As she opened the driver’s side door, she saw headlights closing in on her from behind. Aubrey wasn’t worried about them not seeing her since she’d put her hazards on as soon as she got stuck, but to be on the safe side, she walked over to the shoulder several feet in front of the car. This way her car would shield her as the other car passed. Aubrey allowed herself a spark of hope when she saw the vehicle which slowly headed toward her was some sort of dual-wheeled truck with a snow plough attached to the front.
The truck idled to a stop beside her. Aubrey stepped to the passenger’s side window as it rolled down. At last, she had a look inside the cab of the truck. She smiled in spite of herself. It was Kyle. Aubrey weighed her options while she stared into Kyle’s welcoming eyes. The heavy snow defeated her. Or, perhaps, it was just a sprinkle of The Magic of Christmas that made her think the snow defeated her. “If you promise not to preach, I’ll take that ride now,” Aubrey said.
“What do you say we tow that sled on wheels back to the airport and get a nice cup of coffee for the ride back to Timberville.” Kyle considered his last statement for a moment. “You still take yours black?” He left out any mention of the silliness of her renting that sled on wheels in the first place because he badly wanted Aubrey to ride back with him.
Aubrey’s defenses melted a little bit more when she realized Kyle, remembered, through twelve years’ worth of opportunity to forget, she liked her coffee black. It was amazing to her this came up on the very day she had been so distressed thinking of Walter and his cappuccino machine. “I would like that,” she said.
Kyle removed a length of chain from the bed of his truck. Aubrey proved she wasn’t a damsel in distress by helping Kyle hook up that chain from his rear bumper to a spot on the frame of her rental car. Since she would have to drive the rental while Kyle towed it, he gave her a few pointers on how to not crash into the back of him before they got the car back to its lot.
Aubrey was nervous but performed admirably. It also helped Kyle never hit a speed above five miles per hour during the entire eighth of a mile trip. Thirty-five minutes, and two cups of coffee ‘to go’ later, the pair were headed out Route 29 toward the mountains of the Shenandoah National Forest.
The snow fell furiously in thick wide flakes. Aubrey spent the first few miles of her ride home with Kyle oblivious to the beautiful display mother nature put on for her benefit. She texted her mom instead. Eventually her mom convinced her there hadn’t been anything nefarious in the summoning of Kyle to pick her up at the airport. It took several dozen texts to do that convincing, but Aubrey ended up believing her mom really did think Kyle was the best option to pick her up in the snowfall that was predicted. She also managed to convince Aubrey her failure to report the change of plans had been because she knew Aubrey would be so upset. Since this was what happened, Aubrey couldn’t dispute the point. Besides, she wasn’t nearly as mad as she would have guessed she’d be. If someone had told her in New York that eight hours later she’d be alone in a pickup, at night, on a mostly deserted road, with her ex-boyfriend, four days before Christmas, she would have said that person was crazy. If someone had told her all that and also had the gall to suggest she wouldn’t be apocalyptically upset, she would have said they were inhuman.
After she completed the texts to her mom to her satisfaction, Aubrey and Kyle passed the time with small talk about their respective careers. Kyle told Aubrey how he’d built a successful contracting business in Timberville. How he managed to hire three new full timers this season even though the real estate market had been in a downturn for over a year. He wasn’t bragging, he just wanted to measure up, in some small way, to the Aubrey Wilson who told him all about her wildly successful adventures in the big city.
It wasn’t hard for him to get her to talk about it either. This deal for Clarke’s Department Stores had been on her mind during both legs of the flight from New York. There were aspects of the deal that caught in her mind like a prickly piece of drift wood. Aubrey found Kyle was just as easy to talk to now as he was twelve years ago when they were together in high school. It allowed her to spill more of the details than she ordinarily would have for fear of monopolizing the conversation.
“It’s not like that at all.” Kyle had put a spin on the deal that painted her company in a bad light. Aubrey hadn’t meant for him to draw that interpretation. She felt she had to defend her company’s position. Which was strange because, she hadn’t thought, up until that that very moment, her company’s position needed defending.
