by Cara Malone
“Where are you going, honey?” Mom asked.
“I just want to stretch my legs before the drive to Denver,” Carmen lied. It was easier than telling her how desperately she wanted to get the snow globe out of her possession, and much easier than sitting here and listening to sad Christmas music.
“We only just got in,” Mom objected, but Carmen was already out of the limo and heading into the lodge.
Her dad was standing at the front desk and now that Carmen was here, she wasn’t quite sure what she was doing. Should she look for Joy, or just leave the snow globe at the desk for her? She joined her dad and asked, “Is Joy Turner around?”
“Not yet,” the front desk attendant said. “I think her shift starts at ten today.”
“What’s going on, kiddo?” Dad asked, and Carmen showed him the snow globe.
“I can’t leave without saying goodbye to her,” Carmen said. “And I don’t feel right taking this back to New York with me.”
Dad glanced at the time on the clock behind the desk, then looked at her with a half-hearted smile. “I know it sucks, kid, but we don’t have time to run around Emerald Hill looking for her. We’ve got to get into Denver for our flight.”
He put his hand on her shoulder, and Carmen could feel her heart racing in her chest.
“Why don’t you leave the globe at the front desk?” he suggested, turning to the attendant. “You can make sure Joy gets it, right?”
“Sure,” the man said. “You can leave a note if you want.”
“No,” Carmen said. There were no words in the world that could sum up how she was feeling, let alone that would fit on a note scribbled on resort stationery and left at the front desk. The more her dad tried to hurry her along and get her back to the limo, the more certain she was that it wasn’t just Emerald Mountain magic, or the Christmas spirit, or whatever Joy wanted to call it. What she and Joy had was more than a fling, and Carmen wasn’t going to leave the resort until she was sure Joy knew how she felt. She told her dad, “I have to see her. I didn’t get to say goodbye.”
“We don’t have time,” he said.
“Dad, please,” Carmen answered, and she saw Mom coming into the lobby, probably wanting to know what the holdup was and looking a little irritated at the possibility of missing their flight.
“You have her phone number, right?” Dad asked. “This doesn’t have to be the last time you ever talk to her.”
“She won’t answer her phone,” Carmen objected, and by then Mom had her by the elbow and they were leading her out of the lodge. It was with a sinking feeling that she allowed them to bring her outside, into the cold and the waiting limousine.
Thirty
Joy
Joy woke up early on the morning after Christmas. She’d spent the night on the couch and slept fitfully, and when the sun started peeking over the mountains, she got up. She shed the knit blanket like an old layer of skin, hoping to shed the melancholy that accompanied it, but it followed her into the kitchen as she made herself a cup of tea and prepared to start her day.
There would be a lot to do at the resort today – there always was in the flux of changing seasons. The red and green Christmas decorations would start to come down, replaced by gold and silver for the New Year, and holiday guests would start to check out, Carmen among them. Life never stood still for too long in Emerald Hill, especially for the locals who were always scrambling to adapt to the changing expectations of their visitors.
Joy sipped her tea – a peppermint variety that always put her in the mind of Christmas. But she didn’t want to be reminded of Christmas anymore. She hoped the New Year would bring something better for her, something that would make the heartache she was feeling right now worthwhile, and it couldn’t come soon enough for her.
She put down her mug and went over to the Christmas tree in the living room. Most years she’d keep it up until January, or until the branches started turning brown and Danny convinced her it was a fire hazard. She went to the closet and pulled out a couple of plastic bins, putting them on the floor in front of the tree as she started taking the ornaments off one at a time and packing them away. She untangled the lights and wound them into a neat circle, dropping those into the boxes as well, and last but not least, she dragged the tree out of the apartment to the curb for trash day.
When she came back inside, Joy shoved the plastic bins back into the closet beside her snowboard with the broken bindings. She would get it fixed soon because there was no way she could bring herself to use the beautiful, expensive board that Carmen had given her. Just thinking about it made tears threaten in her throat, and she pushed the thought aside.
She felt a little bit better when she stood back and looked at the empty living room. The space where the tree stood in front of the window now felt conspicuously empty and there were a few pine needs scattered on the carpet to remind her of what was missing, but she had a clear view of the bright morning sunlight and the snow on the ground outside. She took a deep breath and decided to think about that space like a blank slate. Now that Danny was gone, she could do whatever she wanted with the apartment, and now that she’d packed up Christmas, she could move on from Carmen.
Joy went into her bedroom and changed into her work clothes, then poured the remainder of her tea into a thermos to keep her warm on her drive to the resort. When she got there, it was chaos in the lobby. Her coworkers had already begun taking down the Christmas ornaments on the large tree in the entryway – the tree would stay, but the decorations would be switched to the New Year’s color scheme of celebratory metallic – and quite a few families from the hotel were checking out at the front desk. Joy couldn’t help scanning the crowd, looking for any member of the Castillo family, but she didn’t recognize any of them and she headed for the employees-only area behind the desk to get started with her day.
Unfortunately, before she got there, someone stopped her at the desk.
