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“No! I don’t want to stop. I just… don’t want to, uh, keep going past that?” Carl fidgets, not quite meeting my gaze.
“I got that impression. Because this still seems casual to you or…?” I shrug, unsure how to finish the sentence.
Carl turns to fiddle with a gorgeous poinsettia sitting on a stand by the door. “It’s not that I don’t like what we’re doing. But it’s not real, right? It’s going to end when you go back to Toronto and that’s going to be hard enough without complicating things for no reason.”
Adding orgasms with someone I can’t get out of my head to our storybook holiday fling hardly seems like no reason. Something about Saint’s not-quite-shovel-talk makes me think that there’s more to this. And that Carl has probably had bad reactions in the past. I can take a no.
“Okay. Whatever you’re comfortable with. I won’t push for more than kissing.”
“You’re sure that’s enough?”
“More than enough. This is the best December I can remember. So. Ready to make sweet, sweet cookies?” I try to lighten the mood, waggling my eyebrows.
Carl laughs as he leads me to his kitchen.
He really does have all the ingredients out. Instrumental holiday music is playing softly from a speaker. His house is tastefully decorated for the season wherever I look. Holiday cards hang from neat rows of festive string twisted to look like candy canes. The cards are clipped evenly along their lengths, covering one wall of his hallway. Dozens of cards. Even if most of them are from acquaintances or work connections, that’s far more people than I can even wrap my head around adding to my personal holiday card list.
Is that really any wonder with how friendly he is? No, but it strikes me that his life is full of friends and family and mine is… well, as pristinely barren and empty as my apartment back in the city.
These past few weeks helping Mom with her craft booth and now getting to know Carl are the happiest I’ve had in years. I’m not going to do anything to upset our arrangement prematurely. So I let any deeper conversation fall by the wayside. I roll up my sleeves and set to making another holiday memory.
Carl reads out the measurements and I hand him what he needs. We laugh more than anyone ought to when I turn on the mixer too fast to incorporate the dry ingredients and the powder flies everywhere. When we roll out the dough, I feel like a kid again at the selection of cookie cutters he has for us to choose from. We make an army of gingerbread people, a forest of Christmas trees, and a galaxy of cookie stars. Along with a herd of assorted dinosaurs for good measure.
Carl’s house smells amazing as the last batch comes out of the oven and we carefully transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool. Carl regales me with stories about holidays past. We both laugh at the one time when Saint tried to make him a batch of cookies to cheer him up after a bad day. He confused the cocoa powder with instant espresso. Carl tells it with the pleasant nostalgia of a well-worn memory.
I don’t think anyone aside from my mother has ever told that sort of fond tale about me. Where you can hear how much the teller loves the subject in every syllable. It doesn’t precisely make me jealous of his bond with Saint, but I envy their closeness.
“So, the cookies came out awful, but of course I ate them anyway. Saint isn’t really one for grand gestures, but he knows I am, so he tried.” Carl finishes the story with a chuckle as he starts mixing the icing for the cookies. “Anyway, they were bitter as sin, and packed enough of a caffeine punch to keep us both up all night.”
“I’d have figured you wouldn’t need cookies for that.” I laugh at the anecdote.
Instead of laughing at my joke, the mirth leaves Carl’s face. He presses his lips into a tight line.
“That was post marriage. The only all nighters Saint was pulling those days were to study for his bar exam.”
“Oh.” Shit, that was a boneheaded thing for me to say. Obviously, his emotions about their previous relationship are complicated. I have so many questions about how they managed to stay so close after such a huge upheaval, but they’re too personal. Asking will only bring the mood down further when we’re supposed to be enjoying an evening of wholesome holiday baking. “Sorry.”
I don’t know what to say to bring back the sparkle in Carl’s eye. So I reach toward him, resting my hand palm up next to the mixer. Carl grabs it and squeezes, and it feels like absolution. He goes back to measuring out all the powdered sugar for the icing.
A puff of sugar rises from the bowl when Carl turns on the mixer. Carl yelps and slaps at the slider to slow down the paddle. He wipes the back of his hand over his face, leaving a smudge on the tip of his nose.
“Phew, that was almost a disaster.” Carl favors me with a lopsided grin.
I’m struck by the urge to kiss away the sugar on his skin. It might come close to being as sweet as he is. I tear my gaze from his face to the icing. There’s so much of it whirling around the bowl, but we’ll need it to decorate our entire assortment of gingerbread creations.
As a kid, Mom’s cookie swaps with her friends were a highlight of my holiday season. Right up there with Santa. It always seemed like magic when the trays of familiar sugar cookies Mom made had multiplied into dozens of different recipes overnight. Melt in your mouth rum balls, jewel-toned jam cookies, spritz cookies decorated like tiny wreaths, white chocolate dipped gingersnaps, and the list went on. Every festive flavor and shape imaginable spread out in a cookie breakfast buffet the morning after the party.
“Almost done. Want to grab the box of baggies by the microwave and we can mix up the colors?” Carl pulls me out of my memories of cookies past. He still looks adorable with a dusting of powdered sugar in his beard and that smudge on his nose. Fuck it.
I lean in to kiss his nose, cupping his face in my hand. He smiles sweetly at me.
“Sure. I’ll get right on that,” I say, fingers lingering on his chin.
Carl pulls me in for a proper kiss and I want to melt into his arms and forget everything but his lips on mine. I could live in the gentle caress of his tongue against mine, contrasting with the warm scrape of his bushy beard on my cheeks. His arms squeeze around me, the solid planes of his back are firm under my hands. Too bad we don’t have time to get distracted from the dozens of cookies we need to decorate for tomorrow.
“We should finish the cookies,” Carl breaks off the kiss, echoing my thoughts.
“Right.” I lick my lips, wishing I could keep tasting him instead.
