4. Lacie
LACIE
Still gripping my phone, I was on the verge of hyperventilation. That might have been overreacting to some, but I’d been fantasizing about Harper’s Inn for months now.
The place had an impeccable reputation. Sequestered in the remote Montana mountainside, the inn claimed to be the perfect getaway at any time of the year, but especially at Christmastime.
Its positioning in the wilderness, surrounded by nothing but forest with a quaint small town nearby to meet shoppers’ needs, made it the ideal, charming escape.
And I wasn’t about to cancel—not when rooms had to be booked a year or more in advance.
That wasn’t the only reason I wanted to go, however. The inn was also rumored to be a place where magic happened.
Their website crowed that Santa Claus himself had visited the inn once—years ago—when it had only been a home to the family who started the inn.
This alleged visit bestowed Harper’s Inn with the title of America’s North Pole.
There was also a fancy event center located there, and I wanted to see for myself whether it was suitable for my dream wedding. And that was what had me tied up in knots.
I still wanted that wedding. And this was my only chance to investigate.
“You still there?” Jared said through the phone. “Now, you’re the one being too quiet.”
Oh, I was quiet all right. Because an idea was COMING.
In fact, it came as quickly as most kids wished Christmas would—blatant and fast. Sugarplum visions began dancing in my head. I paused, waiting, not really taking the time to allow every side to manifest itself or allow the notion to unfold slowly and open my mind a little at a time like a sunrise.
This was no time for hesitation.
“Come with me,” I said, sitting up a little straighter on the bed.
He took too long to answer. “What?”
“I have reservations at Harper’s Inn. The Harper’s inn. Do you know how long I’ve had these for? How early in advance I had to book these rooms?”
I hadn’t planned on being engaged at the time I booked them; in fact, Wyatt and I hadn’t even been dating when I had.
The original plan had been to take Jared with me. He just hadn’t known that part.
Why not stick to that plan?
“Rooms—plural?”
“Yes! Two. Getting one room is hard enough, but I booked two. Because propriety, okay? One for you. One for me. I’ve been dreaming of this trip. This is America’s North Pole.”
“I thought North Pole, Alaksa, was America’s North Pole.”
I ignored his sarcasm. “ This has real magic, Jare. And Wyatt and I were going to spend Christmas together there.”
“In…separate rooms.”
“What’s wrong with waiting until marriage?”
I pictured him lifting his hands in defense. “Nothing.”
“You’re not helping. Besides, the room was originally supposed to be yours anyway. You’re always part of the picture for me.”
Okay, he took way too long to respond this time. Why didn’t he say anything? I didn’t like the accompanying strain on my already frazzled emotions.
“I don’t know, Lacie.”
I trailed a thumb across my suitcase zipper. “What don’t you know? Why is this a hard decision. Tia left for her cruise, right?”
Another pause. “Yeah.”
“And you’re not going to your dad’s in Louisiana.”
He said nothing. I knew he wouldn’t.
He wasn’t on the best of terms with his dad and hadn’t been since his parents had divorced ten years ago. His dad kept trying to repair that breach and had made another move to do so by inviting Jared to his new house in Baton Rouge.
Jared had declined.
“I already have the flights—flights that are about to leave much sooner than I’d like. There’s no sense in spending Christmas by yourself. No sense in both of us spending Christmas alone. Come with me.”
A flurry took place in my chest, pushing me to my feet. I paced toward my TV stand.
This was brilliant. The optimal solution. Who better to help me, to commiserate with me, than my best friend?
“Lacie—” Jared’s voice was way too reluctant.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re not kids anymore,” he said.
I rested my weight against my TV stand and cradled the phone to my ear. Sugarplum visions were happening here. Couldn’t he see how amazing this solution was?
“I know that. So what?”
“So just because your parents are out of town doesn’t mean you can sleep over.”
The memory passed wavelengths and defied the distance between us. We’d been in high school when my parents had left for a romantic Parisian getaway over Christmas break. I’d been fifteen, and I’d often spent the night at Jared’s house.
This had been no different.
He and I had camped out with sleeping bags in his living room, in front of the tree with my siblings, and we’d stayed up as late as we could playing board games and eating cheap popcorn from those fat tin cans. It was one of my favorite Christmas memories.
“I know we’ve always done this,” he said, “but we’re…”
He struggled for words, but I caught his meaning anyway. To me, having Jared come was a no-brainer. We’d been one another’s backups since we were born.
“You’re like my brother,” I said.
That was understood by anyone who knew us well or who had known us for any length of time. Those who didn’t often asked me why Jared and me weren’t a thing, but we could never be more than we were now.
Surely, he had to know that I grasped this little aspect.
Jared exhaled. “I know, but some people don’t get our history. Some people don’t know how we’ve been tied at the hip since we were babies, and that’s just how it’s always been. The truth is, we’re all grown up now, and we can’t—I can’t?—”
I didn’t think my heart could sink any lower than it already was, but it did.
The fleeting amount of hope I’d been clinging to since Wyatt’s cruel rejection puffed into smoke like a snuffed candle.
“You’re talking about Tia now, aren’t you?”
Tears pricked my eyes all over again. I was already devastated by Wyatt’s rejection. I couldn’t handle Jared pulling away from me, too. Not now. Not when I needed him the most.
I inhaled long and slow, staring at the wavy edge of my purple table running in front of my TV, glad Jared wasn’t here to see me be such a mess of emotion.
I’d been drowning after Wyatt’s phone call, gulping more water than I could handle. And no matter how hard I paddled, I wasn’t keeping myself above the water’s surface.
