No, what meant something to me was the way he looked at me like I was right where I was supposed to be. Am supposed to be.
And that look in this moment... well, I can’t help but start to believe it.
Chapter7
One-Horse Open Sleigh
Nearly two weeks pass, and the landscape has changed from sea breeze hills and snow-dusted gentle forests to the wild and soaring peaks of Montana. The time has both flown by and stood still. So much so that it’s hard to imagine life off the train after it’s become everything I’ve eaten and breathed and lived for so long.
True to promise the activities have abounded both inside the train and out, and before I know it, the messages that pass between Elodie and me are covered in dozens of pictures. Of Christmas symphonies in Chicago and ice skating in a tornado of flurries in Minnesota. Of eating things I’ve never tried before and dancing like I’ve never danced before and frankly just having the best time of my life. Every evening as I spy the train sitting in the station, smoke curlingup toward the dark sky as it waits for my return, my heart warms.
I feel like I could live on this train forever. Truly.
It’s so painful to imagine leaving that I’ve had to stop letting my thoughts drift there entirely.
“I don’t like oatmeal.” Clarence looks at the bowl on his tray, then at me as if I’ve betrayed him.
“Don’t think of it as oatmeal.” I pause midsip of coffee. “Think of it as overnight apple cinnamon rolls. You like cinnamon rolls.”
He grumbles under his breath, but as I move my attention back to the paper, I see he’s edging near it. This is how our days on the train have turned. When lunch arrived after that first successful breakfast cooked in Oliver’s quarters, and Oliver dropped by to see Clarence’s pained expression as he chomped slowly on the hard-boiled eggs sliced over what appeared to be sprouts, sans dressing, he leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Any chance you want to upgrade this?”
I jumped out of my chair faster than a speeding bullet. Clarence loved my stir fry noodles in tahini sauce, and every morning and lunch since, I’ve taken on the task of preparing his meals. Not because I have to, of course, but because I want to. I really want to, actually. While other passengers revel in the endless service and relaxation, the reality was that just wasn’t me. My feet started itching the first day on the train for somewhere to help. Whereas Elodie and my mother and every propaganda on the train emphasized telling me to relax, relax, relax, I found it was much more relaxing to havesomething to do. Someway to help. And preparing Clarence’s meals turned out to be a perfect outlet.
Plus, it was nice how much I ran into Oliver. How often he stayed to cook beside me—despite how often I could hear his phone vibrating—and the stories we shared back and forth about our lives and experiences. Eventually he asked about the elephant in the room (how exactly things didn’t pan out with Jonas), and eventually he in turn shared about a woman named Phoebe in San Antonio who almost lured him away from his train life. We watched movies in the background as we cooked. Some of my favorite moments, in fact, were dicing and stirring in companionable silence.
And yet, he never pursued me beyond friendship. And despite the hundreds of times I’ve reminded myself that that was a good thing during this season, I couldn’t help but end each night with a little disappointment.
Throw in the expanding list of missed calls I’ve successfully ignored from Jonas that began on day two of the trip, and the disappointment has grown.
Well. To be clear, I’ve successfully ignored them all after that first dreadful mistake of a pickup.
I was in the middle of a Santa’s Workshop class one afternoon, my nose pressed to the hot glue gun in my hand as I took aim at the tiny wooden bead for a Scandinavian Wooden Snowflake elective I opted for before the evening outing. It was a small class that day, most opting for a foxtrot class in the Mistletoe Room instead. And most were long gone whiletheir ornaments sat on the table in the corner drying. But that didn’t mean I was alone.
“I have never, and I mean never, seen anyone take ornament making so seriously.”
Oliver’s elbows rested on the table as he sat, leaning forward in his seat, beside me. So close I could smell the pine-scented dish soap coming off his hands, which I’d become accustomed to in his kitchen. “You’re going to miss dinner.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We’regoing to miss dinner if you stay here chastising me for making the perfect snowflake. Also, as I’ve said before, this glue gun is defective. It’s not my fault.”
Oliver smirked. “Right. Just like the first and second glue guns were defective too. Such a bizarre shame.”
Right at that moment my phone on the table began ringing.
I paused on the trigger of the gun, gaze flitting over to the phone. It shook on the table, and I fully expected to see Elodie’s name dancing on the screen. But it wasn’t. It was Jonas.
From the corner of my eye, I could see Oliver glance at the name, then shift away.
I silenced it, turned it over, and returned my attention back to my ornament.
Oliver was silent through the hot gluing of two more beads on my snowflake.
“You don’t answer his calls?”
“No,” I said, picking up another small bead with my glue and transferring it to the ornament.
“Never? You haven’t answered any of them?”
So he had noticed. “There isn’t anything to say.”
