Christmas Eve

by Molly O'Keefe

  Mom sat back against the pillows, staring at Trina like she’d never heard her language before.

  “Would you like some ginger ale?” Trina asked him. “Or Coke? That’s all they had except for that gross vending machine coffee.”

  Dean felt a little bit like he had slipped down a rabbit hole. “Do you have anything stronger?”

  “Sorry, she said. “Spiked hot chocolate is your forte.”

  She was smiling, slightly. A careful smile. A tentative one.

  Remember? her smile said. Remember how close we used to be? Remember that awful night when we trusted each other more than anyone else on earth?

  The reminder was unnecessary and bitter.

  “Don’t,” he said, and the smile dropped from her face. Last year, he could smile and pretend. This year, in his mother’s hospital room, he didn’t make nice.

  Mom was watching them, her shrewd eyes taking in all the things he didn’t quite have the power to hide tonight.

  “Trina? Can I see you outside?” Without waiting for an answer, he got up and walked into the hallway.

  There was a limit. And he’d just hit his.

  It wasn’t like she didn’t know what was waiting for her out in that hallway. Dean was mad. Furious. And frankly, he had every right to be. And she’d had this stupid plan, which of course had gone wrong. Because really what she should have done was call him. Months ago.

  But she’d wanted to get rid of some of the stuff between them. Some of her stuff.

  “Just tell him, honey,” Marion said.

  Trina patted the woman’s hand and followed Dean outside. Her feet were nearly numb from the cold floor, but anything was better than the devil shoes she’d been wearing most of the night.

  She found him in the little waiting room at the end of the hallway, pacing between walls covered in watercolors of cowboys and dogs.

  “What the hell is going on?” He spun on her when she stepped into the room.

  “I didn’t think your mother should be alone.”

  “That’s great, but when did you get to be honey?”

  She blinked. This wasn’t quite the conversation she’d been expecting.

  “She’s been really good to me. Always has been.”

  He pulled off his hat and tossed it on the chair. His hair was all clumpy and sticking to his forehead. If she’d done things right, if she hadn’t been so angry and scared and dumb, she would have had the right to unstick his hair from his head. She could ruffle it and feather it back.

  She could touch him the way she wanted.

  Because he would be hers.

  “Your mom’s been helping me since I left your dad’s company. I’m still fighting the pipeline. I’m just doing it away from your brother, who, I might add, is worse than your father could ever dream of being.”

  “How is my mother helping you?”

  “Money. Logistics. Making introductions to the right people. You’d be surprised by how politically connected your mother is.”

  “Nothing about my mother surprises me.” His voice was cold. Hard. Don’t tell me about my mother, it said.

  “Of course,” she said, uncomfortable and awkward. “She’s your mother.”

  This was not how this all was supposed to go. There had been a plan. A dress. A fancy hairdo. She’d anticipated champagne. Olives. Not Cheetos fingers.

  It was actually kind of amazing how awful she was at this. How every step she took was wrong.

  “Those things…you said in there. About me.” He shook his head. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. Of course it matters.” She took a deep breath. “You matter, Dean. You’ve always mattered.”

  “What am I supposed to say to that?”

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  But please, please say something.

  Only he took her at her word and turned away from her, to stare, silent and broody, out a dark window to the parking lot below. She twisted her fingers together and took a step closer to him. In the window she could see the reflection of his face.

  He was watching her.

  But from a distance. Or an angle.

  It was just another way for both of them to hide. And she didn’t want that. He might reject her. He might laugh in her face and tell her she’d missed her chance, but she wanted to look him in the eyes when she told him.

  She’d spent enough time hiding from him. Hiding from her feelings.

  “Could you please turn around?” she asked, wishing her voice was stronger.

  He did what she asked, his hands in his jeans pockets. His thick wool sweater pulled taut over his shoulders and chest. He had always been so big and so able to hold her up, take on her weight and her problems. She’d wanted to do the same for him. Just a little.

  “I asked your mom for an invitation to the party because I wanted to see you.”

  He shrugged nonchalantly with one shoulder, as if that was all the effort that was required. “You could have seen me anytime,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to check on my mom.” He grabbed his hat and headed back toward Marion’s room. She got in his way. Frowning, he stepped to the right to get around her and she stepped with him. He stepped left and she was still in his way.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Telling you I’m sorry.”

  “I’m done with apologies from you, Trina.” Again he tried to step past her, again she stuck to him, refusing to let him by until she had her say. “What? Are you ten?”

  “I wanted to call you back a thousand times,” she said. “Once I was done being mad, I felt stupid because you were right. Your father had good intentions hiring me. He did. But your brother just wanted to use me as a tool to gather up land, including my father’s.”

  “And you thought what? I was going to rub your face in it? Look, I’m really sorry about the situation with Josh. You deserve better. You’ve always deserved better. But it’s been two years, Trina.”

  “I’ve been spending a lot of time with my dad,” she said. “This year. Since I quit, really.”

  “Trust me, I know. It’s all he talks about.”

  “You got him to stop drinking.”

