He lay down on the rug, arm over his eyes, the quiet humming like static in his ears.
He lasted all of thirty seconds.
The walls felt too close. His skin felt wrong. His thoughts kept circling, faster, darker?—
She needed someone better than him.
She deserved someone better than him.
Tom sat up sharply, breath unsteady.
If she needed someone better, then that was who he would become.
Tom lacedhis running shoes in the dark entryway.
He needed to move. Needed to think. Needed to do something other than stare at that mason jar and feel his chest crack open.
The neighborhood was quiet, that suspended pre-dawn stillness where the world held its breath between night and morning.
The air burned his lungs as he started to run. His feet hit the pavement in a steady rhythm, his breath clouding in the icy chill.
Lauren’s childhood street wasn’t like the one he’d grown up on. The houses were smaller, closer together. Christmas still clung on in this neighborhood in early January—strings of colored bulbs, drooping wreaths, plastic snowmen half-buried in real snow.
He jogged past a house with inflatable candy canes, a reindeer that turned its head mechanically from side to side.
The kind of display that would make his parents cringe. The kind Lauren would love. She loved Christmas.
Tom's pace faltered.
He could see her face so clearly—eyes bright as she’d shown him each square of that quilt. She'd beenglowing. Offering him her whole heart, every patchwork stitch of it.
The truth battered him, sharp and sudden as cold air in his lungs.
He was a coward. Every careful, neutral choice he’d made—every time he’d wished she would tone it down—hadn’t been about standards. It had been about shame. His shame.
He’d worried about what his parents were thinking. Worried about how it looked.
Her joy had been so open, so pure, that it had embarrassed him.
He’d wanted her to beappropriate.
He’d wanted her to hide her joy so he wouldn’t have to feel ashamed of it.
How could he have been such a bastard?
He was running fast now, feet pounding against the frozen pavement.
Past more houses, more lights. A rooftop covered in LEDs, Santa straddling a sleigh, a dozen candy canes stabbing through the snow.
Tacky. Excessive.
But someone had climbed up there in the freezing cold, fingers numb, cheeks burning, to make it happen.
Because it made them happy.
Because it made someone else smile.
Just like Lauren.
