The first thing I see when I wake up is Arden’s face.
I burrow deeper into the covers, taking in all her familiar features now that her makeup has been wiped off. Sharp nose, soft lips, that small scar on her chin. Somehow she looks even more attractive without her signature eyeliner, and something about it missing makes her feel even more like, well…
My Arden.
Especially after last night and her apology. Even though it was still lacking any sort of explanation, I could feel how much she meant it.
And I can’t really hold it against her this time. I left before she could give it because, well… I was suddenly scared. Scared that I couldn’t take knowing the answer, in case it wasn’t one I wanted.
She stirs, and I try to act like I wasn’t just staring at her as her dark brown eyes slowly open, her hand reaching up to rub at the right one.
“Morning,” she grumbles.
“Morning,” I say, rolling over to grab my phone off the bedside table. I frown and sit up when I see the screen filled with notifications and tap on one from Instagram. My eyes widen when I see—
“Ten thousand follow requests?”
“Oh boy.” Arden sits up to peek over my shoulder. The two of us watch a grainy video from the bar last night that found its way onto TikTok. The song name and Arden’s little dedication at the beginning must have made it pretty easy for her fans to track me down.
I scroll through screenshots, fans shouting, ARDEN HAS A WHOLE GF with cry emojis in the comments. There’s even an article entitled “Ten Things to Know About Arden James’s New Girlfriend.” I tap on it to see that half the things are incorrect, from being down a sibling to claiming I’m an “aspiring basketball player.” But without a doubt the worst part is that my ninth-grade yearbook photo somehow makes an appearance. My heart hammers in my chest as I try to process it all.
I mean, I knew this day would come. It’s just… a lot sooner than I expected. I thought with the article that I’d be able to do it at least a little bit on my own terms.
“Holy shit,” I say, slamming my phone down on the mattress when I see someone posted two screen grabs from the very end of the song, from that moment. Arden leaning forward, my cheeks burning when I realize her eyes are focused on my lips.
It feels so strange to see it from the outside. To see how unfiltered I was and how, well, obviously into her.
I wonder if it was obvious to Arden too, or if she just thought I was getting better at pretending.
We sit there in silence for a long moment, shoulder to shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re still—” Arden starts.
“Do you want to hang out today?” I cut her off, looking over at her. “Like we used to. Without people watching. Without fake dating. Without all…” I motion to my phone. “We could make cookies and watch—”
“Love Actually,” we both say at the same time. Our favorite movie from back in the day. We must’ve watched it a hundred times, even when it wasn’t Christmastime, but I don’t think I’ve watched it since she left.
“Absolutely.” She nods. “So cookies for breakfast?”
“Cookies for breakfast.”
Arden borrows an abandoned oversized T-shirt and sweats from Levi and Miles’s old room, since all my pants would be capris on her, and we head into the hall. I peel a sticky note off my doorframe left by my mom: WE’LL TALK LATER in bold Sharpie.
My parents are at work, which puts my mom’s speech off for a few hours at least. We’re not even at the bottom step, though, before I hear Riley crunching her cereal loud enough to be heard all the way at Barnwich Brews.
“Well, well, well,” she says, leaning back in her chair as we approach. “Looks like the date went well.”
She holds out the box of Lucky Charms she’s keeping next to her for easy refills, and Arden takes a handful.
I don’t reply with my usual it wasn’t a date, because… I don’t know anymore.
Instead I head over to the pantry to get the ingredients for my dad’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. When I come back out, Arden is sitting on the counter, tossing cereal pieces into the air for Riley to catch in her mouth.
“When’s Hanukkah?” Arden asks, nodding to the menorah sitting on the windowsill.
“It starts super late this year,” Riley says, swaying left to catch another piece while I turn on the oven to preheat. “On Christmas, actually. But we’ve got the family Hanukkah party this Saturday because Grandma and Grandpa are going on a trip to celebrate their fiftieth wedding anniversary.” She munches noisily, grinning at Arden. “You should come.”
“Oh, I don’t…” She casts a quick glance at me, and I shrug.
“You can if you want.” I add brown sugar, flour, baking soda, and salt into a bowl. “I mean, no pressure, obviously.”
The doorbell rings and Riley jumps up, throwing her bowl in the sink as she bails on the awkward moment she created. “Gotta go. Hanging out at Sammy’s house today.” She’s out the door in a flash, calling goodbye to Arden (and not me) on the way.
