A Merry Little Christmas #3
The sound is soft, knowing. A memory and a kindness.
It pulls my eyes back to his—they’re ocean blue.
Sky blue. The color of the marker he used to scrawl his number across my thigh the night we met at some frat party after flirting for hours.
The shade that colored my world in the months after we both got our dream jobs thousands of miles apart—him in Chicago to work on the Cubs’ operations team and me in San Francisco to work on my favorite skin care company’s social media team.
“Well,” he says, rubbing a finger against the corner of his mouth as he continues to look at me, some emotion making that blue unfathomable, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Does he mean that? Our breakup wasn’t acrimonious; if anything, it was the opposite.
We tried long distance for months, neither of us willing to let the other give up their dream and move.
The longer it went on, though, the harder it got, and the more I wanted to preserve what we had instead of letting it erode into what I’d watched with my parents my whole life.
I told him that one night, sobbing, and from there it was inevitable.
Agreeing that we loved each other but the timing was wrong was the kindest thing we could’ve done, and the fucking hardest.
Secretly I hoped that the timing would right itself at some point, that we’d find our way back to each other. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t occasionally looked at job listings in Chicago, even though I love San Francisco.
Clearly, Max hasn’t been doing the same, and I can’t be mad about that, can I? Not rationally, anyway, so I paste on a smile I hope looks cheerful. Totally fine. “I am too.”
Abby claps her hands together, looking between the two of us with a grin. “Wow. This is going to be so fun.”
My smile drops as soon as Max turns to direct Abby back into the house with one last glance over his shoulder.
Naomi turns to me with her dark brows sky-high. “Well, that was… something.”
“You know what? Forget fleeing in your car,” I say. “Just run me over with it.”
Almost immediately, I discover that there are two houses involved in this getaway, and that the Russells and Parks are staying in the rental next door for the next three days, while the Durhams will be staying here with the Molinas.
Which means Max and Abby are staying here.
But I’m staying here and I can’t handle that, I want to wail. Instead, I smile when Annette tells the happy couple, along with Naomi and me, that the rooms downstairs belong to us.
“They only have twin beds, though,” she says. “Hope that’s okay.”
“Totally fine,” Abby says cheerfully. “Max snores. The farther away we are from each other, the better.”
My gaze jumps to him. He snores? That’s new.
“And Eleanor kicks,” Naomi adds, slinging an arm over my shoulders.
Now it’s Max’s eyes that skip to me, flashing with awareness. That bedtime habit isn’t new. I swear I see the ghost of a smile before he schools it and looks away.
“Fine with me too,” he says, so neutrally that it makes me wonder if he’s even ten percent as shaken over this situation as I am. It’s so hard to tell. The shock that carved out his features for the first ten minutes after he showed up has settled into something else entirely.
When Naomi pulls me into the kitchen, it’s a relief.
The chaos distracts me from counting the number of times I catch Max looking at me (ten) or the number of times he catches me looking at him (thirteen, ugh) or the number of times he touches Abby (two).
I get folded into the Durham magic while I’m at it, and it makes me ache and glow in equal measure.
Jane pours me a huge glass of wine, exclaims over my intricately designed Christmas nails, and asks a million questions about my life.
Then she hands me off to Marcus, who shows me pictures of this year’s tree setup, pointing out the blurry approximation of the spots where the ornaments I gifted them each year hang.
I round out the tour with a lump in my throat while I chat with Levi, who tells me all the colleges he’s applied to.
“I’m hoping to get into UC Berkeley,” he says, glancing over at his brother, who’s standing next to a stocking-draped fireplace, engaged in conversation even though his eyes are on us. “Especially if my brother—”
“Levi, c’mere,” Max calls. “Toni wants to hear about how soccer is going.”
Dinner comes and goes with Max on one side of Naomi and me on the other, with dessert and a teasing but nonstop interrogation of everyone’s romantic life.
Oscar starts to pull me into the fold, which makes me feel lovingly included and incredibly perceived, but Naomi shuts it down with a quelling look that Max catches.
Our eyes meet in the middle of the space Naomi’s carved out between us. That takes our tally up to eleven. Or is it fourteen? Maybe this counts as the first time, since we looked simultaneously.
That brain-pounding math is a sign I need to take a quick breather, so when the idea of charades is introduced, I decide to make my escape.
