Her tone is so different than it was just a half hour ago. But maybe she’s just feeling the way I’m feeling. This is a good tip about the job, one I probably wouldn’t think of myself, and isn’t that what’s always made us such a good team?
“Yeah, of course,” I say, and stand to get dressed.
I’m still uneasy when we pull the door closed behind us twenty minutes later. I’ve got the cookies we made yesterday, and Kris is clutching a small gift bag in one hand, a set of note cards she’d been planning to give to an aunt she’ll be seeing the day after Christmas. The sun is blinding, the snow so white it feels like there’s nowhere comfortable to look, and we mostly squint our way across the expanse of yard that takes us to the ranch house. I hold the tray of cookies tightly in one hand, keep my other at the ready as we trudge through the snow, in case Kris slips.
But she knows snow better than I do, and she doesn’t need me at all.
On the porch we both stamp our feet, knocking off excess powder. As I watch her, eyes cast down and mouth free of her easy smile, I decide I don’t want to ignore that uneasy feeling. Something’s gone wrong enough that it’s got me missing her again. And I’ve already decided: I can’t go back to that.
So when she lifts her hand to knock, I say her name.
She turns to look at me, her eyes flat and her mouth in a line.
“What are we doing here?” she asks.
I slide my eyes to the door. “The lunch?”
“Is this for the job, or is it for Christmas?”
“I . . .” I swallow, not sure what to say. Isn’t it both? Isn’t part of what I’m trying to give her for this Christmas some assurance about the job? I realize, with a sinking sense of dread, how ill-equipped I am to handle this newness between us. Six years and all I’ve practiced with her is themissingpart, and I feel the depths of my ignorance like a slap to the face.
“It’s the job,” she says.
“Of course it’s the job.” I’m frustrated with myself, with her, with everything that’s not us in that cottage. “We have to—”
Just then, the front door opens. Gil’s standing there, holding the same mug, wearing the same green sweater, except this time I think it’s turned inside out. “Pretty cold out here just to be standing around,” he says.
“Gil,” Kristen says, shoving the gift bag in his hand unceremoniously, but keeping a false smile pasted on her face. “Could you excuse me for a few minutes? I think I forgot something back at the cottage.”
For once I’m not the one who’s done the socially awkward thing in a business interaction, and while what I want is to simply drop this tray of cookies and follow her, it’s so out of character for Kristen that I feel a protective instinct to mitigate the embarrassment I know she’ll have later. I turn to Gil, still working out what I’ll say to excuse myself.
“That Christmas stuff didn’t work then?” Gil asks. He’s sipping from his mug, watching her stomp through the snow.
“Work for what?”
He shrugs. “I was wrong about you being married to her. But you want to be, right?”
“I—” I look away, watch Kris’s retreating form. Yeah, I want to be, but I’m not telling Gil that first. Hell, I’m not telling Kris that until we manage at least a few months in a functional relationship; I’m not a barbarian, or a doctor in a Santa suit. “How’d you know that?”
He takes another sip of his drink. Inside, I can hear his family laughing, pots and pans clanging.
“That look on your face when you came around here yesterday morning. That’s about what my face looked like for the whole first month I knew Romina, trying to get her to like me. She thought I was ridiculous.”
“Kristen doesn’t think I’m ridiculous.” Wait, does she? “Also I’ve known her for six years, not a month.”
Gil laughs. “Youareridiculous, then.”
I am, I think. But I say, “It’s because we wor—”
“Uh-huh,” Gil says, not letting me finish. “You know Romina was pretty worried about me changing my mind about the GreenCorp thing.”
I blink in surprise, both at the change of subject and at this admission, since I’d been working under the assumption, especially after that scene at the table yesterday, that it’d been Romina who hadn’t wanted to go. Any other day, maybe, and I’d be focused on this as a new piece of information related to the job. I’d be thinking,Change tactics. Work harder on Romina, and Romina will work on our behalf.
But right now, all I want is for Gil to stop talking long enough for me to go after Kris without it seeming rude.
“Guess she thinks like you, about the difference it could make. She’s worried I’ll regret it later.”
I tighten my hand on the tray I’m holding, my eyes going back to Kristen. “You don’t think you will?”
