The Sweet Spot (4 page)

“I told myself not to come to you,”
Sebastian confessed behind Ani as she blindly snatched up her clothes and began to dress. “For nine months I told myself no, but then I just couldn’t find the strength to say no anymore,” Sebastian admitted quietly. “I was so strong for fifteen years A, keeping you away so you could live your life. But when I finally got out, I realized that the only thing worth being out for was you.”

“Yo
u refused parole,” Ani choked, turning around to stare at Sebastian accusingly. “I held on to hope for six years despite the fact that you refused to see me or talk to me, and then you refused parole,” she murmured in disbelief. “You refused parole, so I started dating Jordan to get back at you, and then I fell in love with him Bast. I fell in love with him and I got pregnant with Raffi and we got married,” Ani cried.

Sebastian
stared back at Ani at a loss for words.

“
Do you understand what I’m saying Bast? Do you understand that I waited all those years for you and you threw them in my face?” Ani sobbed. “The accident was only part of our tragedy Bast. Your choices afterward created the rest of it.”

Chapter Three

It was dinnertime when Ani’s cab dropped her off in front of her brownstone and she could see the shadowy outlines of her sister and daughter walking around in the kitchen.

“Mommy!”
Raffi cried out when Ani stepped inside the foyer and closed the door behind her. Ani smiled at the sight of her beautiful daughter running toward her in her plaid school uniform with her long dark hair streaming behind her.

“You never changed out of your school clothes,” she scolded, capturing Raffi in her arms for a hug.

“We just got home,” Sawyer confessed, coming up behind her niece.

“Oh yeah?”
Ani replied, dropping her keys in the dish by the door and following her daughter and sister back into the kitchen.

“We went shopping,” Sawyer admitted guiltily.

“Shopping!” Ani exclaimed in mock horror. “What about homework?” she asked teasingly.

“Oh we did that too,” Raffi assured her mother airily. “At Starbucks over smoothies,” she added with a grin.

“Now how am I supposed to compete with that?” Ani protested, poking through the takeout bags on the counter.

“You could take me to Starbucks to do homework too,” Raffi suggested impishly, snagging an eggroll from one of the bags.

“Hmmm,” Ani replied noncommittally, ruffling her daughter’s hair with affection.

“How did it go?” Sawyer asked softly as they unpacked the food and dished it out.

Ani shrugged, avoiding her sister’s eyes. “It went,” she murmured in reply.

“Are you feeling better now?” Raffi asked her mother
, as if on cue.

“The sight of your face always makes me feel better,”
Ani answered her daughter with a soft smile.

“I’m glad,” Raffi replied, pressing herself against her mother’s side and leaning her head against her shoulder.

“Is that Chinese food I smell?” a voice called out from the foyer, and a moment later, a tall good looking man with salt and pepper hair and an athletic build strode into the kitchen with a smile.

“Daddy!”
Raffi cried out, pulling away from her mother and running into her father’s arms. “Did you save any lives today?” she asked, smiling adoringly up at her neurosurgeon father.

“I
think so,” her father, Jordan, replied thoughtfully, kissing the top of his daughter’s head and gazing contentedly at Ani and Sawyer across from him. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” he laughed. “All three of my girls in the kitchen surrounded by my favorite food? What’s the occasion?” he asked, hugging his daughter and leaning forward to kiss Ani.

“
An old friend of mommy’s came by the bakery to visit her, so Aunt Sawyer took me shopping and we got Chinese food for dinner,” Raffi announced.

“Oh?” Raffi’s father replied, raising an eyebrow questioningly at his wife. “Your mother
actually has old friends from her mysterious past?” he teased, biting into an eggroll.

Ani star
ed back at her husband silently, at a loss for words and Sawyer broke in to save her.

“We even
did homework at Starbucks,” Sawyer said with a laugh. “I think I’ve ruined Raffi forever.”

