Coop’s lips stretch into a thin line, and the street lights reflect the warmth in his eyes. He puts an arm around me and pulls me against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“Thanks,” I say. My throat aches with emotion, but he’s holding me tenderly, and it feels nice and cozy and … distracting.
“What was your mom like?”
I’m not positive how close we are to the resort, but it took fifteen minutes to get to the escape room, and it’s probably been half that time since we left.
“She was kind and funny and competitive, but not mean. And shelovedChristmas. She started decorating the day after Halloween.”
“The day after Halloween? What about Thanksgiving?”
“She was Canadian—she and Dad met in college—so she always joked that the real Thanksgiving is in October. She thought it was ‘morally repugnant’ that people could start decorating for Halloween on September first but had to wait until the end of November to decorate for Christmas.”
“‘Morally repugnant?’ That’s strong even for me,” he teases. His right arm is slung around my shoulders, giving me my first real glimpse of his scar. It’s a huge, puckered, deep purple gash, and suddenly, it makes me see this larger-than-life superstar as just another guy. A guy who can get hurt, who can bleed, who can cry. And that softens my heart the rest of the way.
“She was sick for a long time—Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS as it’s called nowadays. She used to joke that she loved baseball so much, she made sure she even got the baseball disease.”
“Ouch,” Coop whispers.
“She lived a lot longer than most people with it, though. We were lucky we got so much time with her.”
“You weren’t lucky?—”
“We were,” I insist. “I met kids in the hospital whose parents passed away after only a couple of years with it. We got almost ten years. They were hard, but they wereoursand they mattered.” I feel Coop nodding, but he doesn’t say anything. My voice drops, almost matching the hum of the passenger van. “For the last several years of her life, she couldn’t put up decorations, so I spearheaded all of it. I did the Christmas cards and all the baking. I made sure we watched all the movies on the right days, ate all the right snacks, went caroling. I planned the menu for Christmas Day and gave everyone their assignments. I went over the top making sure each Christmas was the best it could be because it could be the last. And then one day, it was.” My lower lip trembles. “She fell into a coma on Christmas Day two years ago, and she never woke up.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“I know it’s probably an insult to her memory, but I haven’t been able to enjoy holidays since then. If anything, the longer we’re removed from her passing, the more I hate them, especially Christmas. My dad and brothers keep trying to get me to relive all thebest traditions, but the traditions don’t matter. It’s who we did them with that matters, and she’s gone. So what’s the point?”
I wipe away a tear as it rolls down my face. Coop’s arm around my shoulder squeezes.
“What do they say?”
“Nothing. I haven’t told them how I feel. I just avoid them all season long. It’s too hard to be with them and pretend that everything’s okay. They say that it feels like Mom is with them at Christmas but I haven’t felt anything except pain. I don’t wantto make new memories without her. I don’t even want the old memories. They hurt too much.”
The tears are falling faster than I can wipe them, and when I use the sleeve of Coop’s hoodie—the hoodie I’m wearing—to sop up my wet, snotty mess, I hiss. “Shoot, I’m sorry! I swear I’ll wash this before I give it back.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “Take it. It’s yours. Unlike a hat, hoodies really are universal.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” I tell him. “Because I wasn’t planning to give this back. Employees don’t get swag.”
“I thought you didn’t like things that weren’t earned.”
“Stealing is work.”
He laughs, and his shaking chest makes me shake. Then he exhales slowly.
“Can I offer a different perspective about Christmas?”
“I’d really rather you not.”
“Okay.”
Guilt nips at my chest. No, not guilt, reality, maybe. Some part of my brain buried deep down knows what I’m doing isn’t healthy. I flap my lips out like a horse. “Fine. I’ll trade you the hoodie for your perspective so I can say Iearnedit.”
“If you say so,” he says. “It sounds like your mom created more than just Christmas rituals that require her presence to have meaning. These are etched into the soul of your family. If it hurts to remember her, that’s not a bad thing. If it hurts to celebrate Christmas because you can’t stop missing her, that’s okay. Your family’s traditions are strong enough to hold your grief. And maybe they could heal some of it. The scar will always be there, but sometimes you have to take the bandage off a wound to let it heal.”
“But I don’t want toseethe wound. I want to forget about it.”
