Linds hangs up, and I toss my iPhone onto Andrew’s vacant pillow. The love ya is an automated response; I know it’s not rooted in any true maternal affection, but still, I cling to it. I want it to mean something.

All it means, though, is that I can’t do anything to jeopardize this money.

Two hundred thousand dollars. My mother’s debt. My debt. My future.

There’s no time for cinnamon and cloves or mistletoe.

But then I’m thinking about the kiss last night and oh—I still feel that kiss in every inch of my body. I can still feel the phantom press of her soft mouth, the sweet glide of her fingers. Because that’s the thing about Jack—her touch is always as surprisingly delicate as her wristbone, as gentle as her words when I’m panicking, as tentative as her dreams. Jack is wild horses and rainstorms and driving with your arm out the window on a warm day. But she’s also quiet moments: she’s your first mug of coffee in the morning; she’s watching that rainstorm through a window, wrapped up in your favorite blanket.

I forgot about her ability to make me feel both reckless and secure; the way her touch is like a lightning rod and a warm piece of bread.

I arch back against the headboard and let my fingers slide across my soft stomach in the place where my T-shirt has hitched up over my bare skin. And then I drop them lower, along the hem of my pajama bottoms. Past the hem. I’m careful, not sure where Andrew is or when he’s coming back, as my fingers travel over the front of cotton of my underwear. I think about Jack the first time I saw her: long fingers and knuckles and that impossibly fragile wristbone. It’s those fingers I imagine skating over my body, and my body tightly coils at the thought.

Jack the first time she smiled, a flash of white teeth pinning that quarter-moon smile in place. I press the palm of my hand down harder over my mound, releasing the quietest moan as feeling swirls in my lower belly. Jack in the Burgerville bathroom, the first time I saw her skin, the tendons of her neck and the art on her arms, telling me she would enjoy waiting. I rub myself again and again, and I whisper her name into the bedroom, just to feel that hard k sound in the back of my throat as I bring myself closer.

Jack in the snow, Jack in the Airstream, Jack in my arms. Jack—

Jack blasting “Toxic” by Britney Spears at nine in the morning?

My hand stills inside my pajamas as the opening notes of the Britney classic thump against the second-story window from somewhere outside. Only one member of the Kim-Prescott clan would blare this particular song at this particular hour of the day.