Our First Christmas

by Lisa Jackson

  I woke up on the side of the road, my father leaning over me. I later learned he’d done mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was yelling my name.

  I spit up water, coughing, choking, and he pulled me up, tilted me over, and hit my back with his open palm. More water spurted out, then more again. In the distance I heard the ambulance’s siren, called by a passerby.

  He held me close to him, rocked me back and forth, his cheek on mine, our bodies shaking with shock and cold. “Laurel, hold on, please, the ambulance is coming, breathe, breathe, honey, I love you, baby—”

  I held on to him, so relieved to be holding him, that he was alive, that I was alive. I started crying, remembering what I’d said, how I’d treated him. The ambulance came, slowing around the corner, but they still skidded sideways. My father saw them spin and picked me up and ran, his feet hardly getting traction, but enough to get us out of the way.

  The ambulance missed us by about six feet, turning a full one hundred eighty degrees, heading down the road sideways. The paramedics, who looked shaken themselves, quickly had me on a stretcher and bundled up. They cut off my clothes as we rode through the snow in the ambulance, dropped heat packs on my body to prevent hypothermia, and buried me in blankets. We slid twice and my father never let go of my hand.

  I was as overwhelmed with guilt as I was overwhelmed with that chilly water flowing over my head. I had caused the accident. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I rasped out, my whole body trembling uncontrollably. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. I love you.”

  “It is me,” he said, crying, his head bent, those gold eyes, like mine, flooded with tears. “It’s me who is sorry. So sorry, Laurel. I have hurt so many people. This is my fault. Everything you said is true.”

  And then, on that ice rink–like road, disaster struck.

  Again.

  “Tell me about your company, Josh. It’s called Salmon Fly?”

  “Yes. I liked your idea for the name, and it stuck.”

  I bent my head. I was so touched that he’d named his company Salmon Fly. I remembered that day on the river with our fishing poles. I sniffled.

  We were at an Italian restaurant eating ravioli and lasagna. Shadowy. Candle-lit. Pictures of Italy that I couldn’t help wish I had visited with Josh. “Start at the beginning, would you?”

  “During my junior year of college, I took all the money I had and bought a run-down house for next to nothing. I was working half-time for the athletic department. My father’s skills as a contractor were the only positive things I gained from him. Anyhow, I lived in it and fixed it up and sold it for a profit. I bought two more homes, same thing. I kept flipping homes, then I used the money to buy the building I have now. It was completely run-down, a sweet deal, but I fixed it up to the period, provided office space upstairs and room for cafés, art galleries, and businesses at the street level. We still buy, fix up, and sell homes and buildings, or we lease them out.”

  “You have a lot of people working for you.”

  “But my favorite employee is Mrs. Alling.” He winked.

  “She’s one of my favorite people on the planet. I’m impressed, Josh, with what you’ve done.”

  “Thank you, but don’t be. It’s only business.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s my job. It’s my career.”

  “It’s what you always worked for, what you wanted.”

  “It’s what I wanted professionally, Laurel, it’s not what I wanted personally.”

  It hurt, but I said it. “I thought you would be married with five kids by now, Josh.”

  “I did, too. That was in the plan. The right girl ran off.”

  I didn’t want to presume. I’d heard he’d been engaged. I didn’t even want to think about that annoying, dreadful woman. “I heard you were engaged.”

  “My engagement was a mistake. I feel terrible about it still. Lavina was a great lady. Smart. Fun. Kind.”

  “So what was the problem?”

  “Old story, Laurel. A cliché. She wasn’t you.”

  And I have never met anyone like you, Josh. Never.

  “We were engaged for about two months and I broke it off. It hurt her. I hurt. It was awful. I felt like a horrible person. She’s married now, three kids. Lives in Las Vegas.”

  Stupendous news. Dreadful fiancée was out of sight.

  “You were the right girl.”

  “I wasn’t the right girl.” So not right. He had no idea how not right I was after the accident.

  “Yes, you were.”

