Peppermint Kiss Read online

  It had been approximately eight thousand years since Meg had an other-things-a-thon. Being an aspiring actress meant moving around a lot, weird schedules, and the ability to dash off to an audition at a moment’s notice. That wasn’t exactly conducive to keeping a girlfriend. And she was a little bit worried about her ability to manage one anyway. It wasn’t as though she were spoiled with good examples, and her only serious relationship had left her with major abandonment issues.

  Meg couldn’t stomach getting in the car again tonight. Tomorrow. She’d go tomorrow. She went to the thermostat and turned the heat back up, then searched through the garage for a few thick pieces of cardboard she could tape up over the window she broke. And now she really regretted breaking it, since she realized that she couldn’t actually leave tomorrow after all. She had to replace the window before she went. Leaving a broken window and an unsecured (and now unwatched) house behind wasn’t exactly going to put her in her parents’ good books.

  As she gathered up the broken glass, Meg felt distinctly melancholy and pathetic. She was still wearing her hat and coat, so she put her mittens back on. Then she locked the door behind her, hoped no actual, non-imaginary burglars would notice the broken back window, and went for a walk.

  In a perfectly thematic moment of chance, it started to snow while she was wandering through the back roads of town. Meg didn’t pay much attention to where she was going or how long she walked. All she could think about was the fact that her life right now was so far up in the air it was practically sharing orbit with the International Space Station.

  Meg dug in her pocket for one of the new kinds of peppermint candies she was addicted to. These ones were shaped like little bows made of peppermint white chocolate. It was always fun to discover new candies in her favorite flavor this time of year, but she couldn’t help feeling sad that she didn’t have anybody to share them with.

  In a perfect world, she’d be curled up in front of a crackling fire, wearing matching handknit Christmas socks and sharing a blanket with her gorgeous imaginary girlfriend. They would kiss under the mistletoe, which would of course be hung over the couch, and drink peppermint mochas from their perfectly curated but cute ceramic mug collection.

  That was a depressing thought. Meg looked up into the flat gray sky. Snow fell in big, soft flakes all around her. It muffled the world and made everything silent, especially out here where there wasn’t much noise to begin with. But in the silence, a thin little sound reached Meg’s ears.

  It was a squeak. Or a cry? She came to a halt and listened.

  Yes, a tiny, high-pitched cry that came in long bursts followed by the occasional short one. And it sounded like it was coming from several paces down the road, near that mailbox.

  Meg approached cautiously. The squeaky sound grew louder, and she could hear now that it sounded a little echoey. Was it actually coming from the mailbox?

  She stopped in front of it, pulled the door down, and peered inside.

  Shivering in the dark was a black and white kitten.

  Meg gaped at it. Then she gathered it up into her hands. It squirmed weakly and she cupped her mittens around it; the kitten was hardly bigger than a softball. She unzipped her coat and hurriedly nestled the kitten close to her skin and then zipped it up again. Cradling the little bump the kitten made in her coat, Meg looked up the long, snow-sprinkled dirt driveway behind the mailbox.

  It couldn’t possibly belong to them? They sure as hell better not have put their kitten in a mailbox, she thought with a burning anger springing up inside her. Well, either way, the kitten needed to get warm fast, and probably ought to see a vet. She couldn’t risk walking all the way back home with the heat not even back up yet. This house would have to suffice. She jogged up the driveway, trying not to jostle the kitten any more than she had to.

  The kitten inside her coat protested loudly, mewing his concerns with all the energy he had left, and Meg headed up the driveway. The house came into view: an elegant old farmhouse with a big roped-off area in the yard where a few dozen spruce trees were set up. Meg lifted her eyebrows. She vaguely remembered a few of the times they went to pick out a Christmas tree when she was a kid, but she’d never be able to say where. Maybe this was it.

  “Hopefully they haven’t gone on a surprise cruise,” Meg muttered. The dim lights she could see in the windows gave her some hope. She climbed up the steps to the door at the side of the porch and pressed the doorbell.