Arden hops off the counter and tosses the rest of her handful of Lucky Charms into her mouth. “You sure it’s cool?”
“Best brisket you’ll ever have,” I say with a nod, like it isn’t as big a deal as it feels. “Besides, my grandma really liked Operation Sparrow. She watches it like once a month.”
She laughs, reaching over to crack an egg, our arms brushing lightly against one another. “Grams hated it.”
“Edie… may have better taste in movies than my grandma.”
We move like clockwork, as we have hundreds of times before. I add vanilla extract, milk, and shortening. Arden adds the dry ingredients and then dumps in a boatload of chocolate chips.
“I think it would be cool to have a little bit of Hanukkah in the article,” she says while she mixes. “Everything in Barnwich is so… Christmas. It’s kind of messed up that there isn’t anything for people who celebrate other holidays, people with other faiths.”
I look up at her, surprised that Arden clocked what I feel. What no one else seems to see. “I wish Barnwich had something for us too. I just don’t know how it would… fit. Into a town like this. I know sometimes I don’t even feel like I fit,” I admit.
“Well, you and Levi and Miles and Riley and your mom are a part of this town as much as me and Edie and your dad are. And you’re not the only Jewish people here.” She shrugs. I think of a few kids from school I know, Sarah and Heather and Jake and Zoey, the Goldbergs who live two blocks over, and the Bernsteins from caroling, just a few houses down, as she continues. “Maybe we can find a way to… I mean, maybe it’s what Barnwich needs. What’s been missing. Instead of just doing more of the same shit and expecting a different result, maybe it needs something new. More… diversity.”
I give her a long look while she grabs two spoons from the silverware drawer, holding one out to me like she didn’t just echo every single one of my secret thoughts.
“Let’s keep thinking about it. In the meantime… we obviously have to try it,” she says, gesturing to the bowl of cookie dough in front of us.
I nod and take it from her, then scoop an overflowing spoonful as she does the same. “Will your fans hate me if you get salmonella?” I ask through a mouthful. The cookie dough is sweet and smooth and delicious, the brown sugar standing out just like I remember.
“Absolutely,” she says, flicking a chocolate chip at me. “You think you’re trending now? Just wait.”
I groan and take another bite as we scoop the cookie dough onto the pan, which Arden then slides into the oven. It doesn’t take long for the kitchen to start smelling incredible, and we spend a few minutes cleaning everything up. The scent follows us down the hall to the living room, where I get the movie queued up from next to her on the couch. It’s jarring when an ad for a TV show Arden did last year pops up before it starts.
“So serious,” I say as Arden mimics the photo, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed. I push her over, and she smiles, brow softening.
“I had the biggest zit that day,” she says, pointing to her chin in the picture, where I only see smooth perfection. “Someone must’ve spent at least two hours airbrushing that baby off.”
“Too many sour gummy worms?”
Arden only got zits on her abnormally perfect skin when she ate an enormous amount of candy. Sour gummy worms were her weakness.
She looks over at me, defensive. “I got ten of the big bags for five dollars when the pharmacy by my house went out of business. Can you believe that?”
I toss the remote onto the couch as the timer dings from the other room and Arden trails after me, continuing her justification. “Were they a little stale? Sure. Did I finish two whole bags by the next morning? Definitely.”
We pile the cookies onto a plate and grab two glasses of milk, before heading back to the living room.
As we press play and settle under the same blanket, all at once I can’t decipher the past from the present. I’m suddenly fourteen again, and all I can focus on is her leg, barely an inch from mine, the plate resting between us. It takes half a dozen cookies and halfway through the movie, Hugh Grant dancing around the halls of 10 Downing Street, for me to actually be able to pay attention.
In some small way, once I lose myself in it, the movie makes me think of Barnwich again. My conversation with Arden, and what I hope this town could be. All these different stories and people intersecting. Embracing every person and every perspective, all the different celebrations that bring us together.
My train of thought is broken, though, when we start 13 Going on 30. With the plate now on the coffee table, Arden lounges close enough to my lap for her head to be lightly grazing my hand, and I force my fingertips to resist the urge to tangle in her hair.
“Ugh,” she says, handing me half of another cookie when the Seven Minutes in Heaven scene happens and Matty is pushed out of the closet. “This part always stings. He’s got the biggest crush on her!”
“It all works out in the end,” I say, and she snorts, glancing back at me.
“I guess you’re right. I mean, I had such a big crush on you back in the day. And look at us now! Instagram’s sweethearts.”
