"More Instagram photos?" he asked, gesturing to my phone.
"You know it! Since you're here, we can go to the park."
"It's closed at night," he replied.
"It closes at one a.m. I can use the internet too, you know," I told him.
He sighed, and Milo pulled against his leash in the direction of the park.
"I'm surprised to see you out here," I said as we walked the few blocks to the park. "Hartleigh's all alone, and she's dressed up in something skimpy for you."
Jack made a sour face. "There is nothing going on between us."
"I thought you two had a history," I said. My tone was teasing, but I really did want to know what the deal was between the two of them.
Jack seemed pensive for a moment, then he said, "Her family is friends with my parents. Hartleigh is…she's overbearing, I guess you might say. She was always a terrible fixture in my childhood. My parents forced me and my siblings to be friends with her. It was just one of many self-serving decisions on their part."
"Good to know she's not your type," I said, feeling oddly giddy that Hartleigh was in no way in competition for Jack. I mentally hit myself. There was no way Jack wanted anything to do with me.
But he licked frosting off your finger, the naughty elf reminded me.
"Of course she's not my type. She should be locked up. You haven't even seen her at her worst. She's clearly trying to be on her best behavior for the bake-off," Jack said.
"I can't believe your parents just forced you to be friends with her," I remarked. "Didn't they care about your feelings?"
He scoffed. "As if. They don’t care about me. My parents wanted a big family for no other reason than to say they had one. They had no intention of taking care of us. My sister…" His mouth snapped shut. "Never mind."
"I know something about shitty parents," I said, trying to put Jack at ease. "My dad and mom were both major druggies. They were probably some of the first casualties of the opioid epidemic." I didn't know why I was telling him this. He had opened up to me, but his rich-kid problems probably paled in comparison to my life. But I couldn't cut myself off. It felt natural to talk to him as we walked through the park.
"Practically my whole family are addicts. My aunt and two uncles died from overdosing. Even my cousin and his druggie friend stole my identity and wiped out my savings. I reported him—I had to because that was the only way for the bank to give me my money back. I did it even though my oma begged me not to. The police showed up and arrested my cousin. My oma was so upset she died a few weeks later from the shock." The grief and the horror and the betrayal felt as if they had happened only yesterday.
"I'm sorry," Jack said as he unclipped Milo's leash. "Sometimes you have to make difficult choices."
"I think I made the wrong choice, though," I told him. "I shouldn't have reported my cousin. My oma would still be alive. The bank didn't even return my money. They were supposed to refund it all, but it has been months, and still they've only returned twenty percent."
"Your grandmother was an enabler," Jack said, stopping to look at me. He placed his hands on my shoulders, turning me to face him. "She enabled your cousin, and she wanted you to enable his addiction too."
I looked down at the snow and scuffed it with my boot. "I think she probably enabled me too," I said softly.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I should have done a degree in, oh, accounting or something stable. Instead I went to a culinary institute for an associate's degree, which I didn't even finish, and now I'm trying to be a baker." I shrugged unhappily.
"You're a good dessert chef," Jack said. "You are the only person in the world who makes desserts I want to eat. You made those amazing cookies."
"You really liked the Austrian wedding cookies?" I asked softly, looking up at him.
"I loved them," he told me with a small smile.
I sniffed. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and start taking cool photos. Instagram followers were fickle. I had to keep them supplied with new content if I wanted them to stick around.
I dabbed at my face. "I'm splotchy," I said. "I can't take photos like this; I'm a mess."
"I think I know something that would help you," Jack said.
"What?"
Jack wrapped me in his arms, and I shrieked as he whirled me around and around in the falling snow.
