Page 9 of Hiding from Hope

“All that dirty Greek sex you’re having.” Rosie wags her eyebrows at Addison, who just rolls her eyes and sips her drink.

We eat lunch and have a quick farewell, checking home arrival times when Addy informs me she is at Noah’s tonight and Rosie has an adult sleepover, so she’ll sneak back in at the early hours–depending on how good or bad her date is. The girls dart back off to their jobs and I catch an Uber home. The walk would have been nice, but maybe in the warmer months. When I make it back, I immediately dump my bag and head straight for the best place in the house: the kitchen.

It seems cliché for a woman to love being in the kitchen, but I do truly love cooking. I like to keep an array of hobbies; crafting and rebinding classic books is a favorite. Hobbies mean keeping busy, keeping busy means never needing to stop, never having time to waste over-analyzing things. Outside of meditating, the kitchen is the only real time I feel peace.

Baking, experimenting, the lot. The even better part is the compliments. When you try something new, or finally master a skill, and everyone loves it. It is my all-time favorite thing to do. I bake when I’m sad, I cook when I’m inspired, I try something new when I’m feeling stuck. No matter where I’m at, being in the kitchen helps.

Today, it feels awfully close to that time of the month. Not that time, but the scheduled time. Where I take a day to process emotions. All the busyness in the world can’t hide the craziness of life and the way it all inevitably builds up. Sometimes, life is just… hard. It’s challenging, people are complicated–or just plain rude. Sometimes I miss my parents, or being a kid with no responsibilities, sometimes I get sad and dwell on my strained relationship with my sister, her inability to connect with me, or lack of desire to, I suppose. And sometimes I miss having a person. Of course, Rosie and Addison are always there for me, but Connor was, for a time, my person. The person I could be a mess with, let my hair down and go crazy with. He wasn’t that for at least the last twelve months of our relationship, and I guess, lately, I have really missed that.

Seeing the overripe bananas on the counter, I decide I’ll make a dessert for after dinner: banana caramel self-saucing pudding. Yum. I grab all the ingredients out and set up the oven and mixer, walking to the Bluetooth speaker and setting up my baking playlist.

This is like an alternate version of my meditation sessions. It pulls me from my head, my mind wrapped up in the therapeutic nature of creating something with my hands. You combine a bunch of things that are ordinary, or even boring, on their own, and together they create something delicious and amazing. It’s magic.

I get lost in the kitchen. I am Woman by Emmy Meli plays in the background when my phone rings. It startles me and pulls me back into the space, reminding me there is a world outside this place. Quickly stopping the mixer and turning down the music, I grab the phone and answer before even checking who it is.

“Hello?”

“Ahh...” A cough and some shuffling in the background before the man on the other side continues. I pull the phone away quickly and realize who called. “I didn’t expect you to answer so quickly.” My stomach does a dip at the sound of his voice over the phone and the fact he called at all.

“Hey, Jay! What’s up?” I skip over to the couch and plant myself down, staring out at the gloomy view or New York.

“Ahh, well… I was thinking of a way to mend the bridge with Rosie. You know… for being such a dick to Addison. I thought you could give me some ideas.” I giggle into the phone at the memory of this grump being as soft as butter under all that angst.

“Well, what did you have in mind?”

“Originally, I thought I’d build her a bookshelf. But that felt too… weird. So, I am currently looking around the shelves at the café. I was thinking instead a good book would work. She likes reading, I like reading. It could be something that bridges that gap.” I hum into the phone and consider. He isn’t wrong. You buy Rosie a book and you have a friend for life.

“If you’re buying a book for Rosie, it’ll need to be a dirty one. They’re her favorite, and if you’re apologizing, I feel like that’s all she’ll accept. Especially because it’d give her immense satisfaction at how uncomfortable it’d make you to buy her a smut book.” I hear him grumble over the phone and it makes me laugh again. Jessie is a reader, but he is a reader of classics, painfully emotional or mentally challenging general-fiction, or even non-fiction and biographies. There was a time we bonded over our mutual love for classics, but I gravitate to the profound romantic style as opposed to the tortured life-lesson type. “Just make sure it isn’t a book her publisher printed, because she likely already has them.”

“Right. Well, thanks. I appreciate the… information.” He sounds anything but thankful and it makes me laugh at him again. Such a grump.

