by Vivian Lux
I swallowed. “I did, but when it came down to choosing which college to go to...”
“You tried to trap him.”
“What?”
“You told him to apply!” she exploded. “He’s the first kid in his family to ever get to go to college and you were so proud of him! You told him to apply, he got accepted to a place that gave him a full ride, and then you hated him for taking your advice!”
I took a deep breath. “He shouldn’t have left if he loved me. Because he chose to leave instead of staying close to home, close to me... We could have had a family by now and I know how badly you want grandchildren and...” I wiped my eye and was surprised to see that my fingers came away wet. I was crying without even realizing.
“Did you love him?”
“Yes! You know that!”
“I know, honey. And if you really loved him the way you said you did, you needed to believe in that love and not try to put him to the test. Now, honey, I love you more than life itself, but you were kind of a little shit to him back then. Putting him on the spot like that and giving an ultimatum. I raised you better than that, and you’ve grown up and gotten better, but on this issue honey, I’m afraid you’re not the victim.” Her harsh words were softened by the love in her eyes as she took hold of my shoulders and looked me in the eye. “You shouldn’t have tried to make him prove his love to you by giving up his future.”
The oven timer buzzed.
Something hollow echoed in my chest. I opened my mouth and then shut it, waiting for words to rise up in my defense.
But I couldn’t find a single one.
My mother took a deep breath, let me go and grabbed her oven mitt. “It worked out the way it was supposed to. though. In the end.” She opened the oven and pulled out the rack of chocolate chip cookies. “That boy was too arrogant and good-looking for his own good. He was only going to cause you trouble.” She scraped a cookie off the baking sheet with a spatula and held it out to me. “Here honey, have a cookie. It’ll make you feel better.”
It was still scalding hot from the oven and burned the roof of my mouth, but I devoured it anyway, hoping she was right.
Chapter Five
Cole
The dulcet strains of Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” filtered out into the snow-covered lot. I shut the door of Derek’s car and stood there, listening to the hum of voices and the occasional shout of laughter.
In my head, I knew each person who was in there.
I heard Mr. Reese, Brynn and Callum’s grumpy, overworked father with a nose as red and pitted as a raspberry, shouting good-natured insults to the drunken revelers.
I heard a laugh that sounded exactly like a ‘ho ho ho’ and immediately grinned to think of Jasper Beals who always grew out his white beard and wore a red jacket every Christmas just so he could freak out little kids who thought that he was Santa.
That wild cackle that sounded like a Halloween witch had to be Flora Feathergill, the owner of the antiques place that attracted all of the rich yuppies from New York.
I knew this town. I knew these people. I grew up here.
I wasn’t one of the visiting yuppies from New York, no matter what my rented car and expensive watch might say. I was a local. I belonged here as much as any of them.
A shiver of insecurity, of the kind I hadn’t experienced since middle school, rippled through me. With a start, I realized I missed everyone. But would any of them actually be happy to see me again?
Would Autumn be happy to see me again?
When she invited me, I was feeling pretty confident. But out here in the cold lot with the door shut in my face, I wasn’t feeling nearly as cocky. She was in there with the people she’d grown up with, celebrating Christmas in the place where she belonged.
Where did I belong?
I stepped forward, determined to shake these maudlin thoughts. Go inside, have a drink and shake some hands. I was here on business, not pleasure, and I could always cut my losses and leave. This night didn’t mean anything, just another day on the calendar. I spent every other night of the year getting drinks with clients, sealing deals. Why should Christmas Eve... in my hometown... with the girl who broke my heart... be any different?
Yeah. There was nothing special about this at all.
My feet and my brain were not in agreement, though, so it took a Herculean level of effort to take that next step and the next. Sometimes when I was interested in a property, I would go visit dressed as a civilian and take in the scene. Chat up the security guards and receptionists, and try to get the real story on why the owner was selling. Tonight could follow the same script. I would just open the door and peek in, enter as unobtrusively as possible. That way I could feel out the temperature of the room before making myself known.
But a sudden stiff gale that seemed to come directly from the North Pole propelled me forward the last few feet. I threw open the heavy wood door and the wind caught it and sent it slamming into the wall with a resounding thwack.
The whole bar went silent.
“Holy shit,” a drunken female voice slurred from the back. “Is that Cole Granger?”
“Hey everybody,” I called, taking off the gloves that Derek had gotten me. I’d grown up here. How had I forgotten to pack gloves for myself? “Um, Merry Christmas.”
The first person to break free of the pack was Harper McCabe. She was a few years older than me and I knew she was visiting from out of town herself since she was a big children’s book author now. As she came up to me, I couldn’t help but notice that everyone was watching, ready to take her lead.
“Cole!” she called, going in for a hug and a cheek kiss. “It’s so good to see you again! I heard you were in New York and I kept meaning to look you up...”
“I know, it’s a big city,” I finished, smoothing over her guilt. “And I hear you’re not even there too often. Congratulations on the book tour!”
“Oh you know about that?” she grinned, pride shining in her eyes. “I didn’t know you followed the children’s book scene.”
