2. Garrett
Garrett
I 'm lying in a honeymoon suite covered in rose petals with my twenty-four-year-old assistant six inches away from me, and I can't stop thinking about how soft her hair looked when she came out of the bathroom.
She straightened it this morning. I always notice, but tonight it was wavy and loose and falling over her shoulder, and something about seeing her like that, without all her careful armor in place, made me feel these complicated feelings even harder.
This is a problem.
This has been a problem for fourteen months, but tonight it's an acute, immediate problem because she's right there and I can smell her shampoo and hear her breathing, and I'm supposed to be sleeping.
I'm not sleeping.
I can tell she's not sleeping either. Her breathing is too careful, too controlled. She's pretending, and I'm pretending we're both pretending, and this is the most elaborate dance of avoidance I've ever participated in.
And I've been avoiding things for five years.
I give up around 2 AM. Carefully, quietly, I slide out of bed and move to the window.
Outside, the courtyard is completely transformed: everything blanketed in white, the fountain frozen mid-cascade, the fairy lights reflected in the snow.
It's beautiful in a way I haven't let myself notice in a long time.
Lena, my late wife, loved the first snow of the season. She'd drag me outside, make me catch snowflakes on my tongue like we were kids. I thought it was ridiculous. Now I'd give anything to be that ridiculous with her again.
"Can't sleep either?"
I turn to find Claire sitting up in bed, her hair a mess from the pillow, eyes soft in the dim light.
"Didn't mean to wake you."
"You didn't. I've been awake." She slides out of bed and joins me at the window, wrapping her arms around herself against the chill from the glass. She's barefoot, her pajama pants hanging low on her hips, and I force myself to look at the snow instead of her.
We stand in silence for a moment. Somewhere in the hotel, I can hear "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" playing, muffled through walls and floors. The sad version, not the cheerful one.
"You really love Christmas," I say finally.
"I do." Her voice is quiet. "My dad used to go all out when I was little. We'd spend the whole day after Thanksgiving decorating—he'd put lights on everything, even the mailbox. Mom would bake cookies, and we'd watch all the old movies. Rudolph, Frosty, A Christmas Story on repeat."
"Sounds nice."
"It was." She's quiet for a moment. "He died when I was twelve. Heart attack, completely out of nowhere. After that, Christmas was just... different. Mom tried, but her heart wasn't in it. Now she mostly just uses the holidays as an excuse to point out everything I'm doing wrong with my life."
"I'm sorry. About your father."
She shrugs, but I can see the pain underneath. "It was a long time ago. What about you? You said you don't hate Christmas, but you were going to spend it alone in Aspen."
I should deflect. Keep the walls up. But it's 2 AM and we're standing in a dark room watching snow fall, and somehow that makes it easier.
"I used to love it," I admit. "My wife—Lena—she was obsessed. Decorating started the day after Thanksgiving. She'd drag me to every holiday market in the city, every tree lighting ceremony. Our house looked like something out of a catalog."
"She sounds wonderful."
"She was." The words still feel strange. Even after five years, talking about her in past tense feels wrong. "She had ovarian cancer. Stage four by the time they found it. She fought for eighteen months, but—" I stop, jaw tight. I’d never mentioned Lena around her.
Claire's hand finds my arm, gentle. "I'm so sorry, Garth."
Garth. She called me Garth. Not Mr. Rhodes.
"After she died, I threw myself into work. Built the company bigger, made more money, stayed busy. Christmas became just another day to get through. Easier than facing all the memories."
"That's heartbreaking," Claire says softly. "She wouldn't want that for you."
"No. She wouldn't." I glance at her. "She'd probably tell me I'm an idiot for working on Christmas Eve. For making you work on Christmas Eve."
Claire laughs quietly. "She sounds smart."
We fall into silence again, but it's different now. Easier. The music has changed to "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and I find myself actually listening to the lyrics for the first time in years.
I'll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams...
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"Sure."
"Earlier, you said your mother wants you to be happy. But it sounds like she makes you miserable. Why do you keep trying to please her?"
