Chapter 19 Merry Little Christmas
Merry Little Christmas
@M can you send me your recipe for that roasted beet they did manage to make it to the Fairy Pools and Old Man of Storr.
And while they didn’t have dinner with Greta and Edgar, Theo did drop off some Christmas cookies he’d baked, and they’d visited with them for at least an hour.
Sage loved hearing the stories about the trouble Theo used to get into around the island. She smiles as she thinks of how they made his cheeks flush, even as a grin tugged at his lips as Greta regaled Sage with tale after tale.
Sage grabs the butter and makes her way back to Theo. He’s barely made it three feet, but instead of squinting at his phone, he’s frowning up at the shelves from beneath the pulled-low brim of his ball cap as if they’ve personally offended him.
“They don’t have the brand I like,” he pouts.
“Sorry?”
“The thyme,” he mutters, his arms folding across his chest as he glares at what looks like a perfectly acceptable jar of thyme to Sage. She reaches across him and plucks it off the shelf, her face scrunching to mimic Theo’s furrow as she does.
“You’re sort of a control freak, did you know that?”
“From the mouths of babes,” he scoffs, his hand latching onto her wrist and tugging so she’s pressed against him. “This thyme isn’t good.”
“It’s the only one they’ve got. Do you want it or not?” He purses his lips, and Sage grins. “Come on, Theo. Thyme’s a wastin’.”
“Oh my god,” he groans. “That was horrible.”
She laughs, and Theo grins and ducks his head, and she’s tilting hers up to meet him, not a care in the world, but—
Theo freezes.
Pulls back.
Looks at her with wide eyes and a tight smile.
“Sorry,” he coughs. His hand drops to the cart, pink streaking across his cheeks as he shakes his head. “Probably not the wisest place to be doing that.”
He glances around, and sure enough, a teenaged boy is gawking at him as he shops with his mom. He murmurs something to her, and the mom looks over at Theo before tugging her son away.
The thing is, neither of them spare Sage a glance.
Actually, no.
That’s not the thing.
The thing is that Sage hadn’t even thought about the implications of going out in public together when Theo had grabbed her suitcase from the back of Hank, tossed it in his bedroom, and promptly declared they had to go to the supermarket before it became chockablock with people.
She had spent a few minutes debating with him about which version of the English language was more utterly ridiculous, but that’s beside the point.
She hadn’t thought about it—chockablock or no. They’ve been so insulated here, so in their own little world, she’d just … hopped into his car and readied their shopping list without considering the consequences.
And ironically, it wasn’t anyone else who reminded them. Theo was right—people here leave him alone.
It was Theo who just brought them back into reality, and she finds her lips parting but no words surfacing because …
Because Theo put space between them, and she has no right to feel any sort of way about it, but she does. She does, and the middle of the grocery store isn’t the place to dissect that, so instead she forces a shrug and says, “Another thyme, then.”
Theo nudges her, his laugh bouncing off the perfectly acceptable jars of herbs that line the shelves.
“Bloody impossible,” he mutters, but the smile on his lips gives him away. His phone dings, and he fishes it out of the back pocket of his jeans as Sage takes over pushing the cart.
“Sure, sure.” She waves him off. She has no idea what they’re looking for next, but she takes the lead anyway, stumbling a bit as the cart wheel sticks to the floor.
“You keep saying that,” she says as she recovers, “but I’m not sure you actually mean it.
” She reaches the end of the aisle and looks both ways. “Where to now?”
Theo doesn’t answer.
Sage turns to see him still standing in front of the dried herbs and spices.
No, not standing.
He looks … frozen to the spot. His head is bent as he gazes down at his phone, and with his hat, she can’t see his expression, but she knows from the rigid line of his shoulders that something is wrong.
He doesn’t move as she approaches—doesn’t acknowledge her presence at all, even when she calls his name.
Sage abandons the cart and steps to his side, her fingers curling around his forearm, public space be damned.
“Theo,” she says again. “What is it?”
He lifts his head slowly, his jaw tight and his eyes clouded over. He swallows. Tucks the phone back in his pocket. Clears his throat. But the gravel is still there when he says, “He’s not coming.”
Sage is too focused on the tension lining his face to connect the pieces. She frowns, her mouth moving to question him, but Theo shakes his head. “My dad,” he clarifies, his round vowels clipped. “He’s not coming.”
A lifetime of being a bookish nerd means Sage is well practiced at picking up subtext. Not coming isn’t can’t come, which means this … is a choice.
A horrible, selfish, rage-inducing choice that has something fierce and protective unfurling in her as she tightens her hold on his forearm.
“What the fuck?”
“Quite,” he mutters, infuriatingly composed.
“Why?” she demands. Theo fixes his gaze ahead, his chin lifting slightly as he stares unseeingly down the aisle.
“Some business thing came up, I guess.”
“Theo.”
“It’s f—”
“It is not fine,” Sage interjects. “It’s—” She swallows her words when his gaze cuts to hers, because that firm grip on his mask slips, just for a second, giving her a peek at the devastation he’s keeping just below the surface.
“Can we not do this here?” he requests, a plea woven through it. “Please? I just … not here.”
It breaks her heart a little.
A lot.
“Okay,” she agrees. She squeezes his arm once before letting go. “Okay,” she repeats. If Theo doesn’t want to talk about it, they won’t talk about it. But she’s not sure what else he wants, because he’s just standing there, looking lost and close to tears, and it makes Sage’s chest ache.
She wants to fix it.
She has to fix it.
“New plan,” she says, nudging Theo to get him moving toward the cart. “Christmas mash-up.”
Confusion pinches the space between his brows as he frowns warily at her. “What?”
“You pick some of your favorite traditions, I’ll pick mine, and we’ll mash them together and make something totally messy that reflects the state of our lives right now.”
For a moment, she fears she’s gone too far, because Theo merely stares at her. But then his shoulders are dropping and his head is tilting back as he huffs a laugh. “How is that any different from what we were doing?”
“Be serious,” Sage deadpans. “Neither of us are choosing turkey.” He gives her a bemused smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he shakes his head.
“Christ, Collins,” he breathes. “I am so bloody glad you stayed.”
“Did you know he based his accent in this off of Sean Connery?” Sage says as she breaks a corner off the gingerbread house they’re supposed to be decorating and pops it in her mouth, eyes fixed on the TV.