You Give Good Love by J.J. Murray

Author:J.J. Murray [Murray, J.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2015-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

OCTOBER 20

Only 65 more shopping days until Christmas . . .

Chapter 18

Hope fell with Dylan into a comfortable but passionately frustrating weekday routine of Frosted S’Mores Pop-Tarts, Prospect Perk Café coffee, toast smothered with Crofter’s strawberry jam, and kisses; of working fast-food lunches with Kiki and art with the children; of dinners with Dylan, collecting bags of cards, and long walks to her apartment that ended with sighs, a cold platform bed covered with cat hair, and at least half a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.

Hope continued to gain weight while she waited. She conserved her calories and ambled more than walked to work each day. She did as much nothing as possible every evening, sometimes reading, sometimes sketching, but always falling asleep to the droning of the TV after a healthy ice cream high. She also ate well as she and Dylan branched out to other restaurants around Flatbush Avenue for dinner. They went to Sugarcane for jerk chicken wings and Flatbush Farm for chipotle cheddar grits and pastrami sandwiches. They ate poulet à l’estragon—smoked jerk chicken breast with goat cheese, tarragon, and honey sauce—and coconut rice and sautéed vegetables at Kaz An Nou, and gorgonzola walnut ravioli with wilted arugula in brown butter sage sauce at Alchemy.

Hope was still hungry, however, for more than food.

She was hungry for nuits humide passionnées, passionate steamy nights.

Being immersed in art d’enfant at Kinderstuff relieved some but not all of Hope’s yearnings. Hope helped the children make their masks, some scary, some fanciful, and several unintelligible animals from the land of make-believe. Aniya made two complementary masks, what Dylan called “smiling Medusas,” every snaky lock of hair on each mask a different vibrant color. Dylan finished his evil scientist by adding a huge nose, pale-green face, and short, spiked hair, and then he created his “surprise”: a fat, cheeky, winking Santa with a long flowing beard.

The Santa mask scared Hope more than the mad scientist mask did.

Because being without Dylan at night during the week made her feel exceptionally grincheux and crabby, Hope created her version of Dr. Seuss’s Grinch who stole Christmas, adding long black hair to the Grinch’s light-green, dill-pickle-like face.

This fact was not lost on Dylan once Hope nicknamed it “The Dill Pickle Who Stole Christmas.”

She then fashioned her stick figure girl complete with dreadlocks, dark glasses, and a wide frown. She named this one “Noelle.”

The resemblance to Hope in her current state of longing for Dylan was unmistakable.

This fact was also not lost on Dylan, who did his best to kiss these frowns away as often as he could.

Hope’s longings eventually led to creativity of a different sort, and she started creating Valentine’s Day and “Stick Figures” cards to give her Dylan-starved hands something constructive to do.

She found she could do many romantic things with her stick figures. She drew Dread Head Girl (“Noelle”) kissing Long-Haired Boy (“Dylan”) on the cover and wrote “Smooches” on the inside. She joined their hands on the cover and put

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