DECEMBER
ON THE FIRST day of Christmas vacation, I came down with a nasty cold.
In my family, we called mid-December “catering season” because of all the orders for holiday parties. Naturally, I was helping out in the restaurant kitchen. Because that’s what a Santiago did.
But after the third time I had to step out the back door to sneeze and blow my nose, my mother fired me. “Go home,” she said. “I don’t want sickness in my kitchen. I’ll bring you soup later.”
On my way out the door, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and found a call from Bella. When I listened to the message, all she’d said was, “I have the most disgusting cold. Damned Lianne! Miss you.” Click.
I laughed. Lianne had been sick during exams, and the poor girl had been all freaked out that she was going to deliver “Romeo, O Romeo” in a frog voice. Though she’d recovered already, it was no surprise Bella and I had gotten sick next.
I called her. “Me too,” I said when she picked up. “The cold and the missing. Can I bring you some fresh-squeezed OJ?”
“Really? I thought you were working today.”
“I got the plague too. And Ma doesn’t let anyone sick work in the kitchen.”
“I knew I liked your mom. Get your cute butt down here and bring orange juice. We are going to have a movie marathon.”
“You need anything else?” I asked her. “Tissues? Cold medicine?”
“I’ve got all that. Get on the train, hot stuff. Lianne went to rehearsal, and I’m bored and lonely.” She hung up on me.
Turning around, I stuck my head back into the restaurant kitchen. “Ma? Don’t bring me soup later. I’m going to Bella’s. She’s sick, too.”
My mother frowned. “Take that girl some juice.” She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a quart of the stuff.
“What are you doing?” my cousin Pablito complained. “Takes me half an hour to juice a quart.”
He wasn’t wrong. This stuff was like liquid gold. “I’ll pay you back later. I’ll take one of your shifts.” Then I got the heck out of there.
The front of Bella’s mansion on East 78th Street was just as grand as I’d expected it to be. It had a limestone facade and arched, leaded-glass windows. I walked up five steps to a paneled oak door that had been buffed to a high sheen. There was a little button beside the door and a small black sign reading: “Please ring the bell.”
So I did.
A few seconds later the door was opened by a comfortable-looking, middle-aged Hispanic lady. “You must be Rafe.”
“Good morning, ma’am.”
She smiled and took a step backwards. “Miss Cranky is upstairs in her room. I will show you up.”
“Thank you.” I held up the bottle of juice. “I brought her some orange juice. Can I pour her a glass?”
Now she beamed. “Follow me.”
We went through a gleaming entryway, and then through a white-paneled sitting room. In the back was the most beautiful kitchen I’d ever seen in a New York City home. “Aquí están los vasos,” the housekeeper said. She opened a cabinet and brought out two juice glasses.
“Gracias.” I opened the bottle on the pristine stone countertop. “Grab another one, though, because this is really good juice. You should have some. My family makes it for our restaurant in Washington Heights.”
For a second the housekeeper just stared at me. Then her face broke open into an enormous smile. “Call me Maria. And I will try your juice.” She turned to get another glass, and I heard her mutter something in Spanish under her breath. Something like: at least one of my girls has good taste in men.
I filled three glasses. Then I lifted one toward Maria, the housekeeper. “Salud.”
She touched another glass to mine and then took a sip. “Perfecto.”
Smiling, I picked up Bella’s glass. “I’ll take this upstairs if you don’t mind.”
She pointed at a narrow doorway off the kitchen. “The back stairs are closest — just one flight up, and to your right. But I warn you, she is cranky. My Bella — always a happy child, except when she is sick. When she was a little thing, you see a grumpy look on her face? You go looking for the children’s Tylenol. That’s Bella. Not her sister — that child was unhappy for any number of reasons. But it takes a lot to make Bella miserable.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Recently, I’d seen Bella very miserable, but I wasn’t about to share that. Besides, I was pretty sure that the tide had turned.
“You look sick, too,” she said, patting my arm.
“Exams,” I explained. “Maybe we worked too hard.” Or maybe we spent a lot of time having sex instead of sleeping.
“I will bring you both soup later. Now go up to Miss Cranky.” She gave me a small shove toward the stairs.
