The Imitation Game ✓

THIRTY-SIX | EXILE, PT. I

The holiday season had snuck up on Cora—hadn't it just been summer a few weeks ago?—but it was following her now like a shadow, and the little number on her calendar each day reminded her of the travel plans she still needed to make and the Christmas presents she still needed to buy. With how brief her breaks from work were going to be, just one day at Thanksgiving and two at Christmas, she wasn't even going to have the time to think about Christmas until December at the earliest, so she was resigned to taking it one step at a time and just worrying about Thanksgiving for now.

It wasn't even until there was less than a week left to go until the holiday that she'd finally been able to tell her parents with moderate confidence that she could make it for Thanksgiving dinner. Traffic was always a giant mess on the interstates between NYC and Rothbury on major holidays, so much so that it wasn't unheard of for the road trip to take up to twice as long as it normally would, but she was relieved that she and Rasmus could endure it together this year. Driving away from her parents' house by herself had always made her feel a little bit lonely no matter how much she told herself that she didn't mind her own company.

She was actually a little bit excited to just hang out in the car with her boyfriend for a while, but there were still a few days to go before then and other tasks to get done in the meantime. Today, the Sunday before Thanksgiving, had been designated by Siena as Friendsgiving.

They still had their regular matinee performance of Illicit Affairs, but they could make it back to the apartment by six o'clock as long as they didn't dawdle around at the theater too much after the show. Cora had invited Anais and Siena had invited that boy Jackson (who she was evidently still talking to), but he wasn't free tonight. So it was just going to be the small group of them and therefore not the most momentous occasion—barely any different than a typical evening of hanging out, really—but it still made Cora happy to intentionally set time aside just to be with her friends.

The tricky part was the whole cooking thing. She didn't want to force Sie to make all of the food while the rest of them were out that afternoon, so as soon as they were both awake in the morning, they chugged some coffee and got started on prepping the meal so that Sie could just stick it all in the oven later. They had vetoed the idea of a turkey—cooking it felt like entirely too much work when they were all surely going to have some on Thursday—and instead opted to just make some of the smaller dishes and desserts that their mothers liked to serve every year. So with a pile of ingredients in front of them and the recipe cards pulled up on their phones, they got to work.

Even though she wasn't usually a huge fan of cooking, Cora thought it was fun to attempt to recreate a couple of Sie's usual holiday dishes without ever having seen the finished products. And the whole kitchen smelled delicious, especially after they opened a can of pumpkin puree for the pie. The whole process was slow going—neither of them was very efficient at this—but Rasmus wandered up to help them once he was finally awake and that made everything go significantly faster.

All three of them slumped onto the couch once all of the food was finally prepped and ready to be popped into the oven closer to dinnertime. A mountain of dishes was piled in the sink, but Cora needed a minute to rest before she dealt with any of that (why was cooking so tiring?). She shouldn't have been so tuckered out considering that she was a pretty active person, but she felt like she could nap for three hours.

Unfortunately, they only had an hour or so left before they needed to eat a quick lunch and get to the theater. Siena disappeared to her room to change clothes, having spilled some water on the ones she was currently wearing.

Cora glanced over at Rasmus, who had let his eyelids fall shut. He must have accidentally touched his hair after handling the powdered sugar—a few small sections of the dark strands were now peppered with white.