Home For the Holidays

by Lisa Plumley

  “She’s applying for citizenship,” the director’s assistant barked over the phone. “So she has to look très American.”

  “I’ll dress her in red, white, and blue,” Rachel joked.

  “Excellent idea. See you in one month.” Click.

  Disconnecting her call, Rachel frowned at her ancient cell phone—which had performed pretty well, come to think of it. Then she glanced at her bedroom’s inspiration board, still sporting the fabric scraps and other items she’d pinned to it in preparation for her new “collection.” Everything still looked amazing. It still looked…It looked as if all her lost hopes had been set askew and stabbed through the heart with pushpins.

  Feeling queasy, Rachel got up—and almost tripped over her dad, who was passing through the hallway.

  “Rachel! You’re up.” His gaze met hers, skimmed over her security-blanket cardigan, then softened. “I was just coming to get you. I need some help with my train set. How about it?”

  If he’d asked her at any other time, Rachel would have refused. After all, her father’s train set was arranged beneath the Christmas tree right beside her mother’s mini Christmas village—the one she’d painted and fired herself in ceramics class years ago. There was no avoiding Christmas when you were hunched under a fully decorated tree beside an Olde Sweet Shoppe replica tinkering with the caboose of the SantaLand Express.

  But today she didn’t refuse. Maybe she was tired of feeling embarrassed that her L.A. failures were so widely known. Or maybe she just wanted a little old-fashioned paternal affection after all her setbacks. Because Rachel took one look at her turtleneck-wearing father and caved. “Okay, Dad. Let’s go.”

  But she regretted her moment of weakness immediately, as her first step into the living room almost made her stumble. “Please Come Home for Christmas” was playing on the stereo—the same song she and Reno had danced to after decorating his Christmas tree together. A Christmas Story was flickering on the TV—the same movie she and Reno had laughed to together. It was almost too much to bear…especially when her gaze fell on the fireplace mantel, where four hand-knitted stockings hung, each with a first name embroidered on its turned-down cuff.

  Stomping toward them, Rachel grabbed the nearest. Reno winked up at her in green embroidery floss. “What’s this?”

  “Oh, that’s just something I made.” Airily, her mother bustled in, her hands full of wrapped gifts. She added them to the mountain piled beneath the Christmas tree, then straightened with one hand to her aching back. She surveyed the tableau with pride. “We invited Reno to drop by on Christmas Day—”

  “You what?”

  “—and we needed someplace to put his gifts, didn’t we?”

  “No, you didn’t!” Rachel fisted the Reno stocking, her heart aching at the thought of him. She ripped it from its holder.

  “Rachel!” her dad boomed. “Put that back.”

  “Reno doesn’t deserve a stocking,” Rachel protested.

  “Your mother put a lot of work into that. Put it back.”

  She threw it on the floor instead. With relish, Rachel stomped it. She ground it beneath her boot. “There!”

  Her parents both gawked at her.

  “You need a timeout,” her mother announced.

  “You, young lady, are going to your room,” her father said.

  “I hate it here. I’m leaving!” Rachel cried. Feeling a sob well inside her, she ran to her bedroom and slammed the door.

  By the time she emerged, toting a suitcase and making plans to come back for her nonessential luggage later, her mom and dad were nowhere to be seen. The living room stood glittering with Christmas lights and the humble-looking tree. A new Christmas carol played for an audience of no one. The foyer waited, empty except for its avalanche of holiday cards. The dining room was silent, outfitted with special green and red placemats and a mistletoe and holly centerpiece with fat scented candles that bore the unmistakable stamp of her mother’s crafty side.

  Frustrated, Rachel dragged her suitcase from room to room. It was no good leaving in a dramatic huff if no one saw you.

  You need the applause, she remembered telling Reno.

  And you don’t? he’d shot back.

  It turned out that both of them were right—and more alike than they’d wanted to admit. But that didn’t matter now. Nothing did. Just like her spectacular exit wouldn’t matter if she couldn’t track down her parents. Miserable but with her head held high, Rachel stomped through a couple more rooms.

