Chapter 32
CRYING ON CHRISTMAS
Christmas Eve, much like Thanksgiving, was a huge family production in the Harvey household.
Jeremy and my mom baked, Ron and Dad made two kinds of meat (they couldn’t help themselves), and Kate and I helped by cooking many sides.
This year, Barry, Chloe, and Trevor O’Neil would also be joining us.
Trevor’s family lived in Connecticut and he, like Barry, worried that the travel time and potential delays would make it too difficult to get there and back in time for their game next week.
Trevor said he’d see his parents during the February break, since he officially wasn’t chosen for the All-Stars team in favor of the flashier players—
“The fan favorites who score lots and lots of points,” he said. “Overrated if you ask me.”
Barry scoffed and threw an almond at his friend, who caught it in his mouth and winked at me while he chewed. Barry, of course, was picked for the All-Stars game.
I was right that Trevor and Chloe must’ve known each other somehow, because he chatted with her in a way that was more familiar than strangers, and she rolled her eyes at him constantly. I kept raising my eyebrows at Barry when she sent barbs at Trevor, and Barry shrugged every time.
“Think they’ve hooked up?” Kate whispered about the pair.
“Bro, duh,” Jeremy said as he passed us with a bowl of fresh rolls for the table.
Chloe and Barry each made a couple sides (Barry’s salads, and Chloe offered tapioca pudding that I already had two cups of), and Trevor brought roasted carrots that smelled like I would be eating three servings.
By the time we were ready for dinner, Jeremy took the puzzle table and used it as an extender to fit all of us.
I had some anxiety about everyone vibing with my loud, nosy family, but I felt silly about that by the time we were dished up.
It was such a lovely time, really the more the merrier with this bunch.
Jeremy and Trevor were fast friends, Chloe and Kate too, and Barry sat with his leg pressed up against mine all through dinner.
As was my duty, I brought a Christmas puzzle, one that Barry picked up on the team’s last road trip. Christmas kitties. Baby was exceptionally active after I ate, as she usually was these days, and my family took turns feeling her thump against their palms.
“She heard you were sorting a puzzle and got excited,” Jeremy muttered, picking out a couple of edge pieces while Dad muttered nice grandpa things toward my stomach.
We did presents after dessert and coffee, an out-of-control Secret Santa, followed by a few gifts for each other.
I opened a quilt from my mom, intricate patches of lavender and green, fabrics with floral prints, greenery, and ones with tiny fairies and butterflies.
It was the prettiest quilt I’d ever seen, and it must’ve taken her forever to make.
I cried, imagining my baby loving this item made with so much love by my own mother.
I thought of her holding me as a baby, and how she’d care for my children so intensely—my whole family would.
This baby would be so very supported, and so would I.
As much as I was sure I needed to do this whole thing alone, holding this quilt in my arms, I was glad I didn’t have to.
“Oh come on now, no need to make us all cry,” Mom said, but she was already wiping her eyes. I hugged her tight. I could tell Barry was touched by the gift too, eyes glassy, and he rubbed his palm over my spine.
As we relaxed afterwards, my mind wandered to next Christmas, when our currently unborn baby would then be crawling and laughing and already finding her way into trouble.
This made me think of an inevitable Christmas where Barry will have moved on from me. He’d realize I wasn’t what he wanted in a life partner and find a new beautiful wife, one who wasn’t so wary of relationships, who was organized and driven, who could commit to love even when it was scary.
They’d probably have two kids, well-adjusted little siblings for our daughter. Our baby will love the two Christmases and grow to love her stepmom too.
The whole thing made me nauseous to think about. I was preemptively jealous, anticipatory grief for a relationship I wasn’t letting myself have.
Barry caught my eye across the living room while I thought about it, raising his eyebrows in wordless question. I offered a tight-lipped smile and shook my head before rushing out of the living room and slipping as quietly as possible to my old bedroom at the end of the hallway.
In the room I had shared with Kate, I sat on the edge of my old bed and wiped my eyes, having gone from fine to crying before I even closed the door behind me.
I needed to pull it together, but I felt wobbly all over.
I was heartbroken over a future that wasn’t even here—a future I didn’t believe I could change.
There was a light knock on the door before it opened, revealing Barry in the Christmas sweater Jeremy got him in the secret Santa. It had little Christmas trees with faces and was a size too small on him.
I turned my face from him and tried fruitlessly to wipe the evidence of my crying from beneath my eyes. I sniffled way too loud, too, so there went any charade of me being put together.
“Hey, hey,” Barry muttered and clicked the door shut behind him before rushing to my side on the twin bed. I tried to turn away from him, but he put one hand on my lower back, one on my chin, tilting it up toward him. I sniffled again. “Why are we crying on Christmas?”
“We’re not.” I blinked wet eyelashes against my cheeks and tried to rein in my dramatic pout. “Just me.”
“You don’t have to be alone in your feelings.” Barry wiped my wet cheeks with both of his thumbs. “Not when I’m here to bother you.”
I hiccupped a wet sort of laugh.
“You don’t bother me.”
