Page 9 of Pining for You

He doesn’t answer, but something about his look to his sister must be signaling an affirmative, because she nods.

“Lead the way,” she says.

We approach the tractor, and I try to manage my face so I don’t give the impression that this is the best thing to happen to me since Little Debbie introduced Christmas Tree Cakes ice cream. I pause before taking the first step, and instinctively turn to offer her a hand, which she looks down at before looking back at me. And now I’m sweating because is that so weird? But I can’t exactly take back the gesture, so I just wait in agony.

“Thanks,” she says finally, and I exhale. She’s wearing fingerless gloves, and has a birthmark that looks like a tiny fleck of chocolate. Like the ones I always have from the bakery.

“Oh, and I’m Eve. And this is Hugo,” she says, before she takes the step up.

“Bennie,” I say. “Bennie Bosley. Nice to meet you. Both of you.”

As she puts her hand in mine, I feel her skin, which is somehow softer than room temperature butter, and as warm as a batch of fresh biscuits, and she squeezes my hand ever so slightly, and it’s enough to send a whoosh of warmth from my toes to my cheeks. I am so hyperaware of myself and oh my god, it’s like I’m feeling everything everywhere all at once—excitement, anxiousness, curiosity, nausea, amplified by 1843.

What I’m not feeling, though, is my phone buzzing in my pocket from the messages my friends are frantically sending me.

And that is because my phone isn’t in my pocket at all.

3

The last weekend before Christmas is always anything but peaceful, but this year it feels like record crowds. There are no seats for three together on the tractor, so Eve and Hugo ride separately from me while I try to practice some kind of grace with the children sparring their Squishmallows across my lap. At least they’re a distraction from spiraling over what to say to this girl next.

I look out at the farm. From a distance, it’s an orderly grid of green, rows of trees dusted with frost. That heady pine scent hangs in the air, and behind us, the barn—all aglow with white lights even in the daytime—grows smaller as we make our way into the fields.

I chew my lip and recite bakery recipes in my head on a loop: 240 grams of flour, 65 grams of sugar, 5 grams of baking soda… For some people, a mantra is about inner peace. Mine is about pastries. What can I say? Sugar gives me comfort.

When we finally arrive, I find Eve and Hugo waiting for me to catch up.

“Wow,” Eve says, looking around at the rows of meticulously manicured Douglas, Fraser, and balsam firs and Norway and Colorado blue spruce. Couples and families surround us, carrying freshly harvested trees back to the tractor stop, pausing to take in the scenery. Hugo’s eyes are wider than Tiny Tim’s when the goose hits the table. “Kind of amazing,” she adds.

“Yeah, we think so,” I say, and even though this little part of our world isn’t my doing like the bakery, I feel a pang of pride in the farm.

“So,” she says, turning back to me now. “Did your mom, like, give you a tree registry or something, or you’re just winging it?”

“Ha! A tree registry would be brilliant. We should totally offer that to customers here,” I say. “But no, actually my best friend Diya—the one with the cider—she already picked him out.”

“Him?”

“Marley,” I say, grinning at the reference. “Diya always names the trees. Guess she’s in her Dickens era too this season.”

“This place is a trip,” she says, which I decide to take as a good thing. “Lead the way.”

“Right! He should be”—I pause, mentally recalling and reviewing Diya’s map—“this way.”

As we start down an aisle of spruces, Marla—one of the many Coopers who run the farm—appears, pushing a cart piled high with fresh-cut trees. “Morning, Bosley!” she says, and I return the salutation, feeling very important. When she passes by, she leaves tracks in the shallow snow from a little squall this week, and we have to hop a little to navigate around them.

“So,” I say, “are you also in this tree-taco family business? That sounds kind of amazing too.”

She gives a little shrug. “Occasionally I help out. But no. Mostly I work at a Mexican bakery—the oldest in Brooklyn, where we live.”

Bakery? Brooklyn? These are two important buzzwords in my life: The Cooper bakery is my present, and if all goes according to plan, Brooklyn is my future. It’s a plan that, granted, needs a little work at the moment, but still…

Suddenly, I’m even more intimidated. What can I possibly say to impress or relate to a girl who already lives there?

So I focus on the more familiar part of what we have in common—my comfort zone.

“No way!” I say. “I work in a bakery too. The one here at the farm.”

“You know, I kind of had a hunch,” Eve says, nodding toward my head.