Minted, p.15
Minted, page 15
The cashier nods.
“Because this girl is flawless. The stone has to match.”
And when I walk out, ignoring Oliver’s stupid histrionics the entire way, I’m finally ready for Christmas Eve. The caterers and the decorator leave about an hour before the girls are set to arrive—Lucky has been beside herself, so it’s good she’ll have a bit to recover. I take her for a walk outside—no snow. No snowmen for the girls, but that’s out of my control.
“Alright, girl.” Once we get back inside, I sit down and let Lucky practically lick my face off. “Get all that manic energy out, because when they get here, I can’t have you mauling our guests. Tonight has to go perfectly, or—”
The doorbell rings. Twelve minutes early—could that be them already?
It is.
I can’t help beaming just a little as I swing the door wide open.
“You’re in a coat,” Barbara says. “Were you going out?”
“Just getting in,” I say. “I took Lucky for a walk.”
“Oh.” She nods. “Great.”
“She is a border collie,” Ricki says. “Told you.”
“Actually, I said I wasn’t sure,” Barbara says. “And then I kept forgetting to ask Bentley what kind of dog she is.”
“Border collie’s right,” I say. “And be prepared.” She’s already wagging her tail nub like she’s preparing to launch. “She likes to jump up, and she loves to lick people right on the face.”
“Bring it,” Ricki says. “I like all of that.”
“Dog energy is good energy,” Nikki says.
Barbara holds out her hands, and I realize she brought something.
“What’s this?” I ask as I take it from her. With the saran wrap on top, it’s hard to really see what’s on the tray.
“It’s a cheeseball,” she says. “Mom always made one, and since she always did it, I’m not quite as good as her, and I know you said I didn’t need to bring—” She’s taking her coat off, and she freezes. Her eyes are locked on the dining room table and the server buffet where all the appetizers and desserts are laid out.
“Oh, that?” I shrug. “That’s just stuff from the caterers. I don’t really cook, so Seren made me a recommendation, but I’m super excited for this cheeseball.” I start unwrapping it, and I set it down next to the spinach and artichoke dip and stuffed mushrooms. “Plus, these crackers are my favorite.” I sniff. “They’re the sun-roasted tomato Wheat Thins, right?”
Barbara nods absently, still looking at the cheeseball with a wistful expression.
“What’s wrong?”
“It looks funny next to all that stuff,” Nikki says. “It’s all wonky and misshapen, and she didn’t cut the pecans right.”
Now that she points it out, I notice what she means. The crackers are all bunched up on one side, whereas the crackers next to the artichoke dip are artfully splayed. The cheeseball is a little lumpy looking, and it’s more noticeable next to the perfection of the catered, professionally prepared food.
“Who cares about that?” I ask. “I’m a guy. All I care about is how it tastes.”
But Barbara has already snatched the saran wrap out of my hand and she’s trying to wrap the cheeseball back up. “Let’s just stick it in the fridge. I can take it home when we go and eat it later.”
I take it from her. “No. You brought that for me, and I want my cheeseball. Leave it alone. No takebacks.”
“What, are you twelve?” She glares at me for a moment, but then she turns to face the girls. “There’s a coat closet right here.”
“That’s pretty fancy,” Nikki says. “At home we just pile them on the—”
“And here are the gifts.” Ricki thrusts a bag at me.
“Hey,” I say. “I thought we agreed that I’d give you guys stuff, but you didn’t have to bring anything.”
“Yeah, that was a nice idea,” Barbara says. “But there was never a chance we were going to let you provide dinner, the venue, and gifts and not give you something.”
“Well, thank you.” I carefully take four gifts out of the bag and place them next to the rest of mine under the tree.
“Wow,” Ricki says. “Your gifts all look amazing.” Her eyes are round, and I try to see it like she must. My tree this year is all silver and gold, perfectly decorated, and the gifts underneath it are wrapped in matching, coordinated paper. Gold. Patterned gold. Silver. Patterned silver. And two prints that have both.
