Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Mia
As dinner ended, I shook the stardust from my feet and got back to reality because I had an important fire to put out. I cornered Liam in the kitchen while he was loading his plate into the dishwasher and pulled him over to the little nook near the back door. “Maybe you two shouldn’t take Brax…”
He gave me a sweet, older brother smile. “Don’t worry, we’ll go easy on him, sis.” He chuckled at my concern. “We just want to get to know him better.” He extended his arms and cracked his knuckles ominously just to torment me.
“Okay, but—” I opened my mouth to say—no, to beg— Please don’t tell him about Charlie . But then I stopped myself. What kind of girlfriend wouldn’t tell her serious boyfriend about the Charlies in her life?
I mean, I would have if we’d had more than a handful of dates. After that, I purposely kept the personal info to a minimum. With all the trauma of getting him here, I’d avoided giving him the course on Mia 101. How were my brothers not going to see straight through this sham?
“What’s going on?” Caleb asked from the top of the stairs. “What’s the huddle for? Is Mom okay?”
“Mia’s worried about us roughing up Brax tonight.” Liam’s mouth turned up in a smile. “I told her we’d be nice—for the most part.”
“I just—I just don’t want you guys to get into the past.” I tried not to plead, but I could hear it in my voice.
“The past?” Caleb looked puzzled. “As in Charlie?”
“Yes, numbnut,” Liam answered. To me, he asked, “What’d you decide to do about the party? That’s got to feel awkward.”
“No, it’s not,” I said firmly. “Because I’m not going. I wish Charlie well, but I don’t need to show up to do it.”
“That’s okay,” Liam said. “Do what you want.”
“You don’t have to show up,” Caleb said. “But should you?”
I rolled my eyes. This was why I loved Liam and hated Caleb. Caleb always poked the bear.
“Back off, Cay,” Liam said, giving me that concerned older brother look that almost made me spill everything. If I confessed it all now, maybe they’d understand. But they’d never be able to keep it from our mom. “You found someone better. Screw Charlie, right?”
With a sinking feeling, I realized that I would have to tell Brax about Charlie, fast. “Don’t discuss Charlie, okay?” I asked. “It’s—over and done with. I just don’t want?—”
Liam gave me a giant side hug. “Hey, we won’t embarrass you. Brax seems like a nice guy.” He flashed a handsome grin. “And if he’s not, we’ll find that out in the barn. Then we’ll take care of him.” He laughed just as Brax sauntered over. “You ready?” Liam asked. “You can help us with the firepit.”
“Okay,” Brax said. He’d gotten his jacket and was wearing a multicolored knit ski cap with earflaps and a giant pom-pom. He saw me staring at it. “What?” he said, giving it a tug. “Caleb let me borrow it.”
I caught Caleb’s eye just as he turned to leave. He was biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing. Because Caleb had given him, of all the hats, my mom’s. But I didn’t dare tell Brax. Besides, I was too busy trying not to laugh myself to be able to talk.
He looked dopey and silly and somehow very earnest, and for a second, I just wanted to run into his arms and kiss him. For being a good sport. For being willing to subject himself to the whims of my brothers. For sneak eating my peas and making up a sappy story at the table.
But then I thought of all the secrets my brothers would spill.
I grabbed his down-padded arm. “We’ve got to talk,” I whispered. Panic made me a little dizzy, and I clutched the back of a chair to steady myself. Why did I hate discussing my screwups so much? I’d been like this as long as I could remember.
“Okay,” he said with the smile of a guy who was going to go out and have a few brewskies with the guys.
“All set?” Caleb called from the door.
“Be right there,” Brax said, oblivious to my pain. “Is this about any other foods you might hate that I don’t know about?”
I shook my head. How to tell him about the biggest mistake of my life in ten seconds or less? “If they mention a party this weekend, I’m not going, okay?”
Brax stared at me, probably wondering why my voice sounded an octave higher than usual, or why I was making a big deal, as if I were a slighted teenager who didn’t get an invite.