  A few moments later the door opened, and suddenly Meg forgot all about the shivering kitten in her coat.

  She stared. It took several seconds for her eyes and her brain to come into alignment with each other again, and when they did, she still couldn’t make sense of this.

  “...Tia?”

  Chapter Three

  Tia

  What.

  The.

  Fuck.

  Tia almost slammed the door in Meg’s face, but she reined in that knee-jerk impulse just in time. The last person she ever expected, that she ever wanted to see, had just shown up on her doorstep—her new, already-weird doorstep—a week before Christmas. Tia could practically hear the universe laughing at her.

  Once upon a time, in another lifetime it felt like, Meg Bartlett broke Tia’s heart. All those trust issues that had ruined her relationship with Dani? They were Meg’s fault. After that terrible night, Tia and Meg went back to the university they both attended and never spoke to each other again.

  And now, out of the blue, here she was. The ghost of Christmas past, Tia’s mind helpfully supplied. Not funny, she thought back.

  Meg looked a little different now, the way years would do to anyone. Her face was a little less round than it was in college when she was still holding onto a little bit of baby fat. She was wearing makeup that was much more skillfully applied than she used to. But Tia would’ve recognized her anywhere...

  Because she was still the most beautiful woman Tia had ever met.

  “Meg?” Tia asked softly. Then she shook her head and steeled her voice. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  Meg just kept staring. There were snowflakes caught in her hair and accumulating on her knit hat and the shoulders of her coat. Then a pathetic squeaking sound came from somewhere in the area of Meg’s chest and Tia tilted her head in confusion.

  “Kitten!” Meg burst out. “I mean, I found a kitten. In your mailbox. Or, I guess it’s your mailbox? The one at the end of the driveway?” She gestured behind her.

  “Yeah, that’s my mailbox,” Tia responded slowly. “You found a kitten in it?”

  Meg rubbed her hand over the small lump in her coat. “Yeah, it was freezing and crying. I thought...I should get it somewhere warm.” She looked completely dazed and more than a little embarrassed.

  Tia didn’t meet Meg’s eyes. She just looked down at the mewing bundle and gritted her teeth. There was a very short list of things that could have compelled Tia to invite Meg inside her house, and apparently preventing the death of a tiny helpless kitten was on that list. Tia made an irritated sound at herself.

  “You’d better get inside,” Tia said flatly and moved out of the way. Meg stepped in past her and Tia shut the door. “I’ll get a towel.”

  How did Meg still smell exactly the same as she remembered? The thought bounced around in Tia’s mind, which felt hot and claustrophobic. In college, Meg always used peppermint lotion and shampoo. Scents have an uncanny way of taking you back, and that was yet another reason the holiday season made Tia cringe: everywhere she went, she smelled Meg. Now the scent was mingled with the sharp, indescribable smell of snow.

  Tia headed around the corner to the linen closet and came back a few moments later with a fluffy blue towel and a hot water bottle. Meg was still standing awkwardly near the door, and when Tia returned she unzipped her coat and lifted the kitten out.

  Tia gathered it up in the towel. “Oh, wow, it’s really young.” The kitten squeaked while Tia gently rubbed it dry. “Too young to be away
from its mom.”

  “That’s what I thought too,” Meg said nervously. She kept shooting wary glances at Tia, like she was bracing for a blow. Tia wasn’t sure whether that pleased her or not. “We should probably take it to a vet, right?”

  Tia frowned, still examining the kitten. It didn’t look hurt anywhere, but it was shivering badly and was probably starved and dehydrated. “Yeah.” She peered up at Meg. “Where are you staying? Close by?”

  The implied “Can you walk home?” was clear, but then Meg did what she always did. She gave Tia the sad puppy face.

  It shot to Tia’s heart like a barbed arrow. Meg’s full lips pressed together with emotion and her eyes widened hopefully. Her cheeks were still pink with winter cold. The memory of how soft and silky Meg’s lips were—and certain other situations when Meg was flushed—sent chills up Tia’s spine. Intense yearning jerked at her heart.

