Chapter 25
Andy
The snowfall is going to be historic, according to the weather station Mom’s had on all afternoon.
The diner let her know she’s off for the night because they anticipated closing early for the storm, to which my mom gasped, “What storm?” and promptly called Carmen to let her know she was on her way to pick her.
She insisted on staying for the Christmas Eve clean up—surprise, surprise—since most people had already gone home for the holiday.
She’d catch a ride home before the storm kicked up.
And for whatever reason, my mom let it slide.
Decided she didn’t need to drop everything and make sure her eleven year old daughter got home before the roads got blocked.
From where I stand near the sliders that lead to the patio, the roads are more than halfway there.
“No—really I think—” I feel my heart rate in my wrist the moment I hear her.
“Absolutely not!” my mom squeals, cutting off the sweet smoke of Sloane’s voice. “You have to stay. You can’t even drive back in this. And to the airport?”
“You’re so kind,” she says, her voice rising, a little frantic. “But my flight’s…” her voice dips out of my reach, and I know the last thing she wants is to be stranded here. With me.
“Oh, sweetie. You’re not flying anywhere,” Mom chuckles, just as Sloane nervously laughs.
I finally let myself move toward them and find her face illuminated by her phone screen, cold air funneling inside around her, Carmen clinging to her jean leg.
“A little late to make it for Christmas Eve,” I say, clearing my throat. My mom’s head snaps to me, Carmen’s eyes sliding up to me in a glare, and neither of them move.
Sloane’s gaze jumps to mine, panic flashing in her gaze before she slots behind something more practiced—nonchalance, carelessness.
“They’re used to it.”
“You didn’t want to fly back with Grant?”
“Stayed for the theater clean up.”
“Private jets fly all day,” I counter, and shift my weight.
I know how I sound, can tell how cold the words are coming off by the urgency in my mom’s eyes, the silent plea to knock it off.
I’d be lying if I said Sloane leaving didn’t hurt me, that her rejection outside the hospital the other day didn’t throw me for a loop, but what really gets me is that I can tell that it’s fake.
That she thinks I’d be so easily fooled by a performance I’ve given a thousand times over.
“I don’t use the jet,” she grits out, and I can see the way her jaw tenses.
“Just come inside. I’m freezing,” Carmen complains, still clutching the outer seam of her pants while she trembles from the cold, refusing to let her go.
And that does it, Sloane averting her gaze so it won’t collide with mine, striding into the space that feels smaller with all of us in it.
Avoidance will be impossible, and I fight the urge to apologize.
If she’d thought ahead and wasn’t so reckless, she’d be in Atlanta by now instead of here, with me.
“This is…really generous of you, Rebecca.” Sloane slips her heavy sherpa coat off and I take it on instinct, dropping it over the side of the couch as her orange blossom floats across my senses.
Her eyes flit across the room, noticing the paper chain, the straw angels—all the DIY decorations we’ve come to associate with this time of year—and they soften.
My molars press together, vulnerability turning my skin into this raw, easily perceptible thing.
It’s not lost on me that she’s seen more of me than anyone in the three years I’ve been here. More than Will, even.
She saw my front, plowed past it, and then ran away.
“Please, call me Becs,” my mom tells her, beaming.
She actually beams at her and it shouldn’t matter to me, but it does.
Whatever tear exists inside me mends just barely, stitches itself back up only an inch, and the strain slightly lifts.
I want to warn her not to care about her, but I think I’m just trying to warn myself, and that maybe, it’s too late.
Fuck.
She’s oblivious to what is happening inside me, oblivious as she starts to turn back to the door, only for Carmen to tug on her. “I just need to get my luggage,” she laughs, relaxing for the first time since I heard her in the doorway.
“I got it.” I lightly pull the keys from her hands and rush out into the blinding snowy haze, grateful for the sharp chill.
The warmth in there was starting to suffocate me, so I take longer than I need to, standing outside the doorway with her yellow luggage while the cold solidifies the feelings just seeing her dislodged.
They’re all at the table when I come back in, the same mugs she and Carmen were painting just a few weeks ago between their hands. A heap of whipped cream threatens to overflow from Carmen’s mug, and small dollops seem to float in Sloane’s and Mom’s.