“Joy,” her coworker called, and she swiveled on her heel, midway through the door.
“Huh?”
“You’re wanted in cabin number four,” he said, and as soon as the number passed his lips, Joy felt like she might melt into the floor. Of all twenty cabins, which one could it be except that one? She’d forgotten it even had a number – to her, it would forever more be the Castillo cabin.
“What do they need?” she asked. She already knew it would be Carmen trying to figure out where she’d disappeared to last night, trying to pull her into that unbearable moment of saying goodbye. “If it’s a room service request you can send someone else-”
“Nah,” he said. “The family checked out already. I think it’s a housekeeping issue.”
“Oh,” Joy said. “Okay, I’ll go just as soon as I get clocked in.”
She sighed and headed into the room behind the front desk, feeling suddenly quite peculiar. Of course there would be another family inhabiting that space shortly, or maybe a group of friends looking to ring in the New Year in lavish style. It wasn’t the Castillo cabin anymore, and maybe going out there to deal with whatever problem the housekeeping staff had encountered would help Joy begin the process of forgetting. It would just be another empty cabin now.
She got herself clocked in, stored her thermos of half-drunk tea in her locker, and then went back outside. She took a few deep breaths, letting the cold air fill her lungs as she made the short walk up the road, and prepared herself for the final confirmation of Carmen’s absence. She walked up the neatly shoveled sidewalk to the cabin and dug her master key out of her pocket, then let herself in.
The first thing she noticed was that the fireplace had been lit. Joy rolled her eyes and wondered exactly what kind of problem there was here if the housekeeper had time to make herself comfortable, but as she pushed the door open further and stepped into the foyer, Joy found a much more welcome sight.
“Carmen,” she said, her mouth dropping open.
She was standing in the middle of the living room waiting for h
er, and Joy wouldn’t have been more surprised if she’d had a big Christmas bow on her head. A sudden flood of relief washed over Joy and she realized how big a mistake it would have been to let Carmen go the way she almost had. Joy looked around, but the rest of the cabin appeared to be empty.
“It’s just me,” Carmen said, as if to answer that look. “Come in and shut the door. You’re letting the cold in.”
Joy did as she was told, but she lingered by the door, unsure what to do and what Carmen wanted from her. “What are you doing here? They said you checked out.”
“Not exactly,” Carmen said. “I couldn’t leave without seeing you again.”
She walked across the room, making a little detour to the kitchen island where she picked up the snow globe Joy had given her. Then she came over to where Joy was standing in the doorway, stopping only inches from her and holding the globe between them. Joy could hardly breathe with the tension building there.
Carmen gave the snow globe a little flick with her wrist, sending the glitter swirling inside it, and didn’t look at Joy as she said, “I tried calling you yesterday, and I even went down to the lodge to look for you after you didn’t show up last night.”
“I’m sorry,” Joy said. “I wanted to come, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it would hurt to say goodbye to you. I chickened out.”
“You hurt me,” Carmen said. “I was so confused and frustrated and angry. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before and you just disappeared.”
“I’m sorry,” Joy said again, and Carmen pushed the snow globe into her hands.
“I didn’t think it would be right to keep this,” she said. “Not if what happened this week was so inconsequential to you that you didn’t even care to say goodbye to me.”
“Inconsequential,” Joy said, the word coming out like a yelp because it was so far from the truth. She walked over and put the snow globe down on the counter, then took Carmen’s hands in hers, trying to find the right words. “I never knew I could fall for someone as fast and as hard as I fell for you. I got scared and I wanted to protect myself from the inevitability of losing you, so I put a wall up. It was the wrong way to handle it.”
Carmen finally looked up at Joy, those deep, dark eyes glassy as she asked, “Were you happy to see me just now, when you came through the door?”
“Ecstatic,” Joy said, and then she put her hands on Carmen’s cheeks, kissing her with all of the pent-up emotion she’d been carrying around for the last twenty-four hours.
Thirty-One
Carmen
Carmen melted gratefully into Joy’s lips, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her tight so she couldn’t slip away again. She was here and they were alone, and all of Carmen’s frustration and sadness dissolved into pure desire. She unzipped Joy’s coat and yanked it down over her shoulders, and Joy let it drop to the floor. She was kissing Carmen passionately, hungrily, and Carmen let herself be led backward into the room.
“Don’t go away again,” she murmured against Joy’s lips, her arms around her shoulders and keeping her close.
“I won’t,” Joy whispered back. “I promise.”
She ran her hands through Carmen’s long hair and then down her neck, and then laid her down on the couch. The fire kept them warm as Joy worked quickly to undress her, lifting her up to pull her oversized sweater over her head and then laying her back down. Carmen snagged Joy by the collar of her work shirt and pulled her onto the couch, and for a moment Joy just lay there, propped up on her elbows and looking into Carmen’s eyes.
Then they kissed again, and Joy’s lips found Carmen’s jaw, her ear, her neck. She put her hands on Carmen’s breasts and her thighs against Carmen’s hips, moving in the cadence of desire. Carmen closed her eyes and felt all the familiar curves of Joy’s body. She’d memorized them already, and it was sweet relief to feel Joy’s weight on top of her again.
