Christmas of Love

by Erin Wright

  Chapter 16

  Ivy

  “Three, two, one, Happy New Years!!!”

  Declan blew on his plastic horn while Iris threw confetti in the air. Wyatt and Abby were busy tongue-dueling, Adam was discussing exercise regimens for horses with Stetson, and Austin…

  Ivy looked up at him to find him staring down at her, grinning hugely, his normally bright green eyes dark with lust. “Happy New Years,” he whispered, before pulling her against him. He nestled her soft body against his hard planes, and as she looked up at him, she was sure her eyes were dark with lust too. He was sex on a stick – the cutest guy she’d ever dated, by far.

  And as their lips met, she mentally allowed herself to claim the idea that they were dating. Although she’d fought it originally – it was supposed to be revenge on Tiffany and Ezzy, nothing more – that had somehow disappeared.

  With a groan, Austin buried his hands in her hair and tilted her head to the side so he could gain better access to her mouth. She groaned back, feeling electricity dance over her skin. She couldn’t breathe; didn’t want to breathe; only wanted to feel.

  “My place?” Austin murmured when he’d pulled back just a hair.

  “Yes please,” Ivy whispered back. She knew what he was asking, and she was saying yes. Yes, with all of her heart and soul.

  She’d finally realized that no Christmas miracle was coming. No New Year’s Eve fairy was going to save her sorry ass. Come morning, she was going to have to tell the world everything. Come clean. Fess up.

  But tonight was one last night to enjoy what she had. No condemning looks, no yelling, no disappointment. For one last night, she could pretend to be a successful artist who was on top of the world.

  She’d deal with reality in the morning.

  Chapter 17

  Austin

  He woke up slowly, fighting his way through the layers. He was happy. Very happy. He didn’t know why, but he was.

  Something soft and warm was in his bed. He snuggled closer, his dick waking up before his brain did. Hmmm…it smelled good. Like chocolate and cinnamon.

  His eyes popped open. That “it” was Ivy. He’d brought her home last night and they’d made love, slow and sweet, in his bed.

  Which she was still in.

  Which his dick was very happy about, and his brain wasn’t far behind. He pushed her hair out of the way, nuzzling the back of her neck and breathing in deeply. She smelled like chocolate and cinnamon and sex, which had to be the most potent aroma in the world. He began kissing his way down her soft, white back, each kiss bringing him closer to—

  “Urgh.” The grunt emanated from Ivy, and made Austin chuckle to himself. He’d wondered if Ivy was a morning person, but until now, hadn’t had a chance to find out for sure.

  He was beginning to guess Most Definitely Not.

  He began working his way back up her spine, intending to nuzzle her neck again, when she sat straight up in bed.

  “Oh,” she said, looking at him. Her face crumpled, and Austin watched, concerned, as a flurry of emotions crossed her face. Panic? Anger? Worry? He couldn’t tell. He opened up his mouth to ask her what was wrong and then she was shooting out of bed, grabbing her clothes off the floor. “I have to go. I have to go right now. I can’t be here.” Her voice was trembling and her fingers didn’t seem to be cooperating, because she was only managing every other button or so on her shirt.

  “What’s wrong?” Austin finally got in. He couldn’t think of what would cause her to react this way. She’d seemed awfully happy to be in his bed last night. Was she having morning-after regrets? That couldn’t be it. How could she regret such a beautiful event?

  She was frantic, not focused, not making sense. “I gotta go,” she said, not looking him in the eye, and then she was gone, running down the stairs, clomping on each step in her untied boots, and the front door was slamming closed and she was gone.

  Austin stared at the bedroom door, still hanging ajar in her wake.

  What the hell just happened here? He blinked three times, consciously and slowly, hoping to reset his brain or the world or something.

  But instead, he heard the squealing of tires as Ivy tore out of his driveway in her sister’s borrowed car. She’d insisted on driving to his house last night, separate from him. Had she known all along that she wouldn’t want to be there come morning?

