Chapter 8
Logan
Logan knew he shouldn’t do it, but he did.
Under his bed, he had an old cardboard box.
Inside the box were the Christmas cards and ornaments that Bellini had made him, starting in kindergarten, all the way through high school.
She was always a talented artist, and even the cards she’d made as a young girl were fantastic, but the ones from high school were detailed, colorful, and finely drawn.
They had all taken hours of work which, even as a teenager, had touched him deeply.
One was a drawing of Santa’s village. One home was labeled “Logan and Bellini’s.
” In another, she’d drawn a snowman and a snowwoman kissing.
On a pop-up card, the elves, including Bellini and Logan, were working in an elaborate toy-making shop.
One card pictured a naughty list and a nice list. They were both on the naughty list.
He’d written her poems and short, funny notes with pictures. She always laughed. And then…she was gone, and Christmas was never the same. Life was never the same.
But Bellini was back this year. His emotions were already raw, spinning, taking over every minute of his day.
He wondered if she would go to the Christmas tree lighting downtown.
He wouldn’t go—as he hadn’t gone, if Bellini was in town, to her family’s Christmas activities these last years—no matter how many of her cousins invited him.
He never wanted to make her uncomfortable. He never wanted to intrude on her life.
He knew that Christmas would be lonely again, his father as obnoxious as ever. He would go skiing, he told himself, and pretend that Christmas was not happening. He hadn’t had a happy Christmas since he and Bellini broke up.
“Merry Christmas,” he muttered to himself, then swore. He blinked through tears then told himself to man up. Merry Christmas.
He hardly slept that night, the moon shining bright into his bedroom, the aloneness and loneliness he felt because Bellini was not in his life wrapping tight around him like a black cape.