Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,107

were dressed in their New Jersey best. My uncle was wearing a black track suit, while my aunt had stuffed herself into a leopard-print dress and wobbly high heels. Jonathan’s mom looked as if she was going to have an aneurism.

“First up,” Anastasia said, “is Sarah to present her dish. The rest of you can go to the greenroom.”

“No,” Dr. Diane Frost said loudly.

“Uh, no?” Anastasia repeated.

“You’ve wasted quite enough of our time already. Go on, Jonathan, tell them how busy we are. We simply cannot sit through three rounds of dessert. We’ll do them all at once or not at all.”

“Okay, uh—”

Anastasia shot Dana Holbrook a questioning look. Dana waved her hand, and a larger round table was procured. Jonathan’s dad pulled out the chair for his wife. We all set our desserts on at the table and took our seats.

“What an interesting confection,” Anu remarked as Sarah’s cake was placed in the center of the table. She had made strawberry cheesecake, which, to me, didn’t say Christmas.

“This is my grandmother’s recipe,” Sarah began, handing out strawberry coctails.

“No it’s not,” Lilith piped up. “I saw how much cream cheese you put in there—or didn’t put in. Mimi liked to go overboard on her desserts.”

“Did she?” Diane said, turning up her nose.

“You know,” Jonathan’s dad said, “as a world-renowned surgeon, I always tell my patients not to eat sugary foods. All of this”—he gestured at the spread—“will kill you.”

“Then that’s exactly how I want to die!” Dorothy declared loudly, slicing off a giant piece of cheesecake. She took a bite then spat it out.

Nick barked out a laugh.

“Yeah, that’s no good. What is that? It tastes like boiled milk,” Dorothy said, wiping her mouth.

“It’s heart healthy,” Sarah retorted, snatching the piece away from Dorothy.

“Heart healthy my ass! It’s Christmas!” Dorothy insisted and took a swig of her drink. “If I want to eat my weight in cheesecake, goddamn it, I’m gonna do it! Besides,” she continued, “I run a naked yoga retreat. If you’re out there exercising in the cold, you would be shocked at how many calories you burn off. You need some cheesecake after all that.”

“Morticia, you allow this behavior from your…I’m sorry, what is the relationship between you two?” Diane asked, lip curled, as she pointed between me and Dorothy.

“I’m her sex guru,” Dorothy said matter-of-factly before I could answer.

Jonathan snickered.

“It’s not funny,” his father admonished. “Honestly, why can’t you just grow up? You’re in your twenties. By the time I was your age, I already had my MD and my own surgical practice. Yet here you are, wasting your life on cooking shows.”

Jonathan’s mouth was a thin line. He looked unhappy. If I had been a well-bred, well-behaved young lady, I would have fretted about walking the line between not offending his parents and saying something nice about Jonathan to pump up his ego a bit. But luckily, I was not a well-behaved woman.

The production assistants plunked my wreath down on the table. I reached out and grabbed a hunk of ooey, gooey fried dough and took a noisy bite. Jonathan’s mom winced.

“Yep,” I drawled. “Jonathan’s totally wasting his life away. What with all the billions and the alcohol and the soaking-wet panties women are throwing at him.” I took a bite of the thumbprint cookie. Damn, I made a good cookie! “I bet you’re super jealous of him, huh?”

“Hardly,” his father spat. “He gets paid to do nothing. He’s not doing anything of value.”

Jonathan seemed nervous. But men like his father didn’t scare me.

“I bet you work a lot harder than him. But it takes skill to turn a small business into a billion-dollar enterprise in a couple of years. He might make it look easy because he’s young and hot as fuck.”

Dorothy cheered around her own handful of fried dough.

“To any outsider, it’s clear that you’re putting your son down because you wish you had his life.”

“I don’t want his life,” his father snarled, slamming his hands down on the table. “I want him to act according to my standards.”

“Good thing for him he’s not,” I said, grabbing another handful of doughballs. “Because from where I’m sitting, if you want him to act anything like you, the world can do without it.”

58

Jonathan

My father glared at Morticia. I was tense, thinking he’d better not go after her. Instead he grabbed his coat. My mom stood up.

“You need to shape up if you want to continue to be a part of the Frost family,” he warned