“Charlie?”
“I wasn’t feeling the best,” he finally said, lifting his head to meet my gaze. His eyes were sunken and a little red, and he looked as if he really needed some actual rest. “I only left the station to come home and get a nap before the appointment. I was tired, and I was bored. I didn’t want to be there if I wasn’t allowed to work. I don’t like being babysat, Julie. I just wanted to come home. I wanted to be alone.”
I twisted my lips, trying to decide whether or not I believed him.
“Honestly, Julie. I didn’t mean to miss it.”
“That’s been a popular excuse with you lately,” I said, still keeping my voice quiet. I eyed him a little closer, but I didn’t pause long enough to give him time to squeeze in another defense. “If you weren’t feeling well, Charlie, you should’ve told Bruno. He could’ve taken you to the hospital, or we could’ve gotten you into the doctor early. You should’ve said something.”
“It wasn’t anything serious,” he said. “I was just tired, that’s all.”
Again, I peered at him. I’d been having the worst time lately trying to distinguish his lies from the truth. I only wished there was a surefire way to know if he was being honest.
“Okay, well Luke called and rescheduled your appointment for next Monday, and you can’t miss it, understand?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I’ll do my best to make it.”
“You’ll go,” I said. “You have to go, Charlie, okay?”
Again, he nodded, and although he meant to convey that he’d understood, his gesture came across as noncommittal at best.
“Now, lie down,” I said, standing up. I helped ease him back down on the cushions, and then I draped his favorite quilt over him. “Do you need me to get anything for you?”
“No,” he said, nuzzling into his pillow and closing his eyes. “Stop worryin’ about me, Pumpkin. I’m fine. I only need some sleep.”
“Okay,” I said, leaning down to press a kiss to his head. “I love you.”
His lips thinned into a small smile, and then he pulled the blanket up under his chin and rolled over.
I turned back and headed for the kitchen and left Charlie to rest on the couch. He’d insisted on sleeping downstairs lately so that he wouldn’t ‘miss out on any of the action.’ But there wasn’t much to miss out on.
Life in the Little household lately had remained mostly low-key.
I found Matt seated at the island, leaning over a familiar red cookbook, one packed with dozens of handwritten recipes. It was the very same one my mother had used for years, the one she’d held so dear to her heart, and the very one that I’d passed on to my cousin during our first Christmas together in Oakland. At the time, it had only made sense that Matt kept it; I had no use for it, and Mom would’ve wanted it to end up in the right hands. But since Matt had returned home from school in October, I wasn’t sure he was really even the same person he used to be. The boy I’d given that book to had changed so quickly. He’d lost a part of himself, and while I’d hoped that time would mend what was broken, it really hadn’t.
Lately, I’d only seen Matt in the kitchen long enough for him to make the heart-healthy meals that were required for Charlie’s recovery, and although I knew that he hadn’t liked doing it, he never once complained. As soon as he’d finished that cooking stint, he kept to staying busy elsewhere. No longer able to rely on a job at the bistro, he ended up back at the flower shop with Lonnie and Grace. I’d given up my part-time job—since it had technically been his job in the first place—and he got back to work. It had worked out quite nicely, really, because I’d already lined up an even better way to occupy my time—babysitting baby Zoe while Derek took night classes.
“Breaking out the old recipes, huh?” I asked, and Matt jumped at the sound of my voice.
He turned and wrinkled his forehead, and then he looked back down to the book. “She was a genius, you know that?”
“No more so than you,” I said, sliding into the barstool next to him. I nudged him with my shoulder. “I bet there’s nothing in that cookbook you couldn’t make five times better than she did.”
There was a deep sadness buried in his stare. Whatever it was that had pushed Matt away from school, whatever had happened out there at college, it had changed him. And although so much of him seemed different, there was at least one thing I’d come to know for sure: he wanted to get back to doing what he loved. He only needed a push.
“You miss it, don’t you?” I asked.
“Miss what?”
“Cooking, baking, all of the stuff that you gave up when you came home,” I said, watching his eyes trail back down to the pages. Like his dad, he tried to pretend. He gave it his best shot, pretending to read the recipes on the counter, but I could see his eyes were moving far too fast. He was just avoiding my stare. “Mattie, when are you ever going to tell us what happened out there?”
“Julie, I’ve told you a hundred times. It’s not—”
“Don’t sit there and give me that load of crap about how it’s not important,” I said, turning to face him straight on. “You gave up school, your future, everything you’ve ever wanted. What was it? Were you failing?”
“No,” he said, finally looking up at me. “Do you seriously think I could fail?”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “But it’s the only thing I’ve been able to come up with.”
“Well, it wasn’t that.”
“Then what?” I pressed harder. “Did one of the other kids make fun of your crème brûlée? Hurt your feelings? Make you feel inadequate?”
“Ha-ha,” he said, rolling his eyes. “No.”
“A professor, another chef, one of your roommates?”
“Will you drop it already?” he asked, finally shutting the cookbook. “It’s nothing like that.” He slid off the stool, sweeping the book off the counter and tucking it under his arm. He stomped toward the back staircase, ready to put the whole conversation to rest, and then I perked up one last time and asked, “was it a girl?”