  Less than five minutes had passed, and she already wanted to kiss Meg so badly.

  That face had gotten Meg out of gallons of trouble over the college years they were together. It had never been serious trouble, not until the end, and then no amount of sad puppy faces would’ve worked. But every time Meg had a harebrained idea that Tia objected to, or did something ridiculous that Tia had to get her out of, she made that face...and Tia forgave her.

  Well, that wasn’t happening anymore. But just giving her a ride home didn’t equal forgiving her.

  “I’ll drop you off.”

  To her dismay, Meg’s eyes got bigger and the intensity of the puppy face went up a few notches. “But I was the one who found him!” she said. “I have to come with you.”

  Tia’s eyes went heavenward. “Fine! Come on then.” She handed the towel-wrapped kitten back to Meg and led the way back outside, then to the garage where her car was parked.

  The emergency vet was one town over, the roads weren’t great, and it was starting to snow pretty hard...and that made for one hell of a tense car ride. What exactly did you say in this situation? “So, Meg, how’ve you been doing since you broke my heart and ruined me for other relationships by cheating on me with your TA?”

  Nope. Uncomfortable silence it was, then.

  Every so often, Meg would coo something comforting to the kitten, who wasn’t crying as much as before. Tia wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign, but at least it sounded less desperate and pathetic. She and Meg didn’t exchange any words at all until they got to the vet.

  “I’ll pay for the visit,” Meg said as they walked through the door. Tia made a disapproving sound.

  “We’ll split it,” she said. “It was my mailbox, after all.”

  They checked in and soon someone came to bring them into an exam room. The kitten had burrowed deeply into the towel and it started squeaking up a storm when the vet tech lifted it out to examine it.

  “Who do you think left it in your mailbox?” Meg asked quietly while the kitten got weighed and checked for everything from fleas to hypothermia.

  Tia shook her head. “I have no idea. There aren’t all that many people who live out near me and I can’t imagine anyone would abandon a cat like that. But I guess if somebody was going to do it, and they didn’t want the kitten to die, they might go far out of town and leave it where they thought somebody might find it.”

  Meg’s face scrunched up in indignation. “I guess that’s better than dropping it off in a snowbank, but only marginally.” She looked down at the kitten, which the tech had put back into the towel so it wouldn’t squirm away. Her eyes softened. “Poor little guy.”

  “Little guy or little girl?” Tia asked, looking to the tech for confirmation.

  “This kitten’s a boy. He seems healthy other than being so cold and wet,” the tech said. “He must’ve not been in the mailbox long. He’s about four weeks old. We’ll keep him wrapped up in the towel on a warming bed for a little while until his body gets back to temperature. What are you planning on doing with him?”

  Tia blinked at her, then looked at Meg, who had the same expression on her face. Even though it was a logical question, neither of them had been expecting it.

  “Uhh...” Tia drew the word out to fill the space. She purposefully avoided Meg’s eyes, because she knew that the sad puppy look would be right back where it was before. If Meg was only visiting town—and Tia was pretty sure she would’ve heard about it if Meg was still living here—she probably couldn’t just take the kitten home herself.

  Luckily, the vet tech rescued Tia before she had to make a decision. “We have a list of fosterers who take kittens in all the time. They raise them until they’re old enough to be adopted through shelters.”

  “Oh, really?” Tia asked, relieved. She looked over at the kitten, who was now snuggled back in the towel on a heated cat bed. He was so tiny and sweet and helpless, and she wouldn’t want him to just get thrown into a cage or something.

  “With the snow, though,” the tech mused, “I’m a little worried nobody will be able to come get him tonight. Wet kitten food might be enough, but at this age, he could’ve still been nursing for most of his nourishment. And that means he’d need feeding every couple of hours.”

  “You could foster him!” Meg broke in suddenly, and Tia whirled to stare at her. She knew that look too: it wasn’t the sad puppy face, but instead it was the “I’ve just had the best idea in the world and I know you’re going to love it” face.

