Page 23 of Spicy or Sweet (Wintermore #2)

NOELLE

“Howshitgonwarinwishay?”

I stare at my brother, simultaneously disgusted and confused.

“Hell, Felix, maybe try swallowing before talking,” my dad chides, pinging him in the ear.

We don’t usually do family dinners on Wednesdays, and this one was purely accidental. Shay and I have a day off tomorrow—she’s going to visit Nico and is going to be working all weekend to make up for it, so I figured I may as well take the same day off.

Today was draining, but productive. We spent the day prepping and freezing pretty much everything we could, and we’re so far ahead of schedule that we could probably take this upcoming weekend off, too, if we wanted to.

I had planned to spend my night lazing around watching TV, but Felix asked if anyone was free to help unpack the first Christmas delivery for The Enchanted Workshop, and I figured I had nothing better to do.

Neither, it seemed, did my parents, Rora, or my uncle Henry, who wore Sunny in a baby carrier and almost succeeded in stopping her from putting tinsel in her mouth.

Baby girl is already as Christmas-obsessed as the rest of us.

Between the Stanley-Whittens, Abigail, and her brother Quinn, we had everything unpacked and stored away by dinnertime, and my dad promised everyone his famous chili and margaritas as a thank you. No one ever says no to my dad’s margaritas.

Felix finishes chewing his cornbread and swallows. “I said, how is it going working with Shay?”

Just the mention of her name has my cheeks heating. “It’s going fine,” I say, trying to be as vague as possible. “Better than I expected.”

“Shay’s so nice,” Abigail says with a warm smile.

“It’s good to see her a bit more involved with the community,” my mom chimes in. “And I imagine you both have a lot to learn from each other in the kitchen. What’s she like?”

“She’s pretty fun, actually. And she’s great at what she does. Messy, though. A little loud, but she has good taste in music, at least. She loves ABBA. And she has a cute cat—Croissant.”

My mom gasps. “I love ABBA! You know, maybe I should ask her to go for coffee or something. I think we could be good friends.”

Yes, because that’s exactly what Shay needs: more friends. Granted, she probably could do with a few more friends in town, but I’d really rather my mom wasn’t one of them.

“You know, Mom, I’m not sure that would work well, the two of you,” I stammer, and my mom pouts.

“How come?”

“Um… Well…”

Rora snorts, and I look over to see her nudging my uncle Henry. “Told you so.”

He sighs. “You did, sugar.”

However Rora has figured it out, and I’m not surprised because she always does, I would prefer it didn’t become a topic of conversation at the dinner table.

My parents are both looking between me and Rora, confused, but everyone else seems clued in.

“It’s not that I don’t think you and Shay would get along, Mom, it’s just that she’s so busy right now with the baking, you know? But I’ll mention that you’re interested in getting coffee,” I say as diplomatically as I can.

This placates my mom, and Rora does me a favor when she immediately changes the subject, asking my parents if they still have a specific photo album from a trip we all took with Rora’s parents when we were kids.

My mom ropes my dad into helping her check the attic because she’s scared of spiders, and the second they leave, Rora leans forward.

“How long?”

“How long since what?” I ask, feigning ignorance.

“Come on, Noelle, we all know you’re sleeping with Shay.”

I hold up my hands. “Says who? None of you knows that for sure.”

A throat clears, and I turn to look at Quinn, whose cheeks are pink. “Actually, I saw you the other night. You really should consider closing your blinds.”

Well, then.

“Thank you, Quinn. Great advice,” I say through gritted teeth.

“Fine, yes. We’ve been sleeping together since last week, but it’s just sex.

Nothing else.” There are skeptical faces all around the table, so I continue.

“She wants to keep things casual. Apparently, she wants to be friends with me. And anyway, I think she’s caught up on the age gap. ”

I sound… bitter. It’s not a good look, but I can’t pretend to be happy about it. And I don’t want to talk about it. Not here, in front of everyone, anyway.

“It’s all good. Things are fine. Hey, at least we’re getting along, right?”

I change the subject, asking Quinn and Abigail about their parents instead. Their dad is sick, and a sick parent trumps a situationship conversation-wise.

I sit back and let everyone else talk, fading into the background, thinking about Shay. She didn’t seem enthusiastic about visiting Nico tomorrow. I wanted to invite her for dinner, wanted to show her how family can feel. But that’s not casual.

As the night wears on, everyone filters out of the kitchen—Felix takes Abigail out back to show her my dad’s new garden swing, Quinn sits with my mom and dad to watch the new episode of some crime show they like, Rora and Uncle Henry take Sunny upstairs to change her since she spilled milk all over herself during dinner.

I get started on the dishes. There’s something soothing about the repetition of a job like this. I complain about having constant dishes to do at work, but clearing up after a meal my dad made for us, a meal we shared as a family, feels like a privilege.

“Hey. You okay?”

I look over my shoulder to find Rora, my uncle Henry, and Sunny.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I dry my hands on a towel and turn to face them fully.

“We thought you might want this,” Uncle Henry says, passing a wriggling Sunny over. “I’ll get the dishes.”

