Page 79 of The Gingerbread Bakery
Annie's second plate of pancakes was already cold. She’d given up looking busy about an hour ago and was now just staring forlornly into space.
It was December 23rd, the day she and Mac had agreed to meet back at the diner, nearly one year after Mac had taken off on his cross-country adventure. Annie had waited for this day with unrestrained excitement. She had two-dozen gingerbread cookies in a tin in her bag that she couldn’t wait to give him. She’d barely sat still in the last two weeks.
She’d imagined being here in this booth with Mac so many times, it was hard to believe it hadn’t already happened. She pictured them laughing and talking. She wanted to hear all about Mac’s travels, about where he’d gone and what he’d seen, the things he liked best and the things he hated. She wanted to know if he was happy to be home and if he was going to stay and if he had gotten what he wanted out of the trip. She was so freaking excited to just see his face again and she really hoped she would get a chance to kiss it again.
All month she’d been nearly jumping out of her skin with anticipation. Mac had sent postcards over the year like he’d promised, but Annie had kept up her end of the deal, too. She hadn’t wanted to hold him back. They’d done a little bit of texting and they'd only spoken on the phone once when Mac called to wish her a happy birthday, but she'd wanted him to have his year on the road. She didn’t want to ruin that for him.
But maybe that had been a bad idea. Maybe over the course of this year Mac had turned back into a fantasy. Maybe Annie had blown their weeks together way out of proportion. Maybe Mac was as big of an asshole as she had always thought. Just because he was nice to her for a few weeks last year, and just because he had sent her a few postcards, didn’t mean there was anything serious between them.
Clearly there wasn’t, because he hadn’t even bothered to show up.
She checked her phone one last time. She had two texts from Hazel about meeting up later. One from her mom to grab eggnog on her way home and that was it. No,sorry I got caught in traffic. No,I can’t make it today. Not even a,forget the whole thing. I’m not coming back.
Nothing but radio silence from Mac.
Annie had restrained herself and sent only a single text to him. A simple,I’m in our usual booth,and now she hated that she had sent it. Theirusual booth,like this was something they had done all the time when it had been just a few weeks. Here she was acting like they were something when clearly, they were nothing.
Over the course of the afternoon waiting for Mac, she'd pretty rapidly gone through the stages of grief.
Denial: she’d spent the first half hour questioning whether this was the right day and the right time, then thinking that obviously something had gotten in his way of showing up. He wouldn’t stand her up.
Anger: after another hour had passed, Annie was blindingly angry. How could she have been so stupid to believe that this boy had changed? She’d known him forever and she’d never liked him. Why had she let him trick her? And why the hell hadn’t he even bothered to break up with her like a man?
Bargaining: all she wanted was to see him one more time, mostly so she could throw her drink in his face. That always seemed satisfying in the movies. If she could only have that chance, then she would let it all go.
And now she had settled somewhere between depression and acceptance. She figured if she gave it another half hour or so, she could move on and live a fairly normal life.
After all he was just one stupid boy. There would be others. Hopefully some that were less stupid. Some that would actually come when they said they were going to. Annie was relatively certain that eventually she would meet someone that didn’t make her feel as devastated as Mac Sullivan had made her feel.
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. Maybe she wasn't as close to acceptance as she thought.
‘You almost done here, hun?’ Gladys asked, coming up to her table for the tenth time today. The diner was closing soon. Annie really needed to go.
‘Yeah, I'm sorry, Gladys. I'm just about done,’ Annie said, trying to hide her sniffling. Unfortunately, Gladys didn't buy it.
She slid into the seat across from Annie, wisdom and sympathy on her face. ‘It's a boy, isn't it?’ she said, and Anniehatedthat, hated that the go-to thought was that a boy had made her cry. Didn't matter that it was true. She just hated it, like what else would make a girl cry? She could think of a hundred other things to cry about that were much more worthy than one stupid boy.
She wiped her eyes again. ‘Actually, I’m pretty torn up about the polar ice caps melting,’ she said, rolling her shoulders back. She would be damned if she ever got caught crying over a boy again. She certainly would never cry over Macaulay Sullivan again. Today would be the last day that Annie let Mac have any sway over her emotions. She swore it to herself.
Gladys smiled. ‘Good for you,’ she said, like she knew they weren't talking about polar ice caps at all. She patted Annie's hand on the table. ‘You’re a strong girl. You’ll be all right.’ With that, she got up, leaving the check behind, charging Annie for only one order of pancakes instead of two.
Annie paid the check, leaving the gingerbread cookies as a gift for Gladys, and marched out of the diner. She was proud of herself when she didn't even glance around the parking lot to see if maybe a certain car was pulling in. She was determined that this was the last bit of energy she would give to a certain someone. She was going to move on with her life. She was going to find better people to spend her time thinking about.
She glanced down at her watch.
Five twenty-four p.m. on December 23rd would be the last time she would think about Mac and their perfect month and all the feelings she thought she’d had about it. Clearly, she’d been wrong. Mac had used her. He’d lied to her and he’d ditched her. Frankly, she should have seen it from the start that this was exactly how he would behave. Mac was used to getting what he wanted, and she was just one more person that fell for his charm.
Even as she thought it, it felt like a betrayal, a betrayal of the Mac she had gotten to know. Shethoughtshe had seen the truth of him but, apparently, she’d been wrong all along.
* * *
Mac’s hands were sweating despite the fact that it was freezing outside. He was standing outside of Brandon’s house between an inflatable Santa and an enormous working snow globe, steeling himself to go in. A few party-goers wandered in and out of the house and there were plenty of cars parked in the quiet cul-de-sac, but so far, the party seemed pretty mellow compared to some he’d been to in high school.
Hopefully, that meant it’d be easy to find Annie inside. Her sister had said she’d be here, and Charlotte seemed to know everything about her older sisters, so Mac trusted her intel.
He knew he’d screwed things up. He knew Annie would be pissed at him, but he was still holding onto a strange sort of hope that she would be happy to see him, that she would forgive him, and they could go back to how things were last year.
Last year, when Annie had warmed up his frozen fingers with her fuzzy mittens, when she’d kissed him, when she’d smiled at him. He wished he could go back.
