It Started at Christmas...

by Janice Lynn

  He reached out, touched her cheek. “McKenzie, there’s so much I could say to you.”

  “But?”

  “But you already know everything I’d say.”

  “Not everything.”

  His brow rose and she shook her head. Now wasn’t the time to ask him about Shelby. That time had come and gone.

  Apparently he agreed because he said, “It’s been fun.”

  She nodded, hoping the tears she felt prickling her eyes didn’t burst free.

  “Your car door was unlocked and I left something for you in the front seat of your car.”

  Her gaze lifted to his. “What? Why would you do that?”

  “Just a little something for Valentine’s Day.”

  He’d gotten her a gift for Valentine’s Day? But they’d ended things the day before. She had not bought him the standard card. “I didn’t get you anything.”

  “You didn’t need to. Our two months is finished, just as we are.” He glanced at his watch again. “Goodbye, McKenzie.” Then, right there in the reception hall in front of her mother, her father and her brand-new stepfather, Lance kissed her.

  Not a quick peck but a real kiss. Not a dragged-out one but one jam-packed with emotion all the same. One that demanded the same emotion back from her.

  McKenzie blinked up at him. He looked as if he was about to say something but instead shook his head and left.

  “Who was that man, McKenzie?” her mother asked, immediately joining her as Lance exited the building.

  “That’s what I want to know,” her father practically bellowed. “Why was he kissing you?”

  “Why is he leaving?” Her mother asked the more pressing question.

  “He’s just someone I work with,” she mumbled, not wanting to discuss Lance.

  “She gets that from you,” her mother told her father. “The idea she’s supposed to kiss people she works with.”

  “Violet,” her father began, crossing his arms and giving her a sour look.

  But her mother seemed to shake off her thoughts and smiled. “Come, let me introduce you to your much younger, more virile and loyal replacement.”

  “Sure took you long enough,” her father gibed.

  “Some of us are more choosy than others.”

  McKenzie watched her parents walk away together, bickering back and forth. It wasn’t even six in the evening and exhaustion hit her.

  Much, much later, after she’d waved sparklers at her mother and Yves’s exit, McKenzie gathered up her belongings from the church classroom where the bridal party had gotten ready.

  When she got into her car, her gaze immediately went to the passenger floorboard where she saw a vase full of red roses. On the passenger seat was a gift box. Chocolates?

  She doubted it due to the odd box size. She ripped open the package, and gave a trembling smile at what was inside.

  A new pair of running shoes.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “YOU’RE NOT RIGHT, you know.”

  McKenzie didn’t argue with her best friend. Cecilia was correct and they both knew it. Then again, one didn’t argue with a person streaking hair color through one’s hair.

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “Who said this was about him?” Okay, so maybe she was feeling more argumentative than she should be.

  Cecilia’s gaze met McKenzie’s in the large salon mirror in front of her styling chair. “You’re still upset about your mother getting hitched? I thought you were over that.”

  “I am over that.” How could she not be when her mother was happier than McKenzie recalled her ever being? When she’d morphed into an energetic, productive person who suddenly seemed to have her act together?

  Yves had taken her to South America to a bird-watching resort for their honeymoon. Since they’d returned her mother seemed as happy as a lark, working at the health-food store with her new husband.

  This from a woman who’d never really held a job.

  “Then it has to be Lance.”

  “Why does it have to be Lance?”

  “The reason you’re lost in your thoughts and moping around like a lovesick puppy? Who else would it be?”

  “I’m not,” she denied with way too much gusto.

  “Sure you are.”

  “I meant I’m not a lovesick puppy,” she countered, because at least that much was true.

  Cecilia laughed. “Keep telling yourself that, girlfriend, and maybe you’ll convince one of us.”

  McKenzie didn’t say anything, just sat in the chair while Cecilia dabbed more highlight color onto her hair, then wrapped the strand in aluminum foil.

  “Have you tossed out the roses yet?”

  What did it matter if she still had the roses Lance had given her on Valentine’s Day? They still had a little color to them.

  “I’m not answering that.”

  “It’s been a month. They’re dead. Let them go.”

  “I thought I might try my hand at making potpourri.”

  “Sure you did.” Cecilia had the audacity to laugh as she tucked another wet strand of hair into a tinfoil packet. “What about the shoes?”

  “What about them?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me. I’ve known you too long. Have you worn them yet?”

  That was the problem with best friends. They had known you too long and too well.

  “I’ve put them on,” she admitted, not clarifying that she’d put them on a dozen times, staring at them, wondering what he’d meant by giving her running shoes. “They’re a perfect fit.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. He pays attention to details.”

  Lance did pay attention to details. Like the fact she ran away when things got sticky. Then again, he hadn’t tried to convince her not to. Not once had he mentioned anything beyond their seeing each other on Valentine’s Day. If she’d agreed, would he have asked for more? No matter how many times she asked herself that question, she couldn’t convince herself that he would have. She wasn’t the only one who ran.