So I did the worst thing, kept on trying to explain. “Some people we know got married in Vegas, and they’re having a big get-together.”
“That sounds fun.” I could see him processing. “‘Some people’?”
“Old friends.” That was certainly not a lie. “But I’m not going. It…wouldn’t be fun for me.”
“Okay.” Not only were my parents lifelong friends with Charlie’s, but also, my brothers had gone all through school and played sports with his brothers. That was the thing about small towns—everyone knew everyone, and relationships were as entwined and twisted as orchid roots in a pot.
That was what I used to love the most. That people knew and cared for other people. But now—well, it was the worst thing. The very worst. To see all my old friends and be pitied or felt sorry for, to congratulate Charlie and his new wife and smile and pretend nothing awful had happened—no. I just couldn’t do it.
Brax was looking at me funny. Like, I wasn’t exactly giving him a lot to go on. And what about Gracie? I hadn’t told him anything about her either. “I have to tell you more. I—” My heart sank. How did I describe the essence of the person I held close in my heart, who I carried everywhere with me, in ten seconds? It was impossible.
“Hey, we’re sweating in these jackets.” Liam walked past and playfully tugged an earflap of Brax’s hat. “Let’s go, bro.”
He tipped his head to one side and assessed me carefully. “Everything okay?”
I dropped my voice. My brothers were standing near the door, Liam’s hand on the knob, and I could tell Brax was eager to follow. “My ex is having a party, and I’m not going. That’s what you need to know.”
“Okay.” He gave an indifferent shrug. “All good.” He reached out and squeezed my arm. “Talk later, ’kay?”
He smiled and gave me a peck right on the lips. It was quick and decisive, just like him. Maybe he did it to distract me. Or because my brothers were watching. Or maybe he just didn’t see any of this as a big deal. His kiss sent sparks spreading all through me like a warm blanket, wiping my mind as blank as Emma’s throwback Etch-a-Sketch toy.
Charlie who?
A moment later, when I recovered, I knew I’d made a huge mistake, throwing Brax into the throes of my family without an instruction manual.
“They won’t rough him up too badly.” My mom had somehow snuck up directly behind me.
Liam laughed. “Not too badly,” he said, patting Brax on the back on their way out the door.
I forced myself to smile back. For the first time, I realized that this game I was playing wasn’t a game at all.
I’d avoided sharing my vulnerable spots, avoided telling Brax about my past. So now he was going to hear all about it from my brothers instead of me.
In our house, everyone traditionally pitched in with the dishes. Tonight, the guys had cleared and loaded, so I started in on the washing. My mom had insisted on helping until my dad intervened and made her go put her feet up in the family room in front of the big tree. I took a second in the now-empty kitchen to try to stop freaking out. All I knew was Gabe had better return from his holiday engaged and ecstatically happy. I was a private person, especially as far as Brax was concerned. This weekend was costing me a lot more than I wanted to give.
“Hey,” Dina said, returning from giving Emma a bath, startling me just as I finished. She was wearing Liam’s faded red UW hoodie, which practically came down to her knees.
“Go Badgers,” I said back, giving the rah-rah sign with my fist in response to the giant Bucky Badger mascot on the sweatshirt. “Mom and I were going to sit down in front of the fire. Join us?”
“Your mom just ran upstairs to read Emma a story. I just have to tuck her in, and then I’d love to catch up.” She looked at me—really looked, for the first time since I got home. “You okay?”
She’d always had this way of seeing through BS, starting from the time I’d broken up at age fifteen with Harry Styles, my first boyfriend. Okay, his name was really Evan Thomas, but his hair looked just like Harry’s. Anyway, Dina knew me far too well not to sense when something was up.
Instead of words, a tear came out. Drat.
She ran over to me. “Honey, what’s wrong? Is it Brax? We think he’s so nice, but if he’s causing any trouble?—”
“It’s not Brax,” I said, swiping at my eyes and letting her guide me to a chair at the table. The first thing she did was grab the wine bottle from dinner from the counter and pour some into the only clean cup left in the cupboard—ironically, a sparkly Disney princess cup of Emma’s. As I knit my hands together, I realized I was shaking. It felt good to sit down. It felt even better to have a friend to talk to.