“Yeah, the thing is, my office manager found someone who does decor and stuff, and she just. . .” I shrug. “Does it all.”
“That’s amazing.” Nikki’s digging her toe into the carpet. “I wrapped mine, so it’s really ugly. Sorry.”
I glance at the gifts I just set down, and I notice that they’re all in different paper. One is red, with the ends bunched up. One is green, and whoever wrapped that used way too much tape. The other two are silver and gold, and green and red. They were clearly wrapped by Barbara, but even with their adorable bows, they don’t look professional.
“Your presents look way better than all of mine,” I say. “Because they look personal. They were wrapped by you.”
But no one speaks as we walk into the dining room. “I’m assuming you guys are hungry,” I say. “Because I’m starving.”
“Sure,” Nikki says. “I am, too.”
Thankfully, dinner goes a lot better than their arrival. I make a point of moving the cheeseball to the table, where it’s the only appetizer, and we all carve off a big chunk of it. The girls love the turkey, and they get seconds, and Barbara eats lots of ham.
“That’s one of the only good things about Seren being out of town,” Barbara says. “I don’t feel guilty about eating meat.”
“Do you usually?” I ask.
“Always,” Barbara says. “Since I was a kid.” She shakes her head. “What? You don’t?” She laughs. “On our first date, you said you might give up meat.”
“I was just trying to get to Dave,” he says. “I knew he liked her, even then.”
“How?” Barbara looks genuinely curious. “I’ve always wondered that.”
“How many times do you think Dave set me up?” I arch an eyebrow. “In all the years I’ve known him?”
She shrugs.
“Never,” Ricki blurts, a green bean shooting out of her mouth and landing in the mashed potatoes in front of us. She freezes, her eyes glued to the big blob of green on the perfect mountain of white.
She looks absolutely horrified, so of course I can’t help laughing.
“You just spit in the potatoes,” Nikki says. “Say sorry!”
I shake my head. “Please don’t,” I say. “Earlier, I dropped a whole blob of gravy on the tablecloth. You guys are just doing me a favor.” I mock-whisper the next part. “I always feel like the proverbial bull in the china shop at fancy meals.”
“You do?” Ricki asks.
I nod slowly. “And you were totally right. Dave never once asked me to go on a double date, not before that one, and never again since. I knew the second he did that, that something weird was going on. Once I saw her, and I saw the way he looked at her?” I shrug. “I knew he was a goner.”
“That’s pretty cute,” Barbara says. “I just wish I’d known how Seren felt. I think I must’ve called and texted Dave twenty times. It was pretty embarrassing.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say. “If he hadn’t met Seren, you’d have been the hottest, smartest person he’d ever had the luck to meet.”
“I’ve never been able to measure up to my best friend, though,” Barbara says. “I’ve always been an idiot—for being such good friends with someone so much better than me.”
“You’re the kind of person who likes to build people around you up, and that’s something to be proud of. You’re also not afraid to surround yourself with excellence, and that’s also rare.” I shake my head. “But actually, that’s not what I was saying at all. I thought you were the cutest girl there, that night. You drank a little bit, and your cheeks turned pink, and you looked adorable.”
She throws one hand at me, like she’s batting my comment away. “Stop.”
“I mean it,” I say. “If I hadn’t needed to push Dave to action, I’d have asked you out.”
She meets my eyes for a moment, and then she blushes and looks down at the table. “Here. I’ll just take a few more potatoes.” She scoops up the green bean bite. “Oh, good. This one has a little bonus.”
The girls have been watching us like they watch their tennis balls, their heads whipping back and forth for our entire interchange, but now Ricki leaps in again.
“I can take that,” she says.
Barbara shakes her head. “I like to mix my food anyway.”
“But that one was in her mouth.” Nikki’s look of disgust is pretty funny. Especially for two girls who lived surrounded by rats and roaches for so many months.
