I think it’s because you followed your heart here, and that was a good decision for you. Just trust you’ll make the next right decision by the time Christmas Eve rolls around.”
I’ve heard a lot of good speeches since I got here, both from Sky and from Jesse. But this speech from Grace takes the cake. It was exactly what I needed to hear. It was the perfect reminder for this moment.
I sit up and turn back toward Zoe and Grace.
“I have the best friends in the world, don’t I?” I say. While I may not be clear on my feelings when it comes to my romantic life at the moment, my feelings about the two people in front of me couldn’t be clearer.
“Hell yeah, you do!” Zoe replies.
This time I take my own pillow and chuck it at her bed.
“I was waiting for that,” Grace laughs.
twenty-six
ZOE AND GRACE are gone, and Jesse and I (and the guests) are alone again. At least until Thanksgiving, which is in a week and a half. Then Jesse’s parents will join us, which I’m looking forward to, and the guests will clear out for the holiday and the day after, giving us a break.
Closing down for Thanksgiving and the following day is a tradition Jesse’s parents established when they were running the inn, and they recommended Jesse and I continue it. They said at our dinner together that the tradition was always the break they needed before shifting into high gear to prepare for the Christmas season. Plus, the few years they did stay open for Thanksgiving, the inn was less than half full, so they reasoned it wasn’t a big deal to shut their doors and fully enjoy Turkey Day with family.
I’m a little uneasy about how things will go between Jesse and me during the period when it’s just the two of us. Now that his feelings for me are out there, my feelings for him have expanded so much, and it’s getting harder for me not to act on those feelings, even if I don’t want to. And I don’t—not unless I come to the conclusion that I’m more curious about a possible future with him than I am with Sky. Because I would hate to lead Jesse on. I won’t.
I mention this to Jesse two nights after Zoe and Grace have left, and he tells me that he’ll take his cues from me, which makes me feel a little better. But the following night, I begin to question my own resolve when Jesse and I end up in the hot tub following our coldest night ever at the fire.
Jesse in a cutoff shirt gets to me.
Jesse with his entire shirt off gives me a whole other set of feelings, and I’m pretty sure he can see these feelings all over my face as I sink into the bubbles beside him.
“I still don’t have my mind made up,” I say, just so he’s clear that our intense eye contact is not an invitation. It’s not going to lead to anything more.
“I figured,” he says. “It’s only been one day since you last told me you needed more time to think.”
“It feels longer,” I say. Maybe because resisting my feelings just became ten times harder. The jets have kicked on, Jesse is leaning his head back, and he just let out an “ahh” sound that makes me think I’m a complete goner. Two seconds later he half-moans an “oh yeah,” and I sink down lower until my lips and ears are underneath the water.
When I finally come up for air, Jesse’s staring at me again. When I notice his eyes briefly dip to my lips, it takes everything in me not to close the gap between us, because holy hell I want to know what it’s like to kiss Jesse.
I bet he kisses as intentionally as he speaks. I bet he’d mutter something incredibly sweet into my mouth before he slipped in his tongue. I bet once we started kissing we wouldn’t be able to stop, and it would lead to more things with hands and lips and moans.
“We’re going to need a code word,” I mutter, blinking. I set a boundary with Sky during our night together, and it’s time to set a boundary with Jesse.
“For what?” He lifts an arm out of the water to run a hand through his hair. My eyes land on his bicep and linger.
“So that you and I don’t kiss each other.”
“I already told you I won’t kiss you until you tell me that’s what you want, Harper.” He splashes some water my way as if to let me know I can lighten up.
“I’m not worried about you kissing me,” I say. “I’m worried about me kissing you.”
He doesn’t respond right away. When he finally does, his voice is lower, less playful. “Doesn’t the fact that you want to go there tell you something?”
It does. Of course, it does.
“If Sky weren’t in the picture, there would be no part of me questioning my feelings for you, Jesse. But Sky is in the picture. I need to sit with all of this a little longer. It’s been too much, too fast.”
He nods as if he heard me. “What about Xylo?”
“What about Xylo?”
“For our code word,” he clarifies. “Thinking about a chicken is a turnoff, isn’t it?”
“Sort of, but she reminds me of you.”
He grows pensive. “How about bumfuzzle?”
“What?” The corners of my mouth curl into a grin. I wasn’t expecting him to say that given how serious he just sounded.
“I read it in a novel once and thought it was the funniest word I’d ever heard.”
“What does it mean?”
“Confused.”
“Very apropos,” I admit.
He nods as if he hadn’t thought of that.
“Try saying it without laughing,” he encourages me.
“Bumfuzzle,” I repeat and snort out a laugh less than one second later.
“You see.” He brings his arms out of the water and drapes them around the ledge. “Now we’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Only that’s not entirely true because the way Jesse delivered that line gave me chills.
In a hot tub.
And when Jesse gets out and I get a last glimpse of his bare chest before he wraps himself in a towel, I mutter bumfuzzle to myself six times, and my feelings don’t go anywhere.
So I’d say we have a lot to worry about. Or I do, at least.
