Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
“Thank you.”
The words are a whisper from the woman on my chest. It’s long after we left her family’s tree farm, after we lugged the tree into my house, and after we brought a box of extra ornaments and decorations over from her place.
After putting the tree in the stand, we hung all the round ornament balls and lights on it.
We didn’t have a star for the top, but Wren told me she’d look for one that was just right, insisting that tree toppers had to speak to you before you just threw one on top.
We ordered in Chinese and then ate it in front of the glowing tree before she curled up into my chest.
“For the tree? It looks good, Birdie. I’m happy it’s here.
” And despite my general dislike for the holidays and decorations, I realize then that I actually mean it.
I like having them here —the calming, soft glow of the lights and the way they fill up the empty space.
It’s a real tree, obviously, something my neat-freak parents never would have allowed, and I now realize what people mean when they say that they prefer real trees for the smell alone: my entire house now smells like pine.
But it’s not just the decorations. It’s the little nutcracker decoration she put in my living room, half her size, but something she said I had to have when she saw it in her family’s gift shop.
It’s the homemade sugar cookies she grabbed from her freezer and baked after dinner with red and green sprinkles and the mulled cider candle that’s sitting on my coffee table.
It’s cozy and special, and after today, I further realize that despite her love for decorations and spreading joy, Christmas isn’t about commercialism for her. It’s about tiny moments like these with the people she cares about, making memories that will linger for years to come.
And I’m finding more and more; it’s growing on me.
Wren’s version of Christmas is growing on me.
With the dread of the season melting away, I’m starting to remember that I did, at some point, used to love the holidays, before they became a time for responsibilities and missed expectations, before they became a job and a burden.
“Really?” she asks, lifting her head, eyes wide and hopeful. I nod, and she smiles.
“I like the smell.”
That smile spreads into a pleased grin. “It smells like home to me. My parents’ place.”
“We didn’t do much for the holidays, but we had a tree.
Nothing chaotic and surely not one covered in ornaments made by kids.
They had a decorator come in and make one that was aesthetically pleasing, one that wouldn’t interrupt my mother’s decor.
My parents were crazy neat freaks, so we had a fake tree to avoid needles dropping.
I never really got the whole smell thing until now. ”
There’s a beat of silence before Wren speaks.
“You don’t talk about them often,” she murmurs.
I shrug, trying to play it off. “We don’t talk much. There isn’t much to talk about.”
“What are they like?” she asks, shifting to put her hands on my chest, then propping her chin there and staring down my chest at me. “What’s your family like?”
“My family is nothing like yours,” I say with an embarrassed laugh. I remember having friends with close families growing up, ones who didn’t care about prestige or awards or clout, and always feeling embarrassed that my family was the way they were—are, really.
“I didn’t ask about my family, Adam. I asked about yours.” I stare at her, at her sweet, gentle eyes and the small tip of her lips. “I just want to know you more, Adam. You’re very mysterious.”
“Have you Googled me now that you know where to look?”
A blush blooms, and I know my answer.
“I promise I didn’t look at any tabloid articles, just Wikipedia—”
“Read all you want, Wren. I have nothing to hide.” She gives me a look, silently reminding me that I am, in fact, hiding out in Holly Ridge.
“Not from you, anyway.” Joy lights up her face, and I like seeing it there, so I begin telling her what she wants to hear.
“My parents are well-known surgeons, very renowned in their respective fields. They wanted me to do the same. They got me into piano at a young age to improve my hand-eye coordination or some shit like that. Apparently, studies have linked piano playing with surgical skill.”
‘That’s interesting,” Wren says, her fingers tracing along mine with a reverence I’ve never felt before.
“Yeah, well, it backfired. I fell in love with it, with music. It turns out that where they had hoped I would be a great doctor, I was just really good at music. A prodigy of sorts. I picked up instruments fast, often mastering them within a few months.”
Her eyes go wide.“Instruments? Plural?”
“I can play a lot of instruments, but I like the piano best.”
“But in the band…”
“I was bass. I never wanted to be at the forefront, and drums and bass are typically the most in the background. I wanted to live a normal life. Trent didn’t; he loved the limelight, which is why he ended up going solo.”
She lets out an interesting noise but is clearly biting back her commentary, hoping I’ll keep speaking.
“My parents didn’t like the band. They felt it was a waste of all the time and energy they had invested in me.
They realized pretty early on that I wouldn’t be putting my energy into the medical field, so they shifted their focus.
They wanted me to move into classical music, get them the honors they thought they were due that way. ”
“You didn’t want to?”
“Do I look like a tux-and-tails kind of guy, Birdie?” She scrunches up her nose and lets out a little giggle. I feel that urge to kiss her, and I realize I don’t have to fight it, not anymore, so I lean down, pressing my lips to hers. Her body relaxes beneath my touch, and I smile into the kiss.
