37. Your FATEMine
thirty-seven
Your FATE or Mine
“ I ’m nervous. You’ve never ridden with me before, I don’t think.” I flash a smile I can’t control toward the very tall man sliding into my Beetle’s passenger seat.
“Does getting hit by you count?”
Kourt motions out the window to where we parked his truck after driving in from the cave. “We can always get back in mine. The cab’s still warm.” He squirms to get comfortable while I fiddle with the heat to get her warmed up enough to pull out.
“Nope. I’m determined to see this one through. Hey, at least you can see if I’ve improved my stick shift skills.”
“I can’t speak for on the road, but the way you drive stick shift, especially in a cave, needs no improvement.”
“Wow. That was—”
“True? Anyway, this is good. We can leave my truck suspiciously at town square overnight for once.”
“Kourt! Oh my God. I never even thought of it that way. All this time… All of Blitzen?”
“Yup. Your car said it all. Guess they knew you were mine from the start.”
Kourt looks around, fascinated, and fiddles with all the vintage bits in Josie’s VW.
I, on the other hand, can’t stop trembling inside from ‘they knew you were mine from the start.’ I’ve actually been trembling since the cave. I meant it to be momentous, but I didn’t know it would be historic, or apocalyptic—as in, there is no coming back from that kind of sex.
I’ve never been involved in any romantic relationship that didn’t get stale or mundane by the third sexual encounter or so.
I was beginning to think I was broken, or something was terribly wrong with me.
Maybe Archer had me pegged wrong this entire time.
Maybe I was more like the dude that got bored immediately after sleeping with someone.
Then there was Archer, separating himself from great sex and a potentially awesome match, just because he didn’t want to get attached. His cynicism also led me to believe relationships end up that way. Eventually it fizzles out.
Now I know—nothing was wrong with me. I just hadn’t found anyone good enough for me. I mean that as arrogant as it sounds.
There’s something about knowing what you do to a person, and just how much you turn them on. It’s a specificity far more powerful and sustainable than simply assuming someone loves and cares for you because you’ve been dating long enough for that to be the case.
I don’t know what I did to get so lucky, but if actions truthfully speak louder than words, I already know all I need to know about how Kourt feels about me.
The tape deck clicks on, and I freeze on the steering wheel, waiting to see what will play before I drive off.
“Is that a cassette player?”
“Um hmm. You’re going to get to hear my tape.”
An intro of a piano chord plays, followed by a quick run of notes.
I don’t quite recognize it initially, but Kourt seems to.
His eyes flash to mine and a half smile reaches his lips.
The moment the first lyrics of that late seventies song by Kenny Loggins are sung, I recognize it immediately from my dream.
“Please celebrate me home,” I mutter the main chorus.
Kourt dips his chin, then rises back up to meet my eyes.
“You asked me once what my favorite Christmas song was, and I really do like most all of them, but if I had to choose—this would be my favorite. It’s been my favorite since I was a kid and NBC did some “Home for the Holidays” campaign and played it before every commercial break. ” He smiles at the memory of it.
A tear stings my cheek, and I lift my hand to catch it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I just dreamed about this song, and now it’s playing with you here in the car, and I guess, I do feel home.” A stifled gulp leaves my throat and more tears fall.
“Erika,” Kourt pushes loose hair behind my ears, and I try to laugh out of my tears.
“What did you say this tape was, again? A lot of people don’t know or remember this song.”
“It’s my holiday mixtape. I got it at the flea market my first day in Blitzen. Funny enough—it was booth number three I bought it from.”
I look up at Kourt to see if he picks up on that, not knowing if I should be reluctant to continue with my crazy talk.
“And Josie’s Bug happened to have a cassette deck.
It felt kismet already. The first song it played was “It’s beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas.
” It was playing when I hit you, and in the coffee shop you walked out of, and it sparked the idea for the Blitzen Old Fashioned Christmas. ”
Kourt’s still smiling, but his eyebrows dent slightly in contemplation.
“It was a succession of songs after that. They all seemed to play at the right time, and they all seemed to lead me… well, to you. Even when I wasn’t around the tape or driving in my Beetle.
I think it was “Silver Bells” that played on my tape, then again that same night on the radio in your truck, when you and I drove through the courthouse lights and looked at the sleigh. ”
Kourt looks down and away for a moment, seemingly more perplexed as the music plays on.
“Was the booth you bought it from Hawkin’s?”
“Yeah, I think so, Hawkin’s Antiques. Anyway, apart from the music, you had that number three tattoo, and three is my number, and the whole Kourt with a K and Erika with a K thing—I can admit, Great Aunt Josie’s eccentric, but even this got a little weird for me.
I think the obvious signs scared me at first. But then so many more made me think it was my destiny to be here in Blitzen, and maybe my fate to bump into you.
By the time you and I made it to your place, when track four—see, they all played out of order because the Beetle’s tape deck has a mind of its own, or it’s broken somehow, but when—”
“White Christmas. White Christmas is track four.” Kourt’s voice is low, bitter, and unrecognizable to me. The air in my Beetle stills and my heart plummets.
“Eject the tape, Erika.”
His voice is like ice down my spine.
“My holiday mixtape?”
Kourt presses all the buttons frantically until the tape shoots out.
He stares at it, as if it’s haunted, and slowly removes it from the cassette player. I watch him rub his thumb across the tape’s label and the writing on it.
Chills course through my scalp and veins and I know something is terribly wrong.
“It must have been inside the tape recorder when I dropped that last box off to Mr. Hawthorn.” Kourt says it almost to himself as he rubs his forehead.
“This isn’t your tape Erika.” He brings his eyes to meet mine. “It isn’t your fate or your destiny. It’s someone else’s.”
I can’t breathe, and I don’t know how I’m sitting upright. “Kourt, you’re scaring me.”
“This tape belonged to Angie. My wife. She made it for me when we were in college. We found a vintage shop that sold cassette players from the 80s. She took it back with her to school and made me a holiday tape of all my favorite classics and mailed it to my dorm. “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is on there. It was her favorite. That’s why Bob got teary-eyed on you in the hardware store. ”
I swallow a gasp and try to breathe steadily, fighting the urge to vomit profuse apologies.
“She mailed it the first Christmas we were away from home and each other. When we were married, it was tradition for us to bust out that old tape player and the holiday mixtape to decorate the tree. That night, we had just gotten home and gotten the tree in the stand to decorate. It was unusually cold. The temperature just kept dropping. We were fighting.”
I gasp as more tears stream down my face.
“We had been fighting a lot, over where to live. Blitzen suddenly wasn’t enough for her. Maybe, it was me. Maybe I wasn’t enough.” His voice gets drier as he shrugs. “She got angry. Didn’t want the tree or Christmas, just wanted out. That fucking tape I’d started when I set the tree up…”
His jaw clenches.
“It just kept playing… droning on and on in the background, like all was merry and bright. It felt like it was mocking us. Angie started yelling over it, then marched to the recorder, ejected it, and threw the tape at the empty tree. I just stood there. Depleted. She grabbed her coat and keys and slammed the door behind her. She was down the drive before I could stop her.”
He blinks away the thought and shakes his head before facing me. “And the rest is a history you already know. So no, Erika, this tape is not your fate. It was mine.”
The door shuts before I can take my next breath.