  “Meg, I don’t...” Tia smiled nervously and shot a look at the vet. The look of relief on the woman’s face didn’t ease Tia’s sense of conflict.

  “That way we can be sure he’s safe,” Meg urged.

  “We have supplies we give to fosterers,” the vet tech offered, smiling.

  Tia held back a groan and massaged her temple. Everything was getting way out of control. Her quiet, solitary night was turning into the opposite of that.

  And every time she looked at Meg’s hopeful eyes, something thrummed in her heart that she hadn’t felt since the day they parted. It was just as strong and all-consuming as it had always been.

  For four years of her life, Meg was Tia’s dream girl. Meg moved here with her parents the summer before college, and when Tia and Meg met during orientation, both of them were delighted to find somebody from the same town. They had an instant rapport and a bond that formed itself almost without even trying. Their chemistry was through the roof, and they were inseparable from that moment onward.

  Tia admired and pined after the popular, charismatic Meg for two semesters before their friendship turned into an intense love affair. Everything Tia felt for Meg was in high gear at all times, nothing lukewarm or done by halves. She’d never been so in love, and it soaked into every aspect of her life. She had been so sure that Meg felt the same way too.

  But she’d been wrong.

  “There won’t be anybody here tonight to bottle feed him?” Tia asked the tech.

  “Our staff is pretty thin at night,” the tech began, but Meg interrupted her.

  “And he’ll be staying in a cage here. We could take him home, Tia, and bottle feeding a kitten is easy!”

  Tia turned to Meg and stared her full in the face. “We?”

  At that, Meg recoiled a little and bit her lip. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I meant you could.”

  Tia’s face started to heat up. She wasn’t even remotely qualified for this. And now Meg wanted her to say yes like she always did when they were together?

  She and Meg couldn’t ever be like they used to be. The days were over when they could fall into an easy, perfect routine and know what the other was going to say before she said it. Sure, it had been as simple as breathing when they met, but that was then. Things were different now. Tia was different now.

  But she still wanted it. She still missed what they had and craved it, and now with Meg suddenly here, it was agony.

  It was agony because of the stupid, mutinous hope that pushed its way out of her subconscious and made her say, before she could even think, “Okay.”
>
  Meg’s eyes went wide and her face lit up with a big, effortless smile. “Really?” she asked, but before Tia could think twice about it, Meg turned to the vet tech. “We’ll take whatever supplies you think we need. Can you give us a quick refresher about bottle-feeding?”

  Tia followed along in bewilderment while the vet showed them how to feed the kitten and packed up some litter and jars of kitten milk replacement. Refresher? Had Meg done this before?

  She and Meg were presented with a small carrying box with the kitten inside, nestled in the same towel and partially asleep. The vet instructed them to come back if the kitten showed any concerning signs. They split the bill and then there they were, in the car again, with the kitten on Meg’s lap but in a carrier this time.

  Meg chattered away on the drive home, trying to make sure Tia knew exactly how bottle-feeding worked. To Tia it seemed like the situation was getting more and more unreal by the second.

  “Now, remember, you have to make sure you’re holding the kitten at the right angle, because otherwise—”

  “Meg!” Tia broke in, more sharply than she meant to. Meg shut her mouth and looked over at her with raised eyebrows. Tia sighed and ran her hands up and down the steering wheel restlessly. “How can you...just...” She made a helpless gesture. “We haven’t seen each other in almost twenty years. Jesus. We haven’t even said hi.”

  Meg was silent for a moment. “Hi,” she said then, softly.

  Tia sighed and dropped her shoulders. “Hi. What I mean is, we can’t just pick up where we left off. Especially not where we left off.”

  Meg looked down into her lap, and then, to Tia’s surprise, she gave a bitter little laugh. “No,” she said, “we can’t, because we never really did ‘leave off,’ did we?” She turned her face away and watched the snowy trees go by the car’s window. “I didn’t know you were still living here, let alone in that particular house. You can just drop me off at my parents’ house and we can pretend we never crossed paths.”