“Why’d you call me, anyway? Why didn’t you just ask Addy?” Biting my thumbnail–a dirty habit I’ve had since college–I stand and walk over to the window, needing to fidget at the turn in the conversation I took us on, the anticipation for him to speak making my stomach flip. There is a pointed silence from the other side, and I feel like I can see him clearly, see him rubbing his hand down his face, scratching at the scruff he refuses to shave and pressing his brows into that concentrated furrow he has practiced so much.

“You said...” I can hear him swear under his breath, and it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud at his forced friendliness. Not laugh at him. Of course not, I’m all for grumpy lumberjacks finally connecting with their emotions. But I do laugh at the image of him stomping his foot and scowling so deep he forms permanent marks in his forehead. “You said you would be my person,” he all but mumbles, and I bite down on my lip, not wanting to laugh and stop him from continuing. He is silent for another moment, but I say nothing, hope gripping my throat. “Do you think… Well, will you… you know, be that?” His tone is set with defeat, and it makes me squeeze my eyes shut and do a little happy dance in a circle. Maybe my eternal sunshine–as Addison calls it–has finally warmed up JJ’s icy heart.

I let a little giggle go before I respond. “I can be your person if you want, Jessie.” He is silent and I hear him release a breath before he just grunts something that I think meant he agreed. Perhaps wanting to say yes, without admitting he’d like me to be his friend. I can’t help but bite down on my thumbnail again, still trying to suffocate the laugh wanting to escape me. Those earlier emotions that felt like they were brimming to the surface seemed to have dissipated. Between JJ thawing and getting lost in bananas and caramel, my chest feels much, much lighter this afternoon.

“Well, anyway. Thank you for the recommendation. I’ll see if I can find an Elle Kennedy. Those squealing Book Club girls don’t shut up about her,” he grumbles. “I’ll see you… I guess.” He stumbles his goodbye and hangs up before letting me also say goodbye.

I lock my phone and turn and skip back to the kitchen, changing the song. I do a little dance on the spot and whisper to myself as Free by Florence + the Machine plays through the kitchen. “Yes!”

Casey

“What do you call that?” JJ’s deep soothing voice trails over my shoulder as I sit, trying to paint a replica of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, except I think my interpretation might be off.

“It’s the village.” I tilt my head and analyze the yellow and blue blobs on my canvas.

Jessie just harrumphs from behind me, standing so close I get a whiff of his scent, something that reminds me of the fresh smell of a new book mixed with something like vanilla or sandalwood. Something so very him that it skitters across my skin, leaving goosebumps everywhere.

You said you would be my person.

“Maybe if you pull up a chair and have a go yourself, you’ll see how not very easy this is.” I swing my head over my shoulder to give him a glare and notice how close he is standing behind me, bent over, resting his hands on his knees. Our lips are barely a breath apart and it makes me pause. The blue of his eyes is more intense from this close, but with tiny speckles of gold scattered throughout that it creates a mix. Maybe that’s where the slight green comes in. He takes a beat, but he eventually realizes he has invaded some of my personal space–not that I was all that worried about it. He stands quickly and rubs the back of his neck, walking back behind the counter. Forcing a swallow, I take a deep breath to slow my heart rate, which, for some reason, decided to nearly beat out of my chest. He needs a friend right now. Not some idiot lusting over him. I chastise myself and try to wrangle my hormones.

Looking back at the canvas, I suddenly can’t concentrate. “Everyone good for drinks?” I ask the girls, who are happily painting, giggling, and nibbling on hot food from the plate in the middle of the room. I notice a few empty glasses, so I get up and make myself busy at the drinks table when Elle approaches.

“Umm… who is the sexy brood who keeps looking at you like his next meal?” I almost drop the glasses from my hands.

“Who are you talking about?” I ask, completely in denial that she is talking about Jessie. He is sexy. Like a rugged lumberjack who retired and tried to carve out his own bit of quiet peace within the heart of the city. Except I try to pretend that I don’t notice this because he is my best friend’s older brother, and I’m almost certain he still sees me as the annoying kid who used to run around his childhood home. Even if he didn’t, it’s Jessie. He isn’t looking like I’m his next meal, he just looks like that. Permanently frowning. It only looks like hunger because his eyes are so intense, between the blue, gold, and green, all framed with dark lashes. Besides, the guy wouldn’t know emotions if they walked right up to him and introduced themselves.

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