Claire's quiet for a long moment, her arms wrapped tighter around herself. "Because I keep thinking if I just do enough, achieve enough, become enough... she'll be proud of me. That I'll finally be good enough."
"Good enough for what?"
"For people like you," she says, and her voice cracks slightly. "Successful people. Important people. People who have their lives together and don't have to try so hard to be taken seriously."
The pain in her voice kills me. I've spent over a year being cold to her, keeping her at arm's length, and she thinks it's because she's not good enough. When the truth is she's extraordinary and I'm terrified of how much I want her.
"Claire."
"I know it's stupid," she continues, cutting me off. "I know I should be confident, that my worth isn't determined by my dress size or my mother's approval or whether my boss thinks I'm doing a good job. But knowing it and feeling it are two different things, you know?"
I do know. I know exactly what she means. After Lena died, people kept telling me I needed to move on, date again, and be happy. Like it was that simple. Like knowing what you should do and actually doing it were the same thing.
"You are good enough," I tell her. "You're more than good enough. You're…"
I stop myself before I say too much. Before I tell her she's brilliant and capable and the best part of my day. Before I tell her that watching her work is the only thing that makes me feel alive anymore.
Before I tell her I'm in love with her.
"I'm what?" She's looking up at me now, and in the dim light from the courtyard, I can see hope in her eyes.
This is dangerous. We're too close, and I've said too much, and if I don't stop now, I'm going to do something we'll both regret.
But God, I don't want to stop.
"You're an excellent assistant," I say finally, and I watch the hope die in her eyes.
It's for the best. I'm her boss. She's eighteen years younger than me. She deserves someone who isn't broken, someone who can give her a normal relationship, someone who hasn't spent five years hiding from life as a widower.
"Right." She wraps her arms tighter around herself. "An excellent assistant. Of course."
"You should get some sleep," I say, and it comes out colder than I mean it to. It sounds dismissive.
"Right. Sleep." She turns away from the window, from me. "Goodnight, Mr. Rhodes."
Mr. Rhodes. We're back to that.
She climbs back into bed, and I can see the stiffness in her shoulders, the way she curls into herself like she's trying to disappear.
I did that. I hurt her. Again.
I stay at the window for another hour, watching snow fall and hating myself. I almost told her. Almost admitted that every day for the past fourteen months has been torture, watching her walk into my office and knowing I can't have her.
But what would be the point? Even if she somehow felt the same way—which she doesn't, couldn't possibly—what then?
We work together. I'm old enough to have been in college when she was born.
I'm her boss, for fuck's sake. The power dynamic alone makes anything between us inappropriate at best, predatory at worst.
Better to keep the walls up. Better to be cold and distant and professional. Better to make her think I see her as nothing more than an assistant than to risk destroying both our careers and hurting her worse.
When I finally go back to bed, the sky is starting to lighten. Christmas morning, and I'm lying six inches away from the only woman I've wanted in five years, pretending I don't want her at all.
I wake to my phone alarm at 6 AM. I always wake up at 6 AM, even on holidays. Even when I've had approximately two hours of sleep.
Claire is still out, her face peaceful in sleep, her hair spread across the pillow. Without thinking, I reach out to brush a strand away from her face, then stop myself.
What am I doing?
I get up quietly and head for the shower. The hot water helps clear my head, wash away the weird intimacy of the 2 AM conversation. By the time I'm dressed in slacks and a button-down, I've got my armor back in place.
Work. That's what I need. Work is safe. Work I understand.
I order coffee and set up my laptop while Claire sleeps. Check emails and make a list of tasks for when we get back to the office.
Normal. Professional. Nothing happened.
Except everything happened, and I can't stop thinking about her face when I called her an excellent assistant. The way the hope just... died.
I've been cruel to her before, but last night felt worse somehow. More personal.
I can pretend this night never happened. Except I don't want to pretend. I don't want to go to Aspen alone. I don't want her to go to Detroit to a mother who makes her feel small.
I want—What do I want?
I know exactly what I want. I just haven't had the courage to admit it.
Maybe it's time to stop being a coward.