Chapter 1
Doing one of the dumbest things she thought possible for a grown woman, Dawn steeled herself to set the box of cookies down on the doorstep. This crazy idea came about after midnight and two rather fine glasses of white wine. Now, in the sobering cold gray light of a December dawn, she realized that for a variety of reasons, this was a bad idea. None the least of which was what they’d say at school.
She didn’t even know if Jeff was home during Winter Break. Plus, what if coyotes were to discover the box first? Dawn could almost picture Jeff’s face looking down at his porch littered with nothing but festive bits of wrapping paper and unidentifiable crumbs, wearing what she imagined was not an expression of amusement. She’d never ever seen him unhappy, and the thought of now being the person to cause him distress made her stomach churn. When it came to Jeff, she found that all she wanted was to be someone (the someone) who made him smile.
Dawn knew there were a dozen other reasons she shouldn’t being doing this goofy good deed, but none of that mattered now. The box was in place, and in a little while somebody, or some thing, would find it.
Jeff and Dawn had been quietly flirting with one another for quite some time, or at least that’s what Dawn was pretty sure they were doing. She had watched him interact with other women at school and tried to decipher from his mannerisms if he was treating them differently. It certainly did seem as though he reserved a special smile and body language for her, but she didn’t want to be wrong. Now that she was parked on his street, about to deliver a box of cookies she’d spent baking in the middle of the night, she really didn’t want to find out that she’d read too much into it. She even hesitated to write her name on the top of the box. But being home all alone with wine, old holiday DVDs and a pantry full of baking supplies brought about the plot to get an answer, once and for all.
It had been a long time since someone had affected her the way Jeff did. Dawn had had boyfriends in the past, but the biggest missing piece always seemed to be an understanding of how she loved her job, just as much (maybe more) as they did theirs. She was passionate about the elementary school where she had worked in the front office for the last dozen years. From the students to their parents, and everyone on the staff, she adored them and spoke of them often. But the men in her life never wanted to hear it. In fact, most of them were cold and dismissive. Silver Springs had the largest part of her heart and all she’d ever wanted was to be with someone who understood that, even a little bit.
She thought maybe Jeff might be different, only partly because he was a substitute teacher who seemed as enthusiastic about his job as she did hers. Whenever his services were needed, Dawn’s heart would race as she punched in Jeff’s number into the phone and having to be the one to ask him to cover a class for that day, or longer (secretly wishing for slightly longer illnesses or vacation travel delays on her colleagues).
Jeff was the kind of man Dawn’s mother would’ve called “Dark Irish”, with his black hair flecked with gray at the temples, mossy green eyes and cheeks flushed red from Southern California’s Santana winds that blew blustery cold in the winter and oven-like in the autumn. When he walked through the school doors toward the front desk where Dawn sat, she would stop whatever she was doing, making sure her posture and position were picture perfect, in the hopes of leaving a lasting impression as Jeff walked past her toward the Principal’s office to where the staff storage cubbies were.
On days when Jeff had to work with the lower grades, he would rush into the staff lounge at noon as though he was hungry for grown-up conversation even more than the brown bag lunch he brought. Because of that, Dawn always kept her purse on the chair next to her when he was on the schedule in order to save a seat and a conveniently extra cookie or brownie for him. So far, nobody was on to her yet. Not even Jeff. And he always sat next to her.
One afternoon, Jeff mentioned that his favorite cookies were ones his aunt used to make. He smiled wide and spoke dreamily about “June’s maple-oatmeal cookies, chock full of peanut butter chips!” While others absentmindedly nodded acknowledgement, Dawn was happily filing the information away in the growing “Things-to-Know-About-Jeff” catalog in her mind.