  Maybe she should have gotten him a pair of running shoes, too.

  She bit the inside of her lower lip. “You think I messed up letting him go, don’t you?”

  Cecilia’s look was full of amusement. “If you were any quicker on the uptake I’d have to call you Einstein.”

  “It wasn’t just my choice, you know. He walked away that night at my mother’s rehearsal.”

  “He gave you roses and running shoes.”

  Yeah, he had.

  “Running shoes? What kind of a gift is that anyway?”

  “The kind that says he knows you better than you think he does. You’re a runner—physically, mentally, emotionally. He also gave you red roses. What does that say?”

  “Not what you’re implying. He never told me that he loved me.”

  “Did you want him to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do.” Cecilia pulled another strand of hair loose, coated it in dye, then wrapped it.

  “He was in love with a woman who died. I can’t compete with a ghost.”

  “She’s gone. She’s no longer any competition.”

  “Cecilia!”

  “I don’t mean to be crude, McKenzie, but if he’s in love with a woman who is no longer around, well, she’s not a real threat. Not unless you let her be.”

  “He never even mentioned her to me.”

  “There are lots of things you still haven’t told him. That’s what the rest of your lives are for.”

  “He and I agreed to a short-term relationship.”

  “You didn’t have a signed contract. Terms can change.”

  “Ouch!” McKenzie yelped when Cecil
ia pulled a piece of hair too tightly.

  “Sorry.” But the gleam in her eyes warned that she might have done it on purpose. “You could have kept seeing him. You should have kept seeing him.”

  “He didn’t want to go beyond our two months any more than I did.”

  “Sure you didn’t. That’s why you’re miserable now that you’re not with him anymore.”

  “I’m not miserable,” McKenzie lied. “Besides, I see him at work.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Awkward. Strange. As bad as I was afraid it would be. I knew I shouldn’t become involved with a coworker.”

  “So why did you?”

  “Because...because I couldn’t not.”

  Cecilia’s face lit with excitement that McKenzie had finally caught on. “Exactly. That should tell you everything you need to know about how you feel about the man. Why you are so intent on denying that you miss him makes no sense to me.”

  “I miss him,” she admitted. “There, does that make you happy? I miss Lance. I miss the way he looks, the way he smiles, the way he smells, the way he tastes. I miss everything about him.”

  Cecilia spun the chair to face her straight on, her eyes full of sympathy. “Girl, how can you not see what is so obvious?”

  McKenzie’s rib cage contracted tightly around everything in her chest. “You think I’m in love with him.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  McKenzie winced. She wasn’t. Couldn’t be. She shouldn’t be.

  She was.

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Well, you are your mother’s daughter. Maybe you should grab the happiness you want instead of being afraid it’s always going to be just outside your grasp.”

  All these years she’d not wanted to be like her mother, but her mother had been happy, had been choosing to be single, but not out of fear of love. If her mother, who’d borne the brunt of so much hurt, could love, could trust, why couldn’t McKenzie?

  If her mother could put her heart out there, be in a committed relationship, find happiness, why couldn’t McKenzie?

  Maybe she wasn’t like her father. Maybe she wasn’t like her mother either.

  Maybe she was tiny pieces of both, could learn from their mistakes, learn from their successes and be a better person.

  Right now, she wasn’t a better person. Right now, she didn’t even feel like a whole person. She felt like only half a person, with the other half of her missing.

  Lance.

  “I want him back,” she admitted, causing Cecilia’s eyes to widen with satisfaction.

  “Good. Now, how are you going to make it happen?”

  “He didn’t want more than our two months, Cecilia. He was as insistent on our ending point as I was,” she mused. “I wasn’t the only one who let us end at two months. He didn’t fight to hang on to me.” He hadn’t. He’d walked away without a backward glance. “His heart belongs to another woman.”

  “Another woman who can’t have him,” Cecilia reminded her. “If you want Lance back, then you don’t worry about whether or not he’s fighting for you. You fight for him. You show him you want him in your life. Show him how much he means to you.”

  She did want Lance back and, Lord help her, she wanted to fight for him, to show him she missed him and wanted him in her life.

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  Cecilia’s gaze shifted to the back of a flyer posted on the salon’s front door. A flyer someone from Celebration Graduation had dropped by a week or so ago, advertising a St. Patrick’s Day show at the Senior Citizen Center.

  “I have the perfect idea.”

  McKenzie could see her friend mentally rubbing her hands together in glee. “Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”

  * * *

  Lance shoved the giant four-leaf clover to the middle of the stage, trying to decide if the light was going to reflect off the glittery surface correctly or if he should reposition the stage prop.

  “That looks great there,” one of the other volunteers called out, answering his silent question.

