Chapter 10
Carol
Every lie starts small. One skipped truth, one “I’m fine” said too fast. I tell myself that’s all it is. One harmless lie.
But lies grow legs. They follow you home.
Blake thinks I can’t sleep with him because I’m still healing from the robbery. He makes that assumption himself, wraps it up like a gift so I don’t have to say it. I let him. It’s easier than the truth.
He cooks dinner, pasta, wine, plays soft jazz of the carols he knows I like, and tries to make the apartment feel normal again. I watch him move around the kitchen like a man following a script, waiting for applause that never comes.
“How was work?” he asks, plating my food just so.
“Fine,” I say, stabbing at noodles, tasting nothing.
“Any more trouble down there?”
“Nope. Quiet as church.”
He smiles, relieved, and starts talking about his day, clients, deadlines, the drive to the city. I nod, pretending to listen, pretending not to see Humbug every time I close my eyes.
I don’t tell Blake that Humbug had come around the back of Sno-Globes that night, checking on me after he stormed out.
Don’t tell him we stood in the alley under the broken light, like two people who survived the same storm.
Don’t tell him I still felt that kiss like a bruise I can’t hide.
That I hate the biker took his hands off me.
I tell myself it was adrenaline. Curiosity. Closure.
Then another week passes full of my excuses and half-truths until my phone buzzes after midnight and blows all that to hell.
Unknown number.
You awake? Familiar voice.
No.
A pause. Then...
Liar.
How’d you get my number?
Sugar tits at the bar.
That’s not her name, but I don’t correct him. I hang up instead. That should be the end.
It’s not.
Yeah, it starts small, like everything else. A text the next night. Two the night after. Then calls, short, quiet, never lasting long. Sometimes it’s just breathing, the kind that fills my ear and curls under my skin like smoke.
Humbug’s voice is low and lazy, the kind of drawl that belonged in a dark booth, not over a phone line. “You still hum when you’re nervous?” he asks.
I don’t even realize I’m doing it. “No.”
“Liar,” he says again, softer.
After that, the calls come more often. He talks about the club, about fixing bikes, about the snow that won’t quit. He mentions his ex-wife, Trina, like it’s a ghost story he doesn’t believe in anymore. “She’s still breathin’, I guess,” he says. “Just not in my direction.”
Sometimes, neither of us say much at all. Just silence, the kind that feels like confession.
I start staying up later. Pretend insomnia. I crawl into bed beside Blake after he falls asleep, slide my phone under the pillow, and wait for the vibration that means Humbug’s awake too.
“You’re restless lately,” Blake says in the morning over coffee. “You work too much.”
“Maybe,” I say, stirring cream into my cup like it matters.
He smiles and kisses my temple. “You’ll bounce back. You always do.”
I nod. “Yeah. Always.” I can’t tell him that I’m falling asleep with another man’s voice still warm in my ear.
The first time I see Humbug again, it’s not planned. Tuesday afternoon. Sno-Globes is half-empty, the lull between tourists and locals. I’m wiping down the bar when the door opens, and the temperature drops a million degrees.
Biker stands there in a black hoodie under his cut, snow melting into his hair. He looks different, tired, older, like a storm cloud followed him in.
“Coffee,” he says.
“No whiskey?”
“Not today.”
I pour him a mug and set it down. “You look tired.”
“You look like you ain’t sleepin’ either.”
“Must be contagious.”
He smiles, just a flicker, but it hits me like heat from a flame.
We talk about nothing, weather, engines, the ongoing Christmas parade that got canceled for once because of a strike.
I joke about the irony of a town that can afford fake but real snow but not to pay Santa. He laughs for real this time.
When he leaves, he drops a fifty beside his half-drained mug. “For the coffee.”
“That’s a big tip,” I say.
“Guess I liked the service.”
“I don’t think I can accept this.” I huff, pushing it back at him.
“Why not?”
“You know why not. What would it make me?”
Taking the bill back, he says, “You’re not that, Carol.”
He walks out before I can think of something clever to say back. But I know before the door shut behind him, he’ll call later.
And he does.
This time, we fight about the money, and how it made me feel. Like a whore. But we don’t mention the why.
The pattern forms before I can stop it.
Daylight denial. Midnight confessions.
We talk about small things.
“What song’s stuck in your head?” he asks.
“‘Blue Christmas,’” I answer.
“Figures.”
“What about you?”
“‘Highway to Hell.’”
“You’re terrible.”
“You like terrible,” he says, and I don’t argue.
Other nights, he goes quieter.
He calls from his Harley, wind howling through the line. “You ever just ride until you forget where you were headed?”
“Can’t say I have,” I say into my cell, I’m holding on my shoulder. I’m doing the dinner dishes while Blake’s asleep in my bed. “I don’t even drive.”
“Try it sometime,” he murmurs. “Feels like freedom. For real? You just don’t know how?”
“My mom never taught me. It’s like she didn’t want me to leave Evervale.”
“I can teach you. Where’s she?”
“She moved to Canada. I stayed.”
“Seems like she got her wish.”
Sometimes Humbug talks until dawn creeps pale behind my blinds, and I drift off to his voice describing engines, asphalt, sky. He never says anything filthy, not outright, but every word vibrates with the memory of that night. Every silence dares me to ask for more than a call.
When Blake rolls over in bed, I flinch, heart hammering like I’ve been caught stealing.
After a month of calls, guilt’s its own language.
I stop playing Christmas music. Stop lighting candles. I blamed it on the cold, the power bill, anything but the truth, that every time I hear “O Holy Night,” I think of Humbug’s breath against my neck.
He calls at 2:07 a.m. Just the vibration wakes me.
“You awake?” he asks.
“I am now.”
“You sound mad.”
“I sound like you woke me.”
“That’s what I like about you.”
“Why do you keep calling me?” I ask, finally.
“I told you I won’t forget a woman who sleighs me,” he jokes.
“Be serious.”
He goes quiet for so long I think the line’s dropped. Then…
“Because you don’t talk to me like I’m already damned.”
That shouldn’t undo me, but it does. “You’re not,” I whisper.
Neither of us speak. We just breathe, filling the silence between wrong and right until they sound the same.