“Are you sure? Sounds just like Scrooge and Marley to me.” Kyle thought he was making a fair point. He wasn’t so carried away with being able to talk to Aubrey again he wouldn’t challenge her if she said she was okay doing something he knew was not part of her personality.
“Jobs will be eliminated. I’m not denying that. But they’re jobs in fields that have been artificially propped up by the Clarke family. For instance, when was the last time you went to a department store to get alterations done on a suit?” Aubrey shook her head. Somehow that sounded a lot worse when she said it in Kyle’s pickup than when she said it in the boardroom of Cypress Equity. She tried again. “I mean they haven’t purchased new registers since 1992. They’re running a DOS based POS.”
Kyle still wasn’t buying what Aubrey was selling. “I’d rather get rung up on a twenty-five-year-old register than know three thousand people lost their jobs so I could get rung up on a brand new one.”
Aubrey disliked the way this conversation was going. On the one hand, she’d been having this exact conversation with herself on the plane ride here. On the other hand, she didn’t need her former boyfriend, the one who broke up with her on prom night of her senior year in high school no less, lecturing her on how to be a good corporate raider. Out of ideas, Aubrey decided to unload one of Victoria’s golden aphorisms on Kyle. “That which doesn’t change, dies.”
Kyle called her bluff with something he knew would affect her. “Christmas doesn’t change.” As he said this, he also backed off the gas pedal of his truck. He thought he detected the faint impression of brake lights through a swirl in the snow up ahead.
“Maybe it should.” Aubrey regretted it as soon as she said it. That idea didn’t fit who she was as a person at all. Despite all the humbug she spouted at Beth this morning, Aubrey did love Christmas. How could she not love it when her dad jumped through such hoops to make it special every year. “What’s wrong?” Aubrey noticed Kyle’s hyper-focused eyes.
Kyle pushed the button to turn on his four-way flashers. He pointed at the car in the snowbank several hundred yards in front of them. “Looks like somebody could use some help.” Kyle gently slowed the truck and then came to a stop a few feet in front of the stuck car. He opened the driver’s side door of his truck and hopped out onto the snow-covered highway.
Aubrey swiveled in her seat to watch. She found herself strangely attracted to Kyle even after all these years. As she had this thought, she cast a sideways glance at the giant diamond ring on her left hand. She didn’t know if it was okay to think what she had just thought or not. It hadn’t happened to her before, at least she could say that with honesty. It was just that Kyle exuded a quality that pressed down on her heart and made her want something other than her career, her title, and her success. For reasons which Aubrey couldn’t explain, meeting up with Kyle reminded her of what she felt like when she had been loved by someone.
In the same way Aubrey regretted saying that Christmas should change, she immediately regretted having this thought about remembering what it was like to be loved.
She was loved.
Her mom loved her. Beth loved her, as a friend anyway. Walter, well, he… Respected her? No, that wasn’t right. Admired her? Also, not right. What was the right word to describe how Walter felt about her? And why couldn’t she think of it? She needed a talisman of Walter with which to blot out this blue-collar hero with his monster truck and his excessive Christmas spirit.
Aubr
ey saw a middle-aged man in weather inappropriate gear get out of the all-wheel-drive car that had caromed off the road in a similar fashion to what she had done back at the airport in the rental car. She watched as Kyle and this man shook hands in the glare of the head lights from the stuck car. If the Christmas music had been turned down a little lower inside the cab of the truck, she might have heard what they were saying.
Kyle put the tailgate down and withdrew the same chain he used to tow Aubrey’s rental from the ditch. Aubrey guessed the result of the unheard conversation. Kyle’s gracious offer to help had been accepted.
Kyle gave one end of the chain to the middle-aged man while he secured the other end over the hitch on his bumper. The middle-aged man made the same mistake with the chain Aubrey made. He looked for a spot to secure it on the bumper of his car. Aubrey watched as Kyle waved away this idea and then took the time to explain why it wouldn’t work. Even if the man were able to find a spot on his bumper to put the chain, as soon as Kyle put his truck into gear, the torque from Kyle’s massive truck engine would rip it right off.
