Chapter 5
Icrack open the door, looking over my shoulder, feeling like a little kid again, sneaking out of my daddy’s house for a cigarette or a date with Tommy. I should’ve stayed home back then, I guess. Maybe I should stay home tonight, but my skin feels itchy and too tight, and there’s nothing so depressing as sleeping at your parents’ house on Christmas Eve when you’re a grown woman, and there’s nothing waiting under the tree for you but a gift certificate to a store your mama would like you to shop at.
So I called Midge, who lives three houses down from them, and she invited me over for a drink and a chat—something that sounds infinitely preferable to listening to my daddy’s sawhorse snores fill the house.
I could have stayed at my apartment tonight, of course, but I couldn’t stand the thought of that either. The emptiness of it. The cold. Cole had invited me to celebrate with him and Jane and his girlfriend Holly, but the only thing worse than being a third wheel, probably, is being a fourth. A thing made with three wheels can move better, in some cases, than something with only two. That fourth wheel’s pretty damn unimportant.
That’s what I’m thinking, anyway, as I slide through the door and shut it behind me, my gaze lifting for half a second to the mistletoe hanging down.
That’ll be a hell no.
My daddy’s pervy friends will be coming over tomorrow for a visit, and “Uncle” Dave always tries to catch the women beneath the mistletoe. He’s probably the one who hung it above the door, come to think of it.
I hop up and yank it down, swearing when it pricks one of my fingers, then throw it into the bushes before I make my way through the snow to Midge’s house. It’s icy now, from having melted earlier and refrozen, and I have to be careful with my steps.
The ice and cold make me think of Logan, even though I’ve been trying very hard to do anything but. Did he make it to Atlanta safely? I was surprised when Cole told me he still planned on going, but I tried not to show it.
I haven’t seen him since the night he dropped me off in front of my house, though he brought the car around later the next day—fixed—and slipped the key under my mat.
I’m guessing he doesn’t want to see me either.
I’m pissed.
I’m embarrassed.
The one man in town guaranteed to hit on anything in high heels was repulsed by kissing me.
I’d thought I was reading his signals right, but then again, I’d let myself get carried away by hope and that dumb necklace I can’t seem to stop wearing.
Sighing, I kick a clump of snow and make my way down the road, freezing even though I have my coat and gloves and hat on. Feeling that bit of stone cold against my neck. I should rip it off and throw it into the bushes with that mistletoe, and my hand actually rises to it with the intention to do exactly that, but instead my fingers stroke it like it’s a cat.
You’ve gone soft, Brittany, I admonish myself. But I still can’t bring myself to take it off. I just keep walking past the neighbor’s huge blow-up Santa, which looks tacky as hell since one of the kids took to it with a permanent marker and drew a dick clear across its face. I’m still shaking my head as I sidle up to Midge’s little yellow bungalow with the purple door. She has a classy display of white lights, and I actually feel a little pulse of something resembling the Christmas spirit as I walk up and knock on her door with my frozen fist.
It’s those lights, and then the flash of green I see through the window. She always buys herself a real tree, not the plastic one her parents have owned since she was four, complete with a burned spot from where Daddy melted one of the branches with his cigarette.
The thought almost makes me laugh at myself, because I’m staying at my parents’ house out of my own free will. Why in tarnation did I accept their invitation?
It seemed less sad than being alone, but now that I’m actually here in this neighborhood, I feel myself changing my mind. The only thing I like here is Midge, but I could go see her just as easily if I’d stayed back in my own house.
The door opens with a gush of warmth, and a waft of Christmas-scented candles hits me in the face a half second before Midge pulls me in for a hug that presses me up against her fake tits.
“Thank God, you’re here,” she blusters. “These cocktails aren’t drinking themselves.”
No, judging from the scent of booze, she’s been doing that for both of us.
I let her hustle me inside, shutting the door behind me, and I get my coat and cold-weather things off and hang them up by the door.
“What’d you make us this time?” I ask.
Midge used to own a bar in Raleigh, in her other life. Then she divorced her third husband and moved here to start running her grandmother’s book and stationary shop. She’s been giving me mixology lessons at my request. I hope like hell Cole will agree to apply for a full liquor license so I can serve them at the bar.
“I’m calling it a Saucy Santa.”
“Do I want to know what’s in it?” I ask as she nods me toward the Victorian-style couch across from the big fluffy tree decorated with glass balls and white lights. It’s gorgeous, and I feel it again—a little burst of Christmas spirit wanting to break free from my withered heart. I’m glad I’m here. So glad I could nearly choke on it.
“Not this one, doll. Just tell me you won’t be driving a car.”
“I won’t be,” I say, my hand lifting again to the stupid necklace as I lower onto the couch, in front of a full drink. Midge sits across from her nearly empty one, then picks it up and clinks the ice, her gaze shrewdly falling to the necklace.
“That new?”
I’m not surprised she’s noticed. I keep touching it like it’s my precious, and I’m not usually one to wear jewelry.
“Yeah,” I say, then lift my Saucy Santa for a swig. The alcohol burns into me, and I’m glad for it. There’s cranberry in it, with a kick of Christmas spice at the end. “You might be burning my taste buds off, but I don’t mind.”