He stopped just short of the first step, but he never turned back. He just dropped his head, looked down at his feet, and paused.
“It was a girl,” I said quietly, reading into the tension that had brought his shoulders up to his ears. “Mattie, what happened?”
“Drop it, Julie,” he said, finally turning around to look at me. “It wasn’t a girl.”
Although he tried to play it off like it was nothing, I felt the heartache had consumed it. Whatever had happened, it had all started with his heart. It was a matter of love, and I should’ve known that from the start. Love was about the only thing that could’ve ever thrown him off track. When Matt fell for someone, he always fell hard, and he didn’t take rejection well; I’d witnessed that firsthand with his last breakup.
So if it wasn’t a girl…
I felt my eyes widen for a second, and then I slid off the stool and stood staring at my cousin.
“Oh,” I said, feeling my lips shape perfectly into an ‘O.’ My hand landed on my chest as I clutched my heart, suddenly lost for words. “Mattie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. It was a… it was a boy?”
“What? God no, Julie!” he said, his cheeks reddening. “Obviously you’re never going to figure it out, and if knowing the truth will shut you up once and for all, then fine! I’ll tell you—it wasn’t a girl. It was the girl. End—of—conversation!”
“The girl?” I asked, searching my brain, but nothing came immediately to mind.
My cousin may’ve been the best looking guy in town—minus Luke, of course, so we’ll call Mattie number two—but he’d never been one for dating endless lines of girls. He’d had his chance, and he could’ve had anyone he’d wanted, but that wasn’t my cousin. He wasn’t that guy. I’d only ever known him to take interest in two particular girls, and one of them was locked up for life for shooting the best looking guy in town. By process of elimination, I knew that he could’ve only been talking about one girl
, the one who’d ripped out his heart and stomped all over it.
“Kara?”
“I said end of conversation.”
“What happened?” I asked, ignoring him. I knew that if he’d really meant end of conversation, Matt would’ve already turned and walked away. But he hadn’t. He’d stayed, and that had to mean something, right? “I thought you guys hadn’t talked in like a year?”
“Julie,” he said, finally dropping his shoulders. There was an element of defeat in his tone, one that made my heart ache to help him. His lips moved slowly, but nothing came out. I sensed he was about to talk, he was about to say something. But after a few long minutes of silence, he just shook his head and turned away. It wasn’t until he was halfway up the staircase that I heard him mumble, “Just leave me alone.”
I stood and listened to Matt round the corner and enter his room, and just when I thought he’d slam his door, he proved me wrong yet again. He shut it quietly, and I knew that meant he was hurting. He’d gotten past the stage of anger and bitterness, and now he was just lost and confused.
I never knew that Matt and Kara had stayed in touch after she’d called things off. I’d always known that he’d held on to hope that she’d come to her senses, but it had been well over a year since they’d parted ways. How had she managed to break his heart all over again? What in the world could she have done?
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and stared at the dark screen for a few long minutes. I knew what I needed to do, but I hated that it had to be done. I unlocked the screen, opened my messages, and sent a text to Luke.
(Me)
I can’t come home. I know I said I would, but I can’t. I’m sorry. Charlie isn’t feeling well, and I’m finally making leeway with Mattie. I can’t leave them alone tonight.
I waited for some kind of response, but I quickly learned that I was just going to have to keep waiting. Because Luke never responded, not even when I tried to call him ten minutes later.
I knew that he’d be angry with me, but what was I supposed to do? They were my family. They needed me.
I’d tried so hard to deny the truth, but it was becoming more and more evident by the day. It would never matter how committed Luke and I were, or whether or not we had Charlie’s blessing to move forward. As long as Charlie and Matt were part of my life, I would always get stuck in the middle, and I’d always have to choose.
I threw myself back on my bed and stared up at the ceiling. Hours had gone by, Matt was still holed up in his room, Charlie was still snoring (for real, this time), and I’d given up waiting to hear back from Luke. He had every right to be upset. I’d made him a promise, and I’d gone back on my word. I knew how important it was for us to spend time together, especially this close to Christmas. I couldn’t blame him if he hated me for how distant I’d become.
The longer I thought about Luke, the more I began to question what he’d ever loved about me. It couldn’t have been my security in our relationship. I’d never been anything but insecure. It couldn’t have been my ability to keep a promise… I was lousy at that. So what was it? He’d said it was my courage and my strength, but I’d never understood that. I didn’t know that I’d ever understand.
I pulled the ring off of my left hand and stared at it, admiring everything about it—the curvature of the band, the sparkle of the diamond, the way it glistened even in the faintest light. As beautiful as it was, none of those things had ever made the ring special to me. Luke was what made it special. It was another gesture, another way of telling me that I was the only one for him.
And yet there I was, inadvertently ruining the one good thing I had going for myself.
How did I always find a way to screw up everything?
