12 Gifts for Christmas

by Various

  He’d been … stubborn? Shortsighted? Selfish? Take your pick, he thought, sighing.

  They’d never contacted each other afterward. No phone calls, no email, nothing. God, he’d wanted to die. To even consider falling in love with someone else … was impossible.

  Nolan glanced down at his sleeping son, his heart flooding with an odd mix of emotions as he recognized some of Carole’s features in Casey. Amazingly, Carole had made him laugh, too. Like Evie, she had also been his best friend. But she had been the wife Evie never could have been … the wife he’d loved with all his heart—at least the parts that were still his to give. Still, Nolan had been startled when her death, shortly before Casey’s first birthday, hadn’t ripped a new hole in that heart as much as it simply enlarged the one already there.

  Movement in the aisle ahead of him brought Nolan back to the present. He watched Evie get up, the mild turbulence making her wobble slightly on her way to the front toilets. Once there, she grimaced, then turned to stagger toward the back. Her smile, when she passed, was fake enough to warrant a Made in China sign. A second later, she and her fake smile were gone, leaving Nolan frowning.

  Because he knew that look, that smile that said, “Everything’s fine, of course it is.” And once upon a time he would have said, “Cut the crap and tell me what’s wrong,” and not given up until she did.

  But what would—could—he do now? Nothing. She belongs in the past, he told himself. Nolan resolved to think about something else for the remainder of the flight. Even when Evie lurched back down the aisle, briefly bouncing off Nolan’s seat-back on the way.

  “We’re starting our descent into Dallas, folks,” the pilot’s blurred voice announced over the intercom. “Please observe the Fasten Seat Belt sign… .”

  Beside him, Casey stirred and yawned, then sat up, blinking toward the tiny square of dark looking outside. “Oh, wow … is that Santa?” The middle-aged man sitting next to them smiled. “Those lights over there—see?”

  “Could be,” Nolan said, watching the blinking red lights on the single-engine plane in the distance.

  “But where’s Rudolph?”

  “Maybe the sleigh’s facing away from us, so you can’t see him.”

  “Oh.” Casey sat back in his seat, satisfied. But then he asked, “Can we see Evie again?”

  Nolan started. “See Evie again?” So much for leaving her in the past.

  Large, hopeful eyes met his. “Yeah. While we’re in Dallas. ‘Cause she’s cool. An’ you two are friends, right?”

  Were friends, Nolan thought as the plane banked, sending Casey’s hands to his stomach and a I-think-I’m-gonna-be-sick groan from his mouth.

  You and me both, buddy, Nolan thought, grabbing the barf bag, just in case.

  Maybe after his less-than-noble stubborn-selfish-shortsighted act all those years ago, he owed it to the woman whose smile had once lit up his life to make sure she was okay.

  Please, please, please, Evie thought frantically as she scooted down the jet-way, just let me get out of here before—

  “Evie!”

  —they see me.

  Still scooting, she twisted around as Casey scampered to catch up with her, beaming. Cute kid. Missing front tooth. Looked exactly like his father, which she decided not to hold against him.

  “I saw Santa out the window right before we landed,” the kid said, bouncing more than walking. “An’ then the plane turned sideways and I almost barfed. An’ Dad says he’s not sure you’re really friends anymore, ‘cause it’s been so long since you’ve seen each other, but you still are, huh?”

  Oh, Lord.

  Evie turned to catch Nolan’s apologetic smile and her heart, already in shreds, flapped limply inside her chest. Fortunately, they didn’t dare stop or they’d get trampled by the hordes. It had been the longest short flight on record, flooded with memories and regrets and guilt and more regrets. And to look at Nolan now you’d never know how horribly things had ended between them—you’d only see what had once been.

  What could never be again. Because she had plans, baby. Big Plans. And nothin’ or nobody was gonna stop her—

  “What Casey’s trying to say,” Nolan said, looking as sane and calm and steady as ever, damn him, “is that we wondered if we could get together sometime while we’re both in town.”

  “You’re kidding?” Evie said, coming to a dead stop. Nolan yanked her to safety moments before they got creamed by the family with all those boys.