“You forgot these,” I say, slipping candy canes from the tree into each of their mugs.
Sloane’s gaze lifts to meet mine, mouth lifting into a hesitant, white flag of a smile. “How could we forget?” Cordial as it is, I decide to try and focus on the fact that whatever twisted friendship we had before that kiss might be salvageable.
“You do this, too?” Carmen says with wide eyes, leaning into the table like it’ll bring her closer to Sloane.
“Of course. Who doesn’t?” Sloane tells her in fake outrage.
“Heathens,” Mom agrees, sipping her hot cocoa behind a heavily restrained smile before glancing at me. “Go on. Make yourself a cup.”
Sloane peers up at me through her lashes, the corners of her lips tugging up like they can’t help themselves, her eyes glittering the way they were on the roof.
“What’s so funny?” I take the bait, knowing better. I always know better.
“That all the women in your life can’t help but boss you around.
” Her smile falters for a moment, just as mine really springs to life.
“Carmen and your mom. Obviously,” she says with an eye roll that reminds me of the way she blew me off that first night at the bar, one hip pressed against the pool table.
“Obviously.”
I imagine that she’s blushing, the soft pink hue of it creeping along the same path as her freckles, but I wouldn’t know.
I stir my drink at the counter, back turned to her, until the mix is dissolved in the hot milk and I spray a mountain of whipped cream that could rival Carmen’s, stealing the seat right next to Sloane.
She eyes my mug, not bothering to hide her judgement.
“Cheers,” Carmen giggles, clinking her mug into mine.
“You don’t think that’s too much?” Sloane says, her thick brows playfully scrunched together as she cocks her head at me, and Carmen starts to push back. “For an adult man,” she clarifies, and I take a size gulp of both the toppings and the chocolatey drink.
“Should too much be in an adult man’s vocabulary?” I ask, mentally betting on the way it’ll fan the flames under her skin.
Like fucking clock work. Her eyes narrow on me as her blush deepens before she glances away. I shouldn’t care that I can make her feel anything at all, but I do. I do, and that she ended up here, snowed in on Christmas, feels like some fucked up cosmic punishment.
Something hard slams into my shin, and I look across the table to see my mom’s brows trying to tell me something through gestures. She slightly tilts her head toward Carmen, who’s lost in the peppermint swirl happening in her mug.
“I’m sorry you have to miss out on your family’s traditions this year,” Mom tells Sloane, cutting me out of the conversation all together as punishment for my not safe for the little ears joke.
“Oh, it’s fine. They probably won’t even miss me,” she shrugs, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She really believes that, I realize, when nothing in her gaze shifts even a little.
Christmas was always this monumental thing in our house.
Luis would make us carol; Mom would make these cookie tins that we’d be forced to pass out, door to door; we spent the entire first week of December decorating together each night after school.
We’d pick out our tree together, watch holiday movies every weekend, get matching pajamas.
It isn’t like that anymore, not since Luis passed, but I’d never be able to say my family wouldn’t miss me. Of course, they would.
Mom’s eyes sadden just before something sparks in them.
“Well. We’re happy to have you. Carmen won’t stop talking about you,” she grins, rubbing Carmen’s back as she cuts her an outraged look.
“That’s not actually true,” Carmen says cooly, like she didn’t drag Sloane into our house.
“I can’t really stop talkin’ about you, so I guess we’re even,” she tells her, and Carm lights up and smiles into her mug.
“Actually,” Mom pops up, wiping her hands on an imaginary apron, “I could use some help with the cookies. If you don’t mind helping me, Sloane?”
“The cookies?” Carmen chirps, just as I say, “The cookies?”
“Yes,” my mom shrugs. “It’s Christmas, isn’t it?”
Sloane’s gaze bounces between us as she tries to interpret the moment before joining her. “My brother is a master baker, which means I’ve become a master assistant. I’d love to help you.”
“Me too!” Carm practically leaps out of her chair, heading to the pantry.
“You can figure out the movie.” Mom points to the television, giving me a knowing glance that tells me she can sense the unease between Sloane and I.
