A Merry Little Christmas #4
“Besides our texts three times a year,” he replies, leaning against the railing, his body angled toward mine, pink-cheeked and smiling.
“Besides that,” I say, unable to hide my surprise that he keeps track of the exact number too.
He studies me, like he can see it, and the smile pulling at his mouth drifts away. Moonlight pours over him, edging him in silver. It turns his eyes electric. I should be cold—it’s freezing, it’s nighttime, there’s a breeze coming off the lake—but the way he’s looking at me makes that impossible.
Softly, he asks, “How have you been, El?”
I miss you I miss you I miss you.
“Good.” I miss you. “Um, I just moved into a new apartment a few months ago—roommate free, no less.”
He whistles through his teeth. “Making those big bucks now, huh?”
“Raking it in,” I joke. “I did get a promotion, though, so that helped.”
“Of course you did,” he murmurs with a grin, his eyes roaming along my face. “They knew they had a good thing when they wooed you out of Chicago.”
I don’t miss the sadness that slips into his voice; it pushes its way into my chest too. I’ve tortured myself more than once thinking about an alternate path where I never found that job, where Max never found his.
But it always makes me sadder to think about the years we could’ve gotten had I stayed or he left.
Now it’s even worse, thinking about how it could be us here together celebrating Christmas.
How I could so easily erase the space between us, slide my hands inside his coat, up under his sweater, step my fingers up the ladder of his ribs, press my palms against his hot skin, where the evergreen air can’t bite at him.
How I could kiss up his neck, his jaw, his mouth, how I could wind my tongue with his and taste him and it would be okay because there would be no Abby, no heartbreak, no distance.
It’s so real. I feel it inside my body, even though my hands are curled in my coat pockets, and that’s a different kind of hurt.
To be close enough to touch. To know I can’t.
I realize belatedly that I’ve been staring at him. That he’s been staring back, his throat working in a hard swallow. I look back out at the dark, quiet lake, my heart beating fast.
“You and Naomi seem close,” he says, breaking the silence.
I nod enthusiastically, hungry for a subject change. “We really are, which is funny considering we only met in May. We just clicked right away, I guess.”
“I’m not surprised,” he says. “You’re good at that.”
“Clicking?”
He nods with a lopsided smile, and I can tell he’s thinking of that party where we started talking and never stopped. It was so immediate, so easy.
Dammit. I have to stop thinking about us like that.
“How are things with you? Work is good?”
I nearly ask about Abby—how long they’ve been together, if that’s good—but I don’t want to know.
He nods. Opens his mouth and then closes it, his eyes scanning the shoreline like he’s considering what to say.
“I actually had an interview out here a few days ago,” he replies finally. When his attention returns to me, it’s a weighted thing. “With the Giants.”
My heart stops. The Giants are San Francisco’s team. My San Francisco.
“Oh,” I think I say.
“Oh,” Max echoes, confirming I did.
There are a million things I want to say: Did they find you, or did you apply on your own?
Did you love them? Did they love you? Of course they did; you’re so talented and unbelievably smart.
Why would you choose a team in my city when you have Abby?
Will you bring Abby? Will I have to share a city with you?
Please don’t make me share a city with you when you love someone else.
But instead I ask, “How’d it go?”
His breath leaves him slowly, softly. His eyes don’t leave mine, turning intense. “It went really well.”
“Oh,” I say again. For a second, it’s all I can get out. I’m pretty sure he’s just answered several of my questions, and I’m afraid of what that means for my heart.
The conversation he just had with Abby makes sudden sense: He wanted to wait until he heard back about the job before telling me about it, but she was pushing for him to say it now.
“Well.” I swallow around the lump in my throat, around the sadness and, frankly, the anger, though I know I have no right. It’s just—of all fucking teams. “That’s amazing, Max. They’d be lucky to have you.”
He doesn’t respond right away. He just looks at me in the near darkness, his expression searching. After a moment, he straightens, something fortifying in his eyes.
“El—” he starts, but then Oscar’s voice bellows from the house.
“Come in for charades, kids!”
I’m halfway up the path before Max has even moved. For the rest of the night, I stay the hell away from him and try not to think about what he was going to say next.