  Had she planned to run out of the house like her ass was on fire?

  He didn’t know, and didn’t know how to begin to find answers.

  Chapter 18

  Ivy

  She made it into the parking lot of the library before she pulled over and began to sob. Huge, body-wracking sobs that made it hard to breathe and she didn’t know what to do or say or go, or how to be.

  She’d known this day would come. For almost a month, she’d done a mighty fine job of ignoring reality. Between telling herself that a Christmas miracle would come along to save her sorry ass, and just plain being good at ignoring what she didn’t want to think about, she’d made it through this stay in Long Valley without confronting the truth.

  She was stuck a thousand miles away from home, without a way to get there, and the only thing left to do was to throw herself at the mercy of her parents. She had to tell them the truth. Them and Iris and Austin.

  She didn’t want to. Oh, how she didn’t want to. She’d spent the last month trying to figure out how to avoid exactly this situation and yet…she hadn’t come up with a solution. Not even a partial one. Not even a really awful one.

  There was no out, except with honesty. She had to admit that she was a failure in every respect. It was after midnight, her carriage had turned into a pumpkin, and there was no fairy godmother to save her.

  Everyone would hate her, of course. How could they not? She’d done nothing but lie to them for years now. And Austin…he’d never forgive her. Running out on him like that; misleading him all this time. He was finally going to know the truth about her.

  Everyone would.

  In the midst of the waterfall of tears, the thought bubbled up to the surface that she couldn’t ignore, that she couldn’t reason away: Why had she become an abstract impressionism artist?

  She forced herself to truly ask herself that; to get an answer for it and not just skim over it and move on like she had been.

  Looking back on it, that was the biggest lie of all – the lie to herself. Truthfully, she hated the abstract movement. When she’d been sitting in the classroom, her art teachers showing the styles up on the projector, deriding plebeian art styles like landscapes, she’d nodded and followed along.

  She’d wanted to fit in. It became crystal clear to her in that moment, everything clicking into place. Her whole childhood, she’d stuck out like a sore thumb. She and Long Valley just didn’t get along. She’d wanted to go somewhere else, where cool people lived. Not these hicks who decorated with ceramic pigs. She’d wanted to be part of the “in” crowd, and be loved.

  Not loved for who she was, because she hadn’t really known who she was back then. How could someone love her for her, if she didn’t even know who “her” was?

  But loved nonetheless. Some kind of love was better than scorn and ridicule and hatred and bullying. Some kind of approval was more than she’d ever gotten before.

  And so she’d spent fourteen years, chasing this love and approval. All for what? So she could be living below the poverty line, struggling to eek out a living as a waitress in a diner for a boss who was a dick to her, all so she could chase the dream of doing something she didn’t even want to do?

  It was insanity. All of it.

  The sobbing hiccups turned into tears, which eventually dried up, until all Ivy could do was stare through the foggy windshield at the side of the library, her eyes burning, her body wrung out.

  It was time to go accept her punishment, and tell her family the truth. She’d start there. They loved her. They would understand, or at least not throw her out on her ass into the snowbank.
>
  She hoped.

  Waiting for Iris to show up from her mother-in-law apartment next door was probably the longest six minutes of Ivy’s life. It was six minutes on the clock, but ten years in Ivy’s mind.

  When she’d come home from Austin’s house, her mother had been frantic with worry over the blotchy face and red eyes of her younger daughter. Instead of answering her cascade of questions, Ivy had asked if Iris could come over so she could tell everyone everything at once, rather than having to repeat herself. One time was awful enough, thankyouverymuch.

  Her dad had gone to fetch Iris, and the wait for them to return was slowly driving Ivy insane.

  The ticking of the clock, the stares from her mom, the pacing back and forth…

  It was like fingernails on a chalkboard. Ivy wasn’t sure if she wanted her dad and Iris to hurry up so she could tell them and get it over with, or never, ever come home so she didn’t have to admit to anything at all.

