by Ace Gray
Copyright © 2017 Ace Gray
Except the original material written by the author, all songs, song lyrics, and song Titles contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders. The author concedes to the trademarked status and trademark owners of the products mentioned in this fiction novel and recognizes that they have been used without permission. The use and publication of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or events is entirely coincidental.
Cover Design by EmmBooks
Editing by Love N. Books
Formatting by Elaine York of Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting
“Roots” Imagine Dragons
“I Got Friends in Low Places” Garth Brooks
“Never Gonna Change” Broods
“Sabotage” Beastie Boys
“Drowning” Banks
“Stubborn Love” Lumineers
“First” Cold War Kids
“I and Love and You” The Avett Brothers
“On My Mind” Ellie Goulding
“Unsteady” X Ambassadors
“If I Could Turn Back Time” Cher
“Burning House” Cam
“Fall in Love” Phantogram
“All I Want for Christmas is You” Mariah Carey
“Fuck Em Only We Know” Banks
“No One’s Gonna Love You” Band of Horses
“It Will Rain” Bruno Mars
“Skinny Love” Bon Iver
“Angel” The Weeknd
“Like I’m Gonna Lose You” Jasmine Thompson
“Four Walls” Broods
“You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” Death Cab for Cutie
“I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You” Colin Hay
“Make You Feel My Love” Adele
“Work Song” Hozier
Recipes
Cam’s Coffee Cream
Of Smoke & Cinnamon
Hard Eight
Black Manhattan
Acknowledgements
About Ace Gray
Other works by Ace Gray
Merry Christmas friends!
This book is dedicated to you. All of you.
About 18 months, I put out a little novel called Strictly Business, a few of you may have bought it. Even less of you read it. And let’s not even talk about who actually liked it. You may think I’m being self-deprecating which (always) isn’t the case (at least not completely). I’m being honest. And let me say, for each of you that loved the book, I’m thankful. Like beyond words, found a drag queen stripper at the end of the rainbow with fried chicken instead of gold, grateful. BUT… becoming friends with you guys has meant so much more. Through the publication of two more Business books, the Twisted Fairy Tale and two anthologies, I’ve realized how unbelievably lucky I am. (Blackjack tables at the Wynn, we’re having a rematch…) Suffice it to say that #blessed, #grateful, #gratitude and #whitegirlhashtags abound and it’s all because of you!
The honest truth is that I couldn’t do any of this without my readers, my friends. I love you. You’re not readers or bookstagram buddies, you’re simply my FRIENDS. I’m not perfect—matter of fact, perfect laughs it’s ass off at me, but I try to show you guys as much love and affection as possible. I will always try to show that side of me. You matter. More than I can ever say.
This little mush ball of a bookie wook started two years ago, before Strictly Business was even published, as an outlet for me. This is a VERY different book than what I’ve been publishing lately, and maybe it doesn’t work in my brand but I just had to take a chance and put it out there.
Willow Creek is essentially my hometown and to say I get anxiety going back there may, in fact, be an understatement. What did I do about it? Write. That’s always the answer, right? Put it in words. Bleed. And try not to add too many “very’s”, too many adverbs, and definitely don’t end sentences with prepositions. So that’s what I did. I leaked out on these pages. About going home, how hard it can be for me, and how beautiful it can be too. I had no intentions of publishing this, but it ended up adorbs and I’m a big ole softy. Christmas just makes it worse.
I hope you enjoy the story, I hope you feel something for Camilla and AJ. But way more, I hope you feel love and light this holiday season. Bye 2017 (Felicia) and hello the grandeur that should (better) be 2017. Most of all I hope you feel my long distance and wildly inappropriate hug through this measly little bit of text.
You guys have my heart. You always will!
xoxo
Ace
P.S. Yes, it’s a playlist not a table of contents. Queue it up now!
P.P.S. Yeah, I wrote the letter drunk, what do you want to do about it? hahahahahaha…
“Roots” Imagine Dragons
Hallmark really should shoot movies here, they wouldn’t have to spend a dime ritzing it up. Multi-colored Christmas lights frame every window down our picturesque little Main Street. Each and every bulb dusted in fluffy, sugary snow. Wreaths hang from every garland-wrapped street lamp and adorn business doors. Quaint multi-colored businesses frame the massive tree plunked down in the center of town and rest beneath mountains that jut up behind the historic storefronts, each one wearing a blanket of snow that glows in the pale moonlight.
I couldn’t make up Willow Creek, Colorado if I tried.
The fact that the window in front of me is a glowing halo around Jimmy Schmidt and Janie Carter—no, now it’s Janie Schmidt—the quarterback and head cheerleader from my high school class doesn’t help. Both of them seem to have gotten blonder and their teeth have gone whiter since I left. And they’re wearing matching Christmas sweaters, toasting the bulk of my high school class gathered at The Barn with Bud Lights.
Vomit.
The bar has become a favorite of locals, particularly kids born and stuck—I mean raised—in town. One of our own built it and we all remember kissing among the hay bales of the barn that was torn down to remodel this space. Mom sent me the headline, and I flipped right past the article in the weekly paper to see the other big ticket news items: the state-wide hockey tournament, the lasagna night fundraiser for the animal shelter, elk spotted on the golf course and the anonymous police blotter.
