Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas

by Juliet Blackwell

  “It’s my job. I love doing this.”

  Weezie looked up from the Cashmerino with a hurt look. “Oh. Maybe you think I’ll steal something.”

  “No, no.” Surprisingly, items were lifted from the store with astonishing regularity. Clara lost skeins of yarn by the dozen each month or two, and what was even worse, whole sample garments just walked away. Knitters, Clara still believed, were the salt of the earth and there wasn’t a community of people she liked more in the world. But every community had a couple of members that would be better thrown back into the knitting pond. She told herself it was the tourists and tried not to worry about it.

  Weezie, though—she had that honest look. That and the fact that her purse was clear plastic. She’d have nowhere to hide anything if she did want to loot the store.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure, honey. If you leave me alone in here, I’ll just add to my purchase pile with total abandon.”

  On the porch, the man still sat in his leather jacket and sunglasses, even though the overhead heaters made the space toasty.

  “Can I get you some tea?” she asked. He didn’t look like the tea type, but she should ask.

  Sure enough, he shook his head. “Nope. Thanks.”

  Peggy pushed out Clara’s chair with the tip of her shoe. She leaned forward and whispered. “About your date. On Saturday night. Tell me everything.”

  Clara glanced over her shoulder at the man. Did Peggy’s sotto voce comment carry to where he sat?

  But he seemed intent on the view. Outside, Sully, Ray and Leo were making their careful way down the sidewalk. They came as a unit, those three old men. When they weren’t sitting on the bench they claimed as their own, they moved through town, poking their noses into anyone’s business who would let them. Sully slipped on an icy patch, and Leo and Ray laughed at him. But Clara noticed that both of them grabbed an arm to keep Sully upright.

  “Come on,” said Peggy impatiently. “I’m dying.”

  Clara kept her voice low. “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “He’s an editor. How bad could it be?”

  Clara took a quick sip, forgetting her tea was still hot. It burned on the way down. “It was bad. First of all, he wasn’t an editor.”

  “But his profile….”

  “He lied. Just out and out lied.”

  “Lord, have mercy. You have to quit dating these guys who lie like that. How did he even pick that profession to lie about?”

  “He prints phone books.”

  “You’re kidding.” Peggy thumped her foot on the wooden planks of the porch.

  Clara glanced at the man, who still appeared to be ignoring them completely. “Nope. I think he likes to think he’s in the publishing industry. Talked a lot about how many units he produced, how many books he had on order.”

  Peggy said, “You’re talking about the phone book, right. That obsolete thing I put right into the recycling as soon as I get it?”

  “He was very proud of the way he organized it.”

  “Alphabetically, you mean?”

  Clara laughed. “I assume so. I’d love to know if he does it any differently. Actually, I take that back. Ninety minutes with that man was long enough. I hope I don’t have to spend another minute in his company. If I saw him coming down the walkway right now, if he told me he wanted a sweater’s worth of cashmere, I would jump up and lock the door.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Peggy. “You can’t be rude to save your life.”

  “Sure, I can.”

  “What about that date you went on with the guy who worked for Waste Management and smelled like the inside of a trash can?”

  Clara raised her shoulders and let them drop. “He couldn’t help that, could he?”

  “And instead of saying anything to him, you changed the plan so you could picnic outside. In the rain.”

  “He wanted to go to the diner and the booths are so tight there. We would have been close. Too close.”

  “You could have told him that he smelled funny and maybe he should have gone home to change.”

  “No!” Clara could never do anything like that. She hated to tell a customer that a sweater was ill-fitting, or that a particular color made someone look sallow. She much preferred to steer them to a better color, or to advise them to make a gauge swatch next time.

  She was polite. It used to break her heart when other people weren’t—when perfect strangers used to come up to her and tell her that if she just stopped drinking coffee with cream, she could lose the weight. That if she just took up the elliptical, her life would change. Every mean “truth” couched in concern had felt like a cruel kick. She wouldn’t do that now if she could help it. Politeness mattered.

