"I can't believe I've known you this long and I've never known how you make this stuff," Caitlin said, helping him unpack the supplies for his famous holiday white trash.
"It's not that hard," he told her. "I make tons of it. Like batches and batches. I could do it in my sleep."
"I know, and Barry eats most of it." She pulled box after box of cereal out of the grocery bag, lining them up along the counter. "Maybe you should be teaching him this recipe."
He put his arms around her from behind and kissed her ear. "Barry's not the one I just moved in with."
"Good thing, too," she said, twisting around to kiss him on the mouth. "Any more bags in the car?"
"Some," he said, and went to get them.
White trash was his holiday tradition, one of the things he'd started doing after moving out of the house so there was no family angst or drama attached to it. Unlike Christmas caroling or tamale-making or the annual screaming fight over whether he was going to Christmas Mass. (Conducted over guilt-trippy voice mails now, because even though he'd left the church ten years ago, his mama apparently still didn't know what an atheist was.) He would put on the cheesiest, poppiest Christmas music he could find and dedicate an afternoon to the project, repeating as often as necessary throughout the month of December.
Caitlin had asked to help this year. He'd said, "Sure!" because he loved her and he loved sharing things with her, so it would be fine, right?
Yes, absolutely, right, he answered himself.
It was weird, in some ways, living with Caitlin. Yeah, he was crazy about her. Had been for a long time. But, man, he had his ways, and so did she. He liked to bounce out of bed early, she liked to sleep in. He liked to have a stack of unwatched DVDs under the TV, so he knew what to pick from, and she preferred to have everything in alpha order on the shelf. ("How do you not know what you've seen and haven't seen?" "Look, I watch a lot of movies, okay!") She was kind of terrible about leaving the toothpaste cap off, and that kind of drove him crazy because then the toothpaste got all fossilized and gross in the mouth of the tube and ugh, Caitlin, how can you live like this.
They were working it out. But there were still some bumps here and there. Like their approaches to cookery.
"You're not going to measure?" she asked, slightly wild-eyed, watching him rip open bag after bag of white chocolate chips and dump them in the biggest bowl she owned.
"Nope," he said. In the background, Mariah asserted that all she wanted for Christmas was him.
"How do you know how much to put in there?"
"Instinct. I told you. I could make this in my sleep." He'd had a recipe for it when he'd first started making it, off some website or another, but over the years it had morphed into, Yeah, that looks about right.
"But what if the proportions are off?"
"Oh my god," he said. "You mean I could have too many M&Ms? Oh my god!"
"You know what I mean," she grumbled, picking up the bags and checking them. She took the pad that held her grocery list off the fridge (pen and paper? seriously? he needed to get her synced on his app), flipped to a clean page, and wrote "36 oz white chocolate chips."
"What are you doing?"
"Taking some notes."
"You're reverse-engineering my recipe."
"Just in case."
"In case I someday get a lobotomy?" he asked, popping the bowl into the microwave. "Because trust me, that's the only way I'll ever forgot how to make this."
"I don't know, just in case," she said. "Just to have it. Like, maybe I can write it down on nice notecards and put it in a nice holiday-themed tin with some of this for when you give it out as gifts."
He usually put it in Ziploc bags. If he was feeling particularly festive, he got the ones with snowmen on them.
"Well," he said. "That, uh, that sounds like a thing to do. Definitely."
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He cleared his throat. "Here. Pour me out some cereal." He plopped the second-biggest bowl she owned in front of her.
"How much?"
"Just keep pouring until I say it's enough." He watched her dig out a measuring cup and bit the inside of his cheek, because the couch was not comfortable.
She'd finally poured enough cereal, and noted down the precise amounts, when the microwave beeped. He took the bowl out and stirred the contents with a spatula to the beat of "Winter Wonderland." He frowned as the chocolate stayed lumpy, not oozing into melty smoothness the way it normally did. "Huh. I put it in for three minutes. That's usually plenty."
"You know my microwave isn't very good. Try thirty more seconds."
It took a full minute for her crappy microwave to melt the chocolate all the way. He stirred it several times to get the last few lumps out and said, "Pass me the cereal, would you?"
She watched him dump the mix of cereals into the bowl with the chocolate. "What now?"
"Peanuts and M&Ms," he told her, carefully folding the chocolate in with a spatula so the cereal didn't get too pulverized.
After she had carefully measured and added the last ingredients ("Caitlin, c'mon, the chocolate's going to harden up here!") he stirred a few more times, digging down to the bottom to get the pockets of pure melted chocolate that had eluded him so far. "Okay! Awesome! Perfect!"
"Do you have to chill it?"
"Nah, just spread it out on some wax paper."
She spread wax paper out. He used the spatula to help him pour the soft, chunky mix out onto it, working his way down the length of the table.
"Sweet!" he said when the bowl was empty. "One batch down, one million to go." He plopped the bowl on the table and ran his finger around the rim, catching an M&M and two Cheerios up in a gluey fingerful of half-solidified chocolate, and popped it in his mouth, crunching away.
She plucked the spatula out of the bowl and started to spread the white trash out.
"Hey," he said. "Hey, hey, that's all you have to do."
"Well, but this way it'll cool more evenly," she said, her brows crinkling together as she smoothed the mix out to the edges of the wax paper.
"It's okay if it doesn't," he said. "I never do."
"This can't possibly be hurting it. I'm being gentle."
"Okay," he said, lifting his hands. "Go ahead. Whatever."
"Are we making another batch? Because I think I've got it down, and I have some ideas for increased efficiency."
He thought, Ay Dios mio, you're driving me crazy, this is not supposed to be an exquisitely balanced chemistry experiment that will blow up if the slightest thing is off, it's white trash for god's sake -
Then he looked at her face, which was bright and hopeful. She had a speck of melted chocolate on her lower lip, as if she'd snuck a little bit from the bowl too. He remembered that this was Caitlin, this was exactly the way she was, and he loved her for it. Even when she was driving him crazy.
And yeah, this was his thing, but she'd asked to share it with him, just like they were trying to share their lives right now. Trying, mostly succeeding.
He said, "Sure. Yeah. Let's."
It did go faster and smoother with two people, he had to admit, not to mention Caitlin setting everything up in advance like a cooking show or something. And by the time they were done with the second batch, the first was cool enough for them to both break off big handfuls from around the edges and fall onto her - their - couch to stuff their faces.
She snuggled close, and he softened like the chocolate. She was a champion snuggler. "Thanks for not killing me," she said, nipping off a bite of candy. "I know I'm - "
"Persnickety?" he suggested.
"Precise," she said.
"We make a good team, once we get it all figured out. And it did cool faster and more evenly," he admitted. "Usually I have to wait like half an hour to get my first bite of solid candy."
She was gracious enough not to gloat.
"Why is this so perfect?" she asked him, nibbling away.
"Dunno," he said through his mouthful.
"I mean, all these things are all right - but put them together and it's just crunchy and sweet and it has all sorts of textures and flavors and - "
It was like a sonata. A crunchy, smooth, chocolatey, peanutty sonata in his mouth. This was why he ran out and bought all the supplies the day after Thanksgiving, even though he knew full well he'd never want to see another Cheerio again by Epiphany.
"It's just - " she sighed. "It's perfect. Maybe it's the combination."
He leaned over and kissed her, tasting chocolate and peanuts and cereal on her lips. "Maybe it is."
FINIS