  “We barely got a chance to talk,” Nolan said, meaningfully.

  Evie stared at him, trying with all her might to telegraph: I know—there’s a reason for that. At least that’s what she meant to do—before she looked into his eyes and melted. Like a Popsicle on a Dallas sidewalk in July. Then Casey grabbed her hand. Her gaze dropped to his and she realized turning down the kid was going to be even harder than rejecting his father had been. Would be.

  Especially since it had been a long time since she’d had anything even remotely resembling sane and calm and steady in her life. A booster shot of Nolan probably wouldn’t hurt, immunizing her against the next ten years of frustration and heartbreak and—dare she admit it?—loneliness.

  “Okay,” Evie said, sighing, rummaging in her purse for her wallet as she admitted she was … curious. At least, that’s what she was going with. “Here’s my card, call my cell whenever. You’re at your parents’ place?”

  “Yeah,” Nolan said, fingering the card. The movement triggered very distinct memories of how he used to finger … other things, and she zipped right past melting to out-and-out evaporation. Nolan’s eyes lifted. “You sure?”

  “Hell, no,” she muttered, moments before she heard her daddy yell, “Good God, Evangeline Marie—what on earth are you wearing?”

  “Oh, now, honey,” Marie Gallagher said, slipping a second piece of pecan pie onto Evie’s plate, “it’s the holidays—you can go back on whatever diet you Hollywood types are into these days after you leave. But while you’re here—” Mama’s round cheeks swallowed her eyes when she smiled “—you can eat like a normal person! After all, you gotta build up your strength for all those classes and auditions and things, right?” Less than twenty-four hours after her arrival, Evie was torn between a desperate desire to escape and an equally desperate desire to crawl underneath the big, fat comforter in her old room and let her mother feed her until she exploded.

  Love was a constant in Evie’s family, just like the same set of decorations that appeared every year—the molded Santa on the front porch, the plastic holly wreath on the front door that warbled “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” and the mantel arrangement of fake pine boughs, red pillar candles and glittered cones. That love was a cord not easily broken—though, just like those ornaments, it did get a bit frayed around the edges from time to time. As long as she didn’t ask for money, her family gave their grudging acceptance of her career choice. Not that they understood how anybody could keep at something for so long for so little return, but then these days Evie wasn’t really sure she understood it, either.

  In her sister’s arms at the other end of the table, the newest baby squawked. Evie was the oldest child and the only one not married, a fact everyone’s pitying glance reinforced at every opportunity. As did the inevitable, “So … you got a part lined up in a movie or TV show or somethin’ yet? Somethin’ I might actually see, I mean?”

  The memory of Nolan’s kind, calm gaze in the airport popped into her head. Evie immediately popped it back out, neatly replacing it with the image of his shocked, censorious, hurt face that she’d carried with her for a decade. After all, she reminded herself, when she had needed his understanding, Nolan hadn’t been any more supportive of her following her dream than her family, had he?

  Just as she didn’t think he’d be particularly sympathetic about her ever-increasing doubts. They weren’t her constant companions—yet—but in the past year they’d started showing up more often, like stray cats. Especially the one that
hissed, “Thirty-two years old and what, exactly, do you have to show for your life, huh?”

  She really hated that one. A lot.

  Dinner over, Evie wandered into her parents’ living room and collapsed on the plaid, early-American sofa. She stared at the fake, pre-lit, eight-foot tree laden with every ornament Evie and her siblings had ever made and the inevitable assortment of sweaters, pajamas, toiletries and earrings that lay underneath its plastic boughs with her name on the tags. Ho-hum, they seemed to say, another year gone… .

  “Wow. Who died?”

  Me, Evie thought as she forced a smile for her next youngest sister, Margie, who was contently nursing the baby across from her. The only one who hadn’t had apoplexy when Evie moved to L.A. “You’ve never had a moment’s doubt about your choices, have you?” she asked her sister.

