Natalie’s parents’ voices carry out of the barn, greeting me as I trudge over the shoveled footpath from the cider stand with two steaming Styrofoam cups warming my hands. I follow the strands of lights hanging along the edge of the path back to the lighted barn looming over the rest of the Christmas tree stand.
Being from Michigan, so much of this feels familiar, but there’s a certain charm to Christmas in Maine that Michigan could never compete with. Currently, that charm is waiting for me in the barn, in desperate need of a distraction and a sweet, steaming treat. She’s embarrassed, I can feel it.
I sort of get it. There’s a decided husky edge to her mother’s voice—one that makes me feel as if I’m intruding on a private moment between her and the wreaths.
I could tease Natalie about it, but I think that’s what she’s anxious about. So for now I won’t. In the past, teasing her has been the only way for me to get her attention, but now other avenues exist. Getting her things that make her happy andtaking care of her when she lets me are honestly preferable to me, anyway.
The barn hovers two steps and a staircase away. I take a second and soak in being here, with her.
When Caden told me he was going to go home with Natalie and finally meet her parents, I wanted to punch him. Actually, I’ve wanted to punch him almost every day since he pulled this shit freshman year. More so when he came home with a smile one day saying he was Natalie’s fake boyfriend and showed me a picture of him kissing her cheek. Although, I felt more like pummeling his face into the ground rather than simply punching him then. Anyway, the moral of the story is, punching Caden isn’t a new or rare sensation for me. But when he came home and said he was going to meet her parents and spend the holidays with her—holidays that since our parents’ divorce freshman year I’ve spent alone in the apartment near campus, well, my fist curled up into a ball at my side and I had an extra edge to me on the ice for weeks.
In the end, Caden got injured. Obviously, I wouldn’t wish that on my “little” brother. It seriously sucks that he’s going to have to rehab rather than honing his skills for the Olympics, but if our phone call after his accident was a hint at anything, he’s finally feeling remorseful for all of this. He’s got it in his head that his injury is karma for everything, and that if he can make it right, giving me a chance with Natalie like this, then maybe he can bring balance to the force or something. I don’t know, he was very high on painkillers, and I don’t think he knows what karma is or how it works—or that there’s a difference between karma and my “nerdy” Star Wars—but I was more than happy to accept an opportunity to come home with Natalie and wrap myself up in the delusion that we’re something more than animosities.
I hoped with time she’d soften her stance on me, but I didn’t expect for it to happen so soon.
Stepping back into the barn, the warmth of a crackling fire greets me. Natalie stands in a corner, slowly receding into the wall. Near her mom, an older man in a flannel and a grey, colonial-clad moose t-shirt stands a little too close, a little too interested in the breathlessness coating each word Mrs. D’Amore utters in the wreath section of the barn.
Two crate basket aisles over, a woman in a black puffer vest shields her daughter’s ears as she walks by.
“Really? You think the balls are too big?” Mrs. D’Amore asks. Her homemade mittened hand pats the branches of the wreath, like she’s copping an evergreen feel—her stare…uhm…I clear my throat. Yeah, I don’t think I was supposed to ever see Mrs. D’Amore look at something or someone like that. That was a very private, intimate look.
Mr. D’Amore, to his credit, doesn’t seem as jealous as I would be if Natalie looked atanythinginanimate or alive that way.
Natalie’s stare is deadened. She’s escaped somewhere else. I hope I’m there too. I hold out her hot cider and clear my throat. “Hot cider?”
She blinks back to reality but shakes her head. “I’m good.”
“You sure?” I ask with a teasing smile and swirl the cup in front of her face. “It has a caramel shot and cinnamon on top.”
“Oh,” she exhales. Her fingers brush mine as she takes it, waking up my nerve endings.
“Did Caden tell you that I like my cider like this?”
I scoff. “Like Caden would have to tell me anything. I know my girlfriend better than my brother does.”
She snorts. Her parents are still busy with the logistics of cramming a very large wreath into their not as large Subaru, so there’s really no excuse to look like a couple, but I’m taking my role very seriously, so I bend down and kiss her cheek. Pulling away, Natalie’s eyes sparkle, reflecting the dim barn lights. The tension hums between us. A tension that’s strengthened onNatalie’s side, like a game of tug-of-war that’s slowly evening out.
My eyes wander over the rustic barn. White Christmas lights hang from the eaves to the floor. Garland wraps around each wooden beam filling the barn with a fresh pine scent mixed with the smoke of the wood fire burning in a stove in the corner of the barn. On wooden stands, miniature Christmas trees are lined, row after row after row. It’s rustic Christmas tree farm perfection and I should be calm standing here.
Since she kissed me after the hockey game, internally, I’ve been a wreck. Everything that I thought I was used to, the unrelenting tugs, the nerves, how all Natalie has to do is look at me and my entire being feels ready to get on my knees to serve her—it’s all heightened, or come back to life. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s more intense, and I’ve had to relearn operating around her in live time without looking desperate or pathetic.
“I can’t believe I’m about to defend him after…everything, but Caden, for all his faults, has at the very least taken the time to get to know me,” Natalie says. “He probably knows me better than anyone else.” Her voice dips, and she drags her boot over the cement floor.
She’s wrong. Caden doesn’t know her well at all. He just likes having someone who is infatuated with him and will do anything he wants. Every class they’ve shared, he always lets her do all the work. He honestly wouldn’t be passing most of his college classes if it wasn’t for Natalie. He likes her too, of course, but it’s parasitic in its nature.
But I can’t just say that to her.
Still, I don’t want to lose whatever this game is we’re playing, either.
“Mug warmer the first year. A heat pack the second. This year, I’m going to keep it a secret, but I’m sure you’ll love it just as much.”
Her eyes go wide. “How do you know what Caden’s bought me?”
“Because I bought them for him,” I say, taking a sip of my cider and reveling in the surprise on her face and the wide-eyed innocence of her eyes as they expand to cartoonish levels.
“Hah!” Natalie laughs, but her face looks like there’s finally a crack where Caden is concerned. There’s enough doubt, anyway, that she doesn’t know if she should believe me or not. It’s a first. It’s a step. I’ll take it.
“Believe what you want. Do you want me to put my arm around you? We look like we’re fighting.”