She slid her hand beneath the waistband of Joy’s pants, making her breathe heavier against Carmen’s ear as she moved her fingers back and forth through her wetness. Joy put her head down on Carmen’s chest, her hair brushing against Carmen’s nose as she moved her hips in time with Carmen’s hand, and then she felt Joy’s fingers hooking beneath the cup of her bra, pushing it up so that her lips and her tongue could close around Carmen’s nipples.
She moaned and pressed her hips up, seeking Joy, while her hand worked faster and harder between her legs. The sound echoed through the room and the heat of the fireplace coupled with Joy’s lips on her skin made her whole body feel weak in the most pleasurable way.
Joy shivered against Carmen’s hand, then she pulled away, throwing her shirt over her head and getting off the couch to step out of her pants. Carmen lay back, watching as Joy revealed more and more of herself, and when she was naked, she took Carmen’s leggings by the waist, yanking them off her and throwing them aside. She knelt down beside the couch and kissed her stomach, then the ridge of her pubic bone, and then Carmen separated her thighs with an anticipatory, sharp intake of her breath.
Joy’s lips found her again, warm and gentle, and then her tongue. Carmen felt wave after wave washing up through her body and tingling in the top of her head. Joy slid her fingers between Carmen’s thighs and the sensation grew, almost too much to handle. She put her hand on Joy’s hip, squeezing her, looking for a distraction, and then her fingers slipped lower, seeking her again. Carmen’s breathing quickened as Joy’s mouth and fingers touched her, and she moved her own hand in as much the same rhythm as she could manage, nearly out of control of her body.
With her free hand, Carmen clutched the fabric on the back of the couch, squeezing it tight as her body gave in to Joy’s touch, pleasure rising inside her and overflowing into an intense orgasm. Joy joined her a moment later, putting her hand on top of Carmen’s and moving her hips against her palm until she let out a yelp of pleasure and collapsed with her head on Carmen’s stomach, her hand still pressed against her and feeling the spasms of her release.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” Joy said, still working on catching her breath, and Carmen laughed and pulled her up onto the couch. Joy put her head on Carmen’s chest, where her heart was still beating fast, and wrapped her arms around her.
“Me too,” Carmen said.
After a minute or two in which her heart slowed back down to normal and Joy’s breathing steadied, Joy asked, “Where’s your family, anyway?”
Carmen looked out the window, trying to estimate the time by the amount of light in the sky. The sun was almost reaching its peak above the mountains, and she said, “Probably still in Denver, or maybe in the air by now.”
“They just left without you?” Joy asked.
“I told them that I couldn’t leave here without seeing you,” Carmen said. Then she made Joy sit up to look her in the eyes and said, “You changed me, Joy. I can’t just go back to my old life.”
Thirty-Two
“What does that mean?” Joy asked. She wanted to believe that it meant exactly what she was too afraid to hope for, that Carmen would stay here with her and they could be together for real – not a vacation romance or a temporary fling, but the real relationship her heart so desperately wanted. It was too much to ask for, though, so she waited for Carmen’s answer and thought her heart might stop in the interim.
“I don’t know,” Carmen admitted with a laugh. “This is crazy, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” Joy said, reaching across the space between them and taking Carmen’s hand. She didn’t want to ask her next question, but it was necessary to figure out what their next step was. She had to know, “How long can you stay? Are we talking about a couple of hours, a day, a week?”
“I don’t know,” Carmen said again. She offered with a tentative smile, “Theoretically if I bought myself a laptop, I could do all my work remotely.”
Joy laughed, trying not to get herself too caught up in the promise of that statement, and said, “Isn’t your family going to miss
you after a couple of days? And your friends?”
“Yeah,” Carmen conceded. “Probably.”
“What do they think of all this?” Joy asked. Her mind was going a mile a minute, looking for all of the ways that this new development could backfire and break her heart again. She wasn’t ready to be unconditionally happy about it, or optimistic about how good it felt to have this cabin all to herself with Carmen.
“My mom was kind of skeptical,” Carmen admitted. “She’s always been a practical type, but as soon as I decided to stay, my dad told me I had to follow my heart or live to regret it.”
“Tell your dad thank you for me,” Joy said, bringing Carmen’s hand to her lips to kiss her fingers.
“I guess the practical answer is five days,” Carmen said. “That was how long I could extend our reservation for at the cabin. Somebody else has it booked starting on New Year’s Day.”
“Okay. Five days is like half an eternity considering what we were able to accomplish in the last week and a half,” Joy said. Carmen laughed and then in the silence that followed, Joy asked, “What do we do now?”
“Whatever we want,” Carmen said, crawling into Joy’s lap and throwing her arms around her.
Joy felt like her heart was welling in her chest, euphoria washing over her. She had no idea what was waiting for them at the end of the five days Carmen had given her, but it didn’t matter as long as she could hold Carmen in her arms for as much of that time as possible. She wanted to shout her happiness until her voice echoed in the vaulted ceiling above them, until it reached the very mountain peaks.
