Chapter 13 Miranda
Chapter thirteen
Miranda
NOW
Driving into Coleman Creek usually made my heart swell up a bit, but driving in with Leo after the eventful week we’d had felt more like coming home from a wartime deployment.
The holiday decorations wrapped around trees and sparkling in storefront windows made the warm embrace of the familiar even more appealing.
I noticed the Hawaiian-shirted Santa outside the bowling alley had a friend this year, a six-foot tall sunglasses-wearing penguin with reindeer antlers.
The official city holiday tree would not be lit until the ceremony this weekend, but we saw it as we passed, already decorated with an array of red, pink, blue, and silver bows.
The high school tree lot was open, beckoning eager residents who felt confident in their ability to keep a fresh fir alive for a month.
At the end of Main Street, my sister Maureen’s consignment shop beckoned, with a piece of paper in the window that read “On Vacation. Back December 9.”
I couldn’t imagine a shop in Los Angeles sticking a sign on the door so the owner could spend a week in the woods.
But Maureen was a one-woman show for now, and the locals didn’t mind.
That was one thing I loved about my hometown.
As much as it sucked to have everyone in your business, it was good to know people had your back.
“Do you want to stop at the pub and grab something to eat?” Leo asked, humming along to the Dean Martin Christmas standards he’d queued up an hour ago.
“I’m not ready to face people just yet. Everyone in town probably knows about Stone by now, and I’d rather deal with it later.”
“Understood.”
We’d broken up the long drive grocery shopping near the highway, so I figured we could hide for a while before anyone realized I’d come to town. My sisters would be back in two days, but Leo and I had the house to ourselves until then.
We’d been quiet during the journey, content to listen to the music as the miles passed.
I thought a lot about what this past week would have been like with Stone if I hadn’t messed up and posted the pic.
Video chats. Counting down the days until he staged his breakup with Naomi.
Waiting for him to come home so we could have a real discussion about our relationship.
To the core of my being, I believed posting that picture had been an accident, but I couldn’t stop the suspicion that—subconsciously—I’d been trying to bring things to a head.
My entire relationship with Stone had been a waiting game I’d willingly participated in.
A waiting game that began as commitment aversion, grew into bored complacency, evolved into paralyzed inertia, and eventually became avoiding the situation altogether.
For the past few months, every interaction with Stone filled me with low-key dread because I couldn’t lie to myself anymore.
The whole time I’d been convincing myself we were in a relationship, we’d actually been waiting to start one.
And part of me knew that when I posted the picture.
Yesterday, when the photos of Stone and Naomi in Vancouver surfaced, I’d barely blinked.
In them, he held her hand and pressed a kiss to her cheek in front of a little club in the Gaslamp district.
My primary reaction was indifference. I wondered if Stone felt the same when he saw pictures of Leo kissing me at the arcade.
Or maybe he hadn’t bothered to look at them.
I thought I’d gained a sort of peace with Stone, an ease. But that was merely a story I’d told myself.
I owed it to him to clean up this mess, whether or not I’d caused it intentionally, and then it was time to set things right. No more waiting game.
Not with Stone.
Or Leo.
The past nights sleeping in Leo’s arms had been both torturous and telling. I couldn’t be with him the way I wanted to be. But I also couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t want what I did.
There was a word for what I felt toward Leo.
I’d read it in a novel once. Limerence. Unrequited love.
The concept wasn’t a perfect match, since Leo loved me back in his way.
Also, I wasn’t obsessed to the point of paralysis.
My limerence was gentler. I desired someone who didn’t desire me back.
And as much as I respected Leo’s right not to want me, the intensity of my own feelings was becoming a pain I could no longer live with.
I’d used Stone to assuage the disappointment of not being able to be with Leo—I saw that now—but it hadn’t worked, and it needed to stop.
After the holidays.
For the next four weeks, I planned to indulge myself like the Leo addict I was.
It was probably unhealthy, torturing myself this way.
I probably needed therapy, but I didn’t care.
If this was the closest I’d ever come to being his girlfriend, I was going to enjoy it.
I was going to pretend that Leo wanted me in all the ways I wanted him.