“Homework at Starbucks?”
Jordan echoed, pulling his daughter against him. “I bet you have ruined her.” He stared at Ani thoughtfully over their daughter’s head. “So what was mommy’s friend like?” He asked Raffi as he piled food on his plate and broke his wooden chopsticks apart. “Was she as beautiful as mommy is?” he murmured, gazing at Ani as he directed the question to his daughter.

“It wasn’t a she,” Raffi corrected her
father. “Mommy’s friend is a boy, his name is Sebastian,” she informed him through a mouthful of fried rice.

“Don’t speak with your mouth full,” Ani scolded her daughter gently
, looking away from her husband’s probing gaze.

“
Sebastian,” Jordan repeated, filling up his pancake with shredded moo shoo chicken and dribbling sauce over it.

“He’s
a childhood friend,” Ani murmured uncomfortably, finally raising her eyes to meet Jordan’s gaze.

“Well
I’m full!” Sawyer pushed her untouched plate away from her. “I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you in the morning at the bakery right A?” she asked, meeting her sister’s eyes questioningly across the kitchen island.

“See you in the morning,” Ani echoed, staring back at her sister
as a thousand unspoken words passed between them.

Jordan watched his wife and sister
-in-law silently as they stared at each other with haunted expressions. He sighed in defeat as Sawyer stopped to kiss him good-bye on her way out, casting him her familiar apologetic smile as she hugged him good-bye. He was used to the sisters’ secrets by now, used to the heavy quiet that fell over them as they held silent conversations with their eyes. Jordan had been married to Ani for a little over nine years now, and had spent the year before that pursuing her in a whirlwind courtship. But Jordan was struck in that moment with how little he actually knew about his beautiful, guarded wife. 

In the beginning he had found her reserve alluring,
amazed that a twenty-two year old girl could have such depth, such mystery about her. He was convinced that he would tease her secrets out of her once they were married, but as he stared at the woman standing before him ten years later, he realized that he was no closer to learning her secrets now than he had been all those years ago. 

Jordan
continued to stare at Ani across the kitchen island as if memorizing the details of her face, and he was suddenly struck with a desperate yearning to gather his wife in his arms and never let her go.

“I’m done
eating, can I go watch TV?” Raffi asked, pushing her empty plate away from her.

“Yes,” Jordan murmured, not taking his eyes off of his wife.
“Ani, you know that you can trust me with anything right?” he whispered to her once Raffi left the room.

Ani nodded, blinking back the tears that had unwillingly begun to fill her eyes.

Jordan walked over to her, reaching out and pulling Ani into his arms.  He buried his face in her hair, marveling as he always did at the soft golden strands. His wife had the most amazing hair, soft and light as corn silk, and her eyes, a deep ocean blue that Jordan could lose himself in forever. Jordan felt Ani’s hot tears on his neck and wished desperately the same thing that he wished a million times since he’d first laid eyes on her. He wished he had known her his entire life. He could never figure out why, but he’d always felt that if he’d known her forever, known the girl that Ani was before she’d become the woman he’d met, that she would belong to him completely in a way that she never had.

“T
rust me with your secrets,” Jordan coaxed, trailing kisses in Ani’s hair. “There is nothing I can’t take,” he whispered tenderly against her ear. “There is nothing that will ever make me love you any less.”

Ani gasped at those last words and pulled out of Jordan’s arms as if she’d been burned.

“I can’t breathe,” she choked, doubling over and taking deep gulping breaths.

“You’re having an anxiety at
tack,” Jordan replied in resignation, switching to doctor mode as he sat Ani down on a kitchen stool. “Slow even breaths,” he coached, regulating Ani’s breathing and wondering fleetingly what it meant that his declaration of love had caused his wife to have a panic attack.

Chapter Four

“Muffins and scones are done,” Sawyer called out softly to her sister when she walked into the bakery at four-thirty the next morning. It was still pitch black outside, a cool, moonless morning with only a sprinkling of stars lighting the sky. 

“Sorry I’m la
te,” Ani offered weakly.