Dina patted my hand and waited in her patient way. She’d always been there to give boy advice and makeup and fashion recs. She was the one who made sure I didn’t overload my freshman schedule in college with courses so I could have some fun too. Basically, she was the older sister I’d never had.
I swallowed. “You can’t say anything,” I managed.
“You know I won’t.” I did know this. When she caught me buying beer with a fake ID as a teenager, she drove me back to the convenience store to return it but didn’t tell my parents. And she covered for me once when I’d stayed out too late with Charlie, telling my parents that I’d been with her. I wasn’t exactly a kid who pushed boundaries, but those times she’d saved my butt without hesitation had meant a lot.
How could I even begin to explain this giant mess I’d created? Ironically, the mess seemed to be more about me than my mom. How had that happened? Maybe Dina wouldn’t be sympathetic. After all, I’d lied and then brought the lie home in person. Not exactly adult behavior.
“Brax is amazing,” she said. “The way he looks at you.” She fanned herself and mouthed a silent whew . “And he’s so personable and nice. And Emma adores him. She’s a very good judge of character. He’s a keeper.” She paused. “Right?”
“He’s not a keeper,” I whispered. I cleared my throat and forced out the words. “Because he’s not my boyfriend.”
First, she looked perplexed. Then her mouth dropped open. To her credit, she quickly closed it. When Emma and her other future children were teenagers, she’d be a great mom, slow to judge. “What?”
“We did date for a few weeks last summer—long enough for me to really like him.” Maybe even fall in love with him , a little voice inside me whispered, but I pushed it aside.
“Wait, you?—”
“I’d been telling Mom all about him—I mean, after the thing with Charlie, I guess I thought I’d never feel that way.” If I was going to spill the tea, I’d better spill hard. “I fell for him. But then we discovered we were going to be working together, and he told me he thought we’d be better as friends.” I took a big breath. “He dumped me.”
Her expression changed from confused to You did go to med school, didn’t you? “And you brought him here anyway?”
Right? What was I thinking? “I was desperate. But I’m okay. To be fair, he’d warned me from the start that he doesn’t do serious. But I thought—” I sighed. “I thought he might be it. ”
She sat down next to me and held my hand.
“Right around the same time, we found out about Mom’s cancer and…” Underneath her frown, I could practically see her pulling the whole terrible story together. “I couldn’t bear to tell her the truth. I did the exact opposite—lied my head off until I ran into a big problem.”
Her eyes got wide. “What big problem?”
“Christmas.” I buried my head in my hands.
Stupid, stupid Christmas.
She lowered her voice. “Did you sleep with him?”
I didn’t deny it. My this-is-a-complete-debacle look must’ve tipped her off. “Oh, honey.”
“The cancer was such a shock. I couldn’t think of any way to make it better.”
“Wait a minute.” She crossed her arms. “If he blew you off and broke your heart, why are you still friends?”
“At work, getting along is sort of a necessity.”
“Now I want to kill him.”
“I can handle Brax,” I said hurriedly. I really wasn’t sure of that, but I had to sound grown-up here. “My friend Gabe was supposed to come, but he was about to get engaged, and Brax ended up helping me out. But right now, Liam and Caleb are telling him everything about me.”
She frowned. “What can they possibly tell him that matters?”
“I never told Brax about Charlie. I’m not going to the party, so I didn’t think it was necessary to explain.”
She got up and shut the door between the mudroom and the kitchen. “You brought your fake boyfriend home, and he doesn’t know your ex-fiancé just got married?”
I crossed my arms. “After Brax friend zoned me, I didn’t want to discuss personal things. But now he’s going to find out anyway. I feel like a coward.”
She was pacing the kitchen floor in front of me, tapping her upper lip in thought. “You should go,” she said. “To Charlie’s party. Everyone goes. You shouldn’t let Charlie stop you from seeing people.”