And I was going to do it in my favorite place in the world. At my favorite time of the year.
When we got to Marley and James’s house, I was unsurprised to find they’d already put up a ton of exterior lights. Leo practically tripped off the front porch when he stepped on the themed welcome mat, which blasted “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
I pulled the key from the fake rock near the door. Flipping on lights along the way, we walked to the kitchen and deposited our grocery bags on the counter.
“I can’t believe they did all this before they left,” Leo shouted from the living room as I put the fresh food in the fridge, and I knew he was taking in the decorations.
“Don’t play like you haven’t met Marley.” I laughed. “She starts in early November, and everything is up by Thanksgiving. The only thing missing is a live tree, which I’m sure they’ll get next weekend.”
Leo popped his head into the kitchen. “There’s already a tree.”
I snorted. “Um, that’s tree number one. I guarantee you tree number two is set up downstairs in the family room. Tree number three will be the live one.”
“Wow. I thought it was over the top last year because of the engagement party.”
“The themed onesie duos didn’t clue you in that she’s more than a little crazy about the season?”
His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I forgot about that.”
“By ‘forgot,’ you mean pushed the embarrassing memory into the darkest recesses of your mind?”
“Hundred Percent.”
I threw bags of chips into the basket in the pantry.
On the top shelf, I saw stacks of red decorative glitter and peppermint candy melts and realized my sister had already started assembling ingredients for Christmas cookies and treats.
“Honestly, I’m glad she’s like this. It’s something she and our mom had in common.
I don’t think Maureen and I would have kept all the holiday traditions alive if we’d been left to our own devices.
Marley’s sort of been our anchor like that. ”
He went back into the living room to put on a record, commenting about how weird the house seemed without Bambi and Oscar, Marley and James’s dogs.
It was nice that mentioning my mom no longer felt like an arrow to the heart.
I’d healed a lot in the two years since Leo and I first talked about my grief in the carport, drawing some of that strength from our friendship.
After a quick dinner of chicken and rice, we watched TV until I started yawning. The house had two guest bedrooms, and his face flashed when I suggested we share the bedroom by the kitchen.
“Your childhood bedroom?”
“You remembered,” I said. “It wouldn’t make sense to mess up both of them, since they’ll be expecting us to sleep in the same room.”
After we brushed our teeth, Leo put on his pajamas in the hall bathroom while I did the same in the bedroom.
I turned my head when he stepped wordlessly through the doorway, a flat look on his face, before stumbling to his usual side of the bed.
He stood by the mattress, punching the pillow to fluff it.
I fanned my fingers in front of my chest, the air in the small room thick and heavy.
I wasn’t sure why we were tiptoeing around each other. We’d been okay in his apartment.
“Why does this feel so awkward?” I forced a laugh.
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because it’s different in Marley and James’s house.”
I waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. We slid into bed, and he flicked off the lamp, shrouding the room in moonlight. A moment later, his arms wrapped around me.
“This okay?” he asked gruffly.
“It would have been stranger if you hadn’t.
” I melted into his embrace. For the past week, we’d shared a bed.
Once I’d gone to him the night of the sombrero serenade, we’d never stopped.
Never talked about whether we should. But I understood why he was asking.
In Coleman Creek, everything was magnified.
Being together in this house, surrounded by my past, meant something.
“Do you have specific plans for when your sisters get back? Anything I should know?” He whispered into the darkness.
“What do you mean?”
His hold on me tightened. “I know we’re going to tell them we’re dating, that we made it official after the wedding, but is there anything else? Some piece of backstory you wanted to get straight?”
I bit my bottom lip, considering. “I don’t think so. They’ve seen us together… just…make it seem real.”
His warm breath caressed my neck as he splayed his hand across my belly. “That won’t be hard.”
I knew he meant it wouldn’t be difficult since we’d shared a bed so many nights before, and we’d been doing a good job with this ruse for a week.
But oh, how I wished he meant it another way!
His soft shaft against my backside and his forearm over mine were nothing new. And it had all been fine a year ago. Manageable. This closeness. But now, things felt less benign. Dishonest somehow.