I have a lot of thinking to do too.
—
Fortunately, come Thanksgiving Day, even though Jesse and I are spending the morning beside each other in the kitchen, we have so many dishes to prepare that I’m convinced there won’t be time for any intimate moments.
At least I don’t think so.
Jesse’s parents are arriving at two, and knowing they’re coming has been keeping both of our heads in the right place. This is also the second Thanksgiving Jesse and his parents have experienced without Brendan, and Brendan was big on the holidays, so Jesse’s tone today is a little subdued.
“How are you feeling?” I check in with him as he dices the onions for the stuffing and I mash the potatoes. I already asked him this earlier this morning.
He gives me the same shoulder shrug as before. “Brendan would be in here right now making us Irish coffees.”
“That was his contribution to the meal?”
“Yeah. He would make them every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. And Molly always made the stuffing on Thanksgiving. I’m using her recipe, but last year it tasted different than when she would make it. I have no idea why. It needs her touch, I guess.”
He looks at me shyly. “Having you here makes it better than last year, though. I know my parents will feel the same way. My mom has mentioned several times how much she and my dad are looking forward to seeing you again.”
I smile, glad I’m able to make things a little bit easier on everyone just by being around.
“Being with you guys is going to make the holiday easier on me as well,” I say. “This is the first one I’ve spent away from my family.”
My parents considered coming out, but they’re hosting both sets of grandparents, who stopped traveling a couple years back due to various health conditions. I already explained this to Jesse.
“Do you want to call your parents?” he asks.
“Yeah, I might do that now, if that’s okay?”
“Sure. I can handle things in the kitchen.”
I wipe my hands off on a dish towel and head to the front desk, using the landline to dial. It’s good to hear their voices once I get them on the phone. My grandparents are there already and it sounds as if everybody is having a good time, which warms my heart and makes me miss them. It doesn’t make me wish I were there, though. I wish my parents and grandparents were here. I’d love to celebrate together, but I’m glad I’m celebrating in Vermont, at the inn. It really cements my feelings about this place. It feels like home, which is crazy because it’s not home, or at least not a home I’ve known for very long. It’s become home, though.
The thought momentarily crosses my mind that I might be leaving this home at the end of December, depending on whether or not Jesse’s parents officially let him take over running the inn and who I realize I have stronger feelings for—Sky or Jesse. But I push the thought away because today is not a day to dwell on future decisions or anything stressful. Today is a day to celebrate and to be grateful for my many blessings.
—
Beth and Mark show up with several side dishes and a pie for dessert, even though Jesse and I told them we’d take care of everything.
“You can never have too much food on Thanksgiving,” Beth tells me as she gives Jesse a hug and then comes over and embraces me. Once Mark’s given out his round of hugs, he decides to make Irish coffees in honor of Brendan, and we take the warm drinks from the kitchen into the parlor and sit on the sofas as we wait for the turkey to finish cooking.
When Jesse gets up to stoke the flames from the fire he started earlier today, Mark and Beth ask me about Zoe and Grace’s visit. Jesse must still be talking to them daily if they know they were just here. I wonder if he told them about Sky’s visit or Madison’s, or if he mentioned that we seem to have feelings for each other that we’re not sure what to do with. They don’t inquire about those visits or that topic, so maybe not. Although if Jesse did tell them anything, they’d know better than to bring it up and potentially ruin our lovely afternoon.
It honestly couldn’t be more enjoyable. We play board games and tell stories. Beth shares that she’s picked up some hobbies lately, including knitting and archery, and Mark fills Jesse and me in about a trip the two of them are planning to take to Ireland in the new year.
“It was hard to travel while we were here,” he says. “Probably the only downside of running this place. So we’re excited to take more trips in the years to come.”
Brendan comes up a couple of times once the turkey is carved and we are at the table eating. Beth wanted to hear some of my favorite Thanksgiving memories from years past, and after I shared a few, I felt weird not asking all of them to share theirs. Of course, all of their memories included Brendan. For the most part, everyone holds it together during those stories, and by the end of the meal we’re commenting that years from now, when questioned about our favorite Thanksgiving memories, this year will be one we share unequivocally.
“Thank you,” Jesse says as he and I wash the dishes while his parents bundle up to join us at the fire. They insisted on being part of our tradition tonight, even though the last time I looked out the window I saw a couple of snow flurries—the first of the season.
“For what?” I say as I hand him a soapy dish. I’m rinsing, he’s loading into the dishwasher.
“For just being you. And for being here today. And for helping me run this place. I’m incredibly grateful you came into my life this year.”
“I should be the one thanking you,” I say. “For helping me with my bucket list. For welcoming me into your family. For being patient with me.”
I dry my hands on a dish towel and reach for one of his hands to squeeze it. I only meant for the touch to be friendly, but my palm lingers in his a little longer than I intend, and then Jesse traces his thumb over mine, and neither of us can seem to let go. My stomach stirs and warmth spreads up my neck into my cheeks. If this is how much I feel for Jesse when I’m resisting my feelings, how much would I feel for him if I leaned into them?
