“What?” I glanced at the window. All I could see was white and then more white. “Are you insane?”
“No. There’s a small market store less than a block away. I think just in case the caterers don’t show tomorrow, then we’ll need to go get a few things. They probably won’t have any whole turkeys for sale…but maybe some turkey breasts or something.”
“Yikes.” Chinese sounded better than that. “Fine. I’ve got nothing else better to do.”
So John and I bundled up from head to toe in all of our parent’s old skiing gear. We each had a full body snowsuit on, goggles, hats, boots, gloves, scarves—the works. Heath, who turned out of be relatively normal just as John had described, although still not someone I would ever consider dating, decided to come with us. After he was properly dressed too, the three of us rode the elevator down to the lobby. Then we waddled out into the cold. The snow was so high, it took the three of us almost a half hour to walk one block down the street. By the time we walked into the market store, I was sweating like it was summer, somewhere underneath layer after layer.
“We can only bring back what we can carry. So what sort of things do you want to eat tomorrow?” John asked us.
“Pumpkin Pie,” Heath said, rubbing his belly. “I could live on Pumpkin Pie.”
“O…kay,” John replied, shooting me a look. “And you Sydney?”
At that moment my phone rang. It was only my mom. She wanted us to get more wine from the store. “There goes my arm space,” I muttered, hanging up. “I guess I’m in charge of wine. The lushes back at the house are demanding it.”
“You get the wine then. Heath, you get the pumpkin pie ingredients. I’ll see what they have in the meat section. Maybe find some sweat potatoes…or stuffing? I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.” John disappeared off in one direction and Heath went in the other direction. That left me, the eighteen year old, to go choose wine. Splendid.
The alcohol section took up half of the entire store. And even though it was kind of picked over, they had a decent selection. Or at least I think that they did. I knew nothing about wine, not that anyone back home would even be sober enough to care what I picked. There was a man in a big puffy coat and hat also trying to make a selection. I thought about asking him for help, but he seemed pretty deep in thought trying to decide between two different bottles. So I decided to go with whatever was the most expensive. Seemed like a good enough approach.
I grabbed something—yikes, one-hundred dollars for wine?—off the shelf.
“Sydney?”
The bottle of red slipped out of my hand and hit the tile floor. Red wine and glass splattered in every direction, all over my boots, my pants, and even on the other person. The man in the puffy coat was Rhett. I hadn’t even recognized him under all his layers. But I recognized his voice instantly.
“What…what are you doing here?” I choked out, looking up at him. I hadn’t heard from him in three days and now suddenly he was here. In the wine section? I’d never seen him in winter clothes before. Seeing him from behind I hadn’t even known it was him.
He set one of the bottles he held back on the shelf. “I was on my way to come see you. I figured I couldn’t show up empty handed. So I stopped here. Wine seemed like a good ‘meet the parents’ gift. Well, actually, that’s not the full truth. I was kind of killing time…trying to decide if I even wanted to show up.”
My heart went through a rollercoaster ride of emotions. Saying he was on his way to see me—I was thrilled and ecstatic and ready to grab his face and kiss him. Then he said he wasn’t sure and I didn’t know what to think. “Oh,” I muttered. “Okay.”
“The flights out here were complete shit. I spent the last few days just trying to book a flight and then when I finally got one I had to transfer in Chicago and Boston. With the holiday and the snow, everything was a mess—the airport was a mess. Thank God they have an underground subway system in the city or I never would have made it this far. And I’ve lying my ass off to all of our friends, acting depressed as hell over us. And the thing is, I don’t know if it’s an act or if it’s real.” He set the other bottle down, groaning, stepping through the wine mess at his feet, coming a little closer to me. His eyes were so sincere and intense and trying so hard to read something from me. “You’re my girlfriend,” he stressed. “At least, for a moment, that’s how it felt. And I missed my girlfriend.”
He said this with so much conviction that my heart kind of stopped and the world stood still.
“Your brother might hate me, but in time he’ll see that I’m genuine. Because I would never do anything to fuck this up. So if there’s any chance that you might feel otherwise…then I don’t see why…I don’t see why we aren’t together.”
There were so many things I wanted to say to him. But I couldn’t contain my emotions or my excitement, and I wrapped my arms around the back of his neck, pulling his body in closer to mine, and I slammed my lips to his. I was a little rough and a little desperate, but he didn’t seem to mind as he kissed me back. He tasted and felt exactly like I remembered. It was the most comforting thing on Earth being able to touch him and hold him again. We had too many layers of coats and scarves and whatnot between us, but he held me tight like we were naked.
Big tears were rolling down my cheeks. I couldn’t help it. I was so blissfully happy. When it came to Ben, for so long I’d thought I’d been in love with him, but the truth was I knew nothing about love. This was love. What I felt with Rhett was love.
“You’re gonna have to pay for that. You know that, right?” came a voice, interrupting us.
I broke away from Rhett to see a man with a mop staring at us. He was the store manager and he didn’t look happy. “Okay,” I muttered, wiping at my face. Why did I have to drop the most expensive bottle ever? “I can’t believe you took three different planes to get here just for me,” I whispered to Rhett.
He shrugged. “It wasn’t a big deal.”
“It is to me. And I’m good with the whole girlfriend thing.”
Rhett smiled. And then he really started to smile. He pressed a quick kiss to my lips, taking my hand and tugging me away from the giant mess so the man with the mop could clean. “You look like an adorable snow bunny in that outfit. It’s killing me.”
The mop man shot us a very disgusted look.
“We’d better go find my brother,” I suggested, pulling Rhett off in one direction.
“You break it, you bought it,” the man shouted after us.
Jeez. “I know,” I shouted back, as Rhett and I hurried away from him as fast as possible. We were rounding the corner when I ran smack into my brother. His arms were filled with various food items, no rhyme or reason to them. He looked at me and then he looked at Rhett. I waited for the insults to come flying out of his mouth. But, surprisingly, they didn’t.
“Okay then,” John said. “If you’re going to be here then you can carry all this.” He shoved everything into Rhett’s arms. Rhett quickly moved to balance the items as best he could. One stray orange—an orange?—went rolling off into the unknown despite his efforts.
“Look,” Rhett said to him. “I know you don’t care much for me but—”
“We really don’t need to discuss this,” John said, immediately cutting him off. “Frankly, I’m sick of talking about you. If you’re here, you’re here. Whatever.”
“Well, can I at least say I’m sorry about Shelley? If it helps, it didn’t mean anything to me.”
I slapped my hand to my head. Shelley was the last person Rhett should have brought up at this moment. John wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t fighting or screaming or bitching. Just let it go, Rhett.
“It doesn’t help,” John grunted. “So…yeah.”
“Fine,” Rhett said, dropping the Shelley thing. “What are you making?” he asked, checking out the ingredients in his arms. “Chicken stew?”