Aubrey knew Kyle was giving this kind of advice because he had given it to her back at the Charlottesville airport. Of course, he had spun the advice in such a way that Aubrey could take it and not have to think of herself as a damsel in distress. She was sure he was similarly taking care of the ego of the middle-aged man.
He would make an excellent father.
Oh lord, where had that thought come from? Aubrey shook her head to clear it of the silliness which kept infecting her.
Since Kyle was walking toward her side of the truck, Aubrey hit the switch to lower her window. He didn’t speak until the window was all the way down. This allowed Aubrey a few moments of staring at him in the perfect winter picture caused by the frame of the truck’s door. The snow collected in his long black hair and beard. It made him look a little like the most interesting snowman in the world. The image combined with the thought made Aubrey smile. It was the sincerest smile that had bent her lips all day.
Kyle pulled the accumulation of snow from the window ledge out into the snow-covered road. It was about to fall in the cab and onto Aubrey. Kyle wanted to save her from a cold wet seat. “Do me a favor, will you?”
“Sure.”
“Slide over to the driver’s side and ease the truck forward. I’ll stand back here and make sure the chain has a good hold.”
The look in Aubrey’s eyes said she wondered if Kyle had lost his mind. “Kyle, I just don’t think…”
Kyle cut her off. He wasn’t having any excuses. “I refuse to believe the twelve years you spent in the city was long enough to make you forget how to drive a truck.” Kyle gave Aubrey his biggest ‘I dare you to resist this next bit I’m about to say’ look. “Besides, I believe you recently insisted you were not a damsel in distress.”
Kyle was betting he still knew what make Aubrey tick. He was proved correct when she took the bait and slid over into the driver’s seat. “Ease into the throttle. I don’t want this guy to have to get an alignment for Christmas.”
Kyle walked back to the place where he could keep an eye on his chain. From there, he gave Aubrey the all clear. She eased into the throttle like the pro he knew she would be. The middle-aged man’s car gracefully exited the snowbank. Once the car was fully on the road, Kyle undid the chain from the frame of the car and from the hitch on his bumper. He threw the chain into the bed of his truck and closed the tailgate.
Aubrey watched from the rear-view mirror as the middle-aged man got out of his car and pulled several bills from his wallet which he tried to offer to Kyle. Kyle refused. The two men shook hands, and then the middle-aged man broke down and gave Kyle a huge hug. Aubrey laughed out loud at the sight.
Kyle approached the driver’s side of his truck. Opened the door and drank in the sight of Aubrey sitting there. Oh man, how he missed her. He’d been right when he saw her at the airport. She was just as beautiful today as the day she left town twelve years ago. And, he was just as much in love with her now as he was then. “You know, you’re the first person, other than me, that’s ever driven this truck.”
“My dad always said I was special.” Aubrey noticed Kyle broke eye contact with her for a full second after she mentioned her father always saying she was special. Whatever it was that flashed through Kyle’s mind, it only lasted a second, and then he was right back with her.
Of course, Aubrey had no way of knowing the thought which flashed in Kyle’s mind was that she had stuck a knife in him with that comment about her father. If he had any chance of winning her back this Christmas, he was going to have to get past that little mental road block. “Mind if I take the reins back?”
Aubrey rolled her eyes at his countrified way of speaking. Nevertheless, she slid over into the passenger’s seat. “That was really nice what you did back there, Kyle. Who knows how long he would have been sitting in the cold if you hadn’t stopped for him?”
“You’d a done the same thing.” Kyle shook as much of the snow off himself as he could. He then reentered his truck and shut the door. When Aubrey didn’t answer his Good Samaritan Challenge right away, Kyle followed up with, “Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe.” Aubrey thought about this for a moment as Kyle pulled back out onto the highway. “You were always like that, though. The first one to offer help, to sacrifice what you wanted for the sake of someone else. You were always so reliable and so true… until that one time when you weren’t.” Kyle was spared further inquisition about the past because, in that moment, Aubrey’s cell phone rang. She glanced down at the screen to see Walter’s name. “It’s my fiancé.”