  “I just poured out the rye. He did the hard part.”

  She still fought the instinct not to give her father any credit. But he’d been sober for the better part of a year, and sometimes she had to remember that. She had to work hard to see the man he was trying to be and not just the man he had been.

  “We go to church together,” she said. “Have coffee after. It’s not great, but it’s good. Frankly, I’m still mad a lot of the time, but we’re trying.”

  “That’s nice. I’m glad.”

  “Thank you.” She wished her voice was stronger. “Thank you for giving us that chance. You were right. Last year, what you said at the gas station, that I don’t forgive or forget. You were right. And I’m working on it,” she said. “That’s what I’ve been doing this year. Working on that. On me, I guess. Trying to be the kind of person who deserves a guy like you. I wanted to call you—see you again, when I was the best version of myself.”

  His eyes went wide. His mouth fell open a little bit.

  “I had this big plan tonight. I made sure your mom put the instruments down in the foyer—”

  “We haven’t played together in years.”

  “Right. That was pointed out to me. That’s why the harpist was hired. But I was going to ask you to play with me. I was going to tell you how much that meant to me when I was a kid. How I never felt as close to anyone as I did while playing those songs with you. Except for that morning…three Christmas Eves ago. When you made me look at you while—”

  She cut off her rambling mouth, blushing. Really, Trina. You’re in a hospital.

  “I remember,” he said quietly. Warmth kindling in his eyes. He took a step closer, and then another, and her knees nearly buckled with relief. Was this working? Was this actually working
?

  “What I want, more than anything, is to feel that close to you again. So I went to that party. Hoping you would be there. Hoping you would see me in this stupid dress—”

  “Hey now, I like that dress.”

  “I wanted you to see me in it and I wanted you to want me.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  She sucked in a breath, blood pounding in her cheeks.

  “But then, when everything happened with your mom, all I could think about was how hard this would be for you and I couldn’t stand the idea of you being here all alone.”

  “You didn’t want my mother to be alone.”

  “I didn’t want you to be alone.” A tear slipped from her eyes and she didn’t brush it away. She was done hiding from him. “I’m here for you. For my friend. Because you’ve always been there for me.”

  He grabbed her hands in his, squeezing them so hard they nearly hurt. Her breath shuddered. The look on his face…she’d never seen him so intense.

  “I don’t want to be your friend,” he said.

  “What?” she breathed, pain rippling through her.

  “It’s not enough. Not anymore.”

  She swallowed. The strap of her dress slipped down her shoulder. “That was what I was scared of. Because it’s not enough for me either. It’s not nearly enough.”

  With shaking hands, they stroked back each other’s hair. And she felt impossibly open to him. Like she’d been unzipped somehow and was standing in front of him with everything showing. And it was the same for her with him.

  She’d always seen him so clearly. The vulnerability he guarded with jokes. That physical ease that hid an emotional want that never got answered. Never got fulfilled.

  And she’d been a part of that. She’d hurt him. With her own fear. Her own vulnerability. Probably in ways she didn’t even know about.

  I’m sorry, she thought again.

  But instead of saying it, she slipped her hands across his cheeks. Holding him still. Looking him right in the eyes, she didn’t hide. Or look away.

  This is me, she thought. All of me. Wanting all of you.

  He sighed, said something soft she didn’t hear or understand, and his hands gripped her waist, the strange fabric of her dress sliding between them, amplifying every touch, broadcasting it all over her body.

  Hey! Dean is touching me now!

  She rose up on her toes. He bent down. They met halfway.

  His lips were dry. He smelled like pencil lead. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on as hard as she could. For as long as she could.

  I won’t let you go. Not again. Never again.

  “Let’s go check on your mom,” she said.

  “And then what?”

  “Will you come with me?” she asked, pulling away from the kiss.

  His eyes, his touch, everything about him said yes.

  “Where?”

  “To my house.”

  “I’ve never been to your house.”

  She wrapped her arm through his, pulling them into motion. “Well, you are in for a very short, very boring tour.”

  “What are we going to do there?” he asked.

  “Talk,” she said.

  He booed.

  “I think we have a lot we need to say,” she said. “I know there’s a lot I want to tell you. About how sorry I am and how much I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you too.”

  “I remember when we were kids and you said that this place would poison us. That our parents would.”

  “I remember.”

  “They almost did, Dean. They almost took all this away from us, and I think we need to get out all the poison.”

  “Okay. Get out poison. Then what?”

  “Well, then I imagine we’re going to be so emotionally wrung out and exhausted that we’ll fall asleep.” Now she was just having fun with him. And she wanted to keep having fun with him forever. She wanted it to never end.

  “Nap. Got it. And then?”

  “Monkey sex, Dean. Then monkey sex.”

  “Excellent!”

  “We got time, boy. We got plenty of time.”

  He stopped and pulled her in close, breathing kisses across her face. “Merry Christmas, Trina,” he said.

  “Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered back.