I nearly choke on the piece of cookie in my mouth. “What?” I manage to gasp out.
Arden had a crush on me? I feel lightheaded. There’s no way—
“Well,” she says with a shrug. “Maybe not a crush.”
“Oh. Okay.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes, because of course Arden didn’t have a crush on me. That would be ridiculous.
“It was more than that,” she says with a laugh, eyes shifting to focus on the TV as the piece of cookie shoots straight back down my windpipe. “I was so lovesick over you that sometimes I thought I was going to die or something. Silly, right?”
I sit there, too stunned to say anything.
Finally, she shoves the rest of her cookie into her mouth like she didn’t just completely upend my world in less than a minute, and swings her legs over the seat of the couch before I can even figure out how to reply. “I gotta go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
I watch her go, fingers curling into the blanket as I try to process what I just heard. The door Arden just opened and then slammed shut.
Could Arden actually have been lovesick over me?
I think of all those moments that meant so much to me that I was sure she didn’t even notice. Our hands brushing against one another as we lay out in the snow watching the stars, sleepovers where we’d stay up so late talking only to wake up curled into each other the next morning. That night she jumped into the lake at Jacob Klein’s party, her body pressed against me, her face so close to mine. How much I wanted to kiss her.
None of it was one-sided?
Arden was on the other side, suffering just as much as I was? Maybe wanting to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss her?
But how could she feel the same way I did and just… cut off the connection, as quickly as she stood up to go to the bathroom?
Should I tell her? Should I—
My head whips around as she comes back into the room, but her eyes are on her phone and her mouth is pulled down into a frown.
“There was a leak in the kitchen at the diner. Whole place is closed down for the rest of the afternoon. Rest of the night if it’s part of a bigger problem,” she says, hesitating by the couch, rubbing her face. “I can tell Grams is worried.” She looks toward the door. “I should go over there.”
“I can come,” I say, and she nods. The two of us get changed before we head out to her car, and just like that, once again, I’m left with more questions than answers.
The drive is short, but Arden chews her lip nervously for most of the ride.
Without thinking, I reach out and grab her hand off the center console, squeezing it. She looks over at me and gives me a small smile as our fingers lace together.
When we get there, despite Edie’s being closed, the parking lot is packed. We exchange quizzical looks until we pull into a spot and see what looks like half the town inside, mopping or carrying out furniture to dry. I can even hear the Christmas music pumping through the closed windows as Arden parks the car.
This time when we look at each other, we’re smiling. “Barnwich,” we say at the same time, laughing as we hop out and head over to find Edie.
The turnout is incredible. So much so that Tom’s even set up a little tent with a grill and is churning out burgers and hot dogs for everyone there in his usual stained white T-shirt, even though it can’t be much above thirty degrees out. Luckily there’s a hot chocolate table set up right next to him.
It feels like what I was thinking about during Love Actually, and it makes me wonder if the town would embrace something if me and Arden just tried.
We find Edie there in the middle of it all, accepting cookies and well-wishes and directing her sea of helpers. The two ladies who run the card store in town are even setting up the rest of Edie’s dust-covered Christmas decorations, Arden’s favorites, rescued from the closet. I watch Arden crane her neck to look at our wreath, now hanging proudly on the diner’s front door, before she refocuses on the task at hand.
“All good?” Arden asks, tucking Edie under her arm after Mr. Green leaves for his Santa shift, already decked out in his costume.
Edie nods, patting Arden’s side. “I mean, no, but… it will be. It’s a big repair, but the plumber said we should be back up and running tomorrow, thanks to all the help.”
“You’d let me know if you need anything. Right, Grams?” Arden asks. Edie smiles but doesn’t answer the question. We both know, though, that missing out on a day of business in an already slow peak season is no small loss. The whole town knows; that’s why they’re here.
When Edie shuffles off to help Tom at the grill, I head over with Arden to join the hot chocolate line.
“Just how slow has it been this year?” she asks.
“You were right about Barnwich,” I admit, looking out at all the people here to help, all of us fighting to keep the place going. “There has been a bit of a drop-off from the holiday crowds we used to have. I didn’t want to admit it before, but just you being here has started turning it around.”
I think of Main Street, the diner, even the bar last night. More people than Barnwich has seen in a while have been trickling in these last few days, thanks to her Instagram stories and the news articles that follow.