  “You know,” said the man, “being too polite is sometimes the worst thing someone can do.”

  Clara turned in her seat in surprise. “Pardon?”

  “So you went on a date with someone who smelled bad, and you didn’t tell him? So you let him go on another date to just get hurt again?”

  “Well,” started Clara. But she had no idea how to finish her sentence. He was the one who’d been eavesdropping, after all, but she wouldn’t point it out. That wouldn’t be polite.

  “And the phone book guy—sounds like he edits the phone book.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “So he’s an editor. And he publishes the phone book, so isn’t he technically in publishing?”

  Clara felt her cheeks heat. “It’s the principle. He could have said that on his ad.”

  “How much did you say you weigh in your personal ad?” His face and voice were relaxed enough, and with those sunglasses on, Clara couldn’t tell what his mood was. Was he teasing her? Or was he serious?

  “You want me to tell you how much I weigh?”

  “Not at all,” he said. And there it was, a real smile. “I want you to tell me how much you said you weighed.”

  “Nuh-uh. I’m not falling for that.”

  “Was it less than your scale tells you?”

  “My scale fluctuates,” said Clara primly. She folded her legs at the ankles, conscious that it was something she couldn’t have done a year and a half ago. Something about the man’s gaze made her self-conscious. She didn’t like the feeling, the sense that he could see into her. For a second, she wished for the weight she’d worked so hard to lose, the weight she’d hidden behind for so long.

  But she also didn’t want to leave the porch to check on Weezie. There was something about that smile of his, the way his mouth quirked at the corner, like he was gently amused. Like he was enjoying teasing her, even though he didn’t know her from Adam.

  “But did you actually tell the truth?” he pushed.

  Peggy said, a laugh in her voice, “Clara? Did you?”

  Clara slumped backward in her chair. “Maybe? If I did fib, it was only by five pounds. Or so.”

  “There you go,” he said.

  “Is it a big lie, though? Doesn’t everyone do that on personal ads?” Her cheeks flamed at the realization this handsome stranger knew she hunted for dates online. “Or on their driver’s licenses?”

  He tilted his head. “So you have a value system for lying?” Then he held up his hands. "Don’t answer that. I’m out of line. Just waiting for my aunt, that’s all.”

  Something about him fascinated Clara. What was it, his confidence? No, she knew confident people. He just seemed to…fit. He fit inside his skin like he knew where he belonged.

  Clara had been trying, ever since her transformation, to be brave. She shouldn’t have been scared to lose the weight, to start walking, to eat better, but the whole thing—from start until today—all of it was terrifying. When she was heavy, she had herself to hide behind. No one ever saw her.

  Now, people noticed her. Women—strangers—smiled more readily, without hesitation, and she found herself confused when they did. Men who didn’t know she existed before, now suddenly found things to say to her. The first time sh
e’d been asked out was by a guy who came into the shop on accident, thinking it was still the French café. Confused by the masses of colored fiber, he’d stuttered, and then—amazingly—he’d seemed to be stuttering because of her. She’d said yes, and he’d taken her out to the drive-in, which she’d thought was charming until he said they could create their own soundtrack. He’d rolled up the windows, leaving the speaker outside the car, and had then laid a kiss on her that had been so wet and grabby that pulling out of it put her in mind of trying to escape a drowning octopus.

  Dating—it was even scarier than losing the weight.

  But Clara did scary things now. At least, she told herself she did. And that included introducing herself to darkly handsome strangers.

  So she said, “I’m Clara.”

  “I’m Lincoln.”

  “As in Abe?” said Clara. As if he’d never heard that one before.

  His lips twisted wryly. “My mother’s idea. She insisted on straightforward honesty.” He pointed to the shop door. “That’s her sister in there. She’s a little softer around the edges than my mother ever was. You can tell her a white lie and she won’t slap your hand if she finds out. Not that I would.” He shifted in his seat, as if his legs hurt him. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, though. I’ll butt out.”

