Kiss Her Once for Me (53)
Using Taylor math, it takes seventeen listens to go about ten miles on the treacherous mountain roads, to an area with a little parking lot where other families pile out of minivans in their quest to murder a tree that will invariably leave pine needles and sap all over their homes. Or maybe I’m just in a weird, anti-Christmas mood today.
My mind is elsewhere as we trek through the woods in search of the perfect tree. I tune out as the grandmas sing Christmas songs and Katherine nitpicks about branch ratios for over an hour. When she finds a ten-foot noble fir that meets her specifications, Andrew cuts it down (with a saw), and he and Jack haul it out of the woods. Dylan shakes out a tarp in the bed of Jack’s truck, and the siblings help strap it down with twine, the tip of the tree spilling over the cab, and the stump hanging over the tailgate.
“Why don’t you ride back in the truck with me?”
I’m zoning out, so it takes me a while to realize Jack has directed this question at me. That she’s making intentional eye contact with me for the first time since the Scarf Incident.
“Wait. Me?”
Jack nods. “Yeah. Ride back with me.” This now has the essence of a command, not a request. After last night, the thought of being stuck in a truck with Jack for seventeen “?’Tis the Damn Seasons” fills me with dread, and in a panic, I turn to Andrew.
“That sounds like a great idea,” my traitorous fiancé says. “The two of you can bond.”
“I’m not a bonder,” I say. “I don’t bond.”
“You’ve bonded with me.” Andrew grins. “Besides, you’re going to be sisters soon. Might as well get in some quality girl time.”
Jack looks vaguely ill at this statement, and I’m not sure if it’s the phrase girl time or the idea of us becoming sisters that does it. Before I can argue with Jack or Andrew, the rest of the family is piling into the Lincoln, leaving me behind with her.
Her truck is just as huge as I remember. When Jack wrenches open the passenger-side door for me and the hinges creak like the playlist of another time, I sigh, resigned, and hoist myself into the cab.
“Paul Hollywood, down!” Jack grunts. The dog immediately leaps into my lap, licking my face and wagging his tail aggressively. I pet him as Jack jogs around to the driver’s side. The truck feels too small as soon as she’s inside. Shoulders and arms and thighs. A six-foot pastry chef in the body of a competitive swimmer.
She’s too close.
“Listen,” Jack says in the stern voice she uses sometimes, the one that does absolutely nothing to my blood pressure. “I’ve been thinking about this since last night. We are two queer women, and we’re going to use this drive back to the cabin to do what queer women do.”
Blood pressure: rising. “And, uh… what’s that?”
“We’re going to talk about our feelings.”
Well. That’s worse than I predicted.
“Do we have to?”
Jack nods curtly. “Yes. It seems like we’ve had some kind of miscommunication about what happened last year. Miscommunications are for the straights,” she says with self-righteous indignation. “We are going to talk this out.”
Jack starts the car. Before she pulls out of the parking lot, she begins fiddling with the aux to cue her playlist. Annie Lennox. “Walking on Broken Glass.”
I shift awkwardly in my seat as the dog curls himself into a ball on my lap. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about what happened because I’m with Andrew now?” I am not above using Andrew as a shield to protect me from this impending conversation.
Jack shoots me a look as she navigates us back to the main road. “I changed my mind. There’s not exactly a guidebook for what you’re supposed to do when your brother gets engaged to your ex”—I note she says ex, not former one-night stand—“but I think we need to clear the air between us so we can move on and start acting like…” A swallow that causes her throat to tremble. “Sisters-in-law.”
Jack isn’t wearing her glasses, but two fingers rise to the bridge of her nose to push them up out of habit. “Tell me what happened last Christmas.”
I think about snow magic and crying with my boots under my arm.
“You were married,” I say.
The truck goes silent save for Annie Lennox. When I risk a glance at Jack’s profile, her jaw is clenched and her hands are strangling the steering wheel. Until she says, finally, “What?”
“Claire.” It’s such a pretty name. Why did her wife have to have such a pretty name? “While you were in the shower, Claire came by the Airstream. Did she never tell you?”
Jack doesn’t relinquish her grasp on the wheel, but she shakes her head.
“Well, Claire came by,” I continue, and I am impressed by how measured my words are, by how well I’m feigning indifference in this moment. I guess she taught me well. “She told me the two of you had some kind of agreement, and she implied that she’d wanted you to go out and have a one-night stand. So, I left because…” Because I felt so silly for loving you too quickly.
“Because I didn’t want to be that awkward, clingy one-night stand who overstays her welcome. It was Christmas, and I figured you’d want to spend it with your wife.”
Jack is still quiet on the other side of the cab while Annie wails through the speakers. A nervous impulse tells me to fill the space. “The family hasn’t mentioned Claire at all, so I’m not sure if y’all are still together, and you spend the holidays apart, or if you’re seeing other people…. I mean, your marriage is none of my business, but—”