I wake up on Christmas Eve with a black cloud hanging over my head.
Naomi keeps me close during our ski day at Palisades, having been privy to my meltdown the night before, when I told her about my conversation with Max by the lake. Specifically—and repeatedly—about how I overheard him telling Abby he loved her.
“It’s just weird,” she mused once my fifth retelling had stalled because I was falling asleep midsentence. “My mom said Max told her it wasn’t serious.”
That’s the thing: From the outside, it doesn’t look serious.
I can count on one hand the number of times they’ve touched, and it’s not like the contact is ever deeply affectionate.
They’re certainly not hanging all over each other.
But I know what I love you means, especially from Max Durham, and in this case, the old adage actions speak louder than words doesn’t apply.
That thought trails me up and down the mountain all day, but my spirits improve once we get back to the house.
It’s hard to stay despondent with holiday music piping through the sound system and all the little kids begging their grandparents to open presents and conversation flowing while snow falls gently outside.
It is, in so many ways, the Christmas I always crave.
And when I catch Max looking at me an additional eleven times, when I notice the close, intense conversation he and Abby have in the kitchen while the rest of us watch White Christmas on the couch, when I feel an ache in my chest I can’t seem to shake, I studiously ignore it all.
But I’m still awake sometime after midnight, listening to Naomi’s soft snores, my body waiting for the text message that usually comes around this time.
Eventually, I give up the fight and creep up to the living room. The tree is still lit, presents stuffed underneath, waiting with anticipation for the crack of dawn, when all the kids will no doubt be up and ready to tear into them.
For now, though, this space is mine. I curl up on the couch, drape a fuzzy blanket over my lap, and then pull up a song on my phone and press play.
The first strains of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” hit me right in the throat.
All the memories I have synced to it play in my mind—the early morning Christmases with Max, every night I spent alone after them, the drive up here yesterday with Naomi—and I let them, leaning my cheek on my hand as I gaze up at the tree.
I’m listening to the Judy version because that’s partly how I feel: wistful that someday the fates will conspire to pull me toward the people I love most. Max, if I’m being honest. My parents, if I’m being even more honest and ten times as delusional, because that relationship will likely never change.
But I feel the Sinatra version, too, like that moment has already arrived in some ways. Like I’ve made those moments, because they matter so much to me. Like all I have to do is hold on.
Maybe that’s how it’s always going to feel for me: a little bit torn in two. If that’s the case, I can handle it. I can love it, even.
But the ache in my chest is still there, and as the minutes pass and the text I normally get doesn’t come, it starts to radiate. Logically, there’s no reason Max would text me. Not when we’re in the same house, and especially not when he has Abby.
I can’t help wishing for it anyway.
A second later, like a little Christmas angel’s bell, my phone dings. I look down, my heart in my throat, to find a text staring expectantly up at me.
Merry Christmas, El. You have good plans today?
Something dissolves inside me. Some sadness, a little bit of anger, both at him for moving on and myself for not ever telling him I couldn’t. And in its place grows a tiny bit of hope, though I don’t know for what.
I pick up my phone, mulling over how to reply while my heart throws itself against my ribs.
I could give the standard answer, but his message doesn’t feel standard, even though it’s the same as last year and the three years before that.
It feels like a hand reaching out, and I can’t help reaching mine back, so I send a picture of the Christmas tree with a text that reads,
Currently.
And then I stare at my phone screen, waiting for his response. I stare at it so hard and with such intensity that I don’t notice he’s in the room until he’s a foot away.
“Holy shit, you scared me,” I gasp, pressing my hand over my heart.
The tree lights illuminate his tiny smile. “Consider it payback for the shock you gave me yesterday.”
“Yeah, well, please note that you did the same to me,” I reply, watching as he lowers himself onto the couch.
He’s wearing the threadbare sweats he should’ve thrown away years ago, an old Golden State Warriors shirt with a significant rip at the left shoulder seam, and his glasses.
His hair is mussed like he’s been running his fingers through it.
He looks almost frozen in time, like the college boy I fell in love with and let take me home.
It’s hard to believe we’ve spent any time apart.
I glance at the bare space between our knees. When I look back up, Max’s attention is trained there too.