  “How would you know that, Josh? You sound so sure.” And I’d been so lost. “We were young. I hardly had a brain in my head. I was geeky and wild and caused trouble and stopped seeing you when I had to help my father.”

  “Because I knew.” He stared straight across that candle-lit table at me. “I’ve never felt happier with anyone than I did when I was with you.”

  “That was uncontrolled lust.”

  “Do you honestly think that’s all it was?” He shook his head. “It wasn’t like that for me. Yes, I liked the passion between us. I was a teenage boy. But I loved you, as a person. You were my best friend. We had fun. We talked.”

  “I’m not that girl anymore.”

  “I know, I can tell. But I’m not the teenage boy you knew, either.”

  He was . . . and he wasn’t. “You’re the same in some ways. You’re incredibly smart, Josh. You have a business, your own building, employees, exactly as you planned as a teenager. I remember you telling me what you were going to do. You’re ambitious, focused, determined, that’s still there.”

  “I think I need to hang out with you more, Laurel. You’re outstanding for my ego.”

  “You don’t have much of that. You’re a macho he-man stud, but you don’t suffer from an ego. You’re more . . . measured now. Confident. More reserved, maybe. Tougher, for sure. Decisive. I used to talk your ear off, but I still have the feeling I could talk and talk and you’d still listen.” I shut my mouth. I was being way too honest.

  “You never talked my ear off.” He shook his head. “I always loved talking to you. I didn’t have the easiest childhood, as you know, but you were my light. You brought the laughter, the relief, the friendship. You wanted to talk to me. You wanted to be with me. I was not getting that at home.” He paused for a second, breathed deep. “You needed me, and I needed you. I would leave my house and my dad would still be passed out on the couch. Sometimes he’d throw a punch. Or he’d yell, he had that raging temper. We got so many eviction notices I couldn’t even count them. He’d get it together, but only when he had to.”

  “I remember. He scared me.”

  “I was scared, too, as a kid, and so lonely for my mom, but I stopped being scared when I was bigger and stronger than him. He decked me that one night and I hit back, twice, and he was on the floor. Never hit me again, but that’s because I soon moved out and into Coach’s upstairs apartment.”

  “Oh Josh.” I ran a hand over my face. “I’m sorry. My mother and aunt wanted you to move in with us, but they didn’t allow it for obvious reasons.”

  “I think they were right. I would have been living in your pink bedroom, pushing aside the stuffed animals.”

  “What a drunken jerk your miserable father was. It makes me want to cry thinking of a kid living like that. You had to support yourself at only sixteen, alone. I didn’t understand the magnitude of that when we were dating.”

  “When I have children they will not live as I did. They’ll work, I believe that kids need jobs to teach them the value of money, but they will never have to be a teenager working a job so they can buy groceries.” He sounded bitter, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Where is your father now?”

  “He moved to Arizona.”

  I could tell he did not want to talk about him.

  “I didn’t have a sober, calm father, but I had you, Laurel, and that made it all easier. I’d work an eight-hour shift at the grocery store but knew I’d
be climbing up that tree outside your window and that got me through. Or, I knew that I’d see you in math the next day or that you and I and our friends would have lunch together. And every day you’d give me a hug and a kiss and a bag of cookies.”

  “I loved to bake those cookies for you.”

  “I loved to eat what you baked.” He looked down for a second.

  “Laurel, the cookies weren’t just cookies for me. They were a lot more than that.” He held my hand and brought it to his lips. He kissed every one of my fingers. I watched his mouth. I could hardly breathe.

  “Josh. You are not to try to seduce me. It’s against the Ten Date Rules.”

  “What?” He pretended to be outraged. “I didn’t know anything about the Ten Date Rules. I didn’t agree to that.” He laughed, deep in his chest. “Could I seduce you if I tried?”

  “Yes, handsome one. So don’t.”

  He knew I was serious. “Okay, Laurel, I won’t.”

  “Thank you.” Did I mean that?

  “It will be my honor to let you seduce me.”

  My mouth dropped. He laughed again and so did I.

  My. That cowboy was a smoldering son of a gun.