It’s quaint. Picturesque. And I’ve been trying like hell to distance myself from it for the past thirteen years.
Because when I walk into The Barn, I’m gonna be klutzy Cam Collins. The shy, willowy science and choir nerd. No one will care that I’m successful, that I’m wearing both Burberry and Louboutin. Even that I’m walking in six-inch stilettos. In the ice and like a boss no less.
And those stilettos are just one of the thousand reasons I don’t belong here anymore. That I wouldn’t be anywhere near here if it weren’t for my mom.
Come home, she begged. It’s been so long. Everyone asks about you.
Ugh. I know. No one can mind their business.
It’s been thirteen years and we’re not getting younger. Your niece is three and you’ve never spent Christmas with her. You love the snow.
She’d layered on icing for the guilty cake thick. But it’s all true. Especially the snow part. I miss it in Seattle. So much. But I can shove that yearning
aside easily enough.
It’ll be the first Christmas without grandma.
Until she says that. Juju died of cancer in June. And the loss left me so hollow that I caved despite the sickening feeling ripping through my stomach.
When coming home wasn’t enough, Mom had guilted me out the door and to my informal class reunion here at The Barn, too. I should have made her stay so she could personally shove me through the door.
Everyone will be there.
I know. That’s why I don’t want to go.
They’ve missed you.
Doubt it.
AJ will be there.
And just like that, she’s hooked me. Because even after all these years, even after he broke my heart, AJ Jenkins still has a pull on me.
That pull is tugging hard enough that I’m kicking snow piles with my Louboutins in Hallmark-fucked-a-farm Colorado. And I’m staring past Jimmy and Janie at AJ, and how he’s filling out a Henley in a way that should be illegal.
Fuck me.
He’s gotten far more attractive. Like, should be a model attractive, complete with rigid, rippling muscles. He always had broad shoulders but they’re muscular now. All of his formerly gangly limbs are ripped. Any sign of baby fat is gone from his face, replaced by a razor-sharp jaw. His hair is dark, a little wavy, and a lot unruly, just like the devilish scruff he’s sporting. Even with the slight fur, his lips are just as plump as I remember.
I take a deep breath and the two steps toward the door, only to spin back toward the street.
I’ve picked the wrong outfit. My haircut is too fashionable, someone is sure to say it’s crooked rather than notice it’s purposefully asymmetrical. Smokey eyes are totally uncalled for. I worry over ten million things that I wouldn’t think twice about in Seattle.
Only one thing’s for sure—I should be home drinking eggnog and watching The Grinch.
“Cam? Cam Collins?” a voice pulls me from my spiral.
A tall man with bright blonde hair that hangs like a shaggy blanket in his face steps around the hood of a beat-up Chevy. He looks me over lazily as he adjusts the hockey sticks and giant bag in the bed. Except for a scruffy beard, he looks exactly the same.
“Jersey?” I question as my eyebrows knit together.
“No one’s called me that in years.” He laughs at me.
“No one’s called me Cam in years, either.” I let out a deep breath and find a small giggle for him.
“In that case, hi, I’m Mike.” He holds out his hand for me to shake. “I’m in town visiting the family for Christmas. Do you come here often?”
I can’t help but crescendo to a full-blown laugh. I manage to grab his hand and shake it all the same. “Camilla.” I roll my eyes. “And no, I don’t come here often. Nor do I appreciate cheesy pick-up lines.”
“You wound me, Cam.” Mike dramatically cups his heart as he limps toward me like he’s gravely injured.
“Well Jersey, what can I say?” I shake my head when I’m sure he’s watching.
“You can tell me why you’re dancing around on the sidewalk in front of the bar.” He shoves his hands in his pockets and suddenly he’s looming over me.
“You got taller,” I say a little nervous with an attractive version of an old friend so close.
“You got hotter.” He smirks down at me.
My laugh goes a little breathy.
“Better?”
“Yeah, that’ll do.” I blush as I grab his offered elbow.
“They’re all honestly curious, ya know?” He nods toward the door. “Don’t worry.”
I wish he hadn’t said anything about them. Fear and insecurity seep back beneath my skin like a living monster. If it were just Janie and Jimmy and Mike I might have walked in the door like a normal person, but now…now I’m distracted. Questions from the past thirteen years are abusing my brain all over again, and as Mike pulls me along, something terrible happens. Something that hasn’t happened in close to thirteen years.
I trip.
Like a clumsy giraffe battling the doorsill, with limbs flying everywhere despite being rather petite.
The water droplets and bits of tracked in snow on the wood flooring make it worse. I clamor and clatter everywhere. Janie is speaking, but when I jostle her table, her words trail off. When I knock over Jimmy’s Bud Light, the whole bar looks up.
Way to make an entrance, Camilla.
In one moment the designer duds, the successful business, and years of yoga and Pilates are all wasted. All it takes is one moment to erase that version of myself and reinforce the one I’d run from. I no longer have a cover of Seattle Magazine. I’m not revolutionizing the face of American craft distilling. I’m a nerd that just spilled the quarterback’s beer.
