Chapter Nineteen
NINETEEN
I fully expect Christmas Day to be lonely and comparatively dull.
The reality is something else entirely.
I’m jerked from sleep by the buzz of my phone on the nightstand—it takes me a moment to realize it’s an incoming call. Thinking it must be Fisher, I scramble to answer without really looking at the screen. “I love you,” I say, in a sleep-rough voice I hope will pass for sexy. “Merry Christmas.”
“Well, Merry Christmas!” says my dad with a laugh. “I love you too. Here’s your mom.”
Dad has never enjoyed talking on the phone, even though he grew up at a time when that was apparently a normal thing people did. I suspect Mom put him up to making the call, and as they perform the hand-off, I confirm that he’s called from her phone. At 5:57 a.m.
“Is this payback for every Christmas I got you up at the crack of dawn?” I ask her, not bothering to stifle a yawn. Actually, it’s not even dawn; the sky is still black. Too early even for the cat.
“Oh, my goodness, dear. I’m sorry. I entirely forgot about the time difference.”
Which is all the preface she gives her announcement that they have decided to move to Florida. Permanently. She’s already spoken with the head of her law firm about the possibility of working remotely, and they’ve been looking at condos in the same complex where they’re staying now.
“It’s just so … warm,” she tells me in a voice tinged with incredulous delight. And to be fair, warm is indeed hard to come by in Minnesota in December. Or January. Or, occasionally, June.
I open my mouth to remind her what the summers there will be like, but in the end all I say is, “That’s great!” I don’t want to be a downer on what is supposed to be the happiest day of the year.
“I figured it was the perfect time,” she continues, “since you’ll be graduating and leaving us for greener pastures in a few months.”
And suddenly the stew of what happens if I don’t finish my dissertation? that’s always simmering in my gut is spiked with what happens to my fallback plan of moving back home if my parents sell our house?
I wonder whether Fisher would let me store some stuff in his attic.
Then I remember he’s leaving too.
My parents and I talk for quite a while.
Dad gets back on the phone to tell me about his favorite present—a birdwatching expedition in the Everglades—and Mom asks if I got the package she sent.
I lie and tell her yes, but that I’m waiting to open it until later.
I’ve got to go over to my apartment and grab a couple of things today, and hopefully the delivery person will have left it on the stairs.
I never told them about the heat going out or that I was staying somewhere else—never told them about Fisher, period.
After last night, maybe I should?
I remind them of my trip to New York instead and brace for an onslaught of worry.
Mom says, “What a wonderful place to spend New Year’s Eve!”
In the background, Dad jokes, “If you can’t be good, be careful!”
By the time we hang up, I’m thinking they should have moved to a warmer climate years ago. And I’m ridiculously glad that their relationship seems to be back to the way it always was.
It’s still so early, and so dark, I consider trying to go back to sleep. But there’s something about Christmas morning that makes sleeping in impossible. I go downstairs, make coffee, start a fire, and curl up on the couch to admire the twinkle lights.
At exactly 8:01 on the East Coast, I text Fisher.
G’ morning, sleepyhead! Merry Christmas!
Half a second later, my phone rings again.
“Hey.” His voice is husky. “Merry Christmas. Did Santa bring you everything you asked for?”
“He did.”
“I guess that means you were on the nice list.”
“Of course,” I say. “But I think the elves must’ve made a little mistake on the tag, because the present I want the most ended up a thousand miles away from me.”
His low chuckle is adorable. “Maybe that’s because you were naughty too.”
It’s the most blatantly flirtatious thing he’s said since he left, and I’m so excited by the return of playful Fisher; so glad because it means things must really be improving on his end; so tantalized by the prospect of this phone call going in a very different direction than all our previous ones …
“Oh.” I catch myself gnawing on my lip, caught between uncertainty and … well, possibility. “Was I?”
There’s the slightest pause, and I swear his voice drops another octave when he says, “Very.”
Suddenly, the fireplace seems to be giving off a lot more heat.
Before I can come up with a suitable response, however, I hear someone in the background on his end, a woman’s voice, call out, “Ready to go?”
“Yep,” he says (to her), his voice clipped. “Sorry,” he says (to me, in his normal register). The sigh that follows those words is heavy with frustration. “Maybe later, we can, um, pick up this conversation where we left off?”