  She finally located her parents outside in the snow, making last-minute adjustments to their holiday yard display. It wasn’t dark yet, so the display didn’t look like much, but her mom and dad fussed over the location and angle of each object anyway.

  Rachel thumped her suitcase onto the porch, then regarded the scene through jaded eyes. There wasn’t anything here for her. She’d turned into a laughingstock. Even her parents hadn’t been truthful with her, and they were the least duplicitous people she knew. Her father had once driven fifteen miles to pay for an item he hadn’t been charged for at the Bargain Hut.

  “That looks exactly the same as it does every year.”

  Her mother glanced up. “Of course it does!”

  “Why do you think we fuss with it?” her father asked.

  Momentarily deterred from her drama-queen exit, Rachel shook her head. “You’re making it look boring on purpose?”

  “Not boring.” Her dad spoke, but it was her mom who gazed at her with sympathy. “Traditional.” He gestured at the yard. “Blow-up balloon snowmen are boring. Real handmade snowmen are traditional. All white lights are boring. Multicolored lights are traditional. Huge plastic snowflakes are boring. White paper scissor-cut snowflakes are traditional. Get it?”

  “No. Do you have this many rules for everything?”

  Hmmm. That sounded familiar to her…

  Oh yeah. Reno. He’d asked her that once, when she’d explained the difference between a classical and a traditional Christmas. Apparently she’d learned to spot the dividing lines from her parents—who watched her now with distinct wariness.

  Wariness because…she was stomping off in a huff. Right.

  “Rachel.” Her mom stepped forward, bundled up in her old blue coat and the boots Rachel had borrowed to cut down Christmas trees with Reno and Kayla. “I know you’re hurting—”

  “But don’t be so hasty this time!” her dad butted in. “You’re always flying off the handle, Rachel. That’s probably what got you in trouble with whatshername: Alayna Panagakos.”

  That did it. For a second, Rachel had almost buckled.

  Instead she jerked up her chin. “Well, I hope you both have a”—Merry Christmas, her stupid sappy heart volunteered, but she ruthlessly squashed the sentiment—“happy week. I’m leaving.”

  Then she hauled her suitcase off the porch and headed down the street, her satisfaction slightly punctured by the fact that in Podunk Kismet, cabs didn’t operate in the off-season. She’d have to walk, then take a Greyhound bus to the airport.

  At the thought, Rachel shuddered. But she strode onward relentlessly. If there was one thing she’d learned as a self-proclaimed rebel, it was never to back down. And never to admit being wrong. Even if, it occurred to her as she rounded the corner and lost sight of her perplexed parents, she had been.

  She had been wrong, because she never should have come home for the holidays in the first place. Everything that had happened here had been a mistake—starting with the moment she’d fallen for Reno…and ending with the realization that, no matter how much she’d wanted him to, he’d never loved her back.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Just when Reno needed business to be booming at The Wright Stuff, everyone in town seemed to have deserted his store. His bins stood full of basketballs that no one bounced, bats that no one swung, and equipment that would have made ideal Christmas gifts but instead lay ignored and overlooked.

  Frowning, he swiped a dust rag over the smal
l display of out-of-season scuba gear in the farthest corner of the store, his expression doubtless as grim as his insides felt.

  He didn’t know what was wrong with him. He’d been this way since the night of Kayla’s Christmas pageant. Bleak. Miserable. Defiant. Technically, Reno figured he’d won his showdown with Rachel, so he should have been pleased. She’d left. He’d held his ground. That counted as a victory even if no one else knew about it. And he was pretty sure no one else knew about it. But that didn’t make Reno feel any better. Damn it.

  Just as he reached a pinnacle of frustration and impatience—and the end of the gear that needed dusting for the fourteenth time—the bell over the shop’s door jangled.

  At last! Customers were here. Reno glanced up, hungry for distraction. But it was only Jimmy Gurche, his latest part-time employee, striding in with his perpetual-prankster’s aura.

  Reno frowned. “Go home. I’m holding down the store today.”

