Chapter 20 Jason
On the third and final day at Joe’s house, the storm finally slowed.
In the morning, snow had piled up against the front door, deep enough we couldn’t get out, even if we’d wanted to.
Taking advantage of the situation again, Joe and I spent the early hours finishing up the last of his projects.
Apparently three days of construction, and a buddy, had been all he needed to get the house in working order.
There was still the matter of the porch to deal with, but I’d been dropping hints that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to hire out for that.
Aside from that…he officially had a working floor, solid walls, and a kitchen that was both cute and functional. His furniture was due to arrive well before Christmas, and I was happy for him. So incredibly happy.
Happy for myself, too, because the last few days had been a dream.
I’d been trapped in a snow globe with Joe. Living in an alternate universe where I had everything—well, almost everything—I wanted. The snow fell and fell, and Joe and I danced around one another. Synchronized. Two people learning that they worked together, even with so much unsaid between them.
Joe was clever. Funny. Cute.
Capable.
Always serious.
Well, mostly serious.
I had cracked through his shell bit by bit as the days passed.
Saw his yolk in an entirely new way. I witnessed a true laugh, for one thing.
Caused by me, something I’d done wrong that he’d had to fix—head tossed back, throat bobbing.
The sound of his chortling was raspy sweet. Hot honey on cornbread.
And no, that was not a crack at him being from Ohio.
Though it certainly was one about him being blond.
There was always something new to learn from Joe.
And if I ignored my lust—which was incredibly difficult come day three of my Joe-solation, I could almost convince myself that what I felt for him truly was friendship. At least, if I was blatantly lying. In denial just like I’d been for months.
Denial was a safety blanket.
One I was only sporadically allowed.
Because sometimes—when Joe smiled or laughed or breathed—it all came back in a rush. He wasn’t Joe anymore. He was my Joe. And the switch in my head flipped back on.
It was stupid. I was so stupid.
I should’ve said something.
I knew that.
But I was…scared. Scared that I’d lose him. Scared that I wasn’t capable of being what he needed. Scared of being vulnerable. Scared that the past would repeat itself. Scared that if I let him in…and he found me lacking…I’d never recover.
I kept some of my walls up as I tore his down.
And it wasn’t fair.
I knew it wasn’t.
But I couldn’t stop protecting my own heart.
“You know, for such a careful person you are the opposite of careful,” Joe said quietly.
I startled out of my reverie, looking up from the absolutely horrible blob of icing I’d left on my gingerbread house.
I’d bought the village set when I’d been grocery shopping.
Hadn’t thought about it. Hadn’t expected getting to crack open the boxes and use them.
Until the afternoon on day three rolled around and we ran out of house projects to do. Joe had been the one to spot the gingerbread houses and he’d positively lit up. Begged me, “Can we make those?” Like he thought “no” was ever an option when he was staring at me with those eyes.
“Anything you want,” I promised.
He’d been downright chipper as he’d set them up on the kitchen island. He’d had to move some of the food items into the now-dry cupboards, but he hadn’t minded. Now, he was halfway through his third building.
They were pre-assembled, so all we were really doing was decorating. Joe was good at it. Me…not so much. My single gingerbread home—chapel? I think it was supposed to be a chapel—looked like a bird had shit all over it.
“I am being careful,” I said with a sigh. “It just…so happens that I’m not nearly as good at this as you are.”
Joe puffed up a little at that, looking proud as he bent over his project, a little smile on his lips. “I think you cut the hole in your icing bag too big,” he explained, piping a perfect row of little icicles along the edge of his building.
I spied on him, and tried to copy.
Another glob came out and hit the cardboard mat the house was attached to with finality. I laughed. Couldn’t help it. It was ridiculous. All of this was. This was my first time creating a gingerbread house—and I was fucking awful at it.
Privately I wondered if that was why I’d grabbed them.
Childish wishes.
Wanting to share another first with Joe.
A first that didn’t feel like I was crossing lines.
Setting my icing bag down, I covered my face with one hand, snorting into it as the monstrosity I’d made loomed in my peripheral vision. God, it was ugly. So ugly.
“Here.” Joe offered me his icing bag. I dropped my hand, then reached for it, heart skipping a beat at the look on his face.