  He finished arranging props on the stage, then went to the room they were using as a dressing room to get ready for the actual show. He was emceeing.

  The event hadn’t been a planned Celebration Graduation fund-raiser, but the Senior Citizen Center had approached him with the idea and the earnest desire to help with the project. How could he say no?

  Besides, he’d needed something to focus on besides the gaping hole in his chest.

  He should be used to having a gaping hole in his chest.

  Hadn’t he had one since he’d been a seventeen-year-old kid and the love of his life had been killed in a car accident?

  Only had Shelby really been the love of his life? Or had she just been his first love and their relationship had never been able to run its natural course to its inevitable conclusion?

  Which was his fault.

  He winced at his thoughts. Why was he allowing such negativity into his head?

  It had been his fault Shelby was no longer alive. He’d promised her that her death wouldn’t be in vain, that her life wouldn’t be forgotten. He’d vowed to keep her alive in his heart and mind. Wasn’t that why he did the volunteer work?

  Wasn’t that why he headed up Celebration Graduation?

  So that no other teen had to go through what he and Shelby had gone through?

  So that there were other options in teens’ lives besides making bad choices on graduation night?

  If only their school had offered a Celebration Graduation program. If only he and Shelby had gone to the event rather than the party they’d been at. If only he hadn’t given in to peer pressure and drunk. If only he’d not let her drink, not let her get into that car for him to drive them home that night.

  If only.

  If only.

  If only.

  Hadn’t he spent a lifetime playing out if-onlys in his head? What good had they ever done? He couldn’t go back to that night, couldn’t bring Shelby back. All he could do was carry on and make a difference in other teens’ lives.

  He did make a difference in other teens’ lives. Both at his job where he counseled and encouraged teens to make good decisions and with Celebration Graduation.

  Shelby would be proud of the man he’d become.

  At least, he thought she would.

  That’s what kept him going, knowing that he was living his life to make a difference for others.

  He couldn’t let anything, anyone get in the way of that.

  “There’s a full house out there already,” one of the other cast members told him, taking one last look in the mirror before moving to the doorway. “This was a great idea, Dr. Spencer.”

  “I can’t take the credit. The Senior Citizen Center approached me,” he admitted.

  “Well, I’d say they’ve sold out the show,” Lanette said, peeping through a curtain to look at the crowd. “There’s only a few seats left and it’s still a good fifteen minutes before showtime.”

  Lance had called the cast members from the Christmas show and gotten them on board to do a St. Patrick’s Day show. They’d kept it simple, doing numbers that they all already knew, but that would be fun for the audience. Lance had even convinced a magician to come in and do a few tricks between sets. If the guy worked out, Lance hoped to have him perform on graduation night at the kids’ lock-in to help pass their time in a fun way.

  Seven arrived and Lance went out onto their makeshift stage. He welcomed the crowd, apologized to the ones standing in the back of the room, but applauded them on participating in something that was for such a worthy cause.

  He moved to the side of the stage. Four of the female performers came out onstage, holding sparkly four-leaf
clovers the size of dinner plates. The performers changed and a male singer crooned out a love ballad that had Lance’s throat clogging up a little.

  He didn’t want to think about Shelby. He didn’t want to think about McKenzie.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about either.

  The crowd cheered each performance.

  They finished the first half of the show, went to the back to grab a drink and change costumes while the magician did his show. Lance found himself laughing at some of the tricks and trying to figure out how a few others were done. The crowd loved the show. Soon the singers were back onstage and sang a few more songs. Lanette had the lead in the next number and took the stage with a bright smile.

  “Okay, folks, this is a little different from what’s on your program, but sometimes the best performances are the unexpected, impromptu ones,” Lanette began, causing Lance to frown.

  He was unaware of any changes to their schedule and certainly there weren’t any planned impromptu performances that he knew of.

  That’s when he saw her.

  McKenzie, wearing her sparkly green dress that she must have had hidden beneath a jacket for him to have not noticed her before because she glimmered with every step she took toward the stage.

  What was she doing?

  But even before Lanette handed her the microphone, he knew.

  McKenzie was going to sing.

  The question was why.

  And why was his heart beating so crazily in his chest with excitement over what she was about to do when he had no right to feel that excitement?

  To feel that joy that McKenzie was there?

  * * *

  Any moment McKenzie expected her heels to give way and she would fall flat on her face. Definitely she was more comfortable in her running shoes than the three-inch heels she’d chosen to wear because Cecilia had told her they made her legs look phenomenal.

  Who cared how good her legs looked if she was flat on her butt from her feet going out from under her?

  Or maybe it was because her knees were shaking that she feared falling.

  Her knees were shaking, knocking together like clackers.

  Why was she doing this? Wouldn’t a simple phone call or text message have sufficed? No, she’d had to go along with Cecilia’s idea that she had to do something big, something totally out of character to convince Lance she was playing for keeps.