Page 19 of The Whisper Place
“Half butter and half shortening. That’s the secret.” Blake stuffed a piece in her mouth and chewed, glancing at me. “Is that what she did?”
It was hard to swallow. The bite seemed to swell in my mouth. I could smell the burnt crumbs and coffee in my mom’s cramped kitchen, hear the whirr of her wheezy refrigerator that the landlord said was fine, and see the locks on the front door, the two that came with the apartment and the special one she’d ordered online, with its shiny metal and promises of safety.
For a second I could see the exact contour of her slight neck and shoulders, the way they curved more the older she got. She denied it whenever I pointed it out, but I saw the weight of everything that pressed on her small frame. The way her hands shook when she set the banana bread on the cooling rack. I read once that fetal cells stayed in a mother’s body after a child was born and the reverse was true, too: a mother’s cells lived in her child’s blood and tissue for decades. Maybe that’s why it felt like I’d been transported directly into her kitchen, why she was so clearly imprinted in my head. We carried each other inside us.
Tears clogged my throat and I forgot what Blake had asked. I nodded, trying to swallow the knot, to bring myself back into the present. This was exactly the life my mom had wanted for me. But it was a life without her, a life where she only existed as stray cells wandering unmoored through my blood.
Movie night became a Sunday tradition, the one night of the week we could stay up late without worrying about turning the ovens on at 4:00 a.m. We rotated through eighties films and rom-coms, with a giant tub of popcorn between us on the couch as we debated the best characters and which parts of our favorite films stood the test of time. Charlie started joining us, too. He was a strange but not completely unwelcome addition, since he brought beer and boxed theater candy. Last week I’d let slip that Milk Duds were my favorite and tonight he set a box of them casually in front of my spot before we all settled in.
The three of us sprawled on the pink couch in a pile of blankets and pillows, passing snacks and watchingSay Anything, but my head wasn’t contemplating Lloyd Dobler as much as the tasting notes of Milk Duds and how I might be able to reimagine them for the bakery.
“What about a dark chocolate muffin with a salted caramel drizzle? Maybe with an espresso base to balance the sweetness?”
Blake shushed me and shoved the popcorn into my lap. “It’s almost the best part.” Her whole body exhaled as the iconic shot came on-screen—Lloyd standing outside Diane Court’s house, blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” with a massive boombox held over his head.
“That’s stalking,” Charlie said through a mouthful of Raisinets.
“Shut up. It’s romantic.”
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t call the police if your ex-boyfriend stood on your property playing your sex soundtrack on repeat in the middle of the night? Look, she can’t even sleep because of that asshole.” Charlie threw a Raisinet at the screen.
“He’s not standing on her property. He’s in the street.”
“Disturbing the neighbors.”
The two of them bickered for the next two scenes. I half listened while thinking about muffin recipes, until Blake demanded I take a side. It wasn’t the first time I’d had to choose a sibling and I’d always come through for Team Blake. This time, though, it was harder to see her point.
“It . . . could be sweet.” I hedged, even though the idea of someone tracking me down and standing outside my window made me put the popcorn back on the coffee table.
“It’s emotional abuse,” Charlie said, and his deadpan tone made me snort. I swallowed the laugh, scrambling to back Blake up.
“It’s a grand gesture,” I said. “The hero has to do something out of their comfort zone to win their love. Grand gestures are a pillar of the romance genre. The entire trope was probably built around that exact scene.”
“See?” Blake elbowed Charlie, looking smug. “The grand gesture.”
As she leaned into her pillow to watch the ending, Charlie and I looked at each other across her back. Even though I’d gotten used to seeing him, something about his presence made me feel unbalanced. Maybe it was his size, the way he filled a doorway or took up half the couch. Maybe it was how most of his face was obscured by his beard and shaggy hair. He could have been intimidating or straight-up scary if he wanted to be, but he never came off that way. He deflected attention, deadpanning or shrugging off direct questions, and even seemed to dissociate from his constant arguments with Blake, as if baiting her was as familiar and unremarkable to him as breathing. And his eyes. His eyes were the softest brown I’dever seen and they’d never gotten angry. Not once. The first time I met him I thought of a bear. Now I thought of a teddy bear. A sort of sweet, sexy teddy bear.
Blake talked over the movie, pointing things out that neither of us paid attention to. Charlie was still looking at me, shaking his head slightly at my defense of Blake, but on the verge of smiling, too.
Emotional abuse, he mouthed.
Grand gesture, I mouthed back, feeling an answering smile spreading across my face.
Later that night, Blake was brushing her teeth and I was washing dishes when a noise outside brought us both to the living room.
“Do you hear—?” Blake cut off as the noise registered and her face transformed from confused to murderous. She marched to the sliding glass door and pulled it open.
Charlie stood in the yard, holding an iPad above his head that blasted the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” into the night. As Sting sang, “Every move you make, I’ll be watching you,” he slowly pointed two fingers at his eyes followed by one finger up at Blake.
“You’re an asshole!” she screamed, spitting toothpaste at him before stomping back inside.
“Exactly!” he shouted back, swinging the iPad down and stopping the music as his gaze shifted to me. In the sudden quiet, his voice dropped to a huskier pitch. “Right?”
Heat flooded through me, catching me off guard. I’d known something was there, but I wasn’t prepared for the force of the sudden knowledge zinging through my body. God, I was attracted to Charlie.
It felt dangerous to agree with him and impossible not to. He stood underneath the balcony, staring up with those chocolate eyes, the iPad dwarfed in his giant, gentle hand. The silence stretched out and it was only when Blake came back with a pitcher of water, dumping it over the balcony, that I forced a laugh and ran back into the safety of my newfound home.
Max
