Page 33 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
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Slinky Salsa and Shivers
Laura was perched on the sofa in the kitchen with a takeaway coffee in her hand.
“So, you got on really well and you kissed hima lot, but you’re not going to see him again.”
“Correct,” said Kate.
Laura leaned back and crossed her legs. She shook her head.
“I don’t understand you,” she said.
Mina was painting at the table next to Kate, who was color-washing some winter berry sketches. Charley lay dozing on a mat on the floor.
“I can’t see the point of starting something with someone who is still clearly broken up about their old girlfriend,” replied Kate.
“But you could be that person who makes him forget her!”
“In which case I would be the rebound fling who helps him over his ex and then he’d break up with me, all fit and ready to marry someone else,” said Kate. “I don’t want to be the rebound, I want to bethe One.”
“Geez, you’re cynical,” said Laura.
“Cynical!” Mina parroted.
“It’s all academic anyway,” said Kate. “We didn’t swap numbers. At least I don’t think we did. So I couldn’t call him even if I wanted to.”
“Matt was spitting feathers,” said Laura.
“Matt can do what he likes,” said Kate. “It’s none of his business.”
Laura tapped her nails against her mug and gazed out the French doors.
The sky had turned a grayish mustard color; it looked heavy, closer to the ground somehow, like a theater backdrop. Perhaps it would snow again.
“Are you sure,” Laura began with trepidation, “that you’re not making excuses to avoid meeting someone?”
“I signed myself up for the Twelve Dates thing,” said Kate. “Why would I sign up for something—that wasn’t cheap, by the way—if I wasn’t serious about meeting someone?”
“You tell me,” said Laura.
“There’s nothing to tell,” said Kate. “I’m being sensible, that’s all, strategic even. I am not going to pursue someone who has a dead-end sign flashing above their head.”
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Laura left and Kate cleared up the mess inevitably left behind by two children under the age of five.
Kate opened a cupboard in the dresser and pulled out a Tupperware container filled with leaves she’d foraged the day before: the last of the russet autumn spoils, which had been hidden from the elements beneath dark hedgerows. She’d painted them liberally on both sides with thick PVA glue to preserve them; they wouldn’t keep indefinitely, of course—over time the vibrancy of the reds and golden greens would fade—but it gave her a few days’ grace.
She upturned the box and let the leaves float down onto the kitchen table: feathery oak leaves the color of jack-o’-lanterns and beetroot blood, mottled moth-winged birch leaves, and fanned horse chestnut leaves with rust spots creeping over their skeletons.
Kate reached for her sketchbook and a fine-line pen and began to work. When she had five pages of leaf studies, she began to mix paints to capture their colors: poppy red and satsuma for flaming maple leaves, toasted gold and egg yolk for the leaves of the poplar tree.
When the studies were dry Kate would cut them out and arrange them on different-colored backgrounds until she found a design that pleased her. Sometimes it would be quick; the first arrangement gave her the thrill in her stomach that signified success. Other times the process seemed to take an age; she’d fiddle with the composition, she’d go away and drink coffee and consult her mood boards, but she couldn’t submit a design until that tickle in her stomach made itself felt.
Perhaps—she mused as she pushed an oak leaf to overlap a horse chestnut—that was why her relationships hadn’t lasted; maybe she was waiting for her stomach to thrill with a man the way it did with her work.
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