“What is it?”
“It is a baked rice cake called bibingka.” She cuts a slice and hands it to me on a small plate. “Try it.”
There is a faint sweet smell as I hold the cake to my mouth. My teeth sink into the soft confection. The texture is slightly chewy, but I especially love the hints of coconut I’m picking up on my tongue.
“This is delicious,” I say before I go in for a second bite.
Rosa grins. “After the nine-day Simbang Gabi masses, we would stop at the vendors outside the church selling bibingka and puto bumbong. They would warm our hands as we walked home, and then my mother would open the curtains to let in the dawn light, and we would eat our cakes.”
I take another bite. “That sounds like a wonderful memory.”
Rosa nods. Her eyes glisten.
Jeremy gently leads me away from my small taste of Christmas in the Philippines and guides me to the next booth. The smell of the red chili sauce in the tamales mixed with the floral and fruity notes of theponche navideñois familiar. The year we celebrated the traditions in Mexico, Mom’s coworker who was originally from Oaxaca invited us into her home and family and taught us how to make tortillas by hand.
Out of all our Christmases and all the different traditions we learned and experienced, I always suspected that year was Mom’s favorite. I think because Christmas, at its heart, is a celebration with family, and that year we felt as if we’d been adopted into one bigger than just the two of us.
I breathe in deep. Hold the smells wafting up from the two steaming pots, one housing tamales and the other ponche. Embrace the memories, both the sweet of Christmases past as well as the bitter of Christmases in the future. When Mom will be gone, the only family I’ve ever had.
A tear spills out of the corner of my eye, but it’s caught on my upturned lips. Crying and smiling. How appropriate.
Jeremy squeezes my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
I blink back a second tear trying to form, which leaves just the smile on my face as I tilt my head up to him. “Just thinking how much my mom would love this.” There’s more inside me. Deep, unexplored places. But that’s enough to touch the surface.
His shoulders round. “I wanted to surprise you both. Alejandro was going to bring her here before taking her back to Heritage Hills. All of this was for both of you, really. But—”
His hand lifts toward his scalp, and I map its trajectory. This time he’s not stopping his fingers before they run over the top of his head. The motion fills me. Breaks me. A sign that Jeremy Fletcher has lost his firm grasp of control.
For me.
I snatch his hand out of the air before his fingertips graze the signature swirl of his gelled hair. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m tugging him toward the elevator, punching the button to open the doors, and dragging him inside. Once the doors shut, I hit the emergency stop switch.
Jeremy looks down at me, his face a mixture of confusion and amusement. He doesn’t say anything. Just waits for me to explain why I’ve manhandled him into a suspended box and locked him inside.
Try attention training with Jeremy. Focus on hisreactions to you instead of what’s going on in your own head.Keri’s advice echoes around my chest cavity. Now that I’m here, standing in front of Jeremy in the privacy of the elevator, I don’t know what to say. Or, rather, how to say it. Whatever boldness took me over to get to this place has fled.
I bite my bottom lip. I have a choice. I can flip the emergency stop switch and open the doors, pretend this never happened while slowly dying of embarrassment. Or I can push myself outof my comfort zone. Open myself up to Jeremy and see how he reacts instead of telling myself how I think he will.
I push my chin up. Force myself to look into Jeremy’s amber-flecked eyes instead of finding a spot over his shoulder to focus on. He looks down at me. The pinch between his brows releases. A small smile softens his lips.
“I ... I’ve never been good at putting thoughts or feelings into words,” I admit.
He takes a step closer, and I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact.
“The truth is—” I swallow. If I tell him the truth, that I’ve been falling in love with him from afar for years, there’s no going back. No laughing the confession off as a joke. Every time I see him, I’ll know that he knows. I’m not sure I can take the rejection. How am I supposed to act around him after that? How can I ignore the pity in his eyes or the knowing glances of everyone else in the office? How—
His warm hand cups my cheek. Like a fish on a line, he reels me back in with his steady gaze. “What’s the truth, Mackenzie?”
Focus on his reaction to you.
The tips of his fingers curl into my skin with insistent pressure. His chest rises and falls in quick succession. His eyes have a singular focus—me. Could this really mean ... could he actually...?
The truth is right in front of you.My heart beats a staccato on each word. A light turns on, chasing away the shadows that hover in the form of negative self-talk.
I grip his shirt at his waist to anchor myself. “I...” My voice wobbles. “I love you.”
I still. Wait on bated breath for his reaction.No turning back.
