9. Chapter Nine
Percy
I don’t mean to tell her about the Christmas tree or invite her over to Hawthorne. It just sort of came out in a way that I had no control over. At first, she looked at me like I said something strange, and then she pulled a sweater over her head and reached for her coat.
“Let’s go,” she says.
Outside, the wind’s picked up, and it cuts straight through me. I open the passenger door for her, fight it shut, then get in behind the wheel. She drops the keys in my hand like it’s nothing.
I’ve never driven a car worth more than my entire life. I look for the ignition, and there isn’t one. It’s just a button, and I sit there for a second because I don’t know how to start the car, and my ears are going hot.
“Foot on the brake,” she says. “Then the button.”
I put my foot on the brake. I press the button.
The engine turns over like it was only waiting on me.
I back us out slowly and carefully. Hawthorne Street is nearby, only a six-minute drive.
When I pull into the driveway, there’s the Christmas tree in the front window, lit up, and I sit there staring at it before I remember I don’t know how to turn her car off either.
I look for a key to twist. There’s nothing to twist.
“Just the button,” she says with no judgment in it. She reaches over and lifts the fob out of the cup holder. “You keep the lights on,” she says, looking at the tree.
“Yeah.”
Coming home to that lit-up Christmas tree has done something to me these last few weeks.
Stanley strung it up the second week in December, even though we had a game the next day.
He was swearing at the strands, Benson helped with the star, and we decorated the tree with a box of old ornaments from the attic, like it was the early 2000s with Christmas music on.
Then Stanley turned to me before he left for the break and said to me, “This tree’s up for you since you’re staying.
” And ever since then, I haven’t turned the lights off.
I have found myself staring at it like it’s the pinnacle of my existence, like if I look long enough, I can live in these moments forever.
Penelope huffs, “I’ll give you Hawthorne Boys this much.” She’s already opening the car door. “You know how to celebrate.”
I don’t tell her I had nothing to do with it. I step out, she locks her car, and I dig for my house key in my pocket. Then I unlock the front door. The cold hits her the second we’re inside. I never leave the heat on.
“It’s freezing in here, Percy.”
“Sorry.” I head toward the thermostat. The cold doesn’t bother me. I grew up in worse conditions. And heating a whole house for one person is a waste, so since the guys left, I’ve kept it off.
I come back with the blanket from my bed, and she’s got her arms wrapped around herself.
“I wasn’t expecting any guests.” That’s a thing people say, right? Wasn’t expecting any guests…
“That’s what people say when the house is a wreck. Not when they turn the heat off to go to work.” She shivers. “Do you work doubles?”
I nod as I hand her the blanket. She takes it off my hands and wraps up in it on the couch and looks at the tree.
“It’s a real one,” she says, trying to warm herself.
“Yeah.” I sit down beside her.
“Have some of the blanket.” She throws me the end of the blanket.
I fold the loose end back over her instead, adding another layer, and tuck it in at her side. “I’m okay.”
She looks around the dark house, and I wait for her judgment, but nothing comes.
I stare at the Christmas tree and try to think of what could help warm her up.
Then I remember Rowan announcing to the house that he has a stash of hot chocolate in the cabinet and absolutely no one is allowed to touch it.
But he’s gone until the new year, so I look at Penelope and say, “Do you like hot chocolate?”
She nods. “I love hot chocolate.”
I stand up. “Give me a few minutes.”
“Do you have extra marshmallows?”
“I’ll look.”
I step into the kitchen and reach for Rowan’s secret stash, praying that he has enough for at least one cup of hot chocolate.
I pull down the tin and open it. There’s enough for an entire party.
And it looks like a specialty hot chocolate, not the cheap kind sold at Walmart.
I shuffle through the cabinet and find no extra marshmallows.
I hesitate for a second, flinching at the thought that Rowan keeps count of his hot chocolate packets and will hate me for using two.
I already offered her a cup, so he’d understand, right?
I read the instructions carefully, following exactly what it says.
I add the contents together and throw them in the microwave.
When the two cups are done, I grab a spoon and give her the marshmallows floating in my cup.
