“No, it doesn’t have to be a centaur, but if it is, that’s more common. So my mum, the gossip queen of the greater Newcastle area, mind, knows every centaur herd or family between Jersey and Brittany.”
“Those are places or people?”
“Places. And not New Jersey, Jersey in the Channel Islands.”
“Got it.”
“I’m the middle son out of five. The other four, my mother has fixed up. Some didn’t take much fixing, just a casual meeting between our family and theirs, and hey, presto, newlyweds. I’m obviously the harder one to help, living in America. But I come home at least once a year, and last year...” Nigel drains his glass, and his face is etched with pain, “Last year, she told me that she’d met the most wonderful girl. Siobbhan. Beautiful. Ready to settle down. Looking for a serious, marriage-minded bloke. Wanted a husband and kids, and to build something to last, not just date and shag, you know?”
I nod hard, throat tight. Sounds like what I wanted. What I hoped I would be getting this Christmas.
“I text her, of course, before I come home for Christmas. Try to get a call in, but the time zones and her work schedule made it hard. No bother, I thought. Based on everything we’d said, itsounded like she was eager to meet me, that she knew all about what my mother had said—that this was a fix-up, an arranged match, even.”
“Oh, wow. Super serious?”
“I did everything but buy the ring. Siobbhan was there at my mother’s. She stood with me in the family photo. Laughed with me. Stood next to me at dinner—a lot of centaur festivities don’t involve much sitting.
“Got it.”
“I’m not good with words.” The guttural accent turns into something even deeper and thicker. Nigel stops looking at me and looks at the stockings hung over the fireplace. Three of them, one tiny.
A family.
“I think you are,” I whisper, and I reach for his hand.
He seems surprised, but smiles for the briefest second and holds it. “You’re kind. Anyway, the mistletoe was hung. McCartney was warbling away on the stereo. I take Sibbohan over to the corner and think I’ll give her a little peck, ask her to see me on Boxing Day—” he pauses and gives me a quizzical glance.
“I know that one,” I confirm and wave him on.
“She turned her head at the last second and told me she’d just gotten engaged. To someone else. To her old boyfriend, who wouldn’t know the meaning of commitment if it bit his bum. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint my mum, so she came. And she never bothered in her texts to tell me that the serious man she wanted was already in the picture, just not wised up. The second he pulled his head out of his arse, Siobbhan was his.” Nigel puts his glass down and pulls his hand from mine. “Guess she told him she was going to marry some American centaur if he didn’t make his intentions clear—and so he did. Right before I got there. We were never together like you and—”
“Josh,” I remind him.
“You and Josh. It still hurt to have it happen on Christmas Day. It would have hurt to have it happen at all. I felt so sure that she.... I didn’t love her, but I would have, if she’d wanted me to, if she would have become my wife. We are like that, centaurs. A bride is sacred. A mate is something you have for life. I’d been hoping to find one on my own and never did. Not much good at looking for one, I suppose. I don’t dance or go to clubs and pubs. I just have a quiet life. Like my work. My books. Play a bit of footie sometimes in the summer. Nothing that brings a woman running, I suppose. When Mum said she found my future wife, I...” Nigel swallows and swirls the dregs in his cup, not looking at me. “I was excited. Thought it was meant to be.”
“Oh, man. I know that feeling, just in reverse. You never got to give your proposal. I never got to hear mine.”
Nigel looks stunned when I sum it up. “Wow. That’s true. Who’d have thought two strangers would have so much in common? Or end up together in a lodge neither one of them owns, stuck in a snowstorm?
I hear Josh’s voice suddenly, an eerie noise I wish I could erase, but the words linger.
Souls are cosmically joined...
“A set. A pair,” I say, rubbing my arms, a sudden fierce shiver burning through me like a blast of arctic wind.
“Aye, we are. A matched set of misery, aren’t we?” Nigel raises his empty cup. “To the ones we’ve yet to meet. One day, maybe we’ll be happy Josh and Sibbohan got away.”
“Maybe.”
Chapter Five: But the Fire Is So Delightful
“God save us, it’s frigid.”
I wake up and realize something is wrong. Briana and I talked for hours last night—until her head drooped and her words became little mumbles, soft and nonsensical. She spoke in rivers of words, pouring out grief in waves and stories in steady streams. I spoke in drips, a drizzle of words, a few at a time. She didn’t mind. Didn’t tell me to talk more. I didn’t mind. Didn’t ask her to speak less.
I’ve never felt that dynamic before. It made me smile as I stared at her as she slept, looking at how her lips curved, and her hair, now unbraided, flowed into dark waves. It looked like some cross between an old Rembrandt and a lingerie ad, all shadows and soft firelight, soft points of light from the little Christmas lights on the tree and the mantle. And in the middle—a goddess with a deep natural tan, glossy rings and curls of hair, and a heart-shaped face.
I fell asleep, looking at her, thinking to myself that Josh deserved to be trampled by Klaus and every reindeer he’s ever owned. Pulverized. Gritted and spread under a plow.
