As I drive out of the square, everyone waves like I’m in some kind of small-town royal procession. Kids jump up and down. Mrs. Flores blows me a kiss. Even the choir throws in an impromptu “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as I pass.
I keep checking the side streets.
No Rhett.
He doesn’t appear on the road out of town either. Doesn’t materialize by a fence line or the hitching posts or the bend that looks back toward the square.
When Chimney Gorge finally disappears in the rearview mirror, it feels like someone closed a book in the middle of a sentence.
The driveto Saint Pierce is an hour and a half of me and my thoughts and Lolly’s cocoa, which goes lukewarm before I’ve made it halfway.
The trees blur past in shades of dark green and white. The sky stays stubbornly, stupidly clear. No storm now. No excuse.
I replay last night’s talk with Rhett on repeat.
The way he wouldn’t look at me when he told me he’d been wrong.
About starting something with you.
The way he saidmy quietlike it was a person he’d chosen instead of me.
The way he shut down every option I tried to offer before I could even fully articulate it. Like he’d already had the argument with himself and decided for both of us.
I keep hearing my own voice calling him a coward.
I keep hearing his silence afterward.
At some point, I realize I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles hurt. I force my fingers to relax, one by one. My breath evens out.
Was it really nothing to him?
Did the cabin mean nothing? The stove, the socks, the way he tucked the quilt around me, the way he told me about Iraq like he was handing me a piece of himself he never shows anyone?
Was I just… a storm detour?
Heat burns behind my eyes. I blink it back. The last thing I need is to start crying on a mountain road.
“You’re not doing this,” I tell myself, voice thin in the quiet car. “You’re not turning this into ‘you were never enough.’”
Logically, I know he felt something. I saw it. In the way he looked at me. In the way he touched me. In the way his hands shook when he talked about his friend and let me hold that grief with him.
But logic and heartbreak don’t always share a brain.
By the time the outskirts of Saint Pierce appear—a familiar gas station, the billboard advertising a local plumber’s holiday special, the line of brick buildings that gives way to my neighborhood—I feel…hollow.
Like I left the soft, messy part of myself somewhere between the sleigh and the square and came back with just the packaging.
I park outside my apartment building. The world is back to its normal noise: cars, distant sirens, someone arguing cheerfully on a balcony about Christmas lights. My building smells like takeout and cleaning supplies and the faint perfume of my neighbor’s incessant incense.
I lug my bags and quilt and emotional baggage up the stairs.
Inside, my apartment is exactly the way I left it—tiny, tidy, the little faux tree on the side table still half-decorated from when I rushed out to get to Chimney Gorge. A mug with cold latte residue by the sink. A stack of mail fanned out on the counter.
No wood stove. No blankets that smell like smoke and pine.
Just me.
I set everything down, kick off my boots, and stand in the middle of my living room like I don’t quite remember how to be here.
