I had her street name, scrawled on a scrap of paper I folded and unfolded until it felt like something bigger than ink. I didn’t know what came next. Turns out, next looked like this: A job at a garage on the edge of town, thanks to a guy from my past who turned out to be better at forgiving than I was. Cash days, then legit ones. Grease under my nails, engines in pieces, the satisfaction of putting something broken back together, and hearing it roar again.
Parole meetings every month, piss tests in plastic cups, a man with a checklist asking me if I’d“adjusted.”I’d tell him about my job, about the cabin Mara found on a rental site that turned into a lease with both our names on it, about the writing group she still went to every Thursday. He’d look at my file and not quite believe it.
Next looked like long walks on the path behind her old apartment, the one she stopped using after that night. The first time we went, she shook, but she kept moving. I walked on the outside, between her and the trees, my hand hovering just above hers.
“I want to see where it happened,” she’d said. “I want to choose it this time.”
We did. We walked past the place where my life cracked open. Then we kept going. Next looked like nights in the cabin, where I woke up gasping, and she put a hand on my chest and just… stayed. No questions, no pressure. Just heartbeat to heartbeat, until the room anchored itself again.
It looked like me learning that I could sleep lying down without being on edge, that the sound of a door closing didn’t automatically mean danger, that a knock on the wall could be her asking if I wanted tea, not someone coming to take something away. It looked like her reading drafts of a piece she wrote for a small magazine about “letters that saved me,” hands trembling, cheeks flushed.
“You changed my life,” I’d said when she finished.
She’d shaken her head. “We changed each other’s.” I didn’t have a plan when I left. But we made one together, piece by piece.
The timer beeps. Mara curses softly and opens the oven. A wave of heat hits me, fogging the glass of the oven door as she leans in. I step behind her, hands hovering near her waist in case she misjudges the distance or slips. Old habits again. She slides the tray out flawlessly.
“I am a domestic goddess,” she declares, setting it on the stove. “A chaotic one, but still.”
I look at the rolls. “You are,” I agree. “And I’m a man who knows which side his cinnamon is buttered on, so I support this deeply.”
She laughs, bumping her shoulder lightly into my chest.
God, I love that sound.
I love that I get to hear it in person and not just imagine where, in a letter, she would have laughed. She straightens, turns, and leans her back against the counter, looking up at me.There’s a smear of flour on her forearm and a smudge of icing on her wrist. Her hair is still tangled from the ride; cheeks pink from the cold.
“Merry almost Christmas,” she says.
“Almost?” I glance at the clock on the microwave. It’s Christmas Eve, late afternoon, the kind of grey light that feels like the world is between breaths. “Feels like Christmas to me.”
She tilts her head. “You say that every time there’s sugar involved.”
“Not my fault, Christmas and sugar are strongly linked,” I say. “I don’t make the rules.”
Her smile softens. “You ready?” she asks.
“For what?”
“For round two,” she says. “Second Christmas. One year later. The ‘we actually did this’ edition.”
I let out a slow breath. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m ready.”
She gives me a look that says she knows I’m not just talking about the holiday.
She has always been annoyingly good at reading between my lines.
Mara
The Tree Looks Better This Year. Not Because It’s Bigger Or Fuller Or Has More Ornaments, Though It Does, Technically. We added to the collection over the year: a little metal bike, a ceramic mug, a tiny star with“M&J”written badly on it because Jax insisted he could do cursive and then proved he very much could not. It looks better because I remember decorating it with him.
Last year, I put the star up alone, my hands shaking a little as I stretched on my tiptoes. This year, he lifted me onto hisshoulders, laughing as I squealed and grabbed the top of the tree for balance.
“I’ve got you,” he’d said. “Promise.”
“I really, really hope so,” I’d replied, clinging to his hair.
We’d argued about which side looked “balanced,” rearranged baubles five times, then given up and decided imperfection was charming. Now, as we carry the rolls into the living room, the lights blink lazily across the branches, casting soft shadows on the walls. The fireplace crackles happily. Stockings hang from the mantle, two knitted ones I found at a charity shop, each with a letter embroidered on them.
