Chapter 34
ZARIAH
KEPT IN THE FAMILY
The first three days being back home for the holidays were always the busiest. My mom didn’t believe in going halfway. A huge nativity scene stretched across our lawn, you could see our decorations from down the block, and we were always ‘the house’ our relatives visited.
It was hard as shit to hide the letters.
“ZZ!” my cousin screamed. “There’s another letter!”
“There’s something called an ‘indoor voice,’” I suggested. “You should try it sometime.”
I camped out in front of the washing machine, shoulders hunched to hide the contents of Denali’s letter.
I miss you so much. Everybody thinks I’m pumped to go through the advent calendars but I’m just counting down the days until I see you again.
“That’s so sappy,” I whispered. “So corny. So…” A happy shiver ran through me, and I found myself whistling, humming along to the Christmas songs crooning from the radio. Daydreams of Denali were on my mind. I still had the warm fuzzies on my way to the kitchen to see if my aunts needed help.
Today seemed like a dessert day. Everyone was up to their elbows in flour.
“Zariah?” My Aunt Beatrice frowned at me. “Perché cammini così?”
“Walking like what?” I asked. “How am I walking?”
She mimicked my walk, stumbling across the kitchen tile while the other ladies tittered. “Come se la freccia di Cupido ti avesse trafitto?”
Oh my god, the meddling aunts sniffed out the lovesickness. My ears burned, my aunts laughing harder.
My mom wiped her hands on a towel. “There’s no boy. Zariah would’ve told me.”
“Guarda la sua faccia!” Aunt Beatrice cackled.
She was right, my expression betrayed me. I froze while my mother took my face in her hands, inspecting me. Her mouth fell open. “What’s this in your eyes?”
“Irises?” I suggested. “Corneas?”
“Jay!” she belted.
My dad poked his head in the kitchen, eating chocolate popcorn. “Hm?”
Their love story was one for the ages. My parents met when my dad was the new student-teacher for my kindergarten class.
He said when he saw my mom, it was love at first sight.
She was a single mother, struggling with twins, working too many late nights at the hospital, and he was smitten.
But that was his first year teaching, a relationship would’ve been inappropriate.
So my dad waited. On our last day of school, he asked my mother out for dinner. In Italian.
He spent the year secretly learning Italian for her.
The rest was history—they were married four months later.
“What are we talking about?” my dad asked, munching popcorn.
“Zariah has a boy,” my mom said quickly.
I loved my family but they meddled too much. And while Elijah kept quiet about hockey around the house, if my infatuation with a ‘boy’ became widespread knowledge, I didn’t know how long Elijah could keep things to himself.
Shit. I was trapped.
“There isn’t a boy,” I said slowly. “Because…he’s a man.”
“A man?” my dad repeated, amused.
“A gentleman,” I clarified. “He pulls out my chair, he opens the door, he’s very soft with me.” I reached for the letter in my back pocket, flashing it for my family to coo over. “He writes love letters.”
“Oh, I like this man,” my dad chuckled. “When do we meet him?”
I stuffed the envelope in my pocket again. “Not yet. I’m swearing you to secrecy.”
“Secrecy?” my mom echoed.
“He’s one of Elijah’s teammates,” I said. “You know how protective he is. We’re not telling Elijah until the season’s over.”
It was their Achilles’ heel. Elijah was the baby in my parents’ eyes. They immediately relented, promising to keep their silence.
Aunt Beatrice threw me a mischievous grin. “Herschel diceva sempre che saresti finita da un giocatore di hockey.”
“Beatrice,” my mom snapped, her excitement vanishing to reprimand her. My mom never snapped at anybody. I couldn’t believe how quickly her mood soured over a silly comment that Grandpa Hersch made about me ending up with a hockey player.
Why would that bother her so much?
In fact, the only other time I remembered hearing about my mom yelling was through Elijah. The conversation at Yemeni Oasis came back to me—about the ice monster.
Why did that bother my mom? Why would she care who Hersch left it to?
“Oh my god,” I whispered. “I’m an idiot.”
Why didn’t I see it before?
My grandfather left his sculpture to Denali!
I located the storage keys and grabbed my brother. He had cookies stuffed in his mouth and refused to leave indoor heating, but I didn’t care. I shoved him outside with me.
“You know how meddling our family is?” I asked.
He licked the frosting off his fingers. “Uh-huh, yeah.”
“I don’t want Denali mentioned by name.”
“He’s not just your boyfriend, he was my friend first.”
A thrill rushed up my spine at the official title. “We don’t have labels yet.”
“Shut up.” Elijah grinned, raising his voice. “We don’t have labels yet.”
After our impromptu birthday party, something changed with Elijah. I thought maybe it was because he was putting on a front for the holidays, but his smile seemed real. Sure, he wasn’t like he used to be, but this was so much better.
With a matching grin, I rifled through the storage shed. Our dad loved color-coordinating and labeling things, but there was no ‘Herschel’s Stuff’ or ‘Ice Monster’ to be found. I pulled down more boxes. “Swear that you’ll keep quiet about him.”
“You’re overreacting, Z,” Elijah chortled.
“Swear it,” I warned. “I’m keeping secrets for you too.”
“Fine. Fine. What are you looking for?”
“The ice monster. I’m stealing it, it’s mine.”
“You think Mom won’t notice?”
“Not with the holidays. We have so many old relatives who accidentally steal stuff, she won’t think anything of it.”
“This is a little different.”
“How?”