“I’d like that. In the meantime, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.” There’s more to say, of course, but I’m suddenly shy.
He seizes the space left by my hesitation. “I will,” he says. “I have a lot to celebrate. I love you, Elle.”
A breath I hadn’t realized I was holding shudders past my lips. I hope the noise of it rushing into the phone doesn’t deafen him.
I really hope he hears me say, “I love you, too.”
After that, I decide maybe the best thing for me is a shower.
And even though it might be a good idea to take a cold one, instead I lose myself in the luxury of his bathroom for like an hour and a half.
I know tomorrow morning will be rushed because I have to be at the airport early.
So I take this opportunity for something like a spa day.
When I finally emerge, I have a text
Merry Christmas from the future
Mrs. William Conklin!
I’m not surprised, but I also can’t help feeling like the future Dr. Cassandra Lewis has been erased.
I plop onto the unmade bed, belly first, and Bing Bong, who unbeknownst to me has burrowed under the covers, alerts me to his presence with a weary groan. Cassie’s message has been sitting there for half an hour already, but it’s another twenty minutes before I can make myself type
Congratulations!
To him, I want to add, but don’t.
Thx
I try to muster some enthusiasm.
Ring pic?
Oh, we agreed
a ring wasn’t necessary
Which, I suspect, means he decided a ring wasn’t necessary and she went along with it.
I drop my face into the fluffy down comforter; let it swallow my scream.
This is what happens in a world without romance novels.
I mean, even if he couldn’t afford a big diamond, he could’ve made some sweet gesture—a candy ring pop, or a little circlet of sparkly Christmas ribbon.
The old Cassie would’ve eaten that shit up with a spoon.
I can’t decide whether it’s better or worse that she doesn’t even know what she’s missing.
Over the years, I’ve heard many people complain that romance novels gave women false expectations—and I was always tempted to retort, By which you mean you don’t think we should expect orgasms. And yeah, I’m not going to lie.
The depiction of people having great sex was sometimes part of the appeal.
But more than that, romance taught so many women the power of choice. I want this. I don’t want that. I deserve more. Whether more was a better job, or respect, or unconditional love didn’t matter as much as knowing that it was—or should be—possible to get exactly what you want.
And now all I can think about is Bill’s proposal, how he probably couched marriage in purely practical terms—just like Mr. Collins did when he proposed to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.
And how Cassie, who can no longer imagine love and happiness and romance, must have felt that telling him no wasn’t a choice she could make.
News that should be elating but is instead depressing is also really exhausting. And that, combined with the fact that I started my day at an ungodly early hour for almost anyone, but especially me, means that I decide I’m entitled to just lie there for a good long while.
I wake up a couple of hours later thanks to a combination of chilly air and the buzz of an incoming text from Fisher.
Video chat in 10?
Just great—ten minutes to get camera ready, and I’m sprawled on his unmade bed, wearing nothing but a towel. I wanted to look perfect when he called again.
And then I remember our earlier conversation, and it occurs to me, there’s more than one way to look good …
I open the rear-facing camera on my phone, uncertain if I have the guts to go through with this, wary of what I’ll see.
But my cheeks are pink, still flushed with sleep, and my hair has dried in what can probably pass for tousled waves.
I fluff and stack the pillows against the headboard, carefully position myself leaning against them, drape the towel so it barely covers the important bits, and wait for his call.
I answer with a suggestive smile and a flirty wave of my fingers. Fisher’s dark eyes go wide with shock—and not the good kind. Or at least, not entirely.
“Hey, Elle,” he says, a little tightly, and his gaze darts past the camera. “My family is right here waiting to wish you Merry Christmas!”
I drop my phone, snatch up the first item of clothing that comes to hand (Yale sweatshirt, for the win), and reappear on screen a few seconds later, breathless, only half (but not visibly) naked, leaning casually against his bedroom door (which looks, thankfully, like every other door in the house).
“Merry Christmas, everyone!” I say brightly.
Fortunately, it’s still just Fisher’s face looking back at me, and I can see he’s now struggling to contain his amusement. “Here’s my mom,” he says as he hands off the phone.
“Merry Christmas, Mrs. Davis,” I tell her. I suspect her children got their dark hair from her, though hers is now sprinkled with silver.