  “Hey. I have three kids. I ask myself what I was thinking every hour, on the hour. Don’t I, sweet pea?” Margie said to the baby, who gurgled at her. She looked back at Evie, frowning. “So what brought that on?”

  Evie made a face. Shrugged.

  “Things not going well?” Margie said sympathetically.

  “Not really,” she said. “But if you tell Mom and Dad, I’ll have to kill you.”

  “Then you’d get my kids. And Harold. So you might want to rethink that. But don’t you dare even think about giving up, Evie. You’re far too talented. You just haven’t gotten your break yet, that’s all.”

  And how long, Evie wondered, could she hold on to that belief?

  “Guess who I ran into in the Albuquerque airport?” she said, in a pathetic attempt to change the subject. “Nolan.”

  “Nolan? As in, the man who was so hopelessly in love with you that I had to buy a hideous bridesmaid dress I never got to wear—that Nolan?”

  “The very one,” Evie said over assorted pangs and twinges. “He’s in town for Christmas.” She paused. “With his little boy. He’s a widower,” she added at her sister’s raised brows.

  “And …?”

  “And … he asked if we could see each other.”

  “Get out.”

  Evie sighed. “I know. I would’ve expected him to scream and run in the other direction, too. But no.”

  Margie leaned over as far as she could with a baby attached to her breast. “I’ve still got the dress,” she whispered. “Although whether it still fits is another issue entirely.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t … I couldn’t … he wouldn’t …” Evie shut her eyes and shook her head. “No.”

  “But …?”

  “But … I feel bad. About how things ended. And here he is, like I’ve been given this chance to … to … make it better. Or something.”

  “Then why are you still on that couch?”

  Nolan leaned against his parents’ balcony railing, gazing out at the moonlit golf course and thinking vague thoughts about the value of standing outside, at night, in the dead of winter, freezing his buns off. Jerry and Eileen Clarke had lived in the condo so long Nolan almost thought of it as home. Except this wasn’t his home—his home was in Denver, in the cozy two-story colonial he shared with his son.

  The son who’d been talking nonstop about Evie from the moment they left the airport.

  Nolan shoved one hand into his jacket pocket, tugging out Evie’s card to thumb the slightly raised print of her cell number, the tiny photo of her grinning face underneath a spray of blond hair. Behind him, the patio door whispered open—he barely stuffed the card back before his mother linked her arm through his.

  “Casey’s in his pj’s,” she said, “but I think it’s going to take a tranquilizer dart to get him to sleep.”

  Nolan smiled. “You think it’s bad now, just wait until Christmas Eve.”

  “Somehow I get the feeling it’s more than Christmas that’s got him so excited,” she said, and Nolan braced himself. “He certainly seems taken with Evie.”

  “All kids are taken with Evie. She loves them, they love her back.”

  “So are you going to call her?” When he glared at her, she laughed, holding up her hands in mock defense. “It’s not pushing if it was your idea to begin with.”

  “Actually, it was Casey’s idea—”

  “Oh, Nolan,” Mom said, chuckling. “Who do you think you’re fooling?” When he didn’t answer, she squeezed his arm and said, “You know we loved Carole. What was not to love? She was a wonderful young woman. But Evie … we were crazy about her.” She paused. “So were you.”

  “That was ten years ago.”

  “And it’s been about that long since I’ve seen that look on your face.”

  “Utter confusion?”

  “It’s certainly utter something.”

  Nolan sighed out a breath into the damp, chilly night. “It’s nuts, Mom, but when I saw her again …” He shook his head. “How can I feel so strongly about somebody I haven’t even heard from in more than a decade?”

  “Because it’s not ‘somebody,’ sweetie. It’s Evie.”

  He looked down into her amused, light brown eyes. “Aren’t mothers supposed to worry about their children’s hearts getting broken?”

  “No sense worrying about something we can’t prevent. Anyway, I think it’s safe to say that’s one tough heart you’ve got in there,” she said, patting his chest. “You’ve lived through it twice already. I imagine you’re strong enough to weather it again.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Anytime,” Mom said, smiling.