“What? No. Not going.” Charlie and Erin had written me a note with the invitation, asking me to come. I’d burned it in the flame of my White Barn Tranquility candle. “I’m over what happened,” I said. “I wish them a happy life, but I’m not doing it in person.”
What I did feel bad about was that ever since the breakup, I’d been avoiding my old friends, avoiding going places where I might run into them. It was like I wore a cloak of shame, which made no sense.
Dina took a sip of wine and kept pacing. “Well then, there’s only one thing to do.”
I looked up at her, not expecting a solution, but suddenly hoping she had one. “What’s that?”
“We get to Brax first.” She placed her hands on the table and leaned in. “ You should be the one to tell him, not Liam or Caleb.”
I checked my watch. My brothers were probably cozied up by the fire, plying Brax with liquor as we spoke. “I lost my chance to do that.”
She shook her head. “Not if we show up with sleds.”
The sleds. Of course. The perfect diversion. I stood up and hugged her. “You’re a genius.”
“If I was a genius, I’d tell you how to fix this mess. But we can start with something simple, right?”
As Dina ran off to tend to Emma, I felt a huge relief. Like I wasn’t alone. And that somehow, I might be able to navigate through all this chaos I’d created.
Plus, it was a fantastic night for sledding down our giant hill and then flying clear through the pasture, like I’d done as a kid a million moonlit nights before. When you were sailing through the icy cold air on a sled, you didn’t think about anything. You just closed your eyes, hung on for dear life, and enjoyed every wild, fleeting, free moment. And prayed that you survived the ride.
While I was waiting for Dina, I found my mom in the family room, sitting back in the recliner she’d sequestered from my dad, her feet propped up near the blazing fire.
I handed her one of two mugs of tea I’d brought in from the kitchen, tossed my grandma’s colorful crocheted afghan over her legs, and took a seat on the couch. Cooper hopped up and snuggled in right beside me. Within seconds, he went belly-up, begging to be rubbed, his favorite thing in the world. Of course, I complied.
“You did too much.” I waved my hands around the room. “Making everything look so Christmasy, making all our favorites for dinner.” I made a note to cook dinner tomorrow, regardless of how awful the consequences were. She flashed me a smile that I read as You silly girl, don’t you get it? I’ve always been able to read my mom, probably because we are alike in many ways. We’re attuned to others’ feelings and emotions, we’re do-gooders when we can be, and we tended to wear our hearts on our sleeves. Except she can’t—or won’t—fake what she’s feeling.
Well, with that last one, she was far braver than me.
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“Don’t treat me like I’m too weak to do what I want,” she said in a firm tone. “You know I love this more than anything—having you kids home, watching you finally find happiness.”
Guilt hit me again, oozing its way around my stomach like thick green slime. I knew how badly she wanted my happiness. She’d mentioned it frequently in our conversations, often before her own health.
That said more about my mother than anything else. She was selfless. More concerned about others than herself.
“It’s wonderful to be home.” And to have her with us, God willing, for many more Christmases to come.
My mom looked at me, her eyes a little watery, her expression earnest. “Mia, I think Brax is wonderful. Every time he looks at you, your whole face lights up.”
I felt my cheeks blaze, the curse of the pale complected. Sadly, I knew she was right. When I caught Brax glancing my way, it was like lighting a match. Heat skyrocketed uncontrollably through me, head to toes. But it was just the same unholy attraction I’d gotten used to fighting from the start.
I wished everyone would stop telling me how in love I looked when I was doing everything possible to protect my heart. Next time our eyes met, I swore I would frown deeply, even scowl. I’d glower and toss daggers at him with my eyes. Then we’d see if anything could break through that force field.
My mom blew on her tea, cradling it in her hands. “I’ve always said that there’s not much to a relationship without chemistry.” She tapped her teacup thoughtfully. “Anyone can see that you two have it in spades. You seem well matched.”
