Oreos for Breakfast: Chapter 28

Oreos For Breakfast: Chapter 35
By the Paperbag Princess and Pumpkin Coach

"Girlies!" I cried, opening my arms as they came running towards me. Katie might be fourteen already, but she still ran to see her favorite aunt.

I hugged one girl in each arm and looked over their heads to smile at Mom and Vanessa. Mom gave me a kiss and I let the girls go to hug Vanessa.

"Good trip?" I asked them, and everyone laughed, looking at Katie. "What?"

"Some college guy tried to pick me up," she admitted, looking a little grossed out and a little thrilled at the same time.

I threw my arm around her, steering her towards the exit. "Ah, I remember when I was fourteen and some older man tried to hit on me."

"When was this, Rachel?" Mom said, making me laugh.

"It was the cousin of one of Jon's friends. Jon smacked him around a little. Don't worry, he took care of me. I can only imagine what he would do to someone who hit on Katie."

"Kill them," Vanessa said. "So we're not telling him, or he'll try to get a list of all the passengers on the train or something so that he can hunt the guy down."

"There he is," Colleen said, pointing to a nice enough looking guy walking with his parents.

"He's cute," I said, checking him out. "Too young for me, though."

"He's nineteen," Colleen offered. Obviously she'd been paying attention. "Nick's twenty-two."

I snickered, holding open the door for them. "And look where that got me. I'm going for older men now."

"How old is Be?" Colleen asked, stopping the flow of traffic to look up at me.

"Only thirty. Don't worry. He's not ancient. But he did loan me the limo," I said, motioning to the car waiting for us.

That was ours, right? Lots of limos outside Penn Station at Christmas time.

Everyone just looked at me, as Steve, the driver, popped out to greet us. "Ms. Connor," he said, coming over to me. "This must be your mother. I see where you get your good looks."

Mom laughed. "I get that a lot, dear."

"Mom, Steve," I said, doing quick introductions as Steve started piling their bags in the trunk. "Van, Mom, get to know him, because he's spending the afternoon with you."

"But we're going to-"

"Shop," Vanessa finished Mom's sentence. "And this lovely man is going to gather our packages, isn't he?"

Steve smiled at her. "Your wish is my command. First I'm taking you to lunch with Mr. Lawson and Jessa, then anywhere you want to go in the city."

Mom and Vanessa actually did a little dance of joy. Shopping in New York was great, but after you got a couple of bags of stuff, it became a bitch to lug them around. Last weekend, Ben and I had shopped, and we'd call Steve once we had a bunch of bags and he'd swoop up and take them.

I sorta liked that perk of dating a successful lawyer. We got to use the firm's limo service.

Once we were all settled in the car, Colleen slid closer to me. "Does Ben have a lot of money?"

"He has a job with some cool perks. You thought it was cool getting tickets to concerts?"

"He does not have to do this for us, Rachel, really," Mom said, and Vanessa hit her.

"It's okay. Steve works for Ben's firm, and they've got seven day a week, twenty-four hour service. Steve would just be sitting around bored today if he wasn't driving you. And really, I have discovered that New York City is even cooler if you have money. I mean, I have money now… but I never knew how to spend it."

"Does that mean we're getting really good Christmas presents this year?" Colleen asked, and we all laughed.

"Weren't your presents good enough last year? This year I just had more fun buying them. And I'm all done my Christmas shopping, so we get to see the Nutcracker this afternoon and you get to meet Ben and his niece Jessa."

"It was very nice of Ben to invite us to the Nutcracker," Katie said, and I could see Colleen biting back a comment.

Limos and the Nutcracker still didn't add up to being a pop star. Or maybe it just didn't add up to being Nick. The girls had made a pretty good case at Thanksgiving that they didn't just like Nick because he was a Backstreet Boy, but because he was Nick.

And Ben was Ben. They'd like him, too.

It might just take a little while.

"Ben is very nice," I told the girls. "And Jessa's a lot of fun. Remember how you used to be all star struck with Nick? She's a little bit like that with me."

"Well, yeah. You rock," Colleen said, and I had to kiss her.