My niece soothes me immediately; she has the little polar bear blanket she carries everywhere clutched in her hand.

I take a seat at the table and hold her close to me, running my hand over the soft peach fuzz covering her head.

She grins at me, a toothless smile that feels a lot like staring directly at the sun.

“I needed this. Thank you,” I say, smiling as Rora takes a seat opposite me. “I don’t know what I’m going to do when she’s too big to cuddle like this. You’re going to have to give me another one.”

She rolls her eyes. “We’re working on it.”

“What happened to the three of you going traveling when Sunny’s six months?” I ask, raising my brows. I’m not surprised they’re trying to have another baby, but I am happy it means they’ll probably stick around a little longer.

“I don’t want Sunny to be an only child. We’ll travel once she has a sibling—we don’t want to wait too long.” She nods toward my uncle Henry and whispers, “Old.”

“I heard that, sugar.”

Rora shrugs it off. “You were supposed to. I’ve got to keep you on your toes. Speaking of old… You want to talk about this situation with Shay?”

I snort, surprising a hiccup out of Sunny. “What a segue. Honestly, there’s not much to say. I really like her, but that doesn’t mean much if she just wants to be friends who sleep together.”

“Have you considered, I don’t know… communicating a little?” Rora asks, raising a brow.

Communication: a novel concept. It’s a nice idea, in theory, but communicating how I feel and what I want means risking Shay telling me she doesn’t want the same.

And right now, I’m not sure I could handle that.

It’s stupid and masochistic, but I’m finding it hard to care about that when keeping my mouth shut means I have at least a little part of her.

“Do you think it’s your age that’s stopping her wanting more?” Rora prods when I say nothing.

I shrug. “I think that’s part of it. And yes, I know I should talk to her about all of this. I will. Eventually.”

Shay is more complex than I think I even realize.

Between her strained relationship with her brother, her deep-rooted trauma about Georgie, and her spending almost two decades married to someone she wasn’t in love with purely for convenience’s sake, it’s a lot to unpack.

And it’s a lot to ask her to unpack, considering it’s only been a week since I kissed her.

“Well, the age gap part we can maybe help you with,” Rora reasons.

“Don’t get me wrong, we’re in a great place,” she says, nodding between her and Uncle Henry, “but it’s not easy.

You have completely different life experiences—you grew up in different eras.

Not to mention, you have to plan for a future where you’ll be at different stages at times.

And you have to think about how it feels from Shay’s point of view, too.

She probably feels pretty shaken for being attracted to someone so much younger—right? ”

She directs the question to my uncle Henry, who sets the last plate in the drying rack and turns around.

“Oh yeah, it’s a lot to grapple with. It took me a while to believe that Rora could even be interested in me.

You might just have to give Shay time and keep showing her that you are.

But also, be ready for what happens after.

We’re lucky. No one in our lives cares about the age gap, but you’ve seen what happens when we leave Wintermore.

How often do people mistake me for Rora’s dad?

Sunny’s grandpa? I imagine the comments would be ten times worse for a woman, considering society’s shitty double standards. ”

“I guess I hadn’t thought about what it must be like day to day,” I admit.

For me, it was stranger that Rora was dating my uncle than Rora dating someone so much older than her.

We laugh and joke whenever someone mistakes her for his daughter—they look nothing alike—but I hadn’t considered the toll that might take.

“Don’t get us wrong; we wouldn’t change a thing about this,” Rora says as he leans down and kisses the top of her head, “but we came into this knowing we had a solid family foundation, and we were both ready for a big change in our lives. I don’t know a lot about Shay, but I know she and Nico aren’t close, and I know she doesn’t have a lot of people here.

I’m guessing there’s some baggage there. ”

“Oh yeah. There’s a lot of baggage,” I confirm. It feels wrong to tell them about any of the things Shay and I have spoken about. They’re not secrets—Georgie, her ex-husband, those things are public record, but I get the feeling Shay’s not usually as open about them as she has been with me.

“So, what, I just take it slow, hint to her that I want more, and hope she picks up on it?”

“That’s what I’d do. For now, anyway,” my uncle Henry says. “Y’all are going to be spending a whole hell of a lot of time together over the next few weeks. Use it. Get to know each other better and slowly build on things.”

“Patience isn’t my strongest attribute,” I admit. It’s an understatement, and they both know it, but neither of them calls me on it, and I appreciate that. “But I can try. Shay is worth trying for.”

“And other than Shay, you’re doing alright?” Rora asks, her gaze scrutinizing.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You just haven’t seemed… happy, since you opened the bakery,” she says, seeing through me as always.

“I’m just tired. It’s a lot of work.”

“I know, and you’re killing it,” Rora says, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “I’m just saying, it’s okay if the thing you’ve always dreamed about isn’t all you thought it would be.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I lie, knowing she won’t buy it. If my uncle Henry weren’t here, she’d probably push me further, but she just hums.

“Well, you’ve been happier this week. I assume that’s the orgasms.”

“Jesus Christ,” Uncle Henry says, shaking his head and pushing back from the table while Rora snorts, and I cover Sunny’s tiny ears.