chapter 37
[Jude]
I wake with a jolt.
Rolling my head side to side, I sense I’m alone. A blanket covers my still naked body, and I sit upright, prepared to call out Angelica’s name until I notice her uniform and shoes are gone.
Falling back to the pillows, I comb my hands into my hair and hold them at the top of my head. Staring up at the ceiling, just past the star on the top of the two-story tree, faint light seeps through the glass dome.
Morning?
I pull back my left arm and check the silver watch on my wrist.
Officially, Christmas.
Although wasn’t it already Christmas last night at midnight? When I said I didn’t celebrate the holiday, and yet I did, making love to a beautiful woman, who has clearly disappeared this morning.
I turn my head toward the pillow where she slept and find a small package, wrapped in green paper with a red ribbon on top.
Slowly sitting upright again, I pick up the box, hesitating with it in my hand like I’m holding an explosive instead of a gift.
Maybe it is meant to implode my heart because I don’t receive many gifts.
Pulling at the ribbon, it easily releases. I flip the square package and unwrap it with care, like I want to save the pretty paper. Once unwrapped, I flip the box and pull off the lid.
Inside is a pocket-sized copy of A Christmas Carol. When I pick it up, something falls out. A flat silver disc with a rudimentary angel on it. One complete with wings and wild hair and a long flowing dress.
Flipping over the silver medal, the back reads: a pocket angel.
I softly smile as I run my thumb over the raised design and then thumb through the hand-sized novel.
Instantly, I find a written inscription.
To the man who had a change of heart and changed mine along with his.
Here is an angel to always guide you out of the dark and remind you to live.
Fuck. My eyes burn and my throat thickens. I didn’t understand.
How could she leave me such a sentimental gift, but be gone?
Reaching for my phone, the first notification I see is from Angelica.
Spend Christmas with me.
I can almost hear the soft command in her voice, like when she invited me to go home with her only last weekend after I apologized to Eva in the bar.
Quickly, I scroll to the transformation list Angelica made me.
Where can you make a meaningful donation?
How can you gift time?
Who do you need to make amends with?
Who deserves an apology from you?
How can you show compassion for another?
A circle with a check mark ticks off what I’ve completed.
Donate money. Check.
Gift time. Check.
Apologize. Check.
Show compassion. Check.
What remains is making amends. But with whom? My family immediately comes to mind, and I send Julia a text wishing her and Chopper and the kids: Merry Christmas.
While chatting on the phone with her the other day, I let it slip that I’d had a heart attack, and my sister went batshit crazy on me for not mentioning it sooner. She was so angry, she hung up without saying she loved me.
Perhaps she’s who I need to make amends with. Especially when she doesn’t immediately respond to my text, which isn’t like her. Then I remember California is hours behind Chicago, and if first light is cracking here, her family is hopefully still snug in their beds.
My thoughts then drift back to Angelica’s invitation.
Spend Christmas with me.
But I don’t celebrate this day. Slowly, I rise from the blanket nest and redress in yesterday’s clothing. I need a shower and a stiff drink. My own bed is calling as well.
I head to my office, to collect a few things, but once I’m there I stand still and pull out my phone one more time.
Spend Christmas with me.
Glancing around my cold, empty office, where I’m alone on Christmas morning, it hits me that this cannot be it. This cannot be my entire world. This is not living my life.
I feel that itchy sensation again. That feeling under my skin, drawing me somewhere, toward someone.
Don’t you leave me, Jude?
“I won’t,” I whisper to the room. “I won’t let you go.”
Rushing to the elevator, I repeatedly poke the down button, as if it will make the lift rise faster. Impatience gets to me, and I race for the escalators next, knowing the descent on the automatic stairs could take even longer.
I skip steps, hanging on the railing, like I did as a child, as if it will propel me faster down seven flights.
I’m running across the red carpet, about to cross where it intersects, when I stop.
Looking upward, I stand directly beneath the glass ceiling seven stories overhead. I tip my head further back and stare at the dome window arching toward the sky that I’ve seen a thousand times in my life.
And as I stand perfectly still, the light slowly illuminates the glass panes and spreads over the angles, forming a slow kaleidoscope of light against the west wall.
The longer I stand, the brighter the window grows and the wider the stretch of light cascades down along the wall, bouncing off the gold railings around each level, reflecting like a prism.
While I still can’t define what Angelica sees in that rounded ceiling, I admit I feel something inside me.
Something warm and longing, almost poking against my rib cage like it wants to be set free.
Like it’s stretching the iron bars around my heart and reaching through the cracks, hoping to expand my chest.
I take a deep breath and find it easier than I would have thought to breathe, considering the ache.
Blood rushes through my veins, and my pulse pounds in my ears, and yet I’m not afraid.
This isn’t stress or shattering or an attack.
This is something more.
My lips curl, exposing my teeth, until my mouth opens and I laugh. Loud and echo-y in the emptiness of the store, where I’m suddenly reminded that I’m standing here alone.
All alone on Christmas in my legacy.
A building that proudly displays my name but has sucked the soul out of me.
A place that has taught me to chase bottom lines and top sales and the black on a spreadsheet.
The strangest sensation fills my eyes. They burn and itch and then water, and I pinch the bridge of my nose, blinking at the foreign dampness, and swallowing the thickness in my throat.
Because the one thing I’ve never chased: the girl. And love.
Ebenezar Scrooge didn’t get his girl in the end because too much time had passed. She married some other guy. The nameless, faceless one, who probably never put her first.
That will not be me.
A plan instantly forms. A new deal for Angelica. A better one.
A better me.
And I will not spend another minute without her.