“I can’t believe you’re even standing
, A,” Sawyer murmured, pulling her sister into her arms. “What did you say to Jordan? Did you tell him about Sebastian?” She released her sister and searched her face with compassion-filled eyes.

“No,” Ani replied quietly. She pulled an apron on and walked over to an empty mixer in the corner of the room, pulling butter and lemons out of a bag that she set on the counter.

“What are you making?” Sawyer asked her sister curiously. They never made anything with lemons and she had already laid out all the ingredients for the day’s baking.

“Lemon bars,” Ani whispered softly in reply, keeping her eyes lowered as she measured out the flour by memory
and dumped the butter into the mixing bowl. Sawyer stared at her sister helplessly, knowing there were no words that she could say to ease her pain. 

“Remember when the coach called you at home to tell you not to bake any more l
emon bars for Bast?” Sawyer asked softly, choking on a strangled laugh that was half a cry as she joined her sister at the counter and began to squeeze the lemons for her.

“How’s Nicki?” Ani asked her sister, changing the subject and deliberately
ignoring her comment as they stood together at the counter mixing flour and butter and squeezing lemons.

“She’s good,” Sawyer replied, sliding a
jellyroll pan over to her sister to press the crust in. “A little feisty,” she added with a mischievous grin.

“Just how you like your girlfriends,” Ani grinned back at her sister, and Sawyer almost wept at the sight of the smile on her sister’s face.

“Whatever you’re feeling A, whatever you’re going through, it’s okay you know,” Sawyer said softly, reaching out for her sister’s hand. “You’re allowed to be a wreck right now.”

“I can’t talk about it, Soy,” Ani replied, pulling her hand out of her sist
er’s grasp. “If I talk about it I’ll break, and I need to be strong for Raffi.” She slid the lemon bar crust into the oven to brown and walked back over to the counter.

“Wow, we’re making lemon bars and
mum’s plum cake today?” Sawyer declared, raising her eyebrows at her sister as Ani began to pull cans of plums out of her mysterious grocery bag. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it?”

Ani held both of her middle fingers up to her sister in reply and marched over to the coffee pot on the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“
Sebastian’s smell is starting to fade from my skin,” Ani finally whispered softly, taking a gulping swallow from her hot coffee.

“You’re
lucky, I can’t get the smell of Nicki’s cooch off of my fingers to save my life!” Sawyer replied, shooting her sister a cheeky grin.

Ani choked on her coffee
and gasped as she snorted the hot liquid up her nose in a wild laugh.

“Oh Soy
, how I love you,” she cried, her voice thick with emotion.

“Of course you love me, who else would come here at
three in the morning to bake with you?” Sawyer replied with a saucy grin.

“Please, you come for all the baked goods you steal,” Ani teased back. “I think you’ve wooed your past three girlfriends with pastry from my bakery,” Ani accused.

“Hmmm, well you’d be amazed at the things I can get a girl to do for a taste of your brown-sugar cream-cheese frosting,” Sawyer replied with a devilish wink.

“Ewww, I don’t even want to know!” Ani protested
, holding up her hands to ward off any further details of her little sister’s sordid lesbian sex life.

“Remember the girl before Nicki, the blond soccer player with those amazing legs?
Well you wouldn’t believe what she was willing to do….” Sawyer teased, her voice trailing off as she made lewd gestures at her sister with her tongue.

“
Gross Sawyer! Stop! You are seriously scarring me for life,” Ani protested, closing her eyes to her sister’s antics with a laugh.

“I don’t know, I kind of want to hear more details about the blond soccer player,” a familiar
husky voice broke in from the doorway behind them. 

Ani opened her eyes to
Sebastian’s voice and stared at him helplessly as all of her resolve crumpled, and she started crossing the room to close the distance between them.

“I’ve always had a
thing for blonds,” he murmured, pulling Ani into his arms and brushing his lips against hers.