“It’s just extra flavor,” Barbara says as she slides it to the side of her plate.
Then we all laugh.
“You’re not eating your cranberry sauce?” Barbara asks, looking pointedly at the maroon blight on my plate.
I poke it. “It makes things look prettier, but it’s kind of weird. It’s berries that are made into this gelatinous goo.”
“Try it on a bite of turkey,” Ricki says. “That’s how Mom always ate it.”
I’m skeptical, but because of who’s asking, I try it. “Not bad,” I say. “Maybe that’s how it’s meant to be eaten.”
“Sometimes, things are better when you mix them with other things that aren’t at all the same,” Ricki says. “Mom used to say that.”
“Your mom was smart,” I say. “I think a lot of things in life are better when they have something else, even something dissimilar, to go along with them.” I can’t help looking at Barbara, and she blushes. Hopefully she got my meaning.
“Like how we did that promotion for the black bean brownie mix?” Nikki asks.
“Sure,” Barbara says. “Although I’m not sure their sales stayed very steady. I think they discontinued that line.”
Ricki laughs. “You have such a weird job.”
“Do you like it?” Nikki looks genuinely curious.
Barbara—who I thought loved her job—shrugs. “I like that it pays my bills.”
“Wait,” I say. “You’re working at the same place as James, and you don’t even like it, but you haven’t quit? How many times have I asked you to come work for me?”
“You make it sound like—”
“I always thought you loved your job,” I say.
She shrugs. “Some things about it are interesting. I love helping people like the twins to make some money from doing what they like.”
“But you don’t like rest of it?”
“Do you like your job?” Ricki asks.
“I love my job,” I say. “Every single day, I wake up, and I look at broken things, and I fix them. It’s literally what I get paid a lot of money to do.”
“You fix companies?”
“Exclusively. I used to work with an Investment Bank, and that was cool too, as was the Capital firm I worked for, but in all of those, you’re sort of preying on people who are in trouble. I like to help the people who are struggling and then get a really big check for sharing my time.”
“Sounds good to me,” Nikki says. “Maybe I can do that one day.”
“You make it sound like I’m a corporate sell out because I don’t love what I do. Most people don’t love their jobs,” Barbara says. “They just do them because that’s how they get paid.”
“That’s a depressing thought,” Bentley says. “If you really think that, and I think that’s wrong, then you should reevaluate. You should do something you love to do.”
“The only thing I like doing is helping people like Ricki and Nikki,” Barbara says. “And there’s no market for that.”
I wipe my mouth. “I’m not sure that’s true. You could be an agent.”
Barbara frowns. “Why didn’t I ever think of that?”
“We don’t have an agent,” Nikki says. “Or, I don’t think we do.”
“You don’t,” Barbara says. “But if you did, you’d have someone whose job it would be to help you find more work.”
“But then you’d take our money?” Ricki asks.
“Well, agents get a cut,” I say. “But they help you find way more jobs, so you make more overall. They also make sure the contracts are good, so that you don’t get stuck doing something you shouldn’t.”
Barbara’s brow furrows. “I had never even considered. . .”
“You should,” I say. “I can’t even imagine waking up every morning and not being excited to get to work.”
She’s staring at the same roll she’s been holding for at least two minutes. Lucky’s staring at it too, but I’m thinking they’re staring for different reasons.
“Life’s too short to do things you don’t want to do,” I say.
“What about eating things you don’t want to eat?” Ricki asks. “Can we not do that, either?”
I laugh. “Nice try, but if Barbara says you need to eat something, like those brussels sprouts, which are surprisingly good with that glaze. . .”
Ricki groans.
But eventually, we finish dinner and it’s time for presents. The girls may have insisted they didn’t want any, but now that it’s Christmas Eve, they look pretty excited about opening them. I drag four chairs close to the tree, which is in the entryway. I’m just now realizing that it may look nice, but it’s a pretty stupid place for a tree. Lucky starts barking and circling like she’s not sure what’s happening, but she’s delighted to be a part of it. That’s sort of her modus operandi.