I hand her the mug and sit at the far end of the couch. I can’t make myself watch her taste it, so I look at the tree. If it’s bad, I don’t want to see her be nice about it.
She sips. She doesn’t say anything, which could mean anything.
I finally try mine. Shit. It’s good. I take another before I can stop myself.
Stanley kept a fireplace playing on the TV all December.
He said it was cozy as hell, called the whole room Santa, baby for a reason I will never know.
I turn the TV on, and it’s still the last thing he searched, so I let it play, and the fake fire fills up the dark, and neither of us says how stupid it is that it helps with the silence.
“Why didn’t you go back to Maine?” she asks, both hands around her cup.
My eyes stay on the TV, but my mind travels back to two weeks ago when Mary called and asked me to come back for the holidays. I told her no.
Last Christmas, I watched Mary’s hand rest softly on the back of some boy’s head who’d only been there for a week.
The other kids tore through their ‘gifts’ from Santa and cried when it wasn’t what they wanted.
Mary gifted me a thrifted book in French, but I couldn’t help but feel like a burden.
I swore it would be my last Christmas being a burden.
“There’s nothing for me there,” I say.
Penelope lifts a brow and says, “You and me both. My mother lost her mind that I’m not coming home. I invented a dinner with my boss to get out of it.” She looks at the tree. “There’s nothing in Chicago for me. I never want to go back.”
She tips her cup all the way back before I notice she’s finished. Mine’s been gone a while.
“More?”
“No. Thank you.” She shifts under the blanket. “Is it finally warm enough to come out of this thing?”
“Feel for yourself.”
She pushes the blanket off and stands and shrugs out of her coat, and I’ve got my hand out for it before I’ve thought about it. She hesitates to hand it over.
“I’ll hang it up,” I offer.
She lets me take it. I carry the mugs to the counter and hang her coat by the front door, and when I come back, she’s already burrowed under my blanket again.
I walk around the couch and ask, “Movie? Stanley bought Elf. I never really watched it.”
She says, “I don’t think I’ve seen it.”
I sit down and put it on.
Every few minutes, she says something at the screen, and I answer, but I couldn’t tell you what either of us just said.
There’s a foot of couch between us, and I’m more aware of that foot than I’ve been of anything in weeks.
A girl is sitting in the first house that’s ever felt like it might be mine, wrapped in my blanket.
I keep my eyes on Will Ferrell and my whole attention on the sound of her breathing slowing down.
I know the exact moment she’s asleep, and the movie isn’t even halfway through. I stare at the screen, thinking about how I’ve never had this before. And there’s no rule for it in my head. Should I wake her? Should I grab her a pillow?
I don’t wake her. I go completely still at the realization that I don’t want her to leave.
It comes up out of nowhere, bigger than it has any business being, and it scares me worse than anything else ever has.
Because there’s a girl who could be anywhere in the world right now, but she’s asleep on this couch on Christmas Eve –– a couch she would say is mine because I live here.
I don’t sleep, but that’s not new. I never sleep.
The thing that’s tortured me since I’ve gotten here, lying awake in the dark with nothing to do but listen to my own head, turns, for one night, into the best hours I’ve had in a long time.
The movie ends, so I put the fireplace back on, and it loops on the screen.
The Christmas tree lights brighten then soften on the ceiling, and I watch it for a long time.
This is the turning point that Josh always talked about, so I stay awake to live in it. Because I know how this works. I know what I am. Things like this don’t stay. So I’ll be awake for every minute of it while it’s here, and I’ll live off it a long time after it’s gone.
She stirs when the sun slightly shines through the windows. She lifts her head slowly, and I wait for the moment she realizes where she is and regrets it. Her eyes stay closed, and then she peeks through one when she looks down the couch, right at me. Then the corner of her mouth lifts.
“Merry Christmas, Percy.”
My heart races as I watch her drop her head sleepily. No one has ever woken up happy to see me. It steals my breath, and for a second too long, I can’t find my voice.
She blinks and then looks at me again.
I say back, “Merry Christmas, Penelope.”