I carried two glasses of juice up the little stairway. At the top, I turned right into a generous bedroom, where I found Bella. She sat surrounded by pillows on a queen-sized upholstered bed. Her nose was red, and she wore an oversized T-shirt that said: Huck Farvard. She was still the most beautiful girl I knew.
“Hey!” she said, pausing the TV. “You did bring me juice!”
“Of course, belleza.” I set the glasses down on the nightstand and kicked off my shoes. “Nice pad you got here.” There were gorgeous old windows that looked out over a brick patio, and a thick Oriental rug on the floor. All the upholstery was rose-colored. Comfortable, but a little girlier than I expected from Bella.
She took my hand and tugged me onto the bed. “I missed you.” She put her hands on either side of my face, but I only got a tiny peck on the lips. “I probably look disgusting.”
“No way.” I gave her a bigger kiss. “You look great. We only feel disgusting.”
“You too, huh?”
“Yeah, but I’ll survive.” I sat myself up against the headboard next to her. “Is this okay? Can I sit on your bed without breaking any rules?”
Bella snorted. “Oh, honey. They gave up on making rules for me a long time ago. My parents just went out of town anyway — to West Palm for a golf thing. My mother tried to get me to go with her, because she’s going to be bored out of her skull by a bunch of real estate people. I played the sick card, and I don’t think she blamed me at all.”
I handed her a glass of juice. “Drink up, belleza. What are we watching?”
“Let’s see…” She navigated to the Netflix menu. Then she turned to me with a little smile. “This is nice.” One of her bare feet found its way to mine. “Thank you for coming.”
It was nice. “Anytime. I feel like I’m getting away with something. The rest of my family is slaving in the kitchen, and you and I are going to watch TV all day.”
“And Maria is going to bring us food and tea.” She snuggled closer. “And I’m going to man up and check my email at some point.”
“For what?”
“Ms. Ogden was going to get back to me today about my application to nursing school. I filled everything out like she said and lined up the recommendations. But I need to get good grades in three biology courses next semester to be truly eligible. She was trying to get them to consider my application as if those classes were a done deal. She said she’d tell me today if it was going to work.”
I massaged the sole of her foot with mine. “And if it doesn’t?”
“I’ll take some post-grad classes at NYU next year and then reapply. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, but it would set me back.”
“Ah.” I drained my glass and set it aside. “Let’s watch a movie, and then you can check.”
“Okay. Deal.” She picked up the remote. “I think I feel a chick flick coming on.”
I did my best Joan Cusack. “Coffee? Tea? Me?”
Bella’s eyes widened. “I love Working Girl. And you’ve got that Staten Island accent down. Are you sure you’re not from there?”
“I thought you were a nice person.”
Bella laughed, and I pulled her a little closer to me, burying my nose in the clean scent of her hair.
Maria stuck her head in the bedroom door as our movie was ending. “I made pozole. But you have to come downstairs to eat it.”
I groaned. “I love pozole, especially when I’m not the one making it.”
“You cook?” Maria asked.
“Sure. Doesn’t everyone?”
The housekeeper sniffed. “Bella, this boy is a keeper.”
“I know,” she said, sliding off the bed. “He convinced me already.”
“Bring your phone,” I reminded Bella. “You have to check your email.”
She blew out a breath and grabbed it off the nightstand. “I’m goin’ in.”
Downstairs, Maria fixed us giant bowls of soup, thick with braised pork and hominy. “I have toppings,” the housekeeper said. She brought us a tray with chopped onions, diced avocado and a couple bottles of hot sauce.
“Wow,” I said, finding Bella’s feet under the table. “That’s it. I’m never leaving.”
But Bella didn’t listen. She was staring at her phone, and her eyes got big. “I can’t believe it.”
“What?”
“This is going to work! Ms. Ogden thinks they’ll offer me a conditional acceptance. And if I do okay on the bio coursework, I can start at the nursing school in the fall.” She smacked her phone down on the table. “You know what this means, right?”
“You’re going to spend all of next semester in a weenie bin?”
She waved a hand, dismissing that problem. “Whatever. I’ll come out for hockey games and sex. But next year? I’m at Harkness again.” She got up from her chair and moved into my lap. “How do you feel about that?” she whispered.
I slid my hand between her legs and squeezed one of her thighs. “I like that a lot.”