  Ace sent me a Christmas tree. Full-sized. Decorated in gold. My aunt and mother clapped their hands. The card said, “Rudolph misses you already. He is sad.” But I had made up my mind. My answer was still no.

  Josy sent me a draft of the Web site.

  I called her while staring out the window at Gary, our Christmas frog, and the gingerbread house witch. “I can hardly speak.”

  “Okay. Tap once on the phone if you like it.”

  I tapped. “I love it. You totally nailed it.”

  She actually giggled. “This is one of the funnest Web sites I’ve ever done. I love the photos of your mom and aunt throwing hay in the hayloft in their aprons and when your mom is pushing your aunt in the wheelbarrow. Your grandma holding the rifle is my favorite. Same with your granddad on that bucking horse. Did you like the photo of your aunt and mom as little girls holding hands next to the photo of them now holding hands?”

  When people clicked on The Apron Ladies, the home page of the Web site showed a photo of my mother and aunt, wearing fluffy, ruffly Christmas aprons, one with Santa on the bib, one with Mrs. Claus. They held pitchforks on either side of them, the snowy Swan Mountains in the distance.

  Josy had used old-fashioned blue toile wallpaper and antique lace around the edges of the Web site on each page. Down the right column were photographs of their aprons.

  The navigation bar had different tabs: The Apron Ladies. Our Aprons. Our Home and Land. Family History. Grandma’s Recipes.

  Each page was filled with colorful photographs and the text I’d written.

  I showed my mother and aunt.

  “Whoee! We’re The Apron Ladies,” Aunt Emma said. “Mature models.”

  “A smart woman is proud of her body and grateful to still be in it and not”—my mother pointed to the sky—“up there.”

  “Or,” my aunt Emma said, “down there.” And she pointed to the floor.

  Date Three with Josh was snowshoeing. I brought the beer cheese soup, bread, hot chocolate, and salad for our lunch. He was thrilled; his whole face lit up.

  Date Four was a trip to Glacier, the park covered in snow, pure white and silent. I brought my grandma’s Irish truffles, as Josh wanted. That don’t-mess-with-me face lit up again.

  Date Five was a party at a high school friend’s ranch. Afterward, we drove around the lake, watching it shimmer under the white rays of the moon, people’s colorful Christmas lights reflecting off the snow.

  We talked and talked, a whole range of subjects. We were quiet, too. I was dating the new Josh. Somehow, in all the years apart, we’d grown together. We were different from our life experiences . . . but we were still Josh and Laurel.

  Josh didn’t kiss me, but I felt him every second. I had to force myself not to make an awkward lunge onto his lap. I wanted to reach my arms around him and hug him. I wanted to pull his head down to mine and kiss him until I couldn’t think, which would take about one second. I wanted to knock off that cowboy hat, strip open his shirt, and yank down his pants. Then I wanted to push him back onto a bed and straddle the man.

  That same gut-wrenching, desperate passion for Josh, which I knew was buried in my soul, was still there.

  It had never left.

  But I had left . . . and I would leave again.

  Date Six was different. Josh and I had dinner at my house, my mother and aunt out at Feminist Book Club. I made salmon, his favorite fish, baked potatoes, a shrimp appetizer, and chocolate cake, also a favorite.

  “Laurel, thank you so much. That was incredible.”

  Maybe it was the heartfelt thank-you. Maybe it was my long years of feeling lonely and alone, even through the frantic busyness of my life. Maybe it was that face of his, hard and angled, familiar and dear.

  I stepped toward him, and smiled, I know I did. He smiled back and took charge, his arms pulling me in. I lost myself in that kiss. Poof. All rational thought gone. I didn’t let myself think, only feel. And what I felt was Josh, those lips knowing exactly what to do, those big hands knowing exactly where to go, those arms holding me so close I thought we were one person.

  I undid the buttons on his shirt as I was kissing him, then ran my hands straight up his chest, loving the warmth, the muscles. I heard him inhale, felt his heart pounding like mine. He untied my red and white ruffled Christmas apron and dropped it to the floor, then my sweater went flying over my head, followed by my purple bra.

