The Mistletoe Motive(3)
A voice from behind it says, “Delivery for Miss Gabriella Di Natale?”
I stare at it, slack-jawed. This is hundreds of dollars in flowers. Crimson roses and velvet poinsettias, cheery sprigs of pine and holly, snow-white lilies the size of dinner plates. Their cloying scent hits my nose, and a vicious sneeze doubles me over.
A warm, house-sized torso reaches past me as another sneeze wracks my body. Jonathan grips the tapered vase like it’s a twig rather than thirty pounds of floral opulence and goes straight for the note wedged inside. I’m equally curious to know who it’s from—his guess is as good as mine.
“Um, but…” The delivery person finally peeks around the bouquet. “This is for Miss Gabriella Di…” Their voice dies off in the face of Jonathan’s arctic glare. “I need a signature.”
“Does she look like she can sign?” Jonathan jerks his head toward me as I double over in another sneeze, then signs with a flourish. “Gabriella, tell them I’m not stealing your flowers.”
“He’s not. It’s fine. Thank—ah-ah-ah-CHOO.”
“Happy holidays,” Jonathan says, as he shuts the door in their face. “Last time I show up December first with a baked-good olive branch. You accuse me of poisoning you with cookies, when your boyfriend’s the one gifting you a biohazard.” He crosses the store toward the back, systematically plucking each lily from the bouquet. “Some fella you’ve got yourself.”
I double over in a sneeze that rattles my sinuses. “W-what?”
“Knows you well enough to send a holiday-themed bouquet but not well enough to make sure it’s low fragrance. Strong scents make you sneeze and trigger your headaches.”
“He’s not—Wait. How do you know that?”
“Twelve months, Miss Di Natale.” Jonathan sets the bouquet on the counter, whips open the back door to the alley, and flings a hundred dollars’ worth of lilies into the dumpster like they’re vermin.
“Twelve months what?” I ask.
After shutting the door, he strolls into the break room kitchenette where we keep a coffee pot and mugs, along with a cabinet of snacks whose shelves are divided down the middle by boundary-defining tape, like we’re feuding countries and the corner of a Triscuit box encroaching on enemy territory is cause for war.
Jonathan flicks on the water at the sink and rolls up his sleeves to his elbows, each fold of crisp, white cotton revealing two new inches of corded muscles and a dusting of dark hair. I tell myself to stop staring, but I can’t.
Besides my two best friends, who are also my roommates, the only person I spend this much time with is Jonathan Icicle-Up-His-Butt Frost, and I think it’s warping my brain—day in and day out, eight eternal hours around him. Brushing elbows as we pass each other in the store. Watching him grunt and flex all those muscles as he opens boxes and stocks shelves. Catching his eyes narrowed at me when I break the rules and plop on the floor with a tiny customer, cracking open a book to read to them.
Sometimes in those unspoken moments, things like this happen. My mind wipes away fifty-two weeks of daily squabbles and petty power battles and takes an inexplicable turn, like fixating on his forearms, staring at his hands as they slip and rub under the water. And then I start to think about other times arms flex and hands get wet. I think about fingers curling, and now his thumb’s circling a splotch of ink on his palm, and I’m thinking about his thumb circling other things and—
“Twelve months.” His voice thunder-cracks through the air, and I straighten like lightning just zapped my spine. “Fifty-two weeks. Six days a week. Eight hours each day. Two thousand four hundred and ninety-six hours.” Eyes on his task, he flicks off the water, frees a paper towel from the stand with a vicious rip, then dries his hands. “Believe it or not, I’ve picked up a few things along the way.”
Steeling myself, I fold my arms across my chest. “I see. ‘Keep your friends close, your enemies closer.’ Isn’t that the saying?”
Jonathan glances up and meets my eyes, his gaze speaking some cryptic language that I don’t.
I hate that feeling. It’s old and familiar, and it never fails to scrape open the scab of my social struggles. I’m a neurodivergent girl in a neurotypical world, and my autistic brain doesn’t read people the way Jonathan Tactical-Mastermind Frost’s does. It’s one of the very first things that made me dislike him: I can feel his cunning, his cold, calculating mind. He has what I don’t, he sees what I can’t, and he wields those weapons ruthlessly. It’s exactly why the Baileys hired him.
Because he’s everything I’m not.
And in my worst moments, that makes me feel like I’m not enough.
I wanted to be everything the Baileys needed when Mrs. Bailey retired from managing and they promoted me. The Baileys wanted that, too. They love me. They love how I love the bookshop. And their bottom line would certainly be healthier with only one manager in this day and age that’s swiftly killing independent bookstores.
But after my first year solo, seeing I was drowning in the deluge of managerial tasks, the Baileys sat me down over tea and said it was too much to ask of one person—I deserved a co-manager.
So Jonathan was hired, exactly one year ago today. Bursting with holiday excitement, I walked in, only to see him chumming it up with Mr. Bailey, a rosy pink in Mrs. Bailey’s cheeks as he said something that made her smile. I’d been usurped. It hit me like a snowball to the solar plexus.