Mike is right there at my elbow, helping to steady me. I jerk away, slightly uncomfortable at his familiarity, and bang into the table again, sending Janie’s beer wobbling. My hands shoot out to stop it but somehow a solid fist punches the beer, sending suds spraying in a dramatic arc. The bottles clamor and roll, beer chugging onto the floor. My face contorts as I scramble to grab the bottles and somehow stop the trickling beer.
“Cam,” Janie says as she stands up beside me. “Cam, stop. Calm down, it’s just beer.” She pats my shoulder kindly.
I pop up from my crouch and look at her like she’s grown a second head. I expected something bitchy, snappy, or smart. Kind hadn’t even crossed my mind.
“Sorry, Janie. Can I buy you another?” My voice is shaky, so unlike my usual self, so similar to a young, innocent, and naive me, that I’m off balance again.
“Only if you get yourself one and join us. Tell us what you’ve been up to.” I find myself nodding as she adds, “You too, Mike.”
“Did everyone get the memo to call you Mike instead of Jersey?” I ask as I sink into the safety of my wool jacket and fiddle with my zipper on the way to the bar.
“Yeah. Two years after college, I think. Had them announce me as Mike at the alumni hockey game.”
I bite the inside of my cheek. That statement packs a wallop. I had succeeded in distancing myself but in a different way than I’d hoped. I’d missed traditions, changes, and years of everyone’s lives. Not just his.
Mike pulls my jacket off my shoulders and with it, me from my wallowing. He smiles and arches a brow as he hangs it on one of the large support beams nearby. I feel exposed and shove my sleeves down to cover my fingers. They lace into the chunky knit and curl, and even if it ruins the expensive top, it makes me feel better. Hidden somehow. I bite my lip as I tiptoe to the bar.
“What can I get ya?” the bartender asks with her back to us.
A loaded question. In this bar, I don’t even know where to start. After a moment of silence on my part while Mike is busy high-fiving Jeremy Frank, the bartender turns, her curly blonde ponytail swishing. I lock eyes with familiar chocolate brown ones. One has a pen-sized ball of gold but I would have remembered them anywhere—even without that curiosity.
“Trigg?” I ask, wide-eyed.
“Camilla?”
She doesn’t even wait for my response before lunging across the bar and gathering me in a hug.
“I never thought you’d come back,” she whispers in my ear.
“Makes two of us, Trigg.” I hug her tightly.
“He’s watching you.”
And without looking, I know exactly which he she is referring to. I can picture AJ’s crystal blue eyes boring into me. He’s always been able to nail the steely, intimidating gaze of disapproval. It chokes me now that I’m fully aware of it.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I murmur, still locked in her arms sprawled across the bar.
Trigg and I were thick as thieves in high school. I stayed in touch with her longer than anyone else after. But we’d lost touch all the same. Apparently, that hasn’t changed her magic ability to draw confessions from the pit of my stomach.
“I find a drink usually makes it easier.” She pulls back and winks at me.
“Hiya Mike, what can I get ya?”
“A Bud, and two Bud Lights for Janie and Jimmy on my tab.” He throws his arm around me. “Last but not least, whatever Cam here would like.”
I make a sour face and I’m not sure whether it’s because he’s made himself comfortable on my shoulders or called me Cam. Again. Perhaps it’s even the horrific beer.
Shaking my shoulders ever so slightly, hoping to dislodge Mike, I open my mouth to order but Trigg’s already pulling something from beneath the bar. A familiar crystal cut bottle with a beige parchment label emblazoned with a delicate but bold thirteen.
“You have a bottle?” I say quietly as I reach out for the bourbon.
“I’ve carried it since day one. I have the other stuff too.” Trigg’s voice is sweet and warms my insides.
“What is that?” Mike’s brow is crinkled beside me.
“That’s Camilla’s baby.” Trigg snatches the bottle out of my hands and pops the cork stopper before pouring a glass for me. She adds one ice cube and hands it back. “Read you like it that way.”
“Her baby?” Mike bends down to study the label, and for the first time since I left my condo yesterday, confidence swells inside me.
“She makes that.” It helps that Trigg is beaming.
“What?” Mike’s gaze shifts from the bottle to me, and I recognize that look from outside the bar. Interest mingled with hunger. I feel my skin blush in bright rose patches under his sweeping stare. Shy is the only thing I haven’t shaken in thirteen years.
“The bourbon, the bottle, the brand,” I answer quietly, my eyes shifting away to trace the woodgrain of the bar. “That’s what I do now.”
He smiles a familiar smile and I’m not sure how it makes me feel. “We have more catching up to do than I thought.”
“I Got Friends in Low Places” Garth Brooks
My last twelve Christmases have been peaceful. We’ve had deep snow for almost all of them, each tree that the fire department has erected on Main Street has been bigger and more beautiful than the last and I’ve only missed playing in the alumni hockey game twice because of my knee. Even the last three, the ones missing my dad, had a homey feel that Mom and I worked hard to maintain.
