Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,126

matter. He lied. I lied. The whole relationship has been nuked from orbit.”

“Maybe you can give him another chance,” Holly suggested. “The holidays make everything heightened emotionally. You could try again in the New Year.”

“But he ruined my scholarship opportunity,” I protested. “He went behind my back.”

Lilith looked away. The panini maker sounded, and Holly scooped out the sandwiches, cut them into triangles, and set them on the little metal café table.

I picked up one of the ham-and-Swiss triangles, the cheese pulling as I took a bite.

“Can I be real?” Lilith said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad you aren’t going to California,” my twin said bluntly.

I sucked in an angry breath. “You—”

“Wait!” She held up a hand. “You’re my twin sister. We do everything together. I know that you will eventually have your own life, but I want you to have it, you know, very close to me. Like, live on the same street. I was worried that if you went to California, you would maybe meet someone or just decide to stay there. And then I might never see you again.”

“It’s not like I was going to the New World,” I said softly, “where we’re a three-month boat ride apart.”

“I know,” Lilith said, “but California is on the other side of the country.”

“It was my dream job.”

“Was it?” Holly wrinkled her nose. “Wouldn’t you have to sit in a windowless room, looking at old paintings and trying to restore them for basically no money?”

“It’s prestigious,” I argued. “It’s the Getty Museum.”

“I thought your dream was always to own your own art studio and have people pay you a ton of money to do sculptures and humongous paintings,” Holly countered.

“Sometimes you have to change your dreams,” I said.

“Or sometimes you just have to go for it!” Holly exclaimed.

“I’ve been going for it for years,” I complained.

“You had tons of great pieces at the Art Biennial,” Holly reminded me. “That’s momentum.”

“And,” Lilith add, “you’re doing a big sculpture for the Holbrooks.”

Holly nodded. “I told Owen we should do a big sculpture in here! Something interactive.”

In spite of myself, I was excited about the large sculpture. I hadn’t been looking forward to actually doing the Getty internship, just to having done it so it would look good on my resumé.

“Arguably,” Lilith went on, “you were more excited about Jonathan and Dorothy’s crackpot development scheme than you were about spending a year chained to a restoration table.”

I fumed. “I can’t believe he was using me to score Hamilton Yards.”

“Yeah, I have no excuses for that behavior,” Holly said, eating the last of the panini triangles. “But,” she continued, “if you loved him, maybe you should at least let him grovel and apologize.”

I thought about Jonathan and about how concerned he had been that I was going to leave him, how shitty his parents had acted, and how he had gone out of his way to find dresses I liked. I remembered how easy it was to be around him and how I didn’t feel on edge with him, as if I constantly had to pretend to be something I wasn’t. I remembered how he had walked into his apartment, found a cat, and immediately decided she was his baby. He was primary colors with beautiful, big, strong emotions.

Was I ready to walk away from that?

My phone dinged with an incoming text. It was a picture of Cindy Lou Who looking sad.

Jonathan: I suck, and I’m sorry. Here’s a cat showing how sad I am.

Salem nudged my hand. He probably recognized Cindy Lou.

Holly read over my shoulder. “Is that the cat you found?”

“Yeah. Jonathan kept her.”

Holly peered at the picture. “Is she wearing a sapphire collar and a fur-trimmed hat?”

“Jonathan spoils her rotten,” I said with a soft smile. “She has her own room in his house, with a closet and everything.”

Get it together, I ordered myself, though my heart wasn’t really in it.

“Are you going to go at least hear him out?” Lilith asked.

“No.” The rational part of me was back in control.

“Really? You might be able to swing a condo out of it,” Lilith wheedled. “We wouldn’t have to live in Emma’s apartment.”

“I’m not forgiving him,” the rational part of me decided, though the hopeless romantic in me was shrieking in protest.

But before I could compose the nasty message, heels clicked on the marble floor of the large atrium.

“And look at all the losers gathered here. Especially the biggest of them all,” Sarah taunted. “I told you Jonathan was mine.” My cousin smirked. “I ruined Keeley,