His eyes said, I don’t mind that you’re terrible at this.
They said, it’s not about being perfect.
They said, I’m happy.
And god.
That look tore me apart the most. It was evidence that he’d been telling the truth before. I wasn't being useful right now. Not at all. And he still wanted me around.
The icing bag helped a little.
Okay, that was a lie. I was just as terrible with his. But the bag itself was warm from his palm, and that in itself, made it feel better. Joe swapped me for my bag and began working again, in slightly less controlled lines.
When we were done, you could clearly tell who had made which buildings.
We set them along the counter between the fridge and the sink. A little village of our own.
“It looks like a five-year-old made mine,” I snorted when we stood back to admire our work.
Joe shook his head.
There was something tender about his expression.
All his hard lines were gone, including the ones by his mouth.
Outside, the sun was beginning to set. It’d melted a decent portion of the snow, enough that we’d be able to get out the doors if needed.
The snow plow had gone by earlier, taking the worst of what decorated the road with it. We weren’t trapped anymore.
But we were both pretending this didn’t have to end.
“Have you never done this before?” Joe asked, still watching me with that warm, warm expression. My throat clicked when I swallowed. For a beat, I considered lying. Bullshitting about it so that I wouldn’t have to be vulnerable. So I wouldn’t have to admit the truth.
But…
“No,” I admitted. “We hardly celebrated when I was a kid. My parents weren’t really…home. Not even during the holidays.”
“Oh.” Joe frowned. His dark eyes were sweet. Sweet as the gravel in his voice. “I’m sorry.”
He didn’t need to apologize on their behalf. In fact, he couldn’t. Nothing he could do would make up for the years I’d spent lonely. And yet…for some reason…it helped.
Joe didn’t pity me, the same way I didn’t pity him.
But he was sad for me.
Sad for the boy I’d been, and what I’d missed.
“What about you?” I asked, genuinely curious. “What was Christmas like for the Miltons?”
“Loud,” Joe said. “Mom yells.” He blinked, eyes going far away, transported back to his childhood.
“She cooks a lot. Too much. There’d be food everywhere.
Messes everywhere. Not a single place in the house would be quiet.
Mom decorates the first of November so the house would be covered in tinsel and stuff with a big sparkly tree.
Makes—made, I mean—everyone contribute. Usually I was on cookie duty. ”
“That sounds nice,” I said wistfully. Joe nodded.
“It was,” he agreed. “You know…” he cleared his throat, cheeks going pink as he stared at the dining room table. “If I’d known you then, as a kid.” His words were very careful. “I would’ve wanted to be your friend. I would’ve invited you over for Christmas. So you wouldn’t have to be by yourself.”
My heart squeezed so tight I worried it might pop.
Joe didn’t push.
I was grateful.
I was pretty sure if he said anything else I was going to cry.
“Sounds like you need a Christmas tree,” I deflected, strained and shook to the very core. “Lights. If your family is coming here you’re going to have to pull out all the stops to impress them.”
“Yeah,” Joe agreed. He was staring at the worst of the gingerbread houses I’d made, something achingly fond in his eyes. He was looking at them with a new perspective. Like they really had been made by five-year-old Jason.
It made me feel…
It made me…
“Bathroom,” I blurted out. “I’ll be. Back. In a—you know. Jiffy.” After offering Joe what had to be the most awkward set of finger guns known to man, I darted down the hallway. Once inside the bathroom I could breathe a little easier. Emphasis on the “little” part, because—
God.
I was so in love with him it wasn’t even funny.
I splashed water on my face.
I studied the haggard wrinkles around my own eyes. My laugh lines. The gray in my hair. Tried to make sense of why Joe would look at me like he did. Like I was…I was something good. Something worth looking at.
Like I was his.
“You’re his best friend,” I muttered to my dripping reflection. “Nothing more. Stop projecting. So what if he likes your shitty gingerbread skills. Chill.”
It felt like a lie.
It totally felt like a lie.
When I exited the bathroom and looked for Joe, he was nowhere to be found. Which was, as you can probably guess, alarming. I did locate him, eventually, on the back porch. More time had passed than I’d realized.
