I stare at a young, leafless tree, quietly replaying select elements of that night in my head. I don’t remember a single sock.
“Your bra was socks?” I finally ask, forcing myself to think of something else.
“Yeah, I stuffed it,” she says, sounding surprised. “The socks were clean, but that was definitely not all boob.”
“Oh,” I say, and Thalia starts laughing.
“You never noticed that my boobs are, like, half the size that they looked in that bra?” she asks. “I couldn’t even get the vest buttoned over the socks.”
“I noticed that,” I say. “But I can’t say I do a lot of critical thinking when I look at your breasts.”
She just laughs.
“Mainly, I’m thinking about how great it is to see them again,” I admit. “How much I like looking at them. How fun it is to touch them. There’s very little analysis.”
“I should have kept my secret,” she says.
“I would literally never have known.”
“That wasn’t your Christmas present, though,” she says. “Can I give it to you when I get back?”
“What is it?”
“You’ll find out when I give it to you, won’t you?”
“Difficult,” I tease.
“Nosy,” she teases back, and I give her a long-but-chaste kiss.
When it ends, she takes a deep breath, then hops off the tailgate of the minivan and faces me.
“I should go,” she says, softly. “See you in three weeks.”
I’ve never lamented a long winter break before.
“Three weeks,” I agree. “It’s not that long.”
“I think it might feel that way,” she says, steps forward, and kisses me. She kisses me sweetly, gently. It’s a long, lingering kiss, and when it’s over, I can still feel it in my bones.
When it ends I give her one brief, final kiss on the forehead, and then it’s over.
“I’ll miss you,” she says, giving my land one last squeeze.
I nearly say I love you, but instead I say, “I’ll miss you too,” and she turns and walks back toward the hospital and I drive back to Marysburg, alone.Chapter Forty-TwoCalebI pick up another cookie from the plate and pop it into my mouth as I walk through the kitchen.
“The usual,” Thalia’s saying. “Which over here is a big Christmas Eve dinner and then midnight mass. Per tradition, I nearly fell asleep in the pew and Bastien had to keep elbowing me to keep me awake.”
“Midnight’s not that late,” I say, crumbly bits of cookie shooting out of my mouth. I try to catch some in my hand, but I don’t. Oops.
“It was dark and warm and mass is very soothing sometimes,” she says. “What are you eating?”
I swallow quickly.
“A cookie,” I say. “My mom baked. You’ll still be interested if I weigh an extra fifty pounds when I get back to campus, right?”
“We’ll see,” she says, laughing. “Did Daniel actually faint?”
“No, but he might still kill me,” I say, finding a quiet corner of the kitchen and leaning against the wall. “It remains a distinct possibility.”
Seth and I teamed up and got Rusty a skateboard for Christmas. It’s electric blue and bright purple, and has a picture of a badass unicorn on the bottom. She loves it. Daniel, her father, hates it, even though we also got her knee pads, elbow pads, and a helmet.
We’re very responsible uncles. Really.
“She’ll be fine,” Thalia says, as if she knows anything about skateboarding. “By the way, my family says hi.”
“Hi,” I say, and she snorts.
“They also want to know when you’re graduating, what your prospects are, what your dissertation is on, what religion you are, whether you’d convert to Catholicism, when the last time you went to church was, whether you’re also waiting for marriage, where your family is from originally, how long they’ve been in Sprucevale, whether anyone in your direct male line has served in the military, and if it’s not too much trouble, they’d appreciate blood, saliva, and hair samples.”
I glance over at the cookies and contemplate taking one more. On one hand, I’ve already eaten too many, but on the other hand, my mom’s lemon-iced spice cookies are amazing.
“Can you repeat the first one?” I ask.
“The good news is that this means my mom likes you,” Thalia says. “The bad news is that she has a couple of misconceptions about our relationship.”
“Oh?”
“You know, one or two,” Thalia says. “Probably starting with the idea that most of our time together consists of going on dates to the movies and leaving an empty seat between us for the Holy Spirit —"
“Ooh!” a voice says at the kitchen door. “Is that Thalia?”
Charlie’s standing there, Thomas in a carrier on her chest, utterly asleep and oblivious to the world in a way that only small babies can be.
“I’ve been discovered,” I say sotto voce to Thalia.
“Hi!” calls Charlie, cheerfully coming over and grabbing a cookie on the way.
“Which one is that?” Thalia asks.
“Put it on speaker,” Charlie says, grinning practically from ear to ear. “Come on. He won’t quit talking about you!” she calls, standing on her tiptoes next to me and leaning in.