Chapter 12
Archer
Six years ago (four years after that night)…
I almost turned around three times. Since it was just under a four-hour drive, I’d say that was about once an hour.
Meaning that every single hour, the overwhelming urge to pull over, puke up all my nerves, and then head in the opposite direction and toward home consumed me.
But every time, I fought the urge and kept the truck going in the direction of Boston.
In the direction of someone.
Someone I hadn’t seen in four years but still somehow thought of almost daily. Thinking of him was a habit I tried hard to break, but it felt like the entire town worked against me. How could I forget Toby when everywhere I looked had some kind of memory with him attached?
And then there was Dad. His illness was a reminder of how short life really was.
How fast the years go by. Yet, in some ways, these last four years had felt like forever.
I’d had a lot of time to think—something that was a bit surprising.
After all, learning how to take over and run the farm was more than a full-time job.
But even with my limited time, thoughts of Toby always invaded.
How much I missed him. How I wished I’d handled everything differently.
I thought a million times about calling. Writing. Hell, even going to his house and talking to his mother.
But no matter how persistent those thoughts had been, I never put them into action.
I should never have let our friendship slip away so easily. I needed Toby in my life, something maybe I didn’t realize before but now was undeniable.
Death was confrontational like that. Making you face all the things you didn’t want to. Like change and how inevitable it was. In my attempt to resist it, I’d only made it worse.
Pride overshadowed the urge to make it right sooner, but now death mocked pride too.
And sure, part of me realized that right now I was trying to make up for a looming loss by recouping one from the past, but I also knew that, even if I did, nothing would be the same. And also, nothing could ever soften the blow of parental absence.
But if change must be inevitable, then I wanted to face it with Toby.
I just hoped it wasn’t too late. Which was why I was hurtling toward Boston with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and a sprig of mistletoe in the pocket of my jeans.
Went out there and shot it down without anyone knowing.
Felt wrong to bring him home without it.
Just as the thought of doing yet another Christmas without him also felt wrong.
I just hoped he thought of me as much as I had of him these past four years. No. Even half of how much I thought of him.
Driving into the city felt like arriving in some new world.
Everything here was crowded. The streets felt smaller, the buildings bigger.
Traffic was everywhere, and there was no warmth.
I didn’t mean the weather either. I meant the people here didn’t smile and wave.
The faces weren’t familiar. Everyone was busy, rushing from place to place, and it all felt so impersonal.
And sure, there were decorations, but it felt commercial. Generic.
Not at all like home.
Toby doesn’t belong here.
I got turned around on a couple of streets but eventually found my way to the campus I knew Toby studied on.
I knew from eavesdropping on his mom at the bistro that he lived off campus with roommates and had a part-time job off campus too.
She’d been hoping she’d convince him to come home for the holidays, but he said he had to work.
The buildings were all timeless stone, intimidating in structure and size as students milled around with bags and armloads of books. I fought the feeling that I didn’t belong here, that I somehow wasn’t good enough because I’d skipped college to stay on the farm.
I’d been offered a scholarship to play football, but I declined. I didn’t regret the decision, and I never once felt inferior until people eyed my old mint-green truck as I passed.
After a mini self-guided tour of the campus, I drove toward the vet office where Toby worked part-time. If my sources were correct (aka my eavesdropping ears), he would be getting off work soon, and I could catch him on his way out.
I didn’t even know what I was going to say or even if he would talk to me. But I had to try. I had to correct the biggest mistake I ever made.
Because my truck was very recognizable, I didn’t want to take the chance he’d see it and avoid me somehow, so I parked a block over and walked.
Right across the street from the office was a small coffee shop with tables on the sidewalk and terrible coffee. I ordered it anyway and took a seat in the cold with a clear view of the vet entrance.
I watched the comings and goings of people as I nursed the bitter brew, my knee bouncing anxiously beneath the table.
And then he appeared.
I knew him instantly, as if it had only been four minutes instead of four years. His half-curly hair blew back from his head as he ducked his chin and adjusted the straps of the bookbag strapped to his back.