  “Today and every other day. Go on, take some time off!” Jimmy urged. “Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. I can watch over things here. You must have things to do—”

  Find Rachel and beg her to come back occurred to Reno.

  “—places to go—”

  If Rachel was still at her parents’, he could find her.

  “—gifts to buy—”

  He’d never get to give her her Christmas gift now.

  “—parties to attend.” Jimmy sauntered to the cash register and smiled at the holiday cards hung there. “You’re a popular guy, right? You must have been invited to a few shindigs.”

  Reno had been. “Not interested. I’m busy.”

  “You’re worn out, is what you are. Look at those bags under your eyes.” Jimmy peered at his face, then shook his head. “At least go home for a while. Take a damn nap or something.”

  Home. Reno couldn’t go there.

  Everything about the place reminded him of Rachel. He stepped in his front door and remembered making love to her at the base of his Christmas tree. He picked up his Scorpions sweatshirt and pictured her wearing it, adorable and all but branded as his alone. He walked in his bedroom and yearned to find her, naked and smiling and totally unwilling to back down.

  You know I’m right, Rachel had said to him, and she had been. She hadn’t been afraid to call him on his bullshit. She hadn’t been afraid to love him. All of him. The real him.

  Or at least that’s what he’d thought, Reno reminded himself with a final savage sweep of his dusting cloth. Now he knew better. Rachel might have figured out his issues with football and fame and money—but those were ephemeral things. Job-related things. His family and friends—and especially Nate—were real things. Authentic things. Things that mattered…things that Rachel just didn’t understand about him.

  She also didn’t understand—although he’d bet she was learning it now—how much pride Reno placed in not backing down. That pride had gotten him through the NFL. It had gotten him through life. It would get him through heartbreak, too.

  “Screw that.” He scoffed. “A nap? I’m way too busy.”

  As though to prove it, Reno jabbed his chin toward the store’s interior. It was so empty, crickets practically chirped.

  Well, who cared? Not him.

  Ignoring Jimmy’s sympathetic look, Reno shouldered his way to the soccer balls. Some punk kids had mixed them up with the baseballs. Damn miscreants. Dourly, he sorted through them.

  Jimmy hustled over. He tossed a baseball in the next bin.

  Reno glared at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Helping you.”

  “Go home.”

  “I will if you will.”

  “Jerkwad.”

  “Dickface.”

  At the sight of Jimmy’s mulish expression, an odd gratitude suddenly welled inside Reno. For days now, he’d been hiding out inside The Wright Stuff, avoiding everyone and refusing to do so much as turn on the Christmas lights in the windows.

  He hadn’t shoveled anyone’s driveway. He hadn’t repaired anything. He hadn’t lent tools to his neighbors, dug anyone out of a snowbank, babysat, moderated a parental crisis, or acted as a date broker for his best friend. He hadn’t done anything.

  And everyone had left him alone. Until now.

  The bell over the door jingled again. Reno glanced up.

  Tom Wright sauntered in, an expression of contentment on his face. He spotted Reno and headed in his direction.

  “Hey, son! How’s it going?”

  Reno would rather not say. “What are you doing here, Dad?”

  “I’m in the market for…um, some new weights.” His father rubbed his hands together, seeming newly energized as he examined the mostly vacant shop. “Yeah, that’s it. Some new weights. I definitely need new weights. Can you help me out?”

  Suspiciously, Reno squinted at his dad. “You have so many weights that I’m not sure your condo can hold them all.”

  “I’m, uh, helping to outfit the community rec room.”

  “You don’t have a community rec room.”

  “It’s new.” With blustery, brisk movements, his father strode forward. He waved to Jimmy, then gave Reno a nonchalant pat as he surveyed the contents of The Wright Stuff. “This might take me all day, so get used to having me around, okay?”

  Reno compressed his mouth. There was something very unlikely about this scenario. It was possible that his dad fancied himself an expert in weight training—given his experience as a late-life bachelor—but…all-day shopping?

  In Reno’s experience, Wright men would rather pluck nose hairs with rusty barbecue tongs than endure all-day shopping.