“Well, Mrs. Collis probably believes your writing is at my reading level,” I grinned. Reckless Falls’ High School’s English Department was presided over by Mrs. Molly Collis — more dragon than woman — who was famous for holding a grudge. Of course, being the idiot I was back then, I took her gruff hatred of teenaged boys on as a personal challenge and led Gil Aldridge’s cow up to the stairs to the third floor of the school. See, cows can go up stairs, but they can’t go back down again. They had to get a crane to lower the cow out a window. This only sealed my fate as an imbecile in her eyes — though I maintained it was pretty smart of me to woo a cow into a building like that — for the rest of my four-year career. Even my 4.0 GPA wasn’t enough to convince her I wasn’t illiterate.
“Oh Mrs. Collis believes I’m a literary failure as well,” Harper pointed out. “Don’t listen to her. I think she thought I was going to write the next great American novel.”
“Didn’t you?”
“Gilly’s Garden had a 150-word vocabulary. So, um... no.” She cast her eyelids down for a second. “What brings you home for the holidays? Let me buy you a drink.”
“Oh please, you don’t need to do that.”
“Call it reparations for ratting you out all those years ago. I was more worried you’d fall than anything else.”
“I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have been drinking on the water tower that night.” I was trying to get over Autumn, I didn’t say. Instead, I smiled widely. “I was just a mass of poor life choices back then.”
But instead of laughing, she cocked her head to the side. “Have you changed now?”
Reflexively I licked my lips. “I like to think so.”
She smiled and nodded, and then grabbed my arm, dragging me up to the bar. “Hey guys, make room for Cole!” she called to the assembled crowd.
“Granger!” Sam Fitch was decked out in holiday-colored camo, which was something I didn’t even know existed b
ut wasn’t surprised that he owned. He slid off his barstool and gave me a slap on the back, so big and broad that he took up my entire field of vision. “Careful New York, you’ve got mud on your shoes.”
“Eat me, Fitch,” I shot back, giving him a slap that I was proud to see made his eyes water. “Have you ever even crossed county lines?”
I grinned as the rest of the crowd laughed. Fitch looked like the hamster wheel in his brain was starting to smoke. “I went to Elmira once,” he retorted.
“Yeah?” I smiled, shrugging off my jacket. It was pleasantly over-warm in here and I’d thawed to the point where I could close my fingers around a bottle of beer. “What did you think of Elmira?”
Fitch wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Didn’t like it. I’m not a city guy. You like the city better than here, Granger?”
A week ago I would not have hesitated. Of course I liked the city better, I would have said immediately. The city had culture, the city had restaurants, the city had clubs.
But now that I was back here, I couldn’t answer so quickly.
“Yeah?” I drawled out. “I don’t know. They both have their good points.”
“Yeah?” Fitch actually looked interested. He hovered close to me and seemed to expand so that I couldn’t see anyone else, a big, camo-covered universe.
I moved my hands, trying to grasp the words from out of thin air. “It’s really, um, noisy there,” I began. He was watching me so intently I felt oddly self-conscious. “And you’re never alone. Even when I’m alone in my apartment I can hear the guy who lives next door to me. He's really into salsa music. I forgot how nice it is just to have silence. Like you’re the only person in the world.
“Yeah but the chicks man, big city chicks...” Fitch looked like he was ready to swoon.
I licked my lower lip. There had been a sea of women in New York, all polished and perfect and career-driven. I’d had my fun, but the thought of actually sticking around never crossed my mind. Not like it had with Autumn. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I think the girls here are pretty great too.”
“Hear hear!” Fitch roared, lifting his bottle. “Country girls!”
There was an answering ‘woo’ from the back of the bar and all at once the Christmas music stopped and the bass started thumping. A cry of delight went up from the assembled girls and all at once everyone around me started heading to the small makeshift dance floor. “Country girls!” Fitch yelled even louder and made a beeline for the dance floor. I grinned and looked around, suddenly able to see the whole place and all the assembled town without Fitch standing in my way.
And, as if on cue, I saw Autumn.
Her back was to me, but there was no way I could mistake that hair. Or the way she held her head slightly forward like she was eager not to miss anything. Or the way her hands had such long, elegant fingers that cut these swirling shapes in the air as she spoke. I used to tell her she had bird hands and she thought I was making fun of her, but I was trying to give her a compliment. Her hands soared and swooped like the gulls over the lake and before we even dated I used to try to talk with her just so I could watch her hands.
Across the table was a girl with a familiar face, but then every face in this bar was slightly, vaguely familiar. I squinted a little, trying to place her.
And that’s when she caught me. Her wide blue eyes narrowed and she bent to say something to Autumn who stiffened noticeably. “Brynn Reese!” I realized, a second too late.
Autumn’s hands fluttered back down to her sides when Brynn told her I was here. Because what else could she have said while staring me down?
I waited for a beat, but Autumn did not turn around to say hello.
I sipped my beer, smiled at Fitch spastically dancing in the middle of the floor, and then chugged half my beer in one gulp.
Autumn still didn’t turn around.
I moved a little closer.