“I don’t think my soccer player was your type of blond
,” Sawyer laughed as Sebastian held Ani against his chest tightly.

“So t
rue. This is my only type of blond,” Sebastian replied softly, locking gazes with Sawyer across Ani’s head. 

“Oh
Bast,” Sawyer choked out, her eyes filling up as she gazed back at him. “We missed you so much.” She crossed the room and wrapped her arms around Sebastian and her sister. “You have no idea what it was like, those years after you went to prison,” she sobbed, finally letting out the emotions that she had been holding back since she’d walked into the bakery yesterday and seen Sebastian sitting on the floor.

“Well it was no picnic inside…”
Sebastian teased, swallowing back his own emotion as he slipped his arms around Sawyer and held her and Ani against his chest.

“It was horrible,” Sawyer cried
, soaking Ani’s back with her tears. “It was so horrible for so long,” she whispered, lost in the memories of her broken sister, her sister who had always taken care of her, who had taken over for their mother after she’d died. 

“I would watch
Ani sleep at night,” Sawyer confessed to Sebastian. “I was afraid to go to sleep because I didn’t know if she would wake up in the morning. I was so afraid that she would just give up and stop living.” Sawyer squeezed her arms around her sister and Sebastian, and they were both silent; Sebastian taking in Sawyer’s words, and Ani lost in the memories of the months after Sebastian was sent away.

“
God we need therapy,” Ani finally choked in a half-laugh, half-sob.

“
I don’t know, I think it sounds like we’re finally even,” Sebastian teased Sawyer gently. “I saved your life when you were a baby, and you saved Ani for me after I was sent away.”

“Oh my God! The Salvation Army clothes bin!” Sawyer cried, shoving Ani as her sister moaned and covered her face with her hands.

“Will I ever live that down?”
Ani laughed at the reference to the time she’d tried to sneak her three-month-old baby sister into the goodwill bin her mother had placed on the porch for the Salvation Army pick up. Fortunately for Sawyer, six-year-old Sebastian had stopped Ani when he spotted her gesturing wildly to him from her porch with Sawyer bundled in her arms in a pile of clothes.

“Soy was stinky and she cried all the time,” Ani defended herself with a muffled laugh against Sebastian’s chest.

“That wasn’t the only time she tried to do away with you either,” Sebastian teased Sawyer. “There were many other plots against you that I saved you from over the years.”

“I’m sure there were!” Sawyer exclaimed, glaring at her sister in
mock outrage.

“You know what I remember most about you?” Sebastian murmured, resting his chin on Ani’s head and breathing in her scent of lemons and butter.
“You always smelled like cookies,” he whispered to Ani. “Your own special scent of cookies. I used to search for your smell in the prison kitchen when I worked there, but I could never find it. I traded favors for cookies with the other inmates trying to find your smell. One of the guys used to get his sister to send him lemon cookies for me and I slept with them pressed against my face. They called me the cookie monster in the early years,” Sebastian laughed softly.

“What did they call you in the later years?” Sawyer asked with interest, lifting her face up to look into
Sebastian’s eyes.

“The peacekeeper…” Ani answered
for Sebastian softly, slipping her fingers beneath Sebastian’s shirt and tracing the symbols under his collarbone with her fingers.

“I didn’t earn the peacekeeper label until the very late years,”
Sebastian laughed ruefully. “Fifteen years inside a prison is a long time.”

“So what did they call you during the in
-between years?” Sawyer persisted.

“
The monk,” Ani answered for Sebastian again with a laugh, breaking the seriousness of the moment. “Because he wouldn’t suck dick.”

“Well, I can’t ar
gue with that!” Sawyer replied with a laugh. “Who would want dick after tasting cooch?”

“You two sure haven’t changed
much,” Sebastian grinned, pushing the girls off of him and playfully swatting their asses.
“So you like girls huh?” Sebastian grinned at Sawyer. “Ani was pretty sure you did when we were kids. I remember she thought you had a crush on Carmen Alvarez.”