“Hey there, Grumpy.” My head snapped up at the sound of Luke’s voice, and I sat up immediately. He stood in the doorway, leaned against the frame, and shook his head. “Can you give me a hand downstairs?”
“What are you doing here?” I asked, sitting straight. I slid the ring back on my finger, pulled myself up off the bed, and smoothed the wrinkles on my shirt. But I never took my eyes off of him.
“Well, I figured if you weren’t coming home for a little pre-Christmas fun, then I’d bring the fun to you,” he said, pushing himself off the frame. He stood straight and extended his hand. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“You’re going to help me bring the tree in.”
“The tree?”
“You mentioned last week that Charlie’s been too tired to go pick out a tree,” he said, taking my hand. We turned out of the room and headed for the stairs. “It’s two days until Christmas. You guys need a tree.”
I kept staring at him, letting my gaze burn into the side of his smooth face. His eyes didn’t look as dark and tired as they had in recent weeks, and his hair had been cut a little shorter since I’d seen him a couple of hours ago at the station. Dressed in a black button-up shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans, Luke looked better than I’d seen him look in weeks. I was happy that at least one of the men in my life seemed to have it together. And honestly, I never would’ve thought it would be Luke.
“Hey,” I said, taking his arm and stopping him before he could take the first step. “Seriously, what’s going on? Why are you here?”
“I told you.”
“But I tried to text you,” I said. “And call. I thought you were mad.”
“Why would I be mad?” he asked.
“Because,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Because I’ve been spending so much time here, and because I haven’t been home a lot lately.”
“Jules,” he said, leaning down to catch my gaze. “I know you’re worried about them, and if you feel like this is where you need to be, then this is where you need to be. I’d never be mad about that.”
“Really?”
“Really. They’re your family.”
I studied Luke for a moment, utterly in awe at how amazing he was. Why had I ever doubted that?
“Come on,” he said, taking my hand again. “Let’s go get the tree.”
Charlie was still strung across the couch and sleeping when we crept down the stairs and out the front door. Obviously Luke hadn’t needed my help too much because he unloaded and carried the tree in all on his own. I followed behind him with the two boxes of ornaments, lights, and decorations he’d packed in the backseat.
We brought the tree and decorations inside, careful to be quiet so as not to wake Uncle Charlie. Still, we were making a little too much noise, and Matt had heard the rustling from up in his bedroom. He came down the steps and stopped halfway, watching as Luke secured the live tree in the corner of the living room. At first, Matt stared at us expressionless, acting as though he was more annoyed with us than anything else. But then his scowl stretched slowly into a grin, and he took the rest of the stairs down to the first floor.
“You guys need help?” he whispered, and then Charlie stirred on the couch.
“Sure,” I said, nodding at a nearby box. “You get the lights—”
“And I’ll head out and get the presents from the trunk,” Luke said, passing between us and heading for the front door.
The three of us did our best to work quietly around my uncle, but twenty minutes after we’d started working, Charlie’s eyes snapped open. He’d nearly rolled off the couch when he spotted the large tree in the corner. Matt had just started stringing the lights at the bottom of the tree, and my uncle jumped up from the sofa and insisted on helping him ‘do it correctly.’ To his chagrin, I wouldn’t let him touch the lights. I put Charlie in charge of putting the hooks on all of the ornaments—a simple and stress-free job, or so I’d thought. He concentrated as hard on hooking the flashy Christmas bulbs as Luke did wrapping the gifts. Even Matt had taken his job seriously. I’d never seen a person string lights so slowly and meticulously.
And even though I felt they were only concentrating on their jobs so that they wouldn’t have to be left alone with their tho
ughts, I didn’t really care. It didn’t matter what the reasoning was. The three men I loved the most in the world were all under one roof, happily doing their part to bring some Christmas magic into the Little household.
I couldn’t have asked for more.
“And here I thought Bruno had the worst singing voice I’d ever heard,” Matt said, glaring. I ducked as he moved around me, stringing the lights on the Christmas tree. I dipped just far enough for him to swing the lights above my head, and then I stood tall again and straightened some of the branches. “Honestly! What’s his deal? Is he tone deaf or something?”
“It certainly sounds like it,” Charlie said, digging through a box of ornaments at my feet.
“Stop it,” I said, pointing at the both of them. “He’s trying to focus.”
I looked over my shoulder at Luke as he sat in the middle of Charlie’s living room, quietly screeching the lyrics to a Christmas song as the radio played in the background. He kept his head low as he focused on wrapping each of the gifts, and he’d maintained that position for nearly an hour. Still, he’d only managed to finish the two presents for Derek and Zoey. He’d used up an entire roll of wrapping paper just doing that.
His obsessive tendencies had gotten the best of him. He’d already unwrapped Lonnie’s present six times only to wrap it again, and he still wasn’t happy with where that had gotten him. Poor Luke didn’t seem any closer to finishing the giftwrapping than he was when he’d first started, and that was somewhere around the time he’d butchered Blue Christmas. He was taking his frustration out on the lyrics, and he was ruining some of the best holiday songs ever recorded!
A Little Christmas Magic Page 2
