Her gaze cuts over to me. “I don’t need you to do that, Aiden.”
“They can be unnecessarily cruel sometimes. It’s one thing to have it directed at me, but you?” Baked goods churn in my stomach. “No. I can’t have that.”
“And I don’t want special treatment,” she says softly. “Would you be acting as a buffer between any other window dresser and the harsher parts of their job?”
I close my eyes. “No.”
It’s impossible to describe what happens inside of me when I’m around Stella. It’s like someone is stripping wallpaper in my chest, replacing the sheetrock, nailing up new artwork.
“This is a trial run, right?” Across the console, she nudges me in the side with her elbow. “Let me go through the trial. I can handle it.”
“Are you sure? Keith could have us in Mexico by Monday.”
“Aiden,” she scoff-laughs. I like how easily my name comes to her. Even more than that, I love the way her eyes meander over me. Down my chest and stomach. The fly of my dress pants, briefly. She must think the black fringe of her lashes is hiding her check-out mission, but they’re definitely not. Does she think of me when she’s in the shower? Has she touched herself in bed remembering what it felt like to have her legs around my waist? “I like your bow tie this morning. Are those walruses with wreathes around their necks?”
“They sure are.” I reach up and pull the sides to tighten it. “Found this one at the Union Square Christmas market two Decembers ago. Only one of its kind. Unless the salesgirl was just pulling my leg.”
Stella rolls her lips inward, suppressing a smile I would have paid admission to see bloom to its full potential. “Something tells me she was being honest. I can’t imagine anyone but you walking around with a walrus bow tie.” A few seconds tick by. A few seconds where I can only think about leaning across the seat and licking the taste of marshmallow and chocolate from her mouth. “Do you have ties for every season? Or is it just Christmas?”
“Christmas only. The rest of the year is just a basic rotation of colors. Red, black, blue.”
“Christmas is special to you.”
“Yeah. It is.” Stella is always trying to focus our conversations on me. I’m torn between letting her—maybe she’s not comfortable enough to reveal things about herself yet—and changing the subject to her, instead of me. Maybe it’s my apprehension over Shirley and Bradley having access to this girl who I want to wrap in blankets and ferry to Mexico, but I’m feeling anxious to know more about Stella. Now. Before the window unveiling. Before anyone else has a chance to chip away at this moment with her. “Is Christmas special to you?”
She looks up quickly. Then forward. “I have good memories of it. That calm feeling of everyone being sealed into the house for a full day, nowhere to go because nothing is open. My parents were always working—constantly—I was a latch-key kid. But Christmas…it was the only day of the year where they didn’t take work calls. Or rush out to meetings. My mother usually burned a pie and Dad would sit on the floor of the living room and read whatever World War II book my mother bought him.” She stops to think. “Those memories are special.”
“Did you always have a tree?”
“Yes,” she says slowly, as if trying to recall. “Up until middle school, maybe. We stopped decorating so much as I got older. We were barely having meals at the same table anymore. I guess it didn’t make much sense to create an atmosphere for us to be together. We were all just doing our own thing.” Her expression turns wry. “I was doing my own thing. I need to take responsibility for that. The thought of being parted from my friends for even a day turned me into teenage Godzilla.”
“Fear of missing out.”
She nods, scratches at a spot on the knee of her right stocking. “I really could have done with some missing out. My parents tried to warn me that I was…slipping. Down this treacherous slope. But I didn’t listen.” A beat passes. “It’s weird. When you’re younger, you think you know everything. Then you get older and live in constant awareness of how little you actually know and understand.”
“An age-old curse,” I agree, soaking up her insight like a sponge. We seem to keep ending up in these moments, confiding in each other—and I don’t want them to stop. We’ve only known each other a short time, but I’ve never been more comfortable talking to anyone. It’s like a new portal of the universe has opened up and suddenly…the bond I’ve never had with anyone is being offered to me in a forbidden package. But I can’t stop untying the strings. “Your parents. How is the relationship now?”
“Awkward.” Her brow knits. “I want to have a relationship with them as an adult. But my adulthood was sort of…put on hold. Now I’m trying to find a reason for them to like me, be proud of me, before I reach out for something meaningful. I don’t want to mess up a second time.”
That confession tightens my chest. I want to dig in, want to question her about everything involving those rebellious years, but I can’t throw a dart directly at the bullseye or I sense she’ll clam up. Christmas seems to be our jumping-off point into more serious topics, so I stick with that, hoping she’ll jump with me. “What was your tree decorating style growing up? Did you start at the top or bottom? Strategic placement or haphazard?”
A quiet smile twitches her lips. “Oh, strategic. All the way. I would sketch it out with crayons beforehand.”
I tip my head toward the covered window. “Sounds about right. You stopped getting the urge to plan it out once you’d grown up?”
“Yeah, that would have meant I cared about something. The horror.” Staring past me out the window onto the avenue, she seems to forget herself for a moment. “My friends would have laughed at me. Nothing worse, right? Nicole—”
When she cuts herself off and doesn’t continue, I duck my head to catch her line of sight. “Who is Nicole?”
“Oh.” She gets fidgety. “She’s my best friend.”
Said with no small amount of hesitation.
I wait.
“She came from a difficult family situation. They moved from apartments to motel rooms and back. Her father had some substance abuse issues and couldn’t keep his jobs longer than a few weeks. She was over at my house a lot. Eating, spending the night. My parents were really generous. They were there for her as much as they could be, with their jobs being so busy. But of course she was defensive. Of course she was resentful. She was a kid in this unstable situation that was scary and uncertain.” She stops for a moment. “When she started partying and shoplifting…I went with her. I was her best friend. That’s what best friends do. They have each other’s backs. They don’t let them go out alone. And somewhere along the way, I just got so absorbed. She was my new family and if I did anything without her, she’d get hurt. I’d feel guilty. I never even told her I was taking online college courses after high school.” She wets her lips. “That’s when I knew something was wrong with our friendship. The fact that she wouldn’t like me pursuing a dream. But I still couldn’t break it off. And then it was too late. I agreed to hold up the restaurant, telling myself it would be the last time I caved. That I was going to let the numbness wear off. I missed myself.”