  Peggy clicked her needles loudly and said, “Nah. Now that we’re both listening, tell us more about the date. What was his name again?”

  “Steven.” Lord, it was even a boring name. Compared to Lincoln.

  “What was he like?”

  Regular. Regular height, with regular brown hair which seemed to be thinning at the edges. He’d worn dark brown Dockers with a pressed seam, but the knees were slightly lighter in color than the rest of the fabric, as if he’d spent a great many hours seated, his knees bent while he proofed ads from roofing companies and pizza restaurants. He’d driven a Toyota Corolla, gray in color. His fingers had been medium-length on the steering wheel, and Clara remembered thinking that his nails looked a little uneven, as if he’d clipped them quickly with whatever office scissors were closest at hand.

  Steven was just a guy.

  This man, Lincoln, the one seated just feet from her, was a totally different beast. A lot of tourists who came through Snow Creek had expensive leather jackets. In the winter, they tended to be lined with real fur, scuffed with marks that the manufacturer had carefully placed at the elbows and around the cuffs.

  This guy’s jacket was the real deal. One cuff was so scraped up that it looked like he’d held it together with—was it?—yes, duct tape. Did they make black duct tape? Or had he colored it with black Sharpie? Points for utility, if so. Two of the metal clasps were dangling, as if they’d seen better days. The jacket couldn’t possibly keep him warm in the snow. She wondered what color his eyes were under those mirrored sunglasses. Clara found herself staring at his left wrist, wide and strong-looking. His hand rested easily on his thigh. He was wide—his wrist, his thigh, his chest—even his head was wide. His whole presence evoked both tension, as if he were ready to run at any second, and a graceful ease, for which she felt a brief burst of envy. Clara didn’t feel truly relaxed anywhere but in the apartment above the yarn shop. When she’d been heavy, the apartment had been her safe haven, the place where no one stared. After she’d worked so hard to lose the weight, her home had been where she’d hidden from the never-ending, overly-fascinated conversation about how she’d done it, how she kept it off. Now her goal was to someday be so comfortable in her own body that she sat like he did, her posture open, unguarded.

  She purposely uncrossed her legs and relaxed her face. “He was normal. It was just your regular date.” As if she really knew what that meant.

  “So it was boring.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Even with the sunglasses on, his face betrayed surprise. “Really? It was exciting?”

  “Are you a lawyer?”

  He barked a laugh, his head tilted back. Then he leaned forward, both forearms on his thighs. “Nope.”

  That smile of his…. Was Clara imagining it? Was he flirting? In front of Peggy?

  As if she’d heard her think it, Peggy said, “Hey, honey, I’ve got to use the bathroom. I’ll see how your customer is doing, too.”

  “No, I’ll check on her….”

  Lincoln said, “Until she screams for help, I promise Aunt Weezie is happy in there.”

  Peggy ducked away, the front door giving it's signature quiet creak.

  Clara said, “She did seem happy, that’s true. I know a lot of women made happy by yarn.”

  “What would make you happy?” he said, his voice as open as his hands.

  A kiss. The thought rose, ridiculous and unbidden, but once she’d had it, Clara couldn’t get it out of her mind. Last year, at what felt like the ripe old age of thirty-one, she’d received her first kiss from a man whose hands had been clammier than his tongue. She regretted the kiss while she was still kissing him, while his hands were still awkwardly stuck in her hair. For her, someone who had dreamed of the perfect movie kiss for most of her life, for someone who had felt the pain of being sweet sixteen and never kissed, followed by seventeen, and eighteen, and all the other numbers, it had been heartbreaking. For the love of God, she was now thirty-two, and had experienced multiple kisses, and she wouldn’t repeat a single one of them. She’d kissed the wet octopus at the drive-in, and a podiatrist named George whose lips hadn’t moved. She’d had the disturbing feeling she’d been kissing a set of Halloween wax lips—they even tasted the same, like bitter, chewy plastic. The only other man she’d wanted to kiss was Jose from the carwash—he’d been flirting with her for years, even when she was heavy. When she was thin, he asked her out, but then she’d heard from a friend at the Thursday Farmer’s Market that he was married. She’d be damned if she’d be the other woman after so many years of being no one’s woman at all.

