Chapter 2
“What the hell is this?”
“It’s a Christmas tree,” I said, and Kolter turned to me, furious.
“I know goddamn well what it is! Why did you put it in my living room? We’re going to my mom’s house for the holiday.”
“I thought we could have our own little celebration here, too,” I said. “I cut that tree down. It didn’t cost anything.” It was just a small, gangly one that had been growing in the shade of enough bigger siblings that it wasn’t ever going to get tall itself.
“But you bought the stand, didn’t you?” He picked up the tree by one of its top branches and shook it, and water sloshed onto the floor. “You bought those ornaments.”
“I made some,” I told him. Now most of them had fallen off and broken.
“It’s a waste. It takes up too much room.
Get it out of here,” he ordered. He left and I heard his car start.
Well, first it made a few angry noises, but then the engine finally did turn over.
I got a towel and wiped up the water, and I also picked up the ornaments.
I rehung the ones that weren’t broken and gathered the pieces of the ones that were, because maybe I could fix them.
I was very skilled with glue and I’d used it on furniture, shoes, my bumper. ..it was so versatile.
I carefully carried the tree and put it into the hall closet, where I kept my clothes.
I could bring it out later when Kolter was in a better mood and not so inclined to arguing.
He’d gotten in trouble today at his job, over what, I wasn’t sure.
But I thought that he might like the tree when he was feeling happier in general.
He’d come home in a terrible temper, ranting about his boss, and everything I’d done had made him angrier. Was he hungry? Not for a damn sandwich! How about a beer? Didn’t I know that was the last can he had? I offered a shoulder massage, but he didn’t want me to touch him, and I said I could—
“Will you shut up, Vivi? You yap like a damn dog! Shut up and leave me alone,” he’d told me, so I had.
But then he’d spotted the tree, which I hadn’t hidden or anything.
It was sitting in the living room and that wasn’t large, but he’d overlooked it until he’d thrown himself down on the couch.
And it had made him madder than anything else!
It was because he was always looking out for signs of disrespect toward his mother, and he had thought that me getting a tree was one of those.
He’d probably believed that I was sending a message that I could do things better, which was what he thought his coworkers did, too.
I actually did have a problem with his mother but I never, ever showed her an ounce of disrespect (I knew better than to do something like that).
I didn’t care if she ignored me and spoke only to her son, and I didn’t even care that she made remarks about me in my hearing (rude remarks).
My problem was how she treated Kolter, which was like he was some kind of royalty.
Because she put him on a pedestal, he carried around the expectation that everyone else in the world needed to behave the same way.
She let him do whatever he wanted with her house, her truck, and her bank account, and he—
He was back. I heard a car in the driveway so I quickly checked to make sure that there was absolutely no trace of the tree around, no needles or broken glass from the things that had shattered.
If he had returned so soon, it was either that he’d forgotten something, the engine was running poorly, or he had realized that he didn’t have enough gas or money.
Any of those issues would lead to him being even angrier.
I checked my reflection in the window next to the front door to make sure I didn’t look like I’d been crying, because tears sent him through the roof.
When I did that, though, I also saw that the vehicle in the driveway wasn’t Kolter’s and it wasn’t his mom’s, either.
She liked to come over for surprise checks on her property, so I expected visits at least once a week.
But this wasn’t my boyfriend’s dirty red car or his mother’s blue, lifted truck.
It was a sleek black one that looked like something that a spy would drive in a movie.
I knew that the person behind the wheel, a man from what I could tell, must have been lost. There was nothing that he could have needed here but it was still exciting to watch the car while he got his bearings and to listen to the sound of an engine that didn’t rattle.
But then I took a second look at the driver.
It was hard because the sun was behind the house so its beams reflected off the windshield, but I could have sworn that I recognized him—and then I realized that yeah, I did.
This was a person I hadn’t thought I’d ever meet again, the lost, frozen, drunk guy!