“Oh my
God, Carmen!” Sawyer sighed nostalgically at the memory. “She was my first major crush, an eighth grader. Those big dark eyes and long silky hair, I used to lay awake at night wondering what it would be like to kiss her.”

“Did you ever find out?” Sebastian asked curiously. “I
vaguely remember her, and if I remember correctly, she got around…..” he grinned.

“Yeah she got around alright,” Sawyer pouted, “with half the guys in the school!”

“Ah, so no Carmen Alvarez for you?” Sebastian made a sympathetic face at Sawyer.

“Don’t waste your pity on her. T
rust me she’s more than made up for the loss over the years!” Ani rolled her eyes at Sawyer.

“Hmmm, I have had my share of Carmen Alvarezes,” Sawyer laughed in agreement. “Maybe that’s why I have a thing for girls with dark hair,” she mused thoughtfully.

“Don’t you girls have some baking to do?” Sebastian reminded them teasingly as he looked around the kitchen at their partially completed inventory.

Ani felt
Sebastian’s eyes on her for the rest of the morning as she and Sawyer worked side by side, mixing dough and sliding pans in and out of the ovens until the cases in the bakery were full and the orange light of dawn filled the sky outside.

“You made lemon bars,”
Sebastian whispered into Ani’s ear as he came up behind her while she was opening the front door.

“First time in fifteen years,” she whispered ba
ck, leaning her head against Sebastian’s neck.

“I’m going to put one under my pillow t
onight,” Sebastian murmured as the chime on the door tinkled and the first customer walked in.

Ani slipped behind the
bakery counter to help her customer and Sawyer slipped her apron off and grabbed her keys.

“Thanks for coming this morning Soy.” Ani called to her sister as she handed the customer her muffin and Earl Grey tea.

“Anytime A,” Sawyer murmured, huggi
ng Ani as the customer walked out the door.

Sawyer was a Sports Masseuse, and worked at an exclusive sports rehabilitation center in the afternoons, which was perfect for her dating life
– hence the blond soccer player. Her hours were flexible which allowed her to bake with Ani in the wee hours of the morning when she wanted to. The bakery was a haven for both of them, a place where they could escape the rest of the world and lose themselves in the memories of their childhood baking with their mother, Eva, who had left her family bakery behind in Ireland when she was eighteen. She  came to Boston to visit her cousin, met their father and fell in love with him and never returned home.

“
It’s nice to see you two still baking together,” Sebastian murmured softly to Sawyer, following her out the door of the bakery. “It reminds me of when Ani and I were in high school and you used to help her bake for her lemonade stand after school. It was so hard for her to bake again after your mum died Soy. Having you by her side helped her a lot.”

Sawyer stared at Sebastian
as his words washed over her. She remembered the years after her mother had died vividly. She had only been eight and Ani twelve. Their father completely disappeared into himself. He left at four-thirty a.m. to go to his garage and often didn’t come home until eight or nine, and when he walked through the door, he always had a six-pack of beer in his hand and he headed straight for the TV. As they got older and Ani became the spitting image of their mother, it only got worse, until their father literally couldn’t bear the sight of them. They were too much of a reminder of what he’d lost.

“It was a hard time for both of us,” Sawyer murmured in agreement, holding Sebastian’s gaze as she recalled their childhood together.
She had always adored Bast. He was like Robin Hood in their neighborhood. He helped old ladies carry their groceries up their front steps without being asked, and he stood up for the overweight kid who was being picked on at the playground. Sebastian never seemed to be plagued by the normal insecurities that other kids suffered from. He had a confidence about him that drew people in. Even as a teenage boy Sebastian knew who he was and he wasn’t afraid to stand up for his beliefs. He was the best person she had ever known. But she had watched her sister wait for Bast her whole life, first as a little girl, waiting for him to finally notice that she’d grown up and kiss her, and then for the six agonizing years after he had gone to prison for that horrible accident.