She clenched her thighs around my hand. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
I found Bella’s mouth with my own. The first kiss was slow and soft. But one wasn’t nearly enough. I pressed forward, parting her lips with my tongue. She tasted of orange juice and happiness.
Bella wrapped both arms around me, and the kiss went from “congratulations, honey” to “rip my clothes off” within a minute.
“I know you’re not letting my soup get cold,” came a scolding voice.
Guilty, I pulled back.
But Bella didn’t look guilty. She only smiled at me. “More on that later,” she promised.
I gave her ass one more good squeeze before she went back to her own seat.
Propped up on cushions on her big pink bed, Bella and I used up a lot of tissues, played some cards, and watched TV. We were beginning to nod off when I heard a sound at the door. I opened my eyes and saw Maria peeking in from the hallway.
She put a finger to her lips. “I didn’t mean to disturb you two. But I’m heading out for the night.”
“Thank you for lunch,” I whispered.
“Anytime, chiquito. Will you make sure that my Bella eats something for dinner? There’s more soup. Or homemade pizzas in the freezer.”
“I will.”
She winked at me and then left.
It was dark outside now, and the only light came from Bella’s muted TV. I just lay there enjoying the warmth of her body next to mine, until eventually she woke up with a gasp and a cough.
Sitting up, I handed her a glass of water.
“What time is it?” she asked eventually.
“Seven.”
“We are so lazy.”
“Eh. We’re sick. It’s allowed.” I stretched toward the lamp on her bedside table and clicked it on.
Lianne’s voice came up the stairs. “Hi honey I’m home!” She appeared a moment later. “Hey! It’s Rafe, too. Good timing! I got what you asked me for.” She lifted the handles of a shopping bag. “I’m going to put it away.” Lianne scurried off, toward the guest room I supposed.
“What did she buy for you?” Bella asked.
“Can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Um, Bella? It’s a week until Christmas. Duh.”
She poked me in the belly. “What is it?”
“Didn’t you just hear me say I wasn’t telling?”
“I can make you talk,” Bella insisted.
“No, belleza. Nobody can make me talk.”
“Okay. No sex until I know what’s in the bag.”
I laughed. “If that’s the way you want it.”
She turned to study me. Then she ran a hand from my chest to my crotch. “Goddamn it. What did I just do to myself?”
“Break it up,” Lianne said, bouncing into the room. “You two had all day to grope each other whilst I toiled in yonder salt mines.”
“You poor thing. We were busy with TV and naps,” Bella answered. “Thanks for the plague.”
“Sorry.”
“You can make it up to me if you tell me what’s in the bag.”
Lianne rolled her eyes. “I’m not telling.”
She tried me again. “Please can I open it? It’s almost Christmas.”
“It’s not wrapped,” I argued.
“Actually, it is,” Lianne said. “The store offered, so I said yes.”
“What store?” Bella asked.
“Nice try.” Lianne climbed onto the foot of the bed. “I bought some cocoa on the way home. Can we make hot chocolate?”
“Sure we can.” Bella used her toe to poke Lianne’s hip. “You know that will have calories, right?”
“Yep. But I’ve decided to make a few changes. I’m going to eat whatever I want, for starters.”
“Really.” Bella wrapped her arms around her knees and stared. “What else?”
Lianne picked at one of her perfect fingernails. “I’m going to spend time only with people I like. And stop listening to the ones who try to control me.”
Bella and I exchanged a glance. “That sounds like a good plan for anyone,” I said quietly.
“I need to stop letting people push me around,” she said. Then she looked up at Bella. “You wouldn’t put up with a quarter of the shit that I do. The next time some Hollywood asshole tries to step on me, I’m going to ask myself, ‘What would Bella do?’”
Bella snorted. “I don’t want you to take any shit from anybody, Lianne. But maybe we should find you a less notorious role model.”
“No.” Lianne shook her head. “I never take any risks, and you do. And I know they didn’t all work out the way you planned…”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Bella said.
“But you are fierce,” Lianne finished. “And I admire you.”
Bella’s mouth opened and then shut again. Pink spots appeared on each of her cheeks. “Thank you,” she said, swallowing. “Let’s go have hot chocolate. You can start your bold adventures in my kitchen.”