  But finally, in came Dad through the front door, knocking the snow off his boots while guiding Iris in. She was staring at Ivy, a confused look on her face that clearly said, “What the hell is going on here?”

  A question Ivy was about to answer. The only thing she could do was tell the truth and hope they forgave her.

  When everyone settled down on the floral brocade couch that had graced the McLain’s living room since the early 90s, sitting in a line, all staring at Ivy, she hopped to her feet. She couldn’t just sit there. She had to walk, to pace, to get the panic and energy out of her.

  She turned and looked at her family, sending them a pained smile.

  “I work at the Rockstar Diner,” she said. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was starting there, but she needed to start somewhere and that seemed like as good of a place as any. “I am a waitress there. That’s how I pay my bills. I live upstairs over my art studio – you know, that one I love to brag about and I post pictures of all the time on Facebook? Well, the upstairs isn’t actually supposed to be an apartment. It was storage for the last tenant. Other than the tiniest bathroom that you ever did see, with a sink, a mirror, and a toilet crammed into it, there’s no running water. I take showers down at the local YMCA and I cook on a hot plate while sitting on my bed.”

  She drew in a deep breath. This next part was the worst part, and she wasn’t sure which was going to happen: Getting it all out or passing out. It was going to be close.

  “I never made it as an artist. Not really. Not enough to pay my bills. You can’t live on a hundred dollars a month in the Bay area, and that was if I was lucky and actually sold a painting that month.

  “I’m not really sure where it all started. The lying. I’ve spent a lot of time in my oversized-closet-turned-apartment, trying to remember how I got into this mess to begin with, and I don’t know. I don’t remember the first small white lie. I probably just exaggerated how much I made on the sale of a painting. I never told you guys that I quit waitressing after I graduated from college; I just let you guys assume that I had. I know that sounds stupid, but I tried to minimize the amount of lying that I did, even if I was just assuaging my conscience by lying through omission.”

  Which was when the damn tears started rolling down her cheeks; hot, burning trails, dripping onto her shirt.

  “I know that lying through omission isn’t any better than actually saying the lies. I know better than to tell lies of any kind. Y’all raised me better than this.”

  She snuffled, scrubbing her face on her arm. “I wanted to be something more than I was. I wanted to rub it in the face of every person who was an ass to me in school. I wanted to prove that I was successful, and I wanted to post that proof on Facebook. The bigger the lies, the less I could back out of them and play them off as a joke. Pretty soon, everyone believed me, and I finally got that validation that I’ve spent my whole life craving.

  “But none of it was real.”

  She stopped for a moment, black panic swirling around her. She wasn’t done yet, and she knew the shock on her family’s faces was only going to get worse. Her mother’s mouth was hanging open and her dad’s face had gone white. Iris was crying silently.

  Ivy wanted to die. Just crawl into a hole and never come out again. But just like before, in that damn art closet at the high school, she kept going. Because she had to.

  “I said that I work at Rockstar Diner, but even that was a lie. I don’t. Not anymore. I got fired when I didn’t come back after the party. The truth is, I can’t go back. I don’t have the money to. I was barely hanging on by my fingernails, and had scraped and saved for two months to pay for the plane tickets to come home for the big shindig. When Iris fell—” their eyes met and pain flashed in Iris’ deep blue eyes and Ivy felt sick for making her sister feel awful but she had to finish the story and get this all off her chest, “—I canceled my flight back home, but the cost to buy a new ticket…”

  She shrugged. All pride was gone. The pride that had kept her going for years, pretending to be something she wasn’t, had disappeared.

  “I don’t have it. I can’t leave. I’m stuck here, until…well, I don’t know. You kick me out? I’m going to lose everything – all of my paintings, my clothes, my furniture, my art supplies…When my landlord doesn’t get my rent check for January, he’s gonna start the proceedings, and eventually get me evicted. He’ll sell my stuff, and meanwhile, I’ll still be here. Living in my childhood bedroom and hiding from the world.”

