“You’re still not yourself,” he says, watching me pick at my food.
“I’m trying,” I lie.
“You could try harder.”
That hurts, mostly because he’s not wrong.
He reaches across the couch and takes my hand.“You know what might help?Distraction.Something new.”
That’s how I end up in his car the next morning, hands trembling on the wheel like I’m about to commit a felony.
“You’ve really never driven?”he asks, half amused, half horrified.
“Never needed to.Walked everywhere.Or took the bus.”
He grins.“Well, lucky for you, I’m a great teacher.”
He’s not.
By the third stop sign, I nearly send us into a snowbank.By the fourth, he decides prayer might be more effective than instruction.Still, he keeps showing up, patient as a saint, and every day I get a little better at pretending this is normal life.
For a while, Blake and I fall into a rhythm.
Weekend mornings are driving lessons in his fancy car, afternoons I’m at Sno-Globes where tourists still ask if we serve peppermint martinis even though Jimmy collected enough money to raise a big billboard out on the highway shaped like one.And our nights are spent watching whatever Blake put on TV.
I lay my head on his lap like old times.Let him feed me popcorn.But something in me refuses to thaw.Or to really warm to him again.Blake catches me staring out the window at the falling snow.
He starts talking about the future again.
“Maybe we can take a trip,” he said one night.“Get out of this little Christmas town.”
“Maybe.”
“You don’t sound thrilled.”
“I like it here.”
“You liked it here,” he corrects.“Now you look like someone waiting for permission to leave.”
I have no answer for that.Maybe because he’s right.
Everywhere I go, I see reminders of Humbug.The corner of the bar where he used to sit.The road where his bike idled that first night, I rode off with him.Even the old jukebox at Sno-Globes, it switches songs one afternoon, unprompted, and lands on “O Holy Night.”
I laugh until I cry, then blame it on allergies.
The month crawls by.The days all look the same, gray, cold, quiet.Even the town seems tired of pretending.The lights dull, the tourists thin out, and the snow turns to slush that sticks to boots and ruins moods.By the time the calendar flips, I convince myself it’s over.I bury what happened deep enough it can’t claw its way back up.
It's morning, gray sky, breath you can see.Typical day in Evervale.I step off my porch, tugging my scarf tighter, when I hear the crunch of boots behind me.
Humbug?My throat goes dry.But I turn, and it’s not him.
“Carol, right?”
A woman stands at the bottom of the steps, a plastic bucket in one gloved hand.I know who she is before she says another word.Pictures didn’t do her justice.Trina’s the kind of pretty that knows it, sharp around the edges, like beauty’s her only weapon and she has had to use it well.
“Can I help you?”I ask, already uneasy.
She smiles, a tight, mean smile and lifts the bucket.“Yeah.You can stop pretending you don’t know who I am.”