Jared was my lifeline. And right now, it felt like he was pulling away the rope he’d tossed to me before I’d gotten a good grip on it.
He was leaving me adrift. I was going to sink.
“I wasn’t going to mention anything yet,” he said in a distracted kind of way. “Not until things were a little more settled. I still need to talk to her before…But I guess under the circumstances…” He released a grunt. “Wouldn’t hurt to let you know what’s going on.”
“You know I have no idea what you’re talking about, right?” I said.
Jared didn’t often get this flustered.
“I took her out to lunch a little while ago, and we had a talk,” he said.
I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to hear this. I stalked to the box of tissues beside my bed and snatched on, using it to daub the tears away from my cheeks.
He’d listened to my plight and woes. I could do the same for him.
I wiped my eyes and attempted to hear him out. “Lunch. A talk. This sounds serious.”
“It is. She wants to be more with me.”
I gritted my teeth against the bulging in my chest. More was good, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t I want him to be happy?
“‘More’ meaning what?”
“We didn’t get there. She said we couldn’t pursue a relationship if I was already in one.”
My brows puckered, and I fisted the tissue in my hand.
Had Tia been referring to me ?
“But you’re not in a relationship with me.”
“I’m not?”
Dang him if I didn’t hear a smile in that question.
Jared and I had talked plenty of times about what people thought about us, and the result had been so obvious, neither of us had had to say anything else. We were friends. Boom. Done.
“So she wants to pursue a relationship with you. That means you and I can’t be friends?”
Hesitation.
Throat clearing.
“To her, yes.”
And there went that rope.
I fell under, kicking and flailing, gasping but finding no air.
More tears welled in my eyes. I was already emotional as it was with Wyatt’s phone call and the finality of that breakup. Wyatt had said so many things—he’d listed all my flaws, and I’d catalogued every single grievance the way I took in particulars in a well-decorated room.
Every defect echoed in my mind all over again:
Obsessed with work.
Selfish.
Only think about yourself.
Unable to relax.
Not worth spending a life with.
Maybe Jared thought all of those things, too. Was that why he was doing this?
I’d always had Jared. He was dependable. I’d gone to him after every other hard thing in my life. He wanted to take that away from me?
The strength in my knees gave out. Legs quivering, I sank to the floor and released a squeak of dismay. My phone dropped to the floor, and I wanted to drop with it—to fall through the carpet and cease to exist until the pain went away.
Instead, already wounded from Wyatt’s unkindness, my defenses flared.
I recalibrated and dove for the phone, returning it to my ear.
“And you’re letting her call the shots? You’re seriously going to throw a lifetime of friendship away for someone you hardly know?”
“I’m not letting her call the shots,” Jared said, his voice growing irritated. “And I’m not throwing anything away. I’m just saying… I don’t know what I’m saying.”
Despair filled me, pressing against my ribs and smashing my lungs, making breathing impossible. I tipped my head to the ceiling, working through the short, shallow breaths that never seemed to offer enough oxygen.
“You can’t pull away now,” I said. “We’ve always been together. It’s always been you and me.”
Losing Wyatt was insultingly painful—the kind of painful where I love you was a lie, and my every deficiency was splattered on a billboard for only me to see.
The thought of losing Jared, though? That was like being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition and then being denied access to a hospital. It was like being evicted from my apartment, expelled from my job, ostracized and banished from every town in existence. It was like misplacing my heart and hands and teeth and every other part that made me who I was.
I couldn’t let him go.
“I know,” he said. “But I think we need to decide where we want to end up. To settle. Our lives are changing. We need to change with them. And I feel sort of like I’m caught in the middle right now. Like I can’t—gosh, I wish I could tell you everything. But I have to wait. Wouldn’t be fair?—”
My stomach lurched. Though he went on, my mind snagged on the concept of change. More particularly of changing his life for Tia.
Did that mean he loved her already? They’d only been dating for a handful of weeks!
How did someone even know what love was? I’d thought I loved Wyatt, too, and look how that turned out.
Did loving someone mean you expected to claim ownership of every aspect of their lives? I didn’t think love meant trying to make another person change.
I thought love meant accepting a person as they were.
But Jared was right about one thing—we were adults. According to the rest of the world, adults didn’t just up and share Christmas together, not without it meaning something.
Then why did inviting him feel like the natural thing to do?
But if this was what Jared wanted—if Tia was who he wanted—I could do that, couldn’t I? If I had to. If it meant that much to him.
“Just give me Christmas,” I said.
“What?”
“After this—” My throat closed. I forced out the words. “After this, I’ll stay away. I’ll back out of your life.”
Was that what he wanted? I certainly didn’t.
Sometimes people had various friends who fit different aspects of their lives. One of my friends back in Idaho called me her Forth Worth BFF because even though we lived far away, when we got together, it was always as though no time or distance between us had passed.
Other friends were perfect for the occasional visit to spas or to spend time with at work conferences. Others I spoke to only at church, and we followed one another on social media.
Jared wasn’t just for Sundays. He wasn’t just for certain locations or because we only shared something trivial like preferences for the same kind of music.
He was my everything friend. He saw me as I was—in my spacey phase, my teenage braces years, my boy-band-obsession stage. I didn’t have a secret or an embarrassing moment that he didn’t already know about.
I supposed I could adjust to not being as close as we were now if I had to. Being with Tia didn’t mean Jared and I had to stop hanging out completely, did it?
Finally, Jared broke his silence. “Two separate rooms, you say?”
I grinned, my grip tightening on my phone.