I walked out onto the front step. “What are you doing here?” I called.
He got out and raised his hand. “Are you…what’s your name?”
“Vivienne. Vivi,” I said. “And you’re Nolan, and you found me somehow.”
He walked up the tire track that formed an icy path to the end of the driveway, then made his way across the hard-packed snow toward where I was standing. “You’re barefoot,” he pointed out. “Do you need shoes?”
I looked at his and saw a slightly different version of the nice ones he’d worn on the night that I’d seen him lurching along the shoulder. “I’m ok. Why are you here?”
He stopped in front of the steps and we stared at each other. “I remember you,” he said. “I was trying to piece together how we met.”
“I was out driving and saw you walking…” I prompted, but he didn’t take up the story so I continued it. “I saw you walking and asked if you needed a ride. Did you ever find your wallet and phone?”
“Yes. You knew about that?” He paused and then repeated, “Yes. Because I was going to pay you but I had left them at the restaurant.”
“That’s good news about your stuff,” I said, nodding.
He blew on his hands because this December had gotten very cold. “Could I come in?”
“Um, ok,” I agreed. I stood to the side and let him go first, like he had done for me at the bar.
But he stopped after he’d taken the first step. “What happened to your furniture?”
I knew what he was looking at, and it was the reason I had wanted to stand on the porch to have our reunion.
“My boyfriend got really mad a few weeks ago,” I explained.
He had gone on a little rampage and I had done my best to repair the damage, but its aftermath still showed.
I wasn’t great with tools, never having used them for much before, but I’d tried to nail together the kitchen table.
When that hadn’t worked great, I’d moved on to duct tape and my old friend, glue.
I’d used that on the coffee table, but I’d had to tape the window where it was broken.
I’d also taped together the cushions of the couch, which had gotten slashed.
And despite the work I’d done, it all looked pretty bad.
Nolan tilted his head as he looked at a lamp, which was definitely tilted itself. I had given up on nailing things but the hammer had served me better in another way: I had taped the lamp together and used that tool as the support structure. “He got mad and broke everything you own,” he said.
“It’s actually all his stuff, not mine. I knew that he would be upset but it’s too bad that he took it out on the furniture, especially because I can’t do my side business for extra money. We can’t replace anything right now.”
“Your dryer broke,” he said slowly. “I remember that.”
“Good for you,” I encouraged. “It’s all coming back.
The one thing I wondered about that night—well, I wondered a lot of things, but I didn’t understand why you had to get out of the car you had ordered.
You said that the ride got canceled, but why?
Did you mess up with a credit card?” That happened.
Currently, my boyfriend’s mom owed so much that it had made me whistle when Kolter had told me the number, which had been a reaction that he hadn’t liked at all.
“There’s nothing wrong with my credit card and I also didn’t understand what had happened. Apparently, when I left my phone on the table at the restaurant, a guy got into the app and canceled the trip as a joke. A friend of mine from college,” he answered.
“Some friend,” I said, shaking my head.
“Some boyfriend,” he said, staring at where the living room floor had been gouged and cracked.
Then a few pieces of the plastic wood had been yanked out, so you could see the yellowish board stuff that had been underneath them.
I needed to get a rug but that would have to wait until I got the dryer working, and glue hadn’t done jack to help our appliance situation.
He was still looking around, and I could understand how this appeared to someone just stepping into it. “I also would have been upset if he’d been out with another girl,” I said. “And you know, my explanation about how it happened wasn’t very believable.”
Nolan looked at me quizzically, one eyebrow raised. “Hold on, do you mean what happened with me? Your boyfriend had this reaction when you came home after driving me around?”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. It had been a very difficult night.
That made my guest get upset. He didn’t say anything but I noticed his chest moving up and down faster under his winter coat (he was wearing one today, and I was glad to see it). He narrowed his eyes a little, too, and when he turned his head again to review the damage, the movement looked jerkier.