My life would be much, much easier if he was bothersome.
“What were you thinking about that made you so sad?”
I didn’t know how to tell him the truth, it felt too big to say, to admit that I was falling in love with him—had already fallen—while feeling so certain it was fruitless.
I was pretty sure I was broken, missing the essential thing that would make me a good partner, and in playing house with him, I’d almost forgotten.
I settled on something close enough to the truth.
“Are you scared? What if we don’t know what we’re doing?”
“Sweetheart,” Barry started, in that way he always did. So caring, so sympathetic. A few more tears spilled onto my cheeks. “Of course we don’t know what we’re doing.”
He smiled in a way that looked like a frown when I scoffed a surprised sound.
“What do either of us know about raising a baby other than the things we’ve been trying to learn? Of course I’m scared, Hannah. I’m scared all the time.”
“You don’t seem scared.”
Barry laughed, shook his head, kissed the side of my temple in the way I knew he shouldn’t, then met my eyes again.
“I’m scared that something will happen to you, that you’ll get hurt, that I’ll be a bad dad, or you’ll feel unsupported when I’m on the road half the time during the season, that you’ll resent me. That you’ll find someone else—someone you actually want.”
My forehead creased, shocked by these confessions, and utterly confused by the last one. “You think I don’t want you?”
Barry looked a bit rueful and shrugged.
“Sorta, yeah. But would it really be so bad to be with me?” he asked, throwing my world sideways. Would it be hard for me to be with him? Was he kidding?
“What are you talking about?”
“You’ve never wanted this with me, Hannah. Not when you left New York, not when you found out about the baby, not even when I forced myself into your life and wouldn’t leave you alone.”
I stared slack-jawed at him, one belief after the next so wildly false.
“I wanted you in New York,” I said, something I swore we’d already covered.
Hadn’t I been telling him how much I wanted him?
How hard it was to stay away from him? How being with him without being with him felt like a pressure cooker?
“I thought about it, wanted to text you and see if one night could turn into something, but I—” Sealing my lips together in a tight line, I lifted and dropped my shoulders.
“I’m not your forever; I don’t know if I’m anyone’s. ”
“Hannah—”
“It’s true. I had this whole fantasy about us dating long distance before I remembered I can’t even make a relationship work in the same city.
And then I saw you on TV and realized I could never tell you I was pregnant without looking like I was trying to baby trap you.
See? Because I’m a mess, and you’re—well, you. ”
“What about you is a mess?”
I floundered, aghast at the question when he’d seen how I lived for the last weeks.
The messes I left around the house, the active projects, the general way of me.
“You are a professional hockey player making millions of dollars a year. You are the most dedicated, persistent man I think I’ve ever met. I am a pregnant janitor without a car.”
“A job you like, right?” he asked, instead of saying I had good points.
I thought about it before answering. I did like my job, didn’t I?
I hated my brief stint working a corporate job, and it was a relief to be laid off.
I liked school just fine, but I only did it because I thought I should.
Thought I should work a big-girl job, too, but I never loved it.
I missed the meditative nature of cleaning, the flexibility of working odd hours and having most of my days and evenings to work on whatever I wanted.
As much as I felt like I should maybe be embarrassed about being a janitor, of course I liked it.
I was proud of my dad for starting this business, proud of Kate for taking so much of it on, loved all the excuses I had to hang out with them by working together.
“I do,” I agreed.
“And you sold your car to save for a safer one, which doesn’t make you a mess, Hannah, it means you’re thoughtfully planning for your future and for the future of your baby.”
I couldn’t handle his earnest, steady stare, so I turned to look at the wall above my old dresser. The cork board was still up, photos, notes, and faded movie tickets beneath multi-colored tacks.
“It’s never been that I haven’t wanted you,” I said. “I just know myself, okay? I know me better than you know me, and I can’t let myself believe this is real. It’ll hurt too bad when it’s not.”
“Why do you have so little faith in me?” Barry asked, voice as quiet as mine.
I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t him I couldn’t trust, it was the version of me he thought he knew that couldn’t be trusted.
The illusion of me that he had in his mind, that image I was so sure I would shatter.
And if I let myself love him, by then I’d be too far in; it would hurt too bad. I think it would break me.
“And how do you know if you’re anyone’s forever if you’re too afraid to try?” he asked, exasperated now.
And that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? I was too afraid to fail to ever try.
I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “It’s never been a you problem, Barry. You’re perfect.”
I looked back up at him finally, resisted the urge to run fingertips over the light lines beside his eyes and mouth, stuck there from all the smiling.
A muscle in his jaw ticced as he studied my face for a quiet moment.
From downstairs, we heard an eruption of laughter from my family, oblivious to the woes happening in this lavender bedroom.
“There’s going to be a day you let someone in. It’ll be horrible and frightening, but you’ll trust yourself to do it until it’s not so bad.” Barry pulled my head lightly to his lips, pressing a kiss to my hairline before he stood up. “I just hope I’m the one to see it.”
I closed my eyes as he walked out, hurting myself by imagining that he was right. That it could be him and me.