Nikki drops to one knee and starts rubbing Lucky behind her ears. Lucky immediately covers her face with licks, but thankfully it makes Nikki laugh.
“I’m not sure I really want to open any.” Ricki’s eyes are bright and she’s staring right at the pile of gifts.
“Why not?” I ask. “Because if you don’t like what’s in there, I kept gift receipts, and—”
“I’m sure I’ll like them, but I want to have something to open tomorrow.” Ricki turns to look at me. “Can I save them?”
I did want to see them open the gifts, but my heart contracts. How could anyone tell that little face no? “Of course you can.”
“No, no,” Barbara says. “Don’t be silly. You’ll have more to open tomorrow from Santa. Open these now. I’m sure Bentley will enjoy seeing you open them.”
“You first,” Ricki says.
“But I actually won’t have anything else to open tomorrow,” Barbara says. “I should save mine—Santa doesn’t come to old people.”
“You can save most of yours,” I say. “But at least open this.” I fish underneath the tree for the smallish box—not the ring box, but still small. I finally find it. “Here.”
Barbara rolls her eyes. “Oh, fine. But listen, I’ve been working a lot, and—”
“He’s going to love his gift,” Ricki says. “Don’t say that yours isn’t good.”
Barbara arches one eyebrow at Ricki. “It’s just that—”
“Just open it,” Nikki says.
“You two girls are pretty hard on her,” I say. “But I do agree this time.” I lean forward a little. “Open it.”
Barbara’s so careful when she unwraps it, sliding her finger slowly under the tape to release it, and I get a little nervous, because after it’s finally open, she just stares at the signed copy of A Christmas Carol for a moment. She’s frozen, her brow just a little furrowed.
“I know Pride and Prejudice is your favorite, but I couldn’t find a signed copy of that. I stumbled on this one—the guy I bought all the other books I’ve gotten you messaged me. They found it in this woman’s estate. No one even knew she had it. Apparently when Dickens came to America and did a bunch of readings in 1867, only about a year and a half before he di—”
But she looks up then, and she’s crying. “Thank you, Bentley. You always go so far above and beyond anything I could ever—” She sets the book in its box gently and stands up to hug me.
Ricki and Nikki are both smiling when I release her.
I do prevail upon them to open their gifts, and they seem to really like them. I wasn’t sure whether nail polish, gift cards for clothing, and matching Nook E-readers with gift cards for books would really be the way to go, but judging from their faces, I did alright.
“And now you open yours,” Ricki says.
Barbara shakes her head. “No, he can wait until tomorrow.”
My tree’s starting to look a little bare—Barbara opened the basket of skincare stuff my assistant insisted she would also love, and the girls just have pairs of matching Ugg boots left underneath there at this point. But my real Christmas is happening tonight, so I’m okay that everything is gone.
I decide to snag the boxes that were wrapped by the girls, and then I rip them open back to back.
“We picked them at the same time,” Nikki says.
It’s two ties. One is blue, and one is red. “We couldn’t decide which one to get—and usually we agree,” Ricki says. “But Barbara said we could get both.”
I smile. “These are perfect, and for my job, I have to wear a tie every day, so they’ll get a lot of wear.”
“I told them that,” Barbara says.
Before she can stop me, I snag the other box. One from Barbara. I shake it just a bit—because when I’m not rushing, I can’t help guessing. There’s not much movement, and she knows I dress up for work. “I think it’s a dress shirt to go with the ties.” I shake it one more time, and then I nod. “It’s the right size and weight, and it sounds like fabric.”
Barbara’s smirking.
So I open it—but it’s not a shirt. It’s a scarf, and it looks like. . . “Did you make it?” The scarf’s kelly green, and on either end, there are two stripes, one smallish cream one, and one thicker red one. The tassel alternates between all three colors.