Arden’s about to respond but stops when we reach the front of the line, shocked to find that Ruth is the one dispensing the hot chocolate.
“Did you spit in it?” Arden jokes, as Ruth hands her a cup. I laugh, but Ruth only glowers at the two of us. Clearly she still has not gotten over the incident at Barnwich Brews. So we take our hot chocolates away quickly and lean against the vinyl siding of the diner.
Arden takes a long sip of hers, her face thoughtful. Meanwhile, my phone buzzes noisily in my hand, the entire screen lighting up with even more notifications.
“Caroline,” Arden says, grabbing ahold of my arm. When I look up, I see her face is glowing with excitement. “You work tomorrow, right?”
“Yeah, six to noon.”
“Grams won’t take money from me, but…” She holds up her phone. “What if I work your shift with you tomorrow? I could post about it today, and I bet it would drum up some business.”
I nod, catching on. “Yes! Like a ‘pancakes with Arden James’ kind of thing.”
“Exactly!” The corner of her mouth pulls up into a lopsided grin. “We should take a picture for the post.”
“We?”
“I mean, not to exploit you any further than I already am, but… we are trending. If you’re in the picture I post, people will be even more eager to come and see our relationship in person. I mean, hell, I’ll serve the paparazzi some pancakes myself if I know the money is going into Grams’s pocket.”
She has a point, but I glance down quickly at what I’m wearing. A vintage crewneck and a pair of leggings underneath an enormous puffy jacket. Nothing particularly flattering. “Can I at least go back to my house and change?”
“You look fine,” Arden says with a shrug. “Beautiful, even.” The words come out so easily, just like admitting her crush barely an hour ago, but they floor me just as much. “Besides, people will love how ‘real and natural’ the picture is. You know, ‘homegrown.’ ” She smirks. “Bianchi-style.”
For the first time since we left the bar, I can’t help but wonder again if that is all this is to her.
She steps close enough for me to feel the warmth radiating off her body and holds up her phone, Edie’s sign in the background. I lean into her and smile as she snaps a couple of photos. Still snapping, Arden turns her head to look at me, and my eyes drift to her face too.
I could just lean up, could just kiss her. A part of me wants it so badly again that it makes my bones ache.
But Arden said that she was lovesick. Not that she is now.
So, instead, I look back at the camera, and Arden does too. After a final snap she moves away, taking the warmth with her. I shiver, despite myself.
Arden notices, eyes flicking up from reviewing the photos. “I can take you back,” she says, and I nod, my head still spinning from every conversation and moment we’ve had since she picked me up last night. “No sense in the both of us freezing our butts off today.”
As we drive, I fight the urge to tell her, to shout that I felt it too. That all those years ago, I loved her. I want to ask why she didn’t tell me. Why she kept it a secret.
And, most of all, why did she never call if that was really how she felt?
It takes until she’s halfway back to her car after dropping me off at the door for me to actually say anything at all.
“Wait!” I call out, and Arden spins around to look at me with those dark brown eyes, with that face that I haven’t been able to get out of my head, out of my heart, for years.
“I…” I hesitate, the words getting caught in my throat as she walks slowly back up the porch steps. So instead of telling her how I felt, how I’m starting to think I could feel again, I pull the notepad out of my jacket pocket and hold it up. “I forgot to ask you your question last night. So I’ve got two questions for you today.”
She rests her head on the pillar of the porch while I look down at my notepad. “You really do always have that on you.”
“Yes.”
“Even when you sleep?”
“You didn’t see it? Tucked into bed last night?”
She laughs as I flip through the pages, but everything blurs together, words jumping out at me but not making any sense. Finally, I close it, letting out a long exhale as I look up at her and prepare to ask the closest thing to what I want to know. “What was the easiest part about leaving Barnwich?” I ask, easing into it.
“Chasing my dream. Seeing my parents actually happy, even if I wasn’t really a part of it.”
“And…” I steady myself. “The hardest part about leaving?”
“That’s an easy one,” she says, flashing that perfect lopsided smile of hers. “Leaving you.”
And with that, she’s gone, heading down the porch steps to her car. The engine grumbles to life, and she sets off to get back to Edie’s. I watch the blue Volvo until it fades from view, my head spinning as I slide down onto the cold pavement of the top step.
All I hear is her voice saying it over and over again.
Leaving you.
Leaving you.
Leaving you.
But all I want is to ask the same question I was scared to hear the answer to last night. The one I’m still scared to hear the answer to even now.
Then why did you?