Lunch was good. Ben could talk to anyone. He asked about the winery, and what Mom and Vanessa needed to buy, and he suggested some stores for them to check out. Jessa was a little quiet, but she was shy. She didn't seem to be miserable, just quiet.

We walked over to Lincoln Center, while Mom and Vanessa started their shopping adventure. "The Nutcracker's okay, right, girls?" Ben asked, and Katie answered.

"I've never seen it live," she said. "Just on TV and stuff."

"Wow," Jessa said. "Uncle Ben's taken me every year since I can remember."

"The perks of living in the city," Ben said, smiling at her. "Because I was going to say we could skip it and do something more exciting."

"Don't listen to him, girls," I stage-whispered to my nieces. "He might suggest opera."

"Ew!" they both squealed, and even Jessa laughed.

"Fine, we'll go see the Nutcracker. Or we could shop, or just walk around and see all the lights."

"Mom said we had to meet them at Macy's later," Colleen said. "We usually come into the city at Christmas to see those."

"Okay," Ben said. "It's a date. The Nutcracker it is."

"Ben?" Colleen asked, as Ben handed her a ticket.

"Yes, Col?"

"Aren't you Jewish?"

He laughed, along with Jessa. "I am. And we celebrate Hanukkah. But I look at it this way. Hanukkah is the festival of lights, right?"

"Right," Jessa said, looking like she knew this punch line.

"And what has more lights at Christmas than New York? I'm totally being true to my faith by enjoying the lights."

The girls all liked that answer. So did I.

It was a perfect New York day at Christmastime. We saw the Nutcracker, then took the girls to Chinatown to buy weird stocking stuffers and have tea and dumplings. Then we met Mom and Vanessa at Macy's. We took the subway, since that was an adventure for the girls. I would have preferred the limo.

We took an hour to walk around Macy's and marvel at each window, then we went to dinner at some amazing little place that Ben knew and finally Steve dropped us off on Fifth Avenue and we looked at all the great window displays as we walked back to my apartment.

Which was strangely not full of shopping bags. "Did Steve steal our stuff?" Vanessa asked. That was the deal. Steve took the stuff back to my place and then got to go home and enjoy his evening.

"Across the hall," I told her. "JC's not around, I told him to stash the stuff there so the girls wouldn't go through it."

"But there's stuff Mom can't see in my bags!" Katie protested.

"JC?" Jessa asked. "JC Chasez?"

"He's my neighbor. Well, when he's here," I told her.

"I remember what all the bags from Chinatown look like," Ben said. "And Jess and I have some stuff in there, too. Why don't we go over and get those, then Kate and Vanessa can sort everything else out?"

"You're so clever," I told him, giving him a kiss and the keys to JC's, which Steve had put back just where he got them. "No stealing his socks, Jess," I warned.

She mock-pouted at me. "I'll make sure she doesn't take an pictures, either," Ben said, ushering her out.

"Ben is cool," Katie said, as soon as the door shut behind them.

"He's not Nick," Colleen sniffed.

"Colleen!" her mother scolded.

"He's not," I said, heading for the kitchen. "Tea, anyone? Hot chocolate?"

"Tea," Mom said, joining me. "Ben's a different person," she said to Colleen, looking over at her from the kitchen island. "I think he's lovely."

"He's not Nick. He doesn't kiss Aunt Rachel all the time and make her all dreamy and smiley."

"There are different kinds of love, Col. It's not all chocolate boxes and roses. As a matter of fact, the chocolates get eaten and the roses die and the prince does not always save the day," Vanessa said, and we all looked at her.

"What?" she asked. "It's true. I knew I shouldn't have let them watch all those Disney movies growing up."

"Everything okay at home, Van?" I asked, pulling cups out of the cabinet.

"It's great," Vanessa said. "I love my husband, and he doesn't have to kiss me every three seconds."

"I know," Colleen said. "I just… Ben is not the sort of guy a rock star dates. What's going to happen when you tour?"

"We'll worry about that then," I told her, hearing the door handle turn. We were silent as Ben and Jessa came back in.

"What were you talking about?" Ben asked.

"Shopping," we said, nearly in unison.

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