The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

make friends, how to talk when it felt too scary, but some days were better than others.  My goal was to get her feeling so at ease in day care that starting kindergarten next year would be a breeze.  It would be a good thing!

“We better get home,” I told her, starting to peel away.  “Those cookies won’t bake themselves, you know.”  Tessa let go entirely to clap her hands.  I wasn’t much of a baker—anything of a baker—but she appreciated even the worst offerings that I produced in their faltering oven.  She made me laugh and feel a whole lot better about the incident with my sister-in-law.  What did I care what Kristi thought, anyway?  So what if I hadn’t made much progress on my business?  I wasn’t in a race, except to stay financially solvent.  Oh, gravy, now I felt bad again.  “Let’s go!” I urged Tessa, and we skipped to the car.

“Are they as good as Daddy’s?” I asked her when the cookies were done.  I watched her chew on one and her little jaws seemed to be working awfully hard to grind that sucker up.

Tessa took a big gulp from her milk cup before answering.  “They’re good, Gaby!”  She held up her treat for me to try.  “Do you like them?”

I took a tiny, tiny nibble with only my lips, more like just a taste.  I certainly couldn’t be eating cookies right now, not when the summer was coming fast and with it, bikini season and the final decisions for the Woodsman squad.  We were down to only ten trainees for five available spots (Kennedy, the veteran, hadn’t been cut due to a strenuous diet which led to the loss of the extra weight in her butt that had made Addison so happy).  As far as I could tell from the math of that, I had an ok chance of making it.  Maybe.  Yes, definitely, I told myself, and pushed away the rock-hard cookie.

“They’re delicious,” I agreed with Tessa, but they were really nothing like the baked goods that she and Ben usually made together on the weekends when I didn’t see them.

Actually, I rarely saw Ben anymore.  I hadn’t for a long time, when I thought about it, and I had been thinking about this topic a lot.  I meant, I laid eyes on him, of course!  He came into the house, said hello, took Tessa, and immediately left.  He went into the living room if I was in the bedroom, or the kitchen if I was in the living room, and one time he even stood out in the yard with her since I was walking around cleaning up. I got the message loud and clear: he didn’t want to hang out with me.  That was fine.  Odd, maybe, since we’d had such a lovely conversation a few weeks before after my bad dinner at my mom’s house.  That was when he’d told me that he had called me because he’d wanted to hear my voice, but now, obviously, he really didn’t.  I tried not to let my feelings be hurt by that, but it was very hard to keep up my smile when he would practically run to get away from me.

Tessa and I both caught the sound of the truck in the driveway.  “Daddy!  I’ll bring him a cookie,” she said excitedly, and grabbed one of the hockey pucks we’d cooked up as she streaked out of the kitchen.  It was later in the afternoon than I’d thought, and I quickly turned to the sink to clear our mess so that I could hurry out before I felt too sad that he was avoiding me.  I could hear Tessa telling Ben to take a big bite, but he wasn’t as much a fan of my sweets output as she was.  I’d seen the brownies from last week hidden under paper towel in the garbage.  Unsurprisingly, they didn’t come back into the kitchen, and I finished the clean-up alone as quickly as I could.

“Bye,” I yelled, and hurried out the front door.  It didn’t feel bad, I told myself.  There was no reason at all that Ben and I would have any kind of a relationship beyond simple salutations like that.  “Relationship” wasn’t even the right word for it—we just had an association, really.  Employer/employee, hello/goodbye.  That was all I was after, for sure.

No, I wasn’t upset, even if I was presently using some of the tissue from the box I kept in my car.  Maybe I was in a bit of a mood, I admitted to myself, and crumpled another Kleenex in my fist.  It was just that usually, I felt so excited in the spring because it meant that summer was near.  That had always been my favorite time, full of beach days and parties and fun with my friends, maybe even an interesting summer crush.  I thought fondly of coming home after my freshman year of college and falling head over heels in love with Mr. Gaines who owned the fishing boat charter service around the corner from where I was waitressing.  He’d had so many interesting stories about his tour of duty in the Korean War…

Anyway, summer also meant no more classes, which had been a relief since school had never been my forte.  I’d always worked, of course, but summer days were so long in northern Michigan.  There was time for everything, everything warm and exciting and fun.  But this year, the summer seemed...well, I would just go ahead and say it.  It seemed really, really not something I was looking forward to, which was harsh, but honest.  There were the final Woodsmen squad cuts, for one thing.  For another, I hadn’t seen my most of my friends in a long time and we probably wouldn’t be hanging out together, since I bet they’d moved on and mostly forgotten me in all their fun.  And I certainly didn’t want a crush.  No way.

But while I was thinking of