Chapter 2 #2
Seeing people does something to me now. It drags grief up from wherever I’ve managed to shove it down and sets it right in the open, raw and insistent, stampeding over any and every emotion in its path.
Every familiar face feels like a question I don’t have the energy to answer and every smile feels like it comes with an expectation.
Tonight, though, my car drives me here anyway, because silly drunk me is reckless, sentimental and apparently incapable of respecting boundaries I spent years building.
Drunk me decided signing up for The Christmas Toy Drive was a good idea, the one thing I swore I would never do again after the last time it nearly broke me.
I don’t even remember signing up for it. Just a hazy recollection of a late night, probably too much wine, my mother’s name sitting heavy in my heart, and a sign-up form that felt like penance. Or nostalgia. Or self-sabotage.
Again, probably all three.
Sober me is now dealing with the consequences. A story I know all too well.
The square is where The Christmas Kindness Drive begins. Where the community center doors open. Where people gather and remember and expect you to feel something you’re not sure you can survive feeling, because grief doesn’t stay quiet in places like this.
The square is already alive when I pull in.
Strings of white lights arc overhead, casting a soft glow over the ice rink where kids wobble and fall and laugh in uneven circles.
Parents cluster near the edges, steaming mugs in hand, faces flushed from the cold and the quiet joy of watching something uncomplicated unfold.
Christmas music hums from speakers strung between lampposts, the notes weaving through the crisp night air.
This is where everything used to begin. My stomach contorts into knots as soon as I step out of the car.
Someone bumps into me immediately.
“Oh…Savannah? Oh my God.”
Mrs. Donnelly’s hands are on my face before I can react, cool and familiar, like she’s checking to make sure I’m real and not a mirage.
“Look at you,” she says, smiling wide and searching. “All grown up.”
I smile because it’s easier than explaining what she’s really seeing.
The years. The leaving. The way I came back just often enough to convince everyone I hadn’t fully disappeared.
She’s a friend of my mother’s. They would grab tea together and often.
She’s the kind of friend where time doesn’t exist, you simply pick right up where you left off, every time.
“Are you staying?” she digs in immediately, the way Pineview people do, as though the answer might shift the entire season.
“Just for a few days.”
She hums, unconvinced, eyes lingering on my face like she’s reading something I didn’t realize I was still writing. “That’s how it always starts.”
I promise coffee. Promise soon. Promise things I know how to leave vague. Then I escape, heart thudding, moving deeper into the square before I can talk myself out of it.
Pineview doesn’t ease you in. It waits.
And then—
There he is. I knew I would see him the second I stepped onto Main Street.
Erik Beaumont stands near the massive Christmas tree at the center of the square, one hand braced against the railing, the other gesturing as he laughs at something a kid in an oversized helmet says. The lights overhead catch in his hair, and dusts his shoulders with gold.
My breath stutters.
Erik was my constant once. A lifetime ago.
He was my north star. The boy who knew where I was before I did.
The one who sat beside me on the hood of his truck at eighteen, talking about futures we were too young to understand.
He gave me many firsts. Some of them still flood my memory from time to time.
This man though, standing before me, is different.
He’s broader now and solid in a way that has a everything to do with the gym and years of using his body for real work.
His shoulders stretch the seams of his coat like it’s been broken in by him, not tailored to impress.
There’s a ruggedness to his face, stubble along his jaw, faint lines at the corners of his blue eyes that speak to laughter earned the hard way, to a life actually lived.
His confidence isn’t performative or loud. It doesn’t need polish. It sits on him naturally, the way good posture does, grounded and undeniable. He’s nothing like the men in New York City who broadcast themselves before you’ve even learned their last names.
His brown hair is just long enough that my fingers itch to test the texture, just short enough that I know he keeps it trimmed out of habit, not vanity.
He’s a no-fuss kind of man with clean lines, practical choices, ensuring that nothing is wasted.
Confidence looks less like armor on him and more like a second skin.
I remember him as the handsome, kind jock, the one who held doors open and made sure everyone got home safe. He’d already had a body people noticed back then, all muscle and easy strength, and the thought of what time has done to it now lands low and torturous in my chest.
Erik doesn’t announce anything. He doesn’t try. He just exists and that somehow, makes him impossible to look away from.
I heavily consider turning around and slipping back into the crowd, putting on my best acting performance like I didn’t just stare at him.
Too late.
He turns to face me and our eyes meet.
I would never forget those eyes.
For a heartbeat, the noise around us fades - the music dulls, the laughter softens, the scrape of skates on ice disappears. My pulse roars in my ears.
Then he smiles.
Not surprised or guarded like I anticipated. It’s just warm. It feels like this moment makes sense to him, maybe he hasn’t spent the years narrowly missing me because I made sure of it.
“Savannah.”
My name sounds different in his voice. Lower. Familiar in a way that makes my nerves spike instead of settle.
“Erik,” I reply, proud of myself for managing the word at all. Any word.
His gaze drops briefly, cataloging me, taking in my coat, my boots, the way I’m standing like I might bolt.
“You always forget how cold it gets here, don’t you?” he says mildly, teasing. “They get snow in New York, right? I’ve seen the movies.”
I let out a breath that might almost be a laugh. “I did not forget.”
“You did,” he quips easily. “You always did.”
I tug my coat tighter, suddenly hyperaware of how close he is and how steady he feels. Of how unsteady I feel.
“It’s not this bad there,” I mutter, trying to prevent my teeth from chattering.
“Sure,” he jokes. “And I’m sure you miss this.”
“I…,” I stop myself. “You look… different.”
Something flashes in his eyes at that. “And so do you.”
The words land heavier than I expect.
For a second, neither of us moves, completely frozen in this moment in time. Then he steps closer to me, just enough that the space between us feels intentional. “Welcome home.”