  We were skin to skin, hands flying, lips meeting, our lips only parting when they moved lower.

  Later, I would have to blame Zelda for breaking up my free-flowing lust. I heard her shriek-meow at the dogs. The dogs weakly barked back, then scampered up the stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, Zelda let loose again with a murderous scream, paws clawing the air. The dogs whimpered.

  I pushed at Josh’s chest, his hands pulling off my jeans, my breath coming in unattractive gasps. “Okay, stop, Josh, please.”

  “What?” He pulled back. “Stop?”

  “Yes, please. I’m trying to resist you, Josh.”

  “Please don’t.” He bent to kiss me again and I gave in for another minute because he is delicious.

  “You’re ruining my resisting,” I gasped.

  “Happy to hear it, honey.” He ran his hands up my naked back, then back down to my waist while kissing me.

  “Don’t honey me.” Ah, he was a scrumptious, manly man.

  “Okay, darlin’.” He kissed my neck. He was still breathing hard, like me.

  “Don’t darlin’ me, either, you seducer.” He laughed as I turned shakily away and grabbed my bra, which had landed on the Rudolph cookie jar. His warm hands fell away. I tried to snap my bra, but my hands were trembling and I couldn’t.

  Josh did it for me, but said, “Poor me. I wish I wasn’t doing this.” Then he kissed my shoulder.

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re not welcome. I would rather you kept it off. I like the purple.”

  I reached for my sweater, which had landed near the coffeepot, and pulled it on. Unfortunately Josh did not button his shirt, so I was forced to feast my eyes on that chest again.

  “You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, Laurel,” he said, his voice soft. “Outside and inside.”

  “I don’t feel that way.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I know who I am, Josh.”

  “I know who you are too, Laurel.” He put one hand on either side of me on the counter, then bent to look me straight in the eye. “When you want to talk, when you want to tell me why you don’t feel beautiful inside, I want to hear it. I know something is making you unhappy, and I want to know what it is so we can work it through.”

  “There’s nothing to work through.”

  “Sure there is.”

  His voice was low,
strong, and confident. Josh was a true man. Masculine and chivalrous, a take-charge type, who had always let me be myself, but the man had a gentle side.

  I wanted to wrap my legs around his waist and forget everything.

  “Can I have one more kiss?” he asked. “Just one.”

  Oh no. I’d be a goner. I’d have him up in my pink bedroom within seconds. “No way, cowboy.”

  “I’ll take a hug then, cowgirl.”

  He held me close. I could live in that hug the rest of my life.

  Zelda screech-meowed at the dogs again. The dogs whined. Poor things.

  “Those dogs need to toughen up,” Josh drawled.

  My mother and my aunt’s Web site launched. We loved it.

  That evening, I checked to see if we had any orders.

  There were two. I was not surprised. No advertising, no marketing.

  My mother and aunt, however, were thrilled.

  “We’re modern ladies,” Aunt Emma said. “Building our own, independent online business.”

  “We make aprons for feminists who love to cook for those they love,” my mother said.

  “Women power in the kitchen,” my aunt declared.

  Chapter 6

  Josh came by our house two days later.

  My aunt Emma spotted his black truck coming down our driveway toward Gary, our Christmas frog.

  “Laurel,” she said, “I’ll give you three guesses. He’s not tall, dark, and handsome; he’s tall, blond, and reeks of a sexually adventurous man.”

  I didn’t need three guesses.

  “I’ll be back in a minute.” I fairly flew out of that sewing room.

  “Hi, Josh.” I stumbled out to the porch and shut the door. I could feel my face heating up. Why did he have to look so seductive without trying?

  “Hi, Laurel.” He handed me a huge Christmas bouquet with carnations, red roses, white chrysanthemums, and red and gold ribbons.

  “Oh. Oh my.” It was lovely. My voice wobbled. “Thank you.”

  “You’re very welcome, ma’am.” He tipped his cowboy hat at me. “I wanted to thank you for dinner the other night and for letting me take off your sweater.”