Midge’s watching me shrewdly, though, and I know she’s not going to let it go. I don’t really want her to, truthfully. Isn’t this why I’m here? I need someone to talk to about Logan—someone who’s not his brother, and I’ve come to realize that I have very few friends who are that kind of confidante. It feels sad, being a bartender who talks to everyone all day but doesn’t have any close friends. But Millie was my best friend growing up, and I never really found another bond like that. I was always too busy, and then there was Tommy to keep up with, and part of me had guessed about the cheating before I really found out. I think I was afraid to get close to a woman, because there was no way of knowing if he’d gotten close to her too.
A sigh gusts out of me, and I lower my hand. Watching the tree, I admit, “Logan gave it to me as a Christmas present.”
“Get out of town,” she says, giving my arm a shove that makes me laugh, because even when she’s not trying to be, she’s forceful.
“You just invited me over, and you’re already trying to get rid of me?”
“You’re not getting out of telling me everything,” she insists, throwing her perfect blonde curls over her shoulder. Midge’s a woman who always has a full face of makeup and perfectly curled hair, but it doesn’t bother me on her. She’s not the kind of woman who expects every other woman to do as she does. “I told you that man has a thing for you.”
She did.
She said as much after I told her about him punching the out-of-towner for touching me. I guess it’s part of why I dared to believe he’d welcome my lips on his—that and the way he was looking at me that night, like I was a treat he was saving for later so he could savor it.
I sigh again. “Well, it turns out you were wrong, because I kissed him, and he pulled back like I was the town drunk the morning after a bender.”
“He didn’t,” she says, and from the way she’s saying it, I’m guessing she’d like to have a word or three with him.
“You’re not to talk about this with him, Midge,” I warn. “Not him or anybody.”
She lifts a hand to her heart. “I’d never. If you tell me it’s a secret, then I’ll take it to my grave, but I’d sure like to have a word with him. What a damn fool.”
“He towed my car for free. And fixed it,” I say, because part of me wants to defend him. Part of me is anxious beyond belief to see him so I can know he’s all right, because I don’t like the thought of him driving across all this snow to get to Atlanta—and another part of me is damn pissed that I care.
“As he should.” She puts a hand on her hip, which is slightly undermined by the fact that we’re both sitting.
“So you were wrong,” I say, swallowing. “He didn’t like me like that. He probably felt sorry for me.”
“Well, I never…” she says. “Why the hell would anyone feel sorry for you, Brittany?”
“Because of—”
She gives me a look that shuts me down quick. “Do you feel sorry for me because my third husband left me for a younger woman?”
“Well, yes, sort of,” I say, laughing. Almost hiccuping.
“Then you’d better put a stop to that right away, because that man did me a favor.” She points at me. “Just like Tommy did you a favor. You were stuck married to a no-good piece of shit, and now you’re a free woman who can do what you like and sleep with whomever you like. Does that sound like something people should pity you for?”
“I’m sleeping in the single bed I had as a five-year-old tonight,” I say dryly.
“Like hell you are,” she says. “I already made up the spare bedroom. I’ll send you home in the morning. Maybe.”
A smile creeps up on me. “Are we going to get drunk?”
“Yes, my friend. We’re going to get good and drunk, you’re going to tell me everything, and then we’re going to cry over the end of Love Actually together while we eat our weight in cookies.”
“I think I might love you, Midge,” I say, feeling an itching behind my eyes, because this is the best I’ve felt since that horrible moment of Logan pulling away—since the feeling of falling face down on asphalt after soaring through the sky.
“You should know you do,” she tells me with a grin. “But I want you to listen and listen good about Logan. You’re wrong about him. I’ve seen the way that man looks at you. He might not know what he wants, but he wants you, make no mistake. He’s burning for you.”
I feel a little tingle inside of me—a natural reaction to the thought, because I want that. I want him to burn for me. I want him to kiss me everywhere. I want him to make me feel again.
“Presuming he is,” I say, even though it feels more like a dream than anything reality would ever give me. “What does it matter? He’s made it clear he doesn’t want anything to happen between us.”
She shakes a finger at me. “Like hell. A man who doesn’t want anything to happen doesn’t go buying jewelry for a woman. That man wants you. The thing you need to remember is that men don’t understand themselves. That’s for us to do.”
Says the woman who’s been divorced three times, but I care about her too much to say so.
“You’re gonna give that man the cold shoulder, and he’s going to be panting for it. Just you watch.”
“If you say so, Midge,” I tell her. But honestly, I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Not because Midge told me it would have him gagging for me, but because it would hurt too much to do anything else.
Still. It’s a good night. A definite improvement on last Christmas. We drink, and she shows me the secret of the Saucy Santas, then we watch Christmas movies much too late into the night, eating cookies from the bakery across the street from the brewery.
“Can we do this every year?” I ask at the end of the night.
She gives me a smile that”s half sad. “Something tells me you’re not going to be alone next year, and I don’t like being a third wheel any more than you wanted to be Cole’s fourth.”
She’s wrong, though. I can feel it in my bones.
If I make a New Year’s resolution at the end of the week, it will be this: I will not let myself be affected by Logan Garrison anymore.