  Nolan turned to lean his elbows on the balcony railing. “But even if I did call her …” Another sigh. “I may be older and—God willing—a little wiser, but we’re still the same people we were when we split up. Our goals didn’t mesh then and I sincerely doubt they do now.”

  “You don’t know that. And you’re wrong about being the same person you were then. Oh, you’re still the same Nolan at the core, I don’t mean that, but time and experience change everyone. Wears down their hard edges, makes them more willing to remove their blinders.” She forked a long-fingered hand through her graying, shoulder-length hair. “And to compromise.”

  “But—”

  “Somehow, I imagine they needed teachers in L.A. ten years ago. Probably still do. And Evie wasn’t with you when you visited L.A. before. That young woman could make Siberia fun. You didn’t really try to hang on to her, did you?”

  That she was only echoing his own thoughts didn’t make hearing them any easier. “So why didn’t you say something then?” Nolan asked, his mood darkening.

  “I did! You didn’t listen to me any more than you did to Evie—”

  “Gran! Dad!” Casey’s muffled voice came through the closed patio door. His feet braced, the kid shoved it open, his eyes like saucers. “You’ll never, ever guess in a gazillion years who’s here!”

  “Evie!” his mother sang out, practically shoving her grandson aside in order to smother a very startled—and, Nolan noted, no longer spinach-haired—Evie in her embrace.

  Huffing like The Little Engine That Could, Evie trotted to keep up with Nolan’s much-longer legs as they marched through avenues of twinkling balconies and glowing doorways positively reeking of Christmas cheer. One overly optimistic soul had even crammed a ten-foot-tall inflatable Frosty onto a nine-foot-tall balcony. Frosty’s hat was a little smushed, but his grin never wavered.

  Unlike Nolan, who was clearly not feeling the joy.

  “You know, your parents seemed a lot happier to see me than you do,” Evie said to his back as she trotted. She’d forgotten how much she’d liked Nolan’s parents, as solid and placid and predictable as their son. The fact that she enjoyed those traits in them was a little weird, considering how much she’d rebelled against placidity and predictability. Against normal. Against dull.

  His hands knotted in his Broncos jacket, Nolan tossed a glare over his shoulder as they walked, one of those spark-laden glares that made good girls redefine a few things and, she thought, cross out dull.

&nb
sp; “Hey!” Evie smacked his arm, stumbling a little when he wheeled on her, still glaring. “Seeing each other again was your idea! But if you want me to leave, just say the word—What are you doing?”

  He’d grabbed her hand and hauled her into a secluded spot tucked between two buildings. Before she could blink he’d cupped her jaw and brought his mouth down on hers. Oh, hmm, okay, she thought and opened to him, rapacious, tasting what she hadn’t tasted in way too long, making those little mmrph sounds in her throat that used to drive him crazy, and just like that, ten years went buh-bye.

  “I take it that’s a ‘no’ to me leaving?” she said some minutes later, when blood returned to the speech center in her brain.

  After several more seconds, Nolan said, unsteadily, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I was actually hoping there’d be … nothing.”

  “Yeah. Me, too,” Evie said, belatedly remembering her mission. Unless she was sorely mistaken, this didn’t fix anything. “So much for that.”

  Nolan gathered her close, burying his face in her hair, and she breathed in his familiar scent and heard the same strong heartbeat against her ear and felt everything click neatly into place the way it always had. Fine, so now you know, nothing’s

  changed, she said to herself, silently whimpering because that was exactly the problem, wasn’t it?

  She tried to pull away. Nolan wouldn’t let her. But she didn’t exactly fight. In fact, she clung to him, as if to absorb all that solidity and stability and sanity, enough to tide her over for a while. Like the rest of her life.

  “And isn’t this stupid?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, kissing her temple. Holding her tight.

  “It’s been too long,” Evie said fervently, still clinging. “We’ve moved on, made our choices, there’s no recapturing who we used to be.”

  “So … maybe this isn’t about recapturing anything.”

  Evie arched, looking up at him, trying to read his expression in the dark. “Then what is this about? Besides the obvious we’re-still-combustible-together thing.”