Elijah showed me a weird notch in the floorboards, revealing a hidden section underneath. I got down next to him and carefully pulled up the heavy box, cold to the touch. A letter stuck out but I hid it from Elijah.
“Swear to secrecy,” I warned, holding out my palm.
Elijah sighed, smacking his palm against mine, going through the handshake we hadn’t done together since we were kids. Still with his hand in the air, he hesitated. “I didn’t know how to tell you. Denali doesn’t know. But…he and I…”
“Do our handshake?”
“Yeah. You’re not mad?”
I shrugged, lifting the box. “If you’re going to share it with anybody, I’m glad you kept it in the family.”
At noon, I was walking around the house to light the Christmas candles when my phone rang. Denali. My lips tugged up for a smile. “Hey, Alaska.”
“Hey,” he mumbled, strangely downcast.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Monotonous voices murmured around him, I couldn’t pick them out over the call. “So, I’m…trying to respect your boundaries…and I don’t want to be needy…”
“What’s up?”
“It’s been three days…and you haven’t called me, and you aren’t really texting me…”
My heart squeezed. “No, no, no, I’m not ignoring you. It’s been so busy here—”
“It’s different on campus,” he said, apologetic. “We don’t have to rely on, like, the postal service, and I get to talk to you all the time.” A heavy silence laid over the phone. “I’m sorry, I really miss you.”
“No, I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” I bit my lip. “I miss you too. What are you up to?”
Denali was at the mall with his nieces—his two brothers’ kids. They were playing in the arcade and routinely came back to ask Denali for more money.
I tsked. “They’re bleeding you dry.”
“I can afford it,” he chuckled. “It’s so weird getting my jersey report. People are buying my jersey.”
“If your Michigan coaches weren’t so fucking dumb, people would’ve already been buying them.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Coach Taylor never let any of my jerseys go to shop. Said it took too much attention away from Hop Robert’s kid. He was a senior who couldn’t shoot a fucking puck—that’s what I was up against.”
“Well, they didn’t know how good they had it.” I went to the garage to start up a load of laundry. “Do you know what I have on?”
“What?”
“Your hoodie.”
I could hear his smile over the phone. “Yeah?”
“It’s not the number seven hoodie, that one has your name on it, but it’s the one I nicked from your closet. Want a picture?”
“Yes. Please.”
I snapped a couple in front of the washing machine, smiling for the camera. In the corner of the image though, I saw the boxes my dad brought down from the attic. They were my kid’s toys, my old hockey gear, and…
“Ooo, Alaska,” I teased. “You messed up calling me. I found your letters.”
“From five years ago? Oh, shit.”
I hefted them in my hand, flipping through the postcards. “I told you I kept them, didn’t I?”
“I kind of want to hear one.”
“What possible motive could you have?” I laughed.
“I’m on the seventh round of watching my nieces play Dance Disco Dance at the arcade, and I’d much rather hear your voice. That’s my motivation.”
“How should I imitate your voice?”
“Do it sexy.”
I tried out a teenage boy’s croak. “How’s this? Really sexy?”
“Oh, god.”
“Okay, first letter.” I turned over the postcard. “Raya, I’m sorry about Hersch. That sounds like a bad hospital visit.”
“When was that?”
“I think it’s when Hersch fell down the stairs, and I had to call the ambulance.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember.”
“I really want to put my tongue in your vagina and rest.”
“What?” Denali demanded.
“That’s the next line.”
“That can’t be the next line.” He groaned. “Fuck me.”
I changed my tone again. “It’s really relaxing, When I buy us a house I want a room where we can watch movies and I can have my tongue in your vagina and we can hang out and do that for lots of hours—”
“It doesn’t say that, please.”
“My favorite part is that you picked out this kitschy-cute postcard with a squirrel driving an RV.”
“Jesus Christ. Is that it?”
“No—there’s more. P.S. I love you—” I stumbled over the words, forcing myself to relax again. “If you die before me, I’ll make sure our kids have lots of money before I kill myself.”
“That’s fucking insane,” he muttered. “Hersch had to get stitches and I wrote that? You should’ve filed a restraining order.”
“You were a horny fifteen-year-old. It’s not shocking how not-suave you were.”
“Burn it. Please.”
“Nope, these’ll be worth real money when you’re a famous hockey star.”
Denali sighed. “Awesome.”
“Don’t worry, this isn’t your Christmas present. That’s already in the mail.”
He perked up. “You got me a present?”
“Does your mom still go through your mail?”
“Yep.”
“Keep your eye out, I sent you two packages. They should be there on the twenty-third.”
“You sent two? I only sent one.”
I shrugged. “One of mine is kind of secondhand. I didn’t buy it.”
“But you sent two, I only sent one,” he said, frustrated. “I won’t be able to ship you anything else before Christmas.”
“Oh no. And here I am an orphan, living under a bridge, without fifty relatives who’ve brought me a bunch of crap I don’t need.”
“But you sent two.”
Walking back inside, I found a quiet place on the stairs to talk to him. “What about we suspend our cautionary rules and regulations for the second gift? So you can send anything your heart desires. Phallas-shaped pictures included.”
“Anything?” he asked quietly. “I could give you anything?”
“Mm-hmm. Lingerie too. Go nuts.”
Denali was silent for so long, I could hear the arcade around him. He drew in a slow breath. “Can I repair the typewriter?”
Surprise flickered through me. I stared at the Christmas tree without words. Denali was so good at leaving me speechless.
There was something weightless about feelings this deep, like nothing could hold me down when I talked to him.
I twisted my curls between my fingers, heart thrumming. “Mm-hmm. Merry Christmas.”