“Stayed for the theater clean up.”
“Private jets fly all day,” I counter, and shift my weight. I know how I sound, can tell how cold the words are coming off by the urgency in my mom’s eyes, the silent plea toknock it off. I’d be lying if I said Sloane leaving didn’t hurt me, that her rejection outside the hospital the other day didn’t throw me for a loop, but what really gets me is that I can tell that it’s fake. That she thinks I’d be so easily fooled by a performance I’ve given a thousand times over.
“I don’t use the jet,” she grits out, and I can see the way her jaw tenses.
“Just come inside. I’m freezing,” Carmen complains, still clutching the outer seam of her pants while she trembles from the cold, refusing to let her go.
And that does it, Sloane averting her gaze so it won’t collide with mine, striding into the space that feels smaller with all of us in it. Avoidance will be impossible, and I fight theurge to apologize. If she’d thought ahead and wasn’t so reckless, she’d be in Atlanta by now instead of here, with me.
“This is…really generous of you, Rebecca.” Sloane slips her heavy sherpa coat off and I take it on instinct, dropping it over the side of the couch as her orange blossom floats across my senses. Her eyes flit across the room, noticing the paper chain, the straw angels—all the DIY decorations we’ve come to associate with this time of year—and they soften. My molars press together, vulnerability turning my skin into this raw, easily perceptible thing. It’s not lost on me that she’s seen more of me than anyone in the three years I’ve been here. More than Will, even.
She saw my front, plowed past it, and then ran away.
“Please, call me Becs,” my mom tells her, beaming. She actually beams at her and it shouldn’t matter to me, but it does. Whatever tear exists inside me mends just barely, stitches itself back up only an inch, and the strain slightly lifts. I want to warn her not to care about her, but I think I’m just trying to warn myself, and that maybe, it’s too late.
Fuck.
She’s oblivious to what is happening inside me, oblivious as she starts to turn back to the door, only for Carmen to tug on her. “I just need to get my luggage,” she laughs, relaxing for the first time since I heard her in the doorway.
“I got it.” I lightly pull the keys from her hands and rush out into the blinding snowy haze, grateful for the sharp chill. The warmth in there was starting to suffocate me, so I take longer than I need to, standing outside the doorway with her yellow luggage while the cold solidifies the feelings just seeing her dislodged.
They’re all at the table when I come back in, the same mugs she and Carmen were painting just a few weeks ago between their hands. A heap of whipped cream threatens to overflowfrom Carmen’s mug, and small dollops seem to float in Sloane’s and Mom’s.
“You forgot these,” I say, slipping candy canes from the tree into each of their mugs.
Sloane’s gaze lifts to meet mine, mouth lifting into a hesitant, white flag of a smile. “How could we forget?” Cordial as it is, I decide to try and focus on the fact that whatever twisted friendship we had before that kiss might be salvageable.
“You do this, too?” Carmen says with wide eyes, leaning into the table like it’ll bring her closer to Sloane.
“Of course. Who doesn’t?” Sloane tells her in fake outrage.
“Heathens,” Mom agrees, sipping her hot cocoa behind a heavily restrained smile before glancing at me. “Go on. Make yourself a cup.”
Sloane peers up at me through her lashes, the corners of her lips tugging up like they can’t help themselves, her eyes glittering the way they were on the roof.
“What’s so funny?” I take the bait, knowing better. I always know better.
“That all the women in your life can’t help but boss you around.” Her smile falters for a moment, just as mine really springs to life. “Carmen and your mom. Obviously,” she says with an eye roll that reminds me of the way she blew me off that first night at the bar, one hip pressed against the pool table.
“Obviously.”
I imagine that she’s blushing, the soft pink hue of it creeping along the same path as her freckles, but I