“Hey,” Julia said immediately, softening, stepping in close. “No, love. Come here.”
“I’m fine,” Vic choked, even as the tears kept rolling, hot and humiliating. “Everything’s fine.”
“Yes,” Julia said, folding her into her arms. “You’re clearly the picture of serenity.”
Vic laughed, a wet, hiccuping sound. “Don’t mock my process.”
Julia didn’t say anything else for a while. She just held her, strong and sure, while Vic got her breathing under control, head tucked against Julia’s shoulder like she’d done a thousand times before in a thousand different crises — none of them involving vegetables.
After a minute or two, Vic’s sobs tapered off into sniffles. Her pulse stopped pounding quite so loudly. The smell of pumpkin was still distressingly present, but Julia’s familiar perfume cut through it — warm, subtle, safe.
“Sorry,” Vic mumbled into her jumper.
“For what?” Julia asked.
“For… exploding,” Vic said, gesturing weakly in the direction of the kitchen. “For the pumpkin. For being insane about Christmas. For—” She flapped her hand helplessly. “All of it.”
Julia eased back just enough to see her face, but kept her hands resting on Vic’s waist.
“Sit,” she said gently, nodding toward the sofa by the fire.
“I’ll get pumpkin on it,” Vic protested.
“Good,” Julia said. “It’ll match the red wine stain from the time you tried to open a bottle with a shoe.”
“That was one time,” Vic muttered.
“And it was hilarious,” Julia said.
She tugged Vic toward the sofa. They sat, shoulders touching, knees angled toward each other. Vic stared into the fire as if it might offer her a revised timetable.
“I had it all planned,” she said after a moment, her voice small and hoarse. “Every detail. The timings. The food. The lights. The stupid centrepiece. I had a document, Jules.”
“I know you did,” Julia said. “You made me proofread it at midnight.”
“It was going to be perfect,” Vic whispered. “Our first proper Christmas all together with no drama overshadowing it. I wanted it to be—” She broke off, throat tightening again.
Julia’s expression softened into something heartbreaking. “You wanted it to make up for all the ones you never had.”
The words hit like a gentle, accurate arrow.
Vic blinked hard. “That’s… that’s not?—”
“My love,” Julia said quietly. “You don’t have to spin this. Not with me.”
Vic swallowed.
The fire popped, sending up a small flare of sparks.
She looked down at her hands. There was dried pumpkin on her sleeves. A smear of icing she hadn’t noticed earlier. The faint indentation of where her fingers had curled around her clipboard all day like a lifeline.
“Christmas was… not good,” she said eventually, each word cautious, like stepping onto thin ice. “When I was a kid.”
“I know,” Julia said.
“No, you know in the abstract,” Vic said. “Because I’ve made jokes about it. ‘Ha ha, my parents once gave me an iron as a present,’ that sort of thing. But I’ve never…” She trailed off.
Julia didn’t speak. Just waited, patient, her fingers tracing idle circles on Vic’s knee.