Well matched. Chemistry in spades. Creepily, I pondered again how easily my mother had bought my lies. Clearly, I’d added a darker bent to my personality since that time when I was ten and couldn’t sleep until I’d confessed to being the one who’d pillaged every last crispy chocolate egg from my siblings’ Easter baskets.
She took a sip of tea. “Are you and Brax going to Charlie and Erin’s party?”
The question was as loaded as our twelve-foot Christmas tree, every possible branch and bough weighted with some storied ornament from our pasts, yet the expression on my mom’s face was as placid as if she’d just inquired about the weather.
“No, Mother.” I hadn’t used that tone—or called her Mother —since I was eighteen and she made me return the dress I’d bought for prom because she said it looked less substantial than a ’40’s pinup girl’s bathing suit.
She laughed. “You haven’t gotten irritated with me since I got sick. It feels sort of good.”
I frowned instead of laughed. “I’ll send a card.”
“Charlie worries a lot about how you feel,” she said carefully, like she was tiptoeing around this awful topic. “His mom tells me he’s waiting for your blessing.”
Clearly, Charlie hadn’t waited for anything. “To absolve him of guilt?” I snorted.
She gave me a stern look. “Now that you found someone who’s right, maybe you can find room in your heart to forgive.”
I set down my mug, no longer wanting any tea. “I forgive him because I’ve moved on. But as far as showing up there…maybe you could do that, but not me.”
I’ll bet you’re thinking that I seemed like a nice person, concerned with helping others—my patients, my family. My friends would likely say the same. I didn’t cut people off, or alienate them, or hold grudges. But I couldn’t simply pretend with Charlie that nothing had happened, as my mom actually seemed to be suggesting.
My mom would always think of him as that cute, little, chubby-cheeked, curly-haired toddler. Even now, she talked as if what he did—what they did, Charlie and Erin—had been something easy-peasy to get over and move on from.
She shook her head adamantly, as if I wasn’t understanding. “I’m not saying what he did was right. I’m saying that you can’t avoid all your friends, everyone—even Charlie—forever. Why let him dictate what you do? But that’s for you to decide.”
So my mom had called me out—and unfortunately, the sinking sensation in my stomach told me she was right, as she usually was. The whole situation was so awkward. If I went to the party, I’d feel like I was under a microscope, with everyone watching for my reaction. But how long was I going to hide for? And didn’t that give Charlie power, if what he did kept me from my old friends and neighbors?
Just as I was about to get up, my mom threw off the afghan, got up, and came to sit beside me. She slid her hand in mine. I initially frowned, but she made me sit there like that until I calmed down. Which of course I eventually did. Because I understood that having my mom by my side, holding my hand, was a precious something that I could have lost. And that thought made all my worries seem much more insignificant. “I’ll think about it,” I finally said.
“Good,” she said, squeezing my hand. We sat for a few minutes, enjoying the fire and the tree. Before long, my mom’s sheer force of stubborn will made me forget that stupid party and just enjoy the moment. Cooper opened one eye and shut it again, wanting nothing more than for me to continue the nonstop belly rubs I was still providing. Oh, to be a dog.
My mom patted my knee. “One day, no one will care what happened, and none of this will even be important to you anymore.”
My head knew this. It knew that this was what was important—being here with my mom, my family. That one day Charlie would be a dim line from my past. I just wasn’t completely there yet.
Thankfully, just then, Dina walked down the stairs and into the room wearing a hot-pink cap with silvery threads shimmering through it, looking more like a kid herself than the mom of a toddler. “Ready to sled?” She turned on the monitor on the end table. “Emma went out hard. Thanks for listening out for her while we’re gone, Beth. We won’t be too long.”
My mom laughed. “I’m perfectly happy sitting here with my tea and my book.” She picked up a hardcover with a glossy library cover from the end table next to her. “Have fun sledding.”
Dina gave me a nod. Let’s do this .
Time to rescue Brax from interrogation by my brothers. So that I would get to tell him all my secrets instead.