  Clara wondered what it would be like to kiss Lincoln. Would his mouth be as strong as it looked? Would he grab her and haul her against that wide chest, his leather jacket creaking as he did so? Would he make her knees weak? Or would he just be another disappointment, lips limp, tongue too wet?

  Somehow, Clara suspected the man might know how to kiss a girl.

  She deflected the question. “What would make you the happiest right now?”

  He picked up his aunt’s hat and put it back down. “Probably not yarn, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Are you sure?” She jerked her thumb in the direction of the shop. “Because yarn can make a person really happy. This I know.”

  “Do I look like a knitter?”

  Clara looked at him again, as if she hadn’t been covertly staring at him this whole time. His hands still rested quietly in his lap. True knitters were never still. She grabbed at her own knitting and punched the needle through the stitches as if it could satisfy her nervousness. “No. But I’ve been surprised before.”

  “What was your biggest knitting surprise?”

  Clara thought about the Harley Davidson rider named Ramirez who had ridden through on his way to meet his ex-wife at a BDSM convention in Oregon (she’d gotten all this within the first two sentences he’d spoken). Ramirez had wanted to surprise his ex with a handmade scarf. His fingers had been big and knotted with rheumatism, but he’d worked out the basic stitch quicker than some, and she’d felt confident sending him on his way with a couple of YouTube videos bookmarked on his iPhone.

  Then there was the six-year-old who wanted to knit his new girlfriend some arm warmers. He’d been a charmer with his high voice and the way his legs kicked steadily as he manipulated the needles.

  But there was one who stuck in her memory….

  “A young guy came in once,” said Clara slowly. “He wanted yarn for his wife. She was sick, he said. Thirty-five. Really sick. He wanted big yarn and big needles. He wanted to learn how to knit.”

  Lincoln said, “Let me guess. So he could make her a gift she’d never forget.�
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  “No,” said Clara. “That was the thing. She’d always wanted to knit, he said. It had been something she’d always talked about doing, learning how to knit so she could make her little son sweaters and scarves. And now she was dying.” Clara could remember the young man’s face but not his name. He’d been thin and much too tall, like a slender crane perched on stilts. He’d ducked his head as they spoke, dipping into and away from her words. “He wanted to learn so that she didn’t have to, so that he could prove to her that he would knit for their son.”

  “Damn,” said Lincoln.

  “I know.” Clara cleared her throat. “He wanted to learn so badly, and he wanted to learn everything, that very minute. But knitting is a muscle memory, really. You can show someone how to do the moves, but it’s not until they’ve done them over and over that they really become known, that they become second nature.”

  “Like riding a bike,” said Lincoln.

  “Yes,” said Clara gratefully. “Just like that. All memory—the body just follows along without having to think.”

  “Like sex,” said Lincoln.

  Clara’s brain stalled and went into a nosedive.

  “Sorry,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose underneath his sunglasses. “I talk without thinking sometimes. Go on.”

  Go on? With the very sudden image of Lincoln naked in front of her eyes? Clara leaned back in her chair, propped her knitting on her knee, and took a slow sip of her now-cooled tea. “Anyway, he stayed in the shop that whole afternoon, sitting here on the porch, doing the knit stitch over and over. Every time I came out to check on him, he’d made a new mistake.” She remembered standing behind him, pretending to pat him on the back when in reality she was surreptitiously plucking an errant dryer sheet from where it clung to his shirt. “Sometimes he knitted into the work hanging below. Sometimes he used the tail to knit with. Sometimes he knit backward into the stitch, and at one point I caught him accidentally tinking—I mean, knitting backwards. No matter how many times I showed him, he couldn’t get it. His wife was actively dying, at that very moment, and he wouldn’t leave to go to her, not until he could knit.”