Chapter 38
“Merry, Christmas, Jack.”
It’s been a long, bittersweet day. I spent the day at my parents’ house.
It was strange, knowing that next year things would be different.
The house would still be theirs, but the farm wouldn’t.
We did everything we always do. Opened presents in our pajamas and ate sticky buns for breakfast. We drank mugs of Dad’s tar-like coffee and watched Christmas movies on the sofa.
Grandma was having a good day, happy and lucid, but I know that won’t always be the case.
Next year, everything about the day could change.
But this year, we chose to enjoy it.
I stayed there until darkness fell, soaking in every last moment, then headed home with a tin full of holiday desserts we spent the afternoon baking.
There are cookie crumbs on my flannel pajama shirt, and I have a fireplace playing on the TV screen, soft Christmas music coming through the speakers.
“Merry Christmas, Stevie,” Jack says.
“How was your day?”
“I went to see my mom,” he tells me, and my heart clenches painfully in my chest, a longing to comfort him so deep that it physically aches.
“How was it?” I ask.
He sighs, and I can imagine him pushing a hand through his messy hair, the only thing about him that’s never tidy. “It was really hard, but it was also…nice? To feel close to her again. To talk to her again.”
“That makes sense,” I say, softly.
“I’ve been running for so long,” he says on another exhalation. “Avoiding staying anywhere too long so I don’t get attached. So I don’t give anyone an opportunity to hurt me again.”
My throat hurts and my chest throbs. I want him to be here so I can tell him that he’s only been trying to protect himself, that he’s done the best he could. I want to touch him and hold him and make him feel like everything will be okay.
“I don’t want to run anymore, Stevie.”
His words hang in the air, more an exhausted plea than anything else.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, then stops. I can hear him swallow, and I do too. It feels like something is changing, a cosmic shift in the universe. Stars being placed in the night sky by gods. “I started looking for a job near Fontana Ridge. What would you think if I was there? Permanently.”
My mind whirs, and for a moment I think I haven’t heard him right. He can’t be saying what I think he’s saying. Jack Sullivan, who hasn’t stayed in one place for more than a handful of months, wants to move here. To Fontana Ridge.
“Why?” The word pulls out of me. I need to know the answer. I need to know if he fell in love with the mountains and the town and the lake. Or with something else. With someone else.
“Stevie,” he breathes, and it’s almost like he’s here, saying my name in my skin. It makes my shiver. “I want…”
He stops himself, and it’s silent for one heartbeat. Two.
Until I can’t take it anymore.
“What do you want, Jack?”
“You.”
My world stops. Then starts again.
“I want to try with you. I want to be near you and with you. You’re the first person to ever make me want to stay, Stevie.
It scares me to think about it, but I want to stay for you.
I want to be someone you can count on. Someone who will cook you dinner and make sure you’re not running yourself ragged taking care of everyone else.
” His voice is frayed. “I want you, Stevie. I want a life with you. If you’ll have me. ”
My heart beats in overdrive, pounding in my throat and in my ears. What he’s saying sounds so good, but something also feels off. Claustrophobic in a way I can’t quite describe. I know that I want him, more than anything, but I don’t want him like this.
“Jack,” I croak. “You can’t come here for me.”
He’s silent for so long I think he’s hung up, but when I check the screen again, I see the timer still running.
“I’m not…I won’t be enough. This town will be too small for you. You’ll plant roots and grow stagnant and resent me for it. This isn’t the life you want.”
“You don’t know that.” He sounds as wrecked as I feel.
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. The Christmas music playing in the background is something soft, romantic, and it makes me want to scream. My skin is too tight, my body singing with an electric current.
“You don’t know that you won’t.”
“Stevie,” he says, and his voice is gentle but still rough.
“We can’t know the future. I didn’t know when I left for college that my mom would die before I graduated.
I didn’t know I’d spend the next decade avoiding my hometown and hardly seeing my brother.
I didn’t know I’d choose a random destination for my next contract and fall in—”
“Don’t say it,” I plead.
“I love you, Stevie. Please, let me love you.”
And that is my kryptonite. Jack thinks I’m selfless, that I always put everyone before myself, but he’s wrong.
Because faced with that, with his declaration of love, I can’t let it go.
I can’t let him go. It’s selfish to let him come here, when I know this place can’t make him happy, but I’ll do it. Because Jack Sullivan loves me.
I don’t sleep, and neither does Jack. We stay on the phone, talking until the wee hours of the morning. He looks at jobs near Fontana Ridge and reads me the descriptions. None of them are exactly what he’s looking for, but he applies for them anyway.
I tell myself it’s okay. Because he loves me.
And I love him.
I don’t tell him, because I want to look him in the eye when I do. I want to be touching him and be able to finally kiss him. I want his hands and his mouth. I want the way he makes me feel and how his eyes light up when he smiles. I want it all with him.
Sunrise is an hour away when we finally hang up, but I can’t sleep. Guilt and a heaviness I can’t quite name are gnawing at me. Dread, I think. A looming fear that I’ve made the wrong decision.
I need air.
It’s cold when I step out into the darkness.
It snowed last night, but the skies are clear now, stars pinpricking the blackness spreading out as far as I can see.
I stare up at them, my blanket wrapped around my shoulders, breathing in the chilled night air.