“No, you don’t,” she responds, a bit dazed when it breaks.
“Exactly. So they were pushing for it, but I was secretly in a band, and we were doing pretty well. I’d say I was at a sleepover or a practice for a sport that was preapproved—couldn’t risk my hands, after all.” Her jaw goes tight, and I chuckle at her protectiveness. “And we got picked up.”
“I imagine they didn’t like that.”
I shake my head and let out a humorless laugh. “No, no, they didn’t. They were pissed, threatened to cut me off and kick me out if I made a fool of them in that way.” I shrug, then finish. “But I knew what I wanted, so I left. I didn’t talk to them for five years.”
“God, that’s crazy,” she whispers with wide eyes. “So you just…did what you wanted?” She sounds so shocked by that, but I suppose that would be a foreign concept for my Wren.
“Yeah. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and that it would never line up with what they wanted from me. I wasn’t going to live my one life for someone else.
” Her face goes contemplative with understanding.
“I didn’t talk to them for five years, until we won Band of the Year.
Dad texted me then and congratulated me.
Now we occasionally speak a couple of times a year, but they’re so different from me, and they don’t get it.
” I shrug, playing it off as I brush her hair back gently. “Your turn.”
“What?” she asks.
“I told you something about me, now it’s your turn. Tell me something no one knows. Something that’s just yours,” I say.
She lifts an eyebrow. “I’m an open book, Adam.”
“The fuck you are,” I scoff out, and she laughs. “Come on. Tell me something no one else knows. Some secret dream you’ve been too selfless to admit out loud.”
Silence hangs between us, and I think for a moment she won’t say anything. I won’t push it, of course, but I stay quiet in case she finds something, gently brushing my fingers through her hair.
“I wish I could travel more,” she says after a while, voice low.
“My parents never left because of the farm, though they don’t mind.
They love it here. But it meant we never went anywhere fun for vacation.
I thought when I left for college, I’d go somewhere fun and exciting, but I stayed in-state to save money and then went right into working at the school.
” She smiles genuinely, and I can see that there are no regrets on her face about that being her path; instead, she’s simply fondly thinking of what could have been.
“Where have you been?”
She lets out a small, self-deprecatory laugh. “I’ve never left Holly Ridge.”
“Never?”
She shakes her head. “I was supposed to go to Seaside Point last summer, but that got…postponed.” I’m sure there’s a story there of some favor she granted, but when she lets out an almost bitter laugh, I focus on her following words.
“Well, I was really supposed to go to Paris. I impulsively bought tickets last year. I was going to go over summer break, but then my grandmother passed away, and everything got so chaotic…I couldn’t do it. ”
Grief lingers in the words, and I’m so unused to dealing with other people’s emotions that I’m not sure what to do.
Despite getting her love of the holidays from her grandmother and bending over backward all season to follow in her footsteps, she really doesn’t talk about her much.
I’m unsure of the right thing to do, to ask, but I go with my gut, which, for the most part, has not steered me wrong with Wren.
“Why Paris?” It’s a simple question, an easy one to brush off if she wants, so I’m surprised when she gives me the answer immediately.
“When I was little, my grandmother got me the book Madeline when I got my appendix out. It’s actually a pretty sad book about a group of little girls living in a boarding school run by nuns, and one of them has her appendix removed, but I found it really entertaining.
It’s set in Paris. Then she got me Madeline at Christmas that same year, and that kind of cemented it.
” She shrugs then, trying to brush it off and make light of her words.
“It’s silly, I know, the only reason I want to go somewhere is a book I read when I was probably six.
But I must have read it at an influential time because it always stuck. ”
I shake my head. “It’s not silly. Not at all.” I often think about how I chose Holly Ridge just because of a woman I met in an airport bar, and that’s far more unhinged than picking your ideal vacation destination based on a book you read as a kid, but she speaks before I can tell her.
“Have you been?” Her eyes are wide and excited, and I can’t help but smile in return.
Reaching up, I brush one of those loose strands of hair behind her ear. “Why do you think I’ve been there?”
“You were in a rock band, Adam. You’ve probably been all over the world. I want to know about everywhere. Where was your favorite? Where did it suck the most? Where was the best food?”
She is the cutest thing on this planet.
“No,” I say with a shake of my head. “I’ve never been to Paris. Maybe one day we’ll go together. Use that passport of yours. I’ll whisk you away to all of the places you’ve always wanted to go.”
She shakes her head and lets out a small smile, a blush creeping over her cheeks. “You don’t have to impress me with lavish trips, Adam. I’m already yours.”
Clearly, she doesn’t get it.
She doesn’t get that I will never take having her for granted. All I want to do is spoil her and give her anything and everything. She doesn’t get that when I say I want to give her everything she asks for, I mean it.
That’s fine.
I’m starting to realize that I’ll be content to spend the rest of our lives proving it.