The cookies haven’t been a part of our Christmases since Luis passed.
We still watch a movie, but the cheer our traditions used to hold bled out years ago, was washed away by the river of everything that came after him.
“Mommy, can we play Christmas music?”
Sloane gasps, pulling her phone out, and moments later, Christmas Wrapping is blaring through the little counter speaker we mostly use for timers.
Mom turns into a statue for a second, but I watch her breathe through it.
Watch her hear one of Luis's favorite Christmas songs and smile at the sound. Sloane offers her a toothy smile, and my mom can’t help but give one back.
“Put me to work, Chef,” she says, lifting her hands with a pop of her shoulder.
Once I’ve found Serendipity, I sneak away to the back storage closet and set Luis’s Christmas Village on the long built–in banister along the living room wall.
Predictably, Carmen only makes it halfway through. Mom, on the other hand, stays awake the entire time but is too mesmerized by the Christmas Village to really pay attention.
“I’m going to head to bed. Santa likes to come early,” she says as the closing credits roll on screen, side eyeing Carmen and the drool stuck to her cheek. “There’s a blow up in the hall closet and a bottle of wine in the fridge,” she adds as a throw away as I lift Carmen up from the couch.
Sloane sighs, shooting my mom a sleepy grin. “A woman after my own heart.”
Mom’s laughter carries through the hallway as she yawns and cracks Carm’s door open, pulling her sheets back so I can lay her down. Glasses clink in the distance as we tuck her in, and I reemerge to find Sloane sitting on the floor, back against the sofa, about to pour.
She lifts it in the air. “A drink, among friends?”
I know this is her calling a truce; her stepping over the elephant in the room and telling me it’s water under the bridge, and I wish I could let it go like that. Wish the kiss and her words outside the hospital weren’t still haunting me.
“Friends,” I say, reaching for the glass, candlelight dancing across the small grin on her face as I try to let that be enough.
I settle in on the floor beside her as she sighs looking at the lit tree, memories I’m not privy to playing in her eyes. Something whimsical passes through her gaze as her lips part, her eyes settling on the top, where an angel stands watch.
Just looking at her is overwhelming. But wanting her isn’t new—it’s the craving that’s different. There’s something fatalistic about it, a recklessness that I know I should run away from. Wanting her for a moment in time suddenly feels like a sick joke. This feeling, if fed, would turn insatiable.
I need to—I have to—compartmentalize the kiss, the way I guess she has, the way I do everything else, and just get through the night. Make this all bearable, because it’s Christmas.
“You up for the roof?”
The idea isn’t a coherent one—it’s 4 degrees outside, the fire pit is probably packed with snow—but I say it anyway because I know she’ll like it. The narrow slant of her gaze is laced with mischief.
“It’s snowin’,” she says, looking up at me through thick lashes.
“Seems like it slowed down. Maybe I can start a fire,” I shrug, relaxing into the kind of cool I’m usually so practiced in, but fuck if I don’t feel unsteady.
Her lips curve into a hesitant smirk as she rakes her teeth over them, glancing out the window before standing up. “I guess there’s nothin’ else to do.”
We pull our coats on and I grab a few blankets, expecting the roof to either be covered in snow or damp from where it’s started to thaw, and head up, bottle in hand.
The terrace lights are still on, softly twinkling over the mostly snow dusted furniture and fire pit.
Regardless, I attempt to start a blaze with the starter logs one of the neighbors keeps in the cabinet out here.
Once the snow’s been emptied, the log takes, warmth erupting into the dense chill around us, and Sloane hums her approval, stealing the blankets from my hold to spread them on the wet ground.
“Chairs?” I quirk my brows, waving toward the splintering Adirondacks that haven’t been replaced in ages.
“Easier to see the sky from down here,” she says, already on her back, blonde hair spilling across the dark comforter I found in the back of the closet.
I join her, knowing better than to try to convince her of anything, surprised that the ground isn’t nearly as icy as I thought. Taking the wine bottle I unplug the cork and offer it to her, hating that I notice the way she doesn’t avoid brushing her fingers against mine as she sits up to take it.