Kyle said nothing as Aubrey answered her phone. He wouldn’t have said anything in answer to why he had been so unreliable even if the phone hadn’t rung, but he was glad to be spared the awkward silence, or the even more awkward excuse. Kyle wanted to reconnect with Aubrey while she was in town, to find closure as his mom put it, but he didn’t know if he had the strength to tell her why he once failed her in such a catastrophic way. He believed if she knew why he had done what he did, she would forgive him, but the reason, the secret reason he did what he did was not his reason to tell.
It was ironic, and yes Kyle was a man from the mountains, but he still knew irony when he saw it, that Aubrey had mixed up his reliability with his ability to sacrifice himself for others in the same sentence. That she ended the train of thought with another indictment of him for leaving her twelve years ago, was the ingredient that made it all such a bitter pill for Kyle to swallow.
“Walter, how was your day?”
Kyle risked a glance at Aubrey. He swore her face looked pained. Fiancé suggested a serious level of connection, but Kyle would have bet a sizable sum that Aubrey wasn’t thrilled to be talking to him. After her initial greeting, she held the phone to her ear in relative silence for five minutes. It was a silence occasionally punctuated with one-word utterances from Aubrey. She was limited to responses along the lines of, ‘uh-huh’, ‘yeah’, and ‘wow.’ All affirmations of whatever it was Walter said. All affirmations that required the least amount of conversational engagement from Walter.
In between focusing on the road, Kyle stole a few more glances at Aubrey. He tried to understand how the Aubrey he knew from twelve years ago would ever be about to marry a man that talked for five straight minutes about himself without asking her a single question about her own day. She was battling a major snowstorm on the way home. Did he not know that?
Or, did he just not care?
Aubrey could accuse Kyle of being too willing to bottle up his own desires to make sure others had what they needed from now until doomsday if she wanted. But there was one thing Kyle knew for sure, if Aubrey were his fiancée, she wouldn’t spend the first five minutes of a phone call from him listening to him ramble on about everything else in the world… except her. Kyle would put her up on the pedestal he knew she deserved to be on.
“Okay, that is great news!” Aubrey cou
ld tell her conversation with Walter was nearly over. She could also tell Kyle judged her lack of participation in it. Considering those two facts, she forced that comment into Walter’s rapid fire, paragraph style of speaking, even though he mostly talked over her while she said it.
“I love…” Aubrey pulled the phone away from her ear and looked at it in genuine disbelief. The phone showed Walter had ended the call. He hadn’t said goodbye or asked her how her trip had gone. Aubrey finished her sentence anyway, as though she were speaking to the phone. “You.”
Embarrassed, Aubrey tossed her phone into her purse and launched volleys of words at Kyle. A degree in psychology wasn’t necessary to see she was trying to excuse her fiancé’s boorish behavior by glossing over it. “Walter had a big day.” Aubrey’s eyes asked Kyle if that didn’t explain it all.
Kyle thought it explained nothing but tried to remain noncommittal. “Of course.”
“He thinks there might be a partnership offer coming by New Year’s.” Aubrey looked out the window at the accumulating snow. She was making hollow excuses. The weird part was she always made excuses like this for Walter’s uncaring behavior. Why did she suddenly care so much about doing what she had always done? When she was in New York and Beth overheard a one-sided conversation, Aubrey dismissed her Walter-barbs with a nonchalant wave of the hand. She would follow that up by saying something along the lines of how she was just like Walter. She didn’t have time for all that emotional connection mumbo-jumbo. And when she’d said things like that to Beth, she hadn’t felt like she was lying to herself. How had accepting a ride to her mom’s house from her former high school sweetheart changed all that in less than two hours?
Aubrey Wilson, acquisitions analyst extraordinaire, the girl who had an answer for everything, had no answer for that question.
On his side of the truck Kyle was equally confused. He had spent the last twelve years trying with all his might to forget just how wonderful a person Aubrey was, trying to forget how deeply he loved her. He was also the type of man who knew second chances only come around once. Did he have the courage to not let this second chance slip through his fingers.
First Christmas Page 4