My breath comes out in clouds, and each inhale feels icy in my lungs. It helps, just a little.
My eyes focus on a pattern in the sky, one of the constellations Jack pointed out—Cassieopeia.
I search the skies for Andromeda and Pegasus, which aren’t as bright as when he showed me.
It’s easy to see them now, when before they were just a blanket of stars.
A memory from a few weeks ago, Jack’s voice in my ear as he told me stories over the phone of constellations, flashes through my mind.
I was sleepy, but I remember the one he told me of Taurus.
I pull my phone from my flannel pajama pants pocket and type the name of the constellation into the search browser. I find an image of the constellation and then peer up at the night sky, trying to find it myself. It takes a minute, but when I see it, it sticks out to me, stars forming a bull.
I can hear Jack like he’s here now, saying, “You can’t just run off with the person you love.”
He was right, of course. You can’t just take someone and run off with them because you love them. You also can’t hold them close to you when they don’t belong.
I sit down in the cold dirt, letting it seep into my bones as I stare at the bull in the sky, thinking.
I told Jack this isn’t the life he wants, and I’m sure it’s true.
He may think he’s been running all this time, and I don’t doubt that, but I’ve also seen the way his face lights up when he talks about the places he’s been, the places he wants to go.
He didn’t move away to college because he was grief-ridden, he moved away because he wanted out of his small town.
He wanted to experience what the world had to offer him.
He left for all the reasons I wanted to.
This isn’t the life Jack wants, and I’m not sure it’s the one I want either. I haven’t allowed myself to think that, not in so long. Not when choosing something else, something for myself, felt so impossible.
But Jack is worth it.
The life I dreamed about when I was in high school, taping photos from travel magazines on my walls and researching recipes of foods we couldn’t get in restaurants or the grocery store in my little town in the mountains, is worth it.
The thought scares me, sends fear spiraling through my stomach, but it also exhilarates me in a way I haven't felt before.
Not when standing on the edge of a mountain, looking out at the world below.
Not when standing in front of Jack, wondering if either of us were going to give in and let ourselves have what we really wanted.
I want more.
My mom and dad are both awake when I show up at their house at dawn, exhausted yet pumping with adrenaline.. They’re farmers, and rising with the chickens for three decades is a habit they won’t give up even though they no longer have to.
They’re surprised to see me, and possibly a little worried by the manic look in my eyes. They both look up when I walk into the kitchen, their hands wrapped around mugs of hot, black coffee, and newspapers spread out before them.
“Can I talk to you?” I ask.
“Stevie, what’s wrong?” It’s Mom, her face pinched in concern.
Dad stands, pulling out my chair, and I lower myself into it, leg bobbing beneath the table.
“Mom, Dad,” I say, looking at them each in turn.
My voice is surprisingly calm, even though my insides feel like confetti spilling from a pinata.
“When I was in high school, I wanted to move away. I wanted to leave North Carolina and travel.” I shake my head.
“You know all of this. But then Dad got hurt and the farm needed help, and I started my job and…I don’t know.
I was happy with my life here, too comfortable to leave. ”
Mom’s eyes are sad, and Dad looks like he’s drowning in guilt. I know it wrecks him that I stayed because of his injury, but I don’t want that for him. Staying was my choice.
“I’ve been happy,” I say again. “I don’t regret staying here, getting to be close to you both all this time.
I know how lucky I am to have that.” Jack’s broken voice when he talks about his mom plays on a loop in my mind.
“I’m so happy to have gotten to witness my friends falling in love and having babies.
I love that I’ve gotten to watch them grow up and be their Auntie Stevie.
” I think of Jack again, finally getting to know his niece after all these years.
“I don’t regret any of it,” I tell them emphatically. Their gazes lock on mine, and I think I see them grasping hands below the table. I think they know what’s coming. We all do. “But I think I want to go now.”
The words hang in the air, and I see a tear fall down my mom’s cheek. She swipes it away with her free hand, and Dad watches her, his face so full of love it feels like I’m intruding.
“I want to see what’s out there. And I want to do it with Jack.”
Neither of them look surprised, and it’s how I know I’m making the right choice. I think they knew I loved him long before I did.
“It’s not full-time,” I say, and both sets of eyes snap to mine.
It’s what I thought about, sitting in the cold, staring up at the stars. Jack wasn’t entirely wrong, and I wasn’t entirely right. Neither of our lives fit the way we’re trying to live them now, but it’s not one or the other.
“I want to travel during the off-season. And live here on my land during tourist season so I can keep working for Uncle Silas.”
I love my job. It’s one of my favorite parts of my life, even though I think it was good to take a step back this fall, have more of a work-life balance instead of scheduling every open hike I could.
Uncle Silas has more employees now, and that means I can still work for him and get to see my family and friends while I’m home too.
But during the off-season, I don’t need to stay here. Not now that Mom and Dad have sold the farm, now that they have free time and the ability to split care of Grandma. They’ve made it clear they don’t need me to step in as much, and I finally feel okay about doing it.
“What do you think?” I ask them.
“We’ll miss you, of course,” Dad says.
Mom nods. “But this feels right, doesn’t it?”
My throat grows tight, thinking about everything changing. It would if I stayed or went. But my mom is right.
“It feels right,” I tell her.
For the first time I can remember, the life I’m choosing feels right.