Naomi peers through her place in the middle of an enthusiastic huddle as soon as my hand touches the sliding glass door handle and mouths, You good?
I give her a thumbs-up I hope is convincing, then slip outside.
Earlier, I overheard Jane talking about a smaller lakefront dock at the end of the backyard, so I head that way now, following the winding stone walkway lit with brushed gold path lights.
Snow blankets the ground, and the sky stretches out endlessly overhead, velvety and star-sprinkled.
I inhale the icy air, taking my first real breath of the night.
I’m so busy deep breathing that I don’t realize someone else is on the dock until I’m at the edge of it. Two someones, to be exact—Max and Abby. They’re faced out toward the inky lake, their elbows resting on the railing.
“All I’m saying is, I don’t understand why you’re waiting until you know the outcome,” Abby says. “You just told me that the guy basically said it was yours, so why don’t you just—”
“Abby.” Even if he weren’t right in front of me, I’d know Max’s voice anywhere. But the tone is foreign to me: low and authoritative, a brick wall. “I love you, so don’t take this the wrong way, but…”
“Shut up?” she deadpans, because of course he wouldn’t say those words directly to her. Because that’s just the kind of guy he is. Because he loves her.
I should turn around, but I can’t. Hearing those words directed at someone else has frozen me more effectively than the nighttime air curling under my coat. After four years apart, I have zero claim to him, but it feels like losing him all over again all the same.
Max looks over at Abby. In the moonlight, I can just make out the strong line of his jaw, the curve of his cheek, the dark slash of an eyebrow. “Yes, that,” he says. “I’m supposed to hear back for sure next week. I’ll do it after that.”
With a sharp sigh, she turns toward him and reaches up, cupping his cheek with irritation and affection carved into her expression. She gazes at him with such easy belonging, and I don’t want to watch, I can’t, but I also can’t look away.
“You know,” she says, “for such a brilliant guy, you sure are a dumbass.”
His choked laugh quickly dissolves into a sigh that makes his body droop. “You don’t get it.”
“Please. You’ve been talking about it nonstop. I know you’re scared of what she’ll say, but—”
I don’t know if I make a sound or if I move or if Abby just has the senses of a cat; whatever it is, it sends her focus bouncing from Max to me. She jerks with surprise, her hand falling from his cheek as a smile overtakes her face.
“Hey!” she exclaims.
Max looks over his shoulder absently, then double takes when he sees me frozen ten feet away. He straightens in increments, eyes on me; it reminds me of those time-lapse videos of flowers blooming.
“Sorry, I was”—shamelessly eavesdropping, to my mental and emotional detriment—“just getting some air. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting,” Abby says, already striding toward me, her hands jammed into the pockets of her long, puffy coat. “In fact, your timing is perfect. I was just telling Max a minute ago that you two should catch up. Chat about life and things.”
“Oh, I’m not sure—”
“I am,” she says as she passes me with a wink. Her hand lands on my shoulder, squeezing, and then she’s off, headed back toward the lit-up house.
I stare at it, trying to brace myself for being alone with Max.
Trying to prepare myself for the possibility he won’t be interested in catching up, that in a matter of seconds he’ll be right behind Abby instead.
I take in the cheerful movement across the windows on the first floor, the raucous noise that even the distance can’t muffle, the Christmas lights that blink merrily on the tree inside.
A jazz rendition of some holiday song I can’t place curls into the air from a neighboring backyard, but otherwise the night is quiet.
Behind me, the deck creaks once. A second time. A steady third and fourth. I recognize the cadence of Max’s footfalls; we had hardwood in our apartment that would groan if you looked at it wrong.
And then he’s next to me. My heart dips as I turn to him. The warmth of his skin intensifies the scent of his cologne—spicy, delicious—and it drifts between us as he dips his chin to gaze down at me, his breath escaping his mouth in one long, white cloud.
“Hi again,” I say, my pulse beating hard in my neck.
His mouth quirks. “Hi.”
Several beats pass between us before I huff out a laugh. His comes a second later, much easier than mine.
“We’re a little rusty with the conversation skills,” he says ruefully, then nods toward the other end of the deck, his eyebrow lifting in a questioning, Want to relocate?
“In our defense,” I say as we make our way over, “it’s been four years since we’ve needed to use them with each other.”