“Listen, what time will you be in?” I asked.
“Probably six, unless they delay the flight due to weather conditions.”
I padded across the room and pulled a hoodie over my head. “I know it’s not our thing, but why don’t I go get a tree—”
“The ugly Charlie Brown kind?” she interrupted again, and this time I laughed.
She loved those stupid ugly trees.
“Sure. We can decorate it and watch Saw or something.”
“Okay.”
Surviving heartache was the only state in which Leighton ever agreed to watch horror movies with me. She’d come to believe in their properties of distraction much like I had.
“Text me when you’re boarding?”
“I will…” She paused. “Char?”
I stopped at my open bathroom door and leaned against the frame. “Yeah?”
“For what it’s worth, I think you really are trying.”
My eyes welled and a lump formed in my throat. “Thanks.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.”
Then she hung up.
“See?” Henry said in my head. “We aren’t the same, Charlie bear. You’re getting better.”
“Maybe,” I whispered into my bathroom.
It was mid-December now, and Beau still wasn’t back from Calgary. There had been complications with his Dad’s surgery and he needed to be monitored around the clock. We exchanged text messages every few days, but mostly I tried not to bother him.
Maverick, as per his usual nature it would seem, had been AWOL since our shotgun kiss.
I’d thought about emailing him, but each time, I deleted the draft before it could send.
There was so much in my head.
My heart was starting to go awry this close to Christmas.
Missing Henry seemed to get worse this time of year. We used to love the holidays as children, but when he got sick, that changed. He began to hate them. It seemed to be a reminder of his shortcomings, and he was never able to get past that. In fact, I think he suffocated in it. Being around us became too hard for him. All he saw were his own failures in our eyes.
It was brutal to watch someone you loved be tortured before your very eyes.
Since then, I’d grown not to hate the holidays, but to wish them gone quickly.
The usual Saturday morning routine was lax in comparison to that of a weekday. I brushed my teeth, lazily applied the basic steps to my face—tinted moisturizer, eyebrow pencil, and a swipe of mascara—and pulled my un-brushed hair into a high ponytail.
Snow had fallen overnight, and it blanketed the city in white through my window. I shrugged on a pair of blue jeans, no holes this time, a heavy wool sweater, and socks that looked like they belonged to a lumberjack, before shuffling into the kitchen.
When I said I didn’t use my kitchen for anything other than reheating, that went for coffee too. I wasn’t even sure I owned a coffee pot. Therefore, I was in desperate need of a trip to the Starbucks down the street before I met Doctor Colby for my weekend session.
She’d requested to continue seeing me once a week, but with the hectic holiday schedule at work, it was getting harder and harder to make it in during the week. So, for the month of December, we’d opted for Saturday morning sessions, and it had been working well thus far for the both of us.
I tucked my jeans into my sorrels and zipped up my parka. My purse was on the breakfast bar and I scooped it up on my way out the door.
Locking the door, I bypassed the elevator and pushed open the door to the stairwell. With the weather this cold, I wasn’t walking to as many meetings, and Emma enjoyed trying out her holiday recipes on the office staff, so my butt could really use the stairs.
I was trying to locate my gloves in the black hole that I called a purse, when I heard his voice. “Hey.”
My head snapped up.
“What are you doing here on a Saturday?” I said, startled.
He kept towards me. “Boss has us on overtime with the cold weather rolling in.”
“Oh,” I mumbled lamely.
The months had gone by without us speaking, and I expected him to pass me and continue on his way, but he didn’t.
He climbed the stairs until he stood on the same landing as me. “How are you?”
I fidgeted awkwardly while I watched him. “I’m fine.”
Dean was wearing his usual, but with a twist. He’d exchanged the plaid shirt for a white thermal and had on a plaid work jacket open in the front. His muscular legs wore black jeans today, and they were shoved into steel-toe boots with the laces half undone.
“That’s good.” He stepped towards me, and I unconsciously backed up a little. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
I winced. “You’ve been avoiding me, too,” I countered.
He shook his head. “No. I’ve been hoping you’d come to me when you were ready.”
“Oh.”
“I see you could use a little push.” He leaned in closely. His lips hovered a mere inch from mine, our bodies closing the space between us, and the wall inside the stairwell.
“I missed you,” he said.