  But before Reno could express his skepticism, the bell over the door dinged again. Derek Detweiler stepped inside, bearing a shiny leather jacket emblazoned with the Multicorp logo.

  Great. Just when Reno was at his lowest, he was going to be pounded by another unrelenting franchising sales pitch.

  “Go away, Detweiler. I’m not interested.”

  “Geez, Reno. Take a chill pill, will you?” The man approached him, holding the leather jacket the way a lion tamer held a chair. “I just came by with a Christmas present for you.”

  “Oh.” Reno studied it. Goaded by Detweiler’s waggling of it, he took it. Gruffly, he said, “Thanks. That’s nice of you.”

  “Not a problem, my man. You’re more than welcome.”

  Feeling churlish next to Detweiler’s good humor, Reno fisted his new leather jacket. “Uh, why don’t you help yourself to one of those jerseys over there?” Stiffly, he nodded to the hockey jerseys, his most popular items. “A gift from me to you.”

  “Mighty nice of you, Reno. I think I will.”

  Appearing delighted, Derek Detweiler made his way across The Wright Stuff. He exchanged hellos with Jimmy, then with Reno’s dad. A few minutes later, all three men had huddled beside the athletic supporters, engaged in a lively discussion.

  Sullenly, Reno went on sorting soccer balls. Fragments of conversation drifted toward him though, carried easily because of the lack of his usual Christmas music. Heartbroken fluttered past, followed by a surreptitious betrayed and a harshly whispered help him. Occasionally one of the men glanced his way.

  Reno scowled. “This isn’t the damn gossip hour.”

  “We’re not talking about you, Reno!” his dad exclaimed—with about as much believability as he’d used to proclaim his love of gangsta rap music after his split with his mom. “Don’t mind us!”

  All three of them stifled guffaws. There was another muffled exchange. Then Derek Detweiler broke from the pack, holding a Redwings jersey in his fist. He approached Reno.

  He spread his arms wide and enveloped him in a huge hug.

  “What the…?” With a startled obscenity, Reno shoved backward. “What do you think you’re doing, Detweiler?”

  Derek glanced over his shoulder. Jimmy and Tom Wright gave him quadruple thumbs-up signs. “Thanking you for the jersey!”

  “I don’t need
that much gratitude.”

  A fond sigh. “Things will work out somehow. Don’t worry.”

  The hell…? Now Derek Detweiler was consoling him? “My only worry right now is turning you down for a date.”

  Detweiler laughed. “Oh, Reno! You’re so funny.”

  Then he hugged him. Again. While murmuring comforting platitudes about loving and losing. Utterly bewildered, Reno stared over the Multicorp rep’s shoulder at his dad and Jimmy.

  But they weren’t there. They’d zipped across the store when he wasn’t looking, and now they ambushed him, too. Feeling like a running back receiving the Malachi Crunch from three burly defenders, Reno was too surprised to move at first. The scents of Old Spice and leather assaulted his nostrils, followed by…

  “Damn, Jimmy! What did you eat today?”

  “Braunschweiger. Mrs. Gurche is German, remember?”

  “Whew! Try a breath mint, will you?”

  Jimmy nodded but didn’t budge. Just when Reno thought he might collapse from sausage fumes, the bell over the shop’s door rang again. The timing could not have been worse.

  Mrs. Kowalczyk stepped nimbly inside, her arms burdened with a rectangular, boxy-looking thing. She stopped on the threshold, startled. “Hmmm. Should I come back later, boys? I don’t want to interrupt a private moment.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  With her boot heels wobbling against the uneven icy sidewalk, Rachel pounded her way toward downtown, passing gaily decorated yards and wide picture windows featuring various families’ Christmas trees. Evidently, everyone else in Kismet was ready for the holidays to arrive. Everyone except her.

  She’d tried to stay through Christmas; her parents had ruined that for her with their talk of not being “hasty” again. But her mom and dad would be sorry when she was gone, Rachel told herself with a sniffle as she adjusted her scarf and kept moving toward (she hoped) the Greyhound station. They would miss her and feel bad. Really bad. For…for what exactly?