  They stepped back into Marion’s tiny little hospital room and were both brought up short by the sight of Eugene, in a big black overcoat, leaning over Marion’s bed, pressing kisses to her forehead.

  She felt Dean’s entire body tense up. And she wanted, badly, to get him out of here before something happened between Dean and his father.

  “Sorry,” she said in a low voice, but the two adults jumped back as if they’d been caught necking.

  “Trina,” Eugene said in his deep voice. “Thank you for taking care of her.”

  “It’s no problem. None at all. Let me just get our stuff.”

  Dean stepped out of the shadows with her and Eugene’s eyes beneath the bushy white eyebrows went wide.

  “Dad,” Dean said with a short nod of his head while he grabbed his jacket off the bed.

  “Dean.”

  Trina nearly rolled her eyes. The testosterone was so thick she could barely see.

  “Glad to see you could make it to your wife’s hospital bed,” Dean said while shrugging into his coat. “Had to finish that last cigar, I suppose.”

  “Your mother asked me to stay at the party,” he said.

  “Because that’s what Mom does,” he said. “Mom says that kind of thing.”

  “And I mean it,” Marion said. “Stop, Dean.”

  Trina had her feet wedged into her shoes and her coat and purse over her arm. She went back to Dean and put a hand against his chest. “Let’s just go, Dean,” she whispered.

  Dean’s eyes went from his mother to Trina and she wasn’t sure what he was thinking. And she had that strange sensation of knowing him both really well and not at all. Not really. And instead of making her daunted or worried, the thought was a happy one. An exciting one. Getting to know all the parts of this man would be happy work. That would make for happy days.

  He touched her hair, pushed it behind her ear. “Maybe I need to do some work to deserve you,” he whispered for her ears alone.

  “Is there something happening between you two?” Eugene asked, pointing a finger at Trina and Dean.

  “If it is, I can only say it’s about damn time,” Marion said, holding his hand. “Wish them a merry Christmas and let them go back to their evening.”

  Eugene seemed slightly baffled, as if he’d walked into the wrong room.

  “Merry Christmas, Dean. Trina,” he said with a sort of head bow.

  “Merry Christmas, Dad,” Dean said, then wrapped his arm around Trina’s shoulder and led her out of the room.

  “That was strange,” she said. “Did you think that was strange?”

  “Things are always strange with my dad,” Dean said. “I’ll drive. We can come back to get your car in the morning.”

  “But that was stranger than usual, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. We didn’t fight.”

  “Right,” she said, with a smile. “You didn’t fight.”

  “It’s a Christmas miracle.”

  “Wait,” she said as they stepped into the elevator. “Why are you driving?”

  He pushed her back into the corner of the elevator, pressed his body full length against hers. Hips to chest. His arms around her waist. “Because I want to make out in my car,” he said into her mouth. “Because I don’t want to let you go for as long as it takes to drive to your house.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  In the end they had hot monkey sex. In the truck. And on her couch.

  Then they talked. They talked until the sun came up.

  And it was Christmas Day.

  Chapter 7

  December 24, 2014

  6:32 PM

  All right, Dean thought,
staring at the red wreath made out of beads on Trina’s front door. This is not going to be easy. I need a plan. Maybe a speech. A speech would be good.

  He didn’t have a speech.

  He took a few minutes out on the porch before opening the door to try and think of a speech.

  But he had nothing.

  Just the mad stupid pounding of his heart and few song lyrics he couldn’t get out of his head.

  The front door was pulled open and there was Trina, her face rosy. Her hair pulled back in a ponytail that fell down over her shoulder.

  “Why are you standing out here?” she asked, glancing around their front porch. “You hiding presents?”

  “No. Just thinking.”

  “Thinking? You do that better in the snow, do you?”

  “Not really.”

  “You are so weird.” She pressed her warm lips to his cold ones and pulled him in at the same time.

  “You’ve been drinking,” he said, smiling against her mouth, kicking the door shut behind them.

  “Just a little.”

  He kissed her again, slipping his tongue into her mouth, and she moaned, melting against him in an instant. That’s what Trina did, she melted against him. She just went boneless.

  He loved it. Hard.

  “Maybe more than a little,” she whispered.

  “Drunk Trina is kind of my favorite Trina.”

  “You only say that because she’s easy.”

  “Shhh, that’s my drunk girlfriend you’re talking about.”

  He kissed her again. Wrapping his arms around her as if he could absorb her through the leather of his coat, the shearling beneath that. His stupid suit and his skin beneath that. Into his blood, that’s where he’d absorb her if he could. Right into the heart of him.

  That’s where he’d carry her.

  “I missed you,” he said.

  “I know, I missed you too. Four days is too long, isn’t it?”

  “The fourth day was the worst,” he agreed. “I almost drove to the Canadian border to meet you.”

  “I would have liked that.”

  She kissed him, slipped her arms around his waist, under his coat, resting her hands on the top of his butt.

  “Hey.” He broke the kiss, though that was the last thing he wanted. But they had some serious ground to cover tonight. And that wouldn’t happen with her hand on his butt. Nothing would happen with her copping a feel.