Brynn glared at me like I was something she'd found on the bottom of her shoe, but I barely noticed because I was too busy willing Autumn to turn around. I finished my beer, called for another and downed half of that one in one gulp too.
Fuck it, why was I here? I was here because Autumn told me I should come. I thought... I didn’t know what I thought would happen, but I didn’t expect this. Shut out, frozen out, whatever the fuck she was pulling. This wasn’t like her. She didn’t hold grudges. Not against me.
She was the one who told me I should go in the first place.
Suddenly angry, I downed my second beer and ignored the flush of heat in my cheeks. I needed to talk to this girl. She was why I was here, and even though my brain was suddenly buzzing from drinking so quickly, I still figured it was better to talk to her then turn tail and go home to my brother’s freezing house. Alone in my hometown on Christmas Eve. No that wasn’t going to happen. Not to me. Not to Cole Granger.
I grabbed one more beer for courage and I moved closer to Autumn.
Chapter Six
Autumn
Brynn’s eyes were the size of saucers as she stared over my shoulder. “Is that Cole Granger?” she asked, then answered her own question with a sputtered, “Holy shit it is!”
I looked down at my hands and back up again. “Yeah?” I said.
I tried as best I could to sound surprised, I swear I did. But I had two strikes against me. One, that I was an open book about everything. Basically the worst poker player in existence. Every emotion that flits through my head also shows directly on my face.
And the second strike was that Brynn was one of those people who could smell bullshit a mile away. One syllable was all she needed to know I was keeping a secret.
She snapped back from staring open-mouthed at Cole and eyed me suspiciously. “You knew he was coming!” she accused me.
I raised my eyebrows. “What?” I squeaked.
“Are you trying to play coy with me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She sat back and folded her arms over her chest. “I’m talking about you seeing Cole Granger behind my back.”
“Seeing him?” My voice crawled an octave higher. I sounded like Minnie Mouse. “Yeah, that only counts if you mean the word ‘see’ literally. As in, I saw him. Today. At the convenience store my mom sent me to so I could get more eggs for her disgusting nog.”
“You’re a freak. Eggnog is delicious.”
I sighed. “Every year I try it, thinking I must be crazy, I mean it looks like something I’d like, all creamy and frothy like that. “ I ignore Brynn’s smirk. “But every year I take a sip and gag. It’s disgusting and I don’t know why I keep trying to pretend otherwise.”
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
“Maybe.”
“The answer to that should be, ‘change what subject?’ God you’re the worst liar in the world.”
I took a sip of my drink and sighed. “I know,” I lamented. “It’s a fucking curse.”
“So getting back on track here,” Brynn said impatiently. Her eyes were glued behind me, and I didn’t need to turn around to know she was staring at Cole. I could feel him behind me. My skin was magnetically alive and aware of his presence.
It was very distracting.
Distracting enough that it wasn’t until Brynn fell silent that I realized she was waiting for an answer.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Oh Jesus, I asked you how you were doing but I think I have my answer.”
“How I’m doing? I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be fine?” Goddamn the hysteria in my voice making a liar out of me.
“Because Cole Granger is five feet away from you.”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t even looked at him.”
“Yes.”
“And he broke your heart into a million pieces and then left without saying goodbye.”
I swallowed. “He said goodbye.”
“In an email. A fucking Dear John letter.”
It was true. “D
ear Red,” it had started. “There are no words to describe how much I loved you...”
I had deleted it before I could read any further. What was the use? He had left. He had already made his choice.
“You loved him,” Brynn reminded me, her eyes still boring into Cole like she was trying to turn him to stone like Medusa.
”But it was puppy love,” I protested, shredding the label on my beer bottle into teeny tiny pieces. These were words I had said so many times. A script I’d memorized and internalized until I believed myself. And believing it was true made it true, right? “We were just kids, it wasn’t a real relationship or anything. High school lovers in a small town high school? Please. It wasn’t love. It was convenience.”
Brynn fixed me with those big wide eyes of her that most people made the mistake of thinking were innocent. Once you got to know her, you learned very quickly that there was nothing innocent about Brynn. I could tell by the way her eyes narrowed a little that she was fixing to slam me with one of her trademark punch-to-the-gut questions and squared my shoulders a little. I waited for her to gut me like my mother had, to tell me I was lying to myself, that Cole and I had something real, that I should have pushed harder instead of giving up. That we could have made long distance work, that Philadelphia wasn’t that far away from Reckless Falls, hell if anyone was stubborn enough to do it, it was me. I had my responses ready to all of these accusations. Since I’d already slung them at myself.
But I still wasn’t prepared for what came out of her mouth. “So then why have you barely dated since he left?”
“I have too!” I sputtered. “Everett?”
“Oh please. You two had the chemistry of a dead fish. He’s a good, decent guy, but you two were a terrible couple and you know it.”
It was true. The thing I loved most about Everett was that he put no pressure on me. At all. He’d go exactly as far as I wanted and never push for more, which was exactly what I needed as I was recovering from heartbreak. He was repressed in a way that made me wonder if there was something else underneath his skin that he kept hidden. But if he did, I wasn’t the girl to find it.