Because of the errant gray hair she found in the mirror now and again, she knew she was too old to fantasize like some schoolgirl writing “Mrs. Dawn So-and-So” in her notebooks, but Jeff made her stomach flutter with the almost forgotten butterflies of young love. It was that exact feeling in her stomach that made her climb out of bed at midnight, open a good bottle of pinot grigio and plug in her mixer. The cookies took approximately two glasses of wine and one pass of “While You Were Sleeping” playing in the background to make and bake. Before she could question her logic or admit that her judgment was perhaps clouded by the grauburgunder grapes that made her wine, she’d already decorated a shoe box with leftover scraps of holiday wrapping paper. Even the box wasn’t sure with the body covered in snowmen and the lid in reindeer.
Hours later, just before the sun came up, she slipped out of the house and placed the still warm, sweet-smelling box next to her in the passenger seat of her car. She felt only slightly guilty that she knew Jeff’s address because it was in his contact information in her work computer, but he’d also told everyone his house was easy to find on Grandiflores Dr. because of the water feature he’d installed. Pulling up in front of his driveway, she smiled at the sight of the bubbler water fountain with seven iron birds lined up on the top.
Getting out of the car, Dawn shivered in her pajamas and oversized wool coat and glanced down at her crimson ballet slippers. She realized she was terribly underdressed but wondered what the appropriate attire for a secret sunrise delivery of baked items would have been anyway. She had no good answer but knew that hours earlier (while the blush of the wine was still hot on her cheeks) she was willing to risk her pride and a wicked head cold for this unusual gesture, wearing little more than pjs in the 30 degree weather. Now, standing on the frigid porch steps of Jeff’s home, she was cold and not feeling so brave anymore, and just wanted to get the heck out of there.
Turning around as fast as possible to make her way back to her car, Dawn suddenly froze – not from cold, but from the sound of a creaking door.“Dawn? Dawn?!”Jeff whispered her name in the dark and for a moment she chuckled, thinking how he might not be calling out to her at all, but simply greeting the new day by its proper name.
Lips pursed in embarrassment, Dawn turned around to face the dark shadow in the doorway that sounded like a very sleepy, but somehow still cheerful Jeff. “Dawn? Is that you?” She nodded. “Yup. Jeez. Yes. That would be me standing here in my red slippers to match my equally red face.”
A deep, throaty laugh emerged from the dark. Jeff switched on the overhead light to illuminate him in his UCSC Banana Slug t-shirt and plaid pajama pants. He motioned to her saying, “Well, come in out of the cold, why don’t you?” Dawn marveled at how even standing under the stark light of a porch bulb, Jeff was still a beautiful man.
Putting her hands over her eyes, she replied, “Oh, I was just … uhm. I was going …”A normally chatty Dawn found herself tongue-tied with absolutely nothing to say to the only person she found she really ever wanted to talk to.
Jeff leaned over and picked up the shoebox from his doormat and said, “The smell from this box tells me that I might need to make a pot of coffee, Dawn. And I really think you should join me.”
Remembering that she was wearing only cotton pajamas under her heavy wool coat, Dawn realized she would be faced with the decision of “Coat on or coat off?” if she went inside. “Oh, Jeff. Thank you for the offer, but I’m afraid I – well, I ….”
Jeff stepped down from the porch and reached for Dawn’s hand. and pulled her close to him. Grinning and biting his lower lip mischievously, he put his arm around her waist and leaned close enough for her to feel the warmth from his cheeks. “Dawn, I haven’t had someone on my doorstep in the wee hours of the morning since I was a teenager. So, between the baked goods and your sweet smile – I kinda feel like a kid again, the one with a crush on the girl from school.”
No longer feeling the cold, only the warmth of Jeff’s body next to hers and the box of cookies between them, Dawn gave in. “Okay. But really, I-I …
Jeff leaned down and gently kissed Dawn on each cheek, then her nose and then pressed his warm forehead against her cold one. She sighed and he lifted her chin up and began kissing her lips gently between his next statements. “C’mon... We can start now… roll into popcorn and movies… and stay up late.” He paused for a moment, then pulled her close and kissed her until the sun revealed itself in the sky, bathing them both in golden light. Pushing the door open with his foot, he chuckled and motioned for Dawn to go inside. “I mean, after all… we don’t have school tomorrow.”
Dawn blushed and walked in, wondering what in the world the girls at school would think.
