27. Cookies and Blood

                                    

                                          
Everything starts off quite tame. She's on one side of the table and Seth and I are on the other. There's silence but for the sweet jazz of Christmas carols floating around us. Sam is painting her cookies and then slapping them together to make sandwiches. I can tell Seth is itching to say something but he holds it in. Truth is, she's going through the icing so fast that there won't be enough for all the cookies.
I can feel Seth glancing in my direction every few seconds and I wonder what he's thinking. Does he think I'm judging his life? Hating his mom? Aching for tonight to end? I shoot him a reassuring smile, hoping he understands that the only feeling I'm experiencing right now is fascination... and maybe a little bit of frustration that she stumbled in here and popped the warm Christmas spirit that had been drifting around us.
I want to go back to his arms around me, the music and swaying, the timeless embraces. Instead, my eyes keep flicking from my cookie to the woman across from me, waiting for her to pass out. She's barely holding herself upright. Her body is slumped over her cookie, a lazy arm reaching her knife into the icing and sloppily slamming it onto her cookie.
A grin tugs my lips and I glance at Seth. His eyes are on his mom too, but there's no humor on his face. Instead, I see shame? Disbelief? Almost like he's seeing her for the first time from another person's perspective. He wants to know how I view her and apparently, the way he thinks I see her is absolutely revolting.
Sliding a hand beneath the table, I find his thigh and give it an encouraging squeeze. His eyes drop to his lap, watching the action before lifting to meet mine. A grateful smile tilts his lips as he looks at me and then he nods. It's subtle, but it's his way of telling me he understand how this all must seem to me and he appreciates my willingness to just go with it. At least, that's how I interpret the nod.
He drops his hand to his lap, giving my hand one quick squeeze before returning to his task of making the most outrageous Christmas tree known to man. I'm not sure if he's aiming for ugly, but the blobs of green and red, piles of sprinkles and strips of icing—meant to be strung lights—prove that his creativity is limited to movie-making only.
"Don't judge," he mutters, not glancing up from his work of art.
"I mean... how could I not?"
He chuckles, eyes sliding sideways to look at my sweater-shaped cookie. "Yours looks like the ugly sweater you wore to the party."
"Good," I clap, "that's exactly what I was going for!"
He tilts his head sideways, lips pinched to the side as he lifts a single shoulder. "Looks like you nailed it."
"This will be the only time you'll get away with calling my creations 'ugly' by the way," I tell him, mixing blue and red icing to make a dark purple.
"Not the only ugly thing here," a raspy voice mutters beneath alcohol-tainted breath.
"Maybe cookie decorating is your calling," Seth says, smoothly ignoring his mom's insult. I, on the other hand, am having a hard time holding my amusement behind my lips. I know her comment was directed at me but something about the way it was delivered was perfectly offensive. This will probably be the only moment in history where she's managed to earn a smidge of respect from me.
"You think?" I ask, picking up my cookie and giving it a once-over before setting it on the tray of finished cookies.
Noting the red is almost gone, I reach for the bowl to start mixing up a new batch when something snaps across my fingers. I glance down to find Sam watching me, her butter knife hovering over my fingers where she's just slapped it across my knuckles. I jerk my hand away, waving it in the air to diminish the sting.