Beneath his open coat, he wore a set of black scrubs with sneakers, and my heart leaped into my throat. Abandoning the coffee and chair, I pushed to my feet. My lips moved, but my tongue was suddenly too dry to call out and my eyes too greedy to let me do much more than stare.
Someone leaned out the glass doors behind him and called out. He spun and said something I was too far away to hear. But just the implication of him speaking unleashed a craving for the sound of his voice. For his laugh. How I’d missed those things.
After waving, he turned back around. I hurried forward, but the traffic forced me to wait. He lifted his chin, and I was blinded by the wide smile spreading across the lower half of his face, a smile so bright it made me feel like I’d been existing in the dark.
But just as soon as the sun came out, it disappeared again behind a dark cloud. A cloud in the shape of a man. A man who appeared seemingly from nowhere on the pavement. A man who acted like he had all the rights to someone I considered mine.
His broad shoulders swooped in, stupid backward hat covering his hair and neck.
Frozen, I watched the dude-bro hold out his arms and wrap them around Toby, completely blocking him from sight.
My eyes dropped to where Toby’s hand slid around to his back, specifically the way his fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt.
When he pulled back, Toby smiled up at him, saying something that made the other man laugh.
I blinked. Blinked again. Surely, I was hallucinating. Or maybe getting the wrong idea. They could be friends. Good friends.
I used to hug Toby all the time.
Until you pushed him away.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, ignoring the pit in my stomach, I made my way across the street—and into the path of an oncoming car.
“Shit,” I swore and stumbled back just as it swerved around me and laid on the horn.
Cringing, I froze like a deer in headlights, expecting everyone on the street to turn and stare. Expecting Toby to see me.
No one noticed. Of course they didn’t. Honking horns were practically white noise in a city.
As my chest heaved, I watched the dude-bro slip his hand around Toby’s. My eyes burned as their fingers linked and they started off down the street.
The pain of missing him for the last four years intensified. The regret turned acerbic and singed the back of my throat. Toby turned to look at his boyfriend, that smile lighting up someone else’s life instead of mine.
He’d moved on. He had a boyfriend. Of course he did.
I might have been too afraid of change, too afraid to take a leap, but clearly someone else wasn’t.
I hadn’t considered this. Not in the last four years. Not in the four hours it took me to get here. In all the panic and wanting to turn around, it never once occurred to me that Toby might be with someone else.
Because even when we were apart, to me, Toby was always mine.
But he wasn’t.
I watched Toby’s retreating back as he made his way down the block, his hand clasped confidently by another man. The mistletoe in my pocket felt like a live wire, steadily electrocuting me with zaps of pain.
When they disappeared around the corner, I turned and retreated in the opposite direction, digging the mistletoe out of my pocket and abandoning it right there on the street.
I’d lost my chance with Toby four years ago under the mistletoe. And it was clear I wouldn’t be getting another one.
Present Day…
Stupid mistletoe.
Stupid gingerbread.
Stupid mistletoe forcing me to work with Toby and the gingerbread.
But most of all, stupid me.
I didn’t know what I’d been thinking, saying all that stuff to Toby. But for a moment there, things between us seemed possible when for so long they were anything but. Regret is so very bitter on the tongue, and rejection wilts the heart. Second chances seem like nothing more than wishes.
Maybe it was the mistletoe, spun sugar in the air, or the disarming way he whispered that my father would be proud.
Those words shouldn’t mean so much from an enemy.
But maybe that’s why they meant everything.
Because he didn’t have to say them. Because he said them not just as my enemy but an old friend.
I didn’t go to the farm for Brett. I went there for you.
I was already disarmed, so those words made me want to take a chance on the magic in the air. Suddenly, I was saying things I never planned, practically confessing right there over gingerbread.
I thought he’d moved on, but now he was back, and I realized it was me who never moved on. I hadn’t even really tried because I didn’t want to. Turned out the idea of Toby was better than the reality of anyone else.
So long ago, I’d accused him of ruining everything… but it wasn’t him who ruined it.
It was me.
And now, this Christmas, I wanted to right my biggest wrong.