  She broke down into hiccuping sobs then, harder, deeper, even more painful than the tears in the car had been.

  But as awful as it felt, it also felt cathartic. Maybe her family would hate her, disown her, throw her out on her ear. But at least she wasn’t lying to them anymore.

  She hadn’t realized how hard it’d been to hide the truth from them all this time. To pretend that everything was fine, when it hadn’t been.

  Maybe telling the truth was awful, but hiding the truth? That was even worse.

  She felt her mom’s arms wrap around her, pulling her against her soft chest, whispering in her ear. Ivy couldn’t hear the words over the pain pouring out of her, but she knew they were loving words. Sweet words.

  Words of forgiveness.

  “I’m–I–I’m so–so–so sorryyyyyyyy!” Ivy wailed. “I didn’t want–want to disappoint yoooouuuuuuuu…” Her shoulders were shaking, her body was shaking and she couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t talk. Her mom’s arms stroked down her back and hair as she whispered in Ivy’s ear and then, her dad was there, on the other side. Her dad, who was not an emotional man. Who had not been raised to hug his daughters or tell them that he loved them. He was holding her and he too was shaking.

  Finally, Ivy’s sobs died down just enough that she could hear her father. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he was whispering.

  “Sorry?” Ivy choked out, the endless cascade of tears ever falling, burning her eyes, burning her cheeks. “For what? For raising a daughter who lies?”

  “For not standing up to those girls at your high school.”

  Ivy froze. She remembered. All of it came rushing back. After all this time, she remembered where the lies had started, and now that she remembered, she was shocked she’d ever forgotten. It was the day that Tiffany and Fredrick announced their engagement on Facebook.

  Fredrick had been her one and only boyfriend in high school. It’d been a pretty innocent relationship – some kisses, some snuggling together during football games. And then, they were discovered together – Tiffany and Fredrick under the bleachers, making out, when he was supposed to be meeting Ivy for the game. It was the fall of their senior year, and it had broken Ivy’s heart.

  Years later, and Tiffany and Fredrick were getting married. Posting adorable pictures of themselves on Facebook. Showing off a rock the size of Kansas on her ring finger. Everything Ivy had wanted in life.

  They never did end up getting married, ironically enough. He was caught cheating on Tiffany with the gas station attendant for Mr. Petro
l's. Which was a sick kind of justice in Ivy’s mind.

  But that night of the engagement-fest, Ivy posted about an art show she’d been invited to on Facebook. She’d been so far down the totem pole in terms of popularity and star power, the hosting art gallery hadn’t even bothered to put her on the advertisements for the show. So Ivy had made up her own flyers, posting them on Facebook for all to see.

  She told herself that it wasn’t really a lie – after all, she was going to be at that show. She was just making advertisements that reflected that – fixing the oversight of the art gallery.

  It was possible that she’d made her name rather large on the hand bill. Perhaps even added a few stars around her name. Of course she would, right? She was the one designing the flyers. She could pretty them up however she wanted.

  Even as she was designing the flyer, she’d felt guilt eating away at her stomach. She hadn’t known then that it would be her constant companion for years to come.

  Ivy pulled back, looking at each person in turn. Each person that she loved dearly. “I lied to you, I lied to the world, and sometimes, I even managed to lie to myself. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let you down.” Her throat choked up again but she swallowed hard, pushing the lump down, continuing on. “Truthfully, I need to forgive Tiffany, Ezzy, Fredrick, and everyone else in high school who tried to make me miserable. Who did make me miserable. Hating them has only made me hate myself, and do things that I never should have.”

  She took a deep, cleansing breath as her mom rubbed her back in small circles, occasionally patting her comfortingly. Ivy almost felt like she should let out a large, satisfying burp so her mom would stop trying to burp her, but that thought only made her smile.

  Smiling. How lovely it was to smile.

  She looked up and caught Iris’ eye, who was also grinning. “What?” she asked, confused. “Why are you smiling?”