My own fault.
As I’d been caught in another spiral.
For a moment, I debated not going out at all.
But that was idiotic.
And my drive to be beside Joe, as always, won.
So, I pushed through the back door with no small amount of struggling through the snow that populated the porch.
Once outside, I took a few, deep lungfuls of fresh air and sighed.
The snow was coming down again, but it was a peaceful sort of drift.
The kind that made me think about holidays I wished I’d had.
About manufactured Christmases and how sometimes, when I was young, I’d observe and wonder why even fake people—the ones on TV—had better lives than I did.
It was a spoiled thought. I knew that now. I’d been blessed in so many ways. But tell that to a kid whose parents sent him a postcard from whichever remote place they were visiting instead of being home with him for the holidays.
Joe shushed me without turning around to look.
He shushed me.
“Wh—”
“Shhh,” Joe repeated. He was sitting on the back steps. There was a quarter inch of snow on his coat. Or close. He practically blended into the wild, the white had imbedded itself in every crevice of his clothing. It coated his hair, little flakes melting on his flushed red ears.
I was so confused it took me a second to realize what he was looking at.
But then I did.
And suddenly, everything stopped. The swirling thoughts in my head. The worries I held. The insecurities gone. Poof. Just like that. Like that day I’d seen him with the magpie, Joe’s magnetism was something wondrous. I was present in a way I hardly ever was.
Frozen.
There was a deer in the yard.
A doe, more accurately.
She had as much snow on her back as Joe had on his.
Walking slowly, each step so quiet, so careful I could hear the crunch of snow beneath her hooves.
With fur that was the loveliest grayish-brown, a shaggy belly, and a tail with a bright-white underside, she had to be the prettiest thing I’d seen.
Her shiny black nose twitched as she turned giant dark eyes on us.
Regarding us with the same veiled curiosity we looked at her with.
Hesitantly, she took another step closer.
Then another.
Her hooves crunched through the layer on the snow that’d crystalized as the sun had melted it.
I held still, scared to even breathe for fear of frightening her off.
Joe was just as still. There was something about the way he carried himself at moments like this that did me in entirely.
He was sure here, in a way he hardly ever was.
With an air of serene confidence. Broad shoulders still, like he was just as scared to breathe as I was.
The deer drew closer, closer, closer.
At the bottom of the porch steps, she paused. Her head tipped back as she stared up at us from a much closer vantage point. Close enough now I could see the snow in her lashes. See the flakes where they clung to her pelt, and the downy fur at the top of her head between her expressive ears.
They flicked this way and that.
She was gorgeous and she knew it.
And yet…I found my attention drifting. Found my gaze falling on Joe. On the snowflakes melting on the vulnerable skin of his nape. On his flushed pink ears. On the way he was my farm-boy statue once again.
There was no denying how much he loved this.
Seeing nature.
Breathing in the fresh air.
Like he was more meant for the wild than the people in town.
At ease in the face of wilderness in the same way I found comfort in conversation.
He made the silence feel…loud. Not loud in the way the world could often be, bustling, bright.
But meaningful. Every second that ticked by, every breath the three of us shared meant something.
I don’t know how long we remained there. Long enough my ears were frozen and my nose was running. Long enough my sleeves were half white. The snow kept coming. Chilly winds blowing flurries through the air.
When the doe eventually left, I sat down beside Joe on the steps.
My knees were weak.
Joe turned his head to look at me. There were snowflakes in his lashes, just like the doe’s. His eyes lingered on my mouth the way they had for days now. Staring. Something uncertain in his gaze that I ached to soothe because it didn’t feel right.
It didn’t feel right for Joe to be uneasy when I was around to take care of him.
We didn’t speak the rest of the night.
We didn’t need to.
We fell into the rhythms that we’d set together. Brushed our teeth in tandem. Took turns in the shower. Slipped beneath the covers like it was natural. Like existing together was the easiest thing in the world.
I crowded against Joe’s back and held him. Pressed my face to his nape and breathed him in. Soaked up every second because I knew the next day would bring reality with it. The sun would rise, and so would we, and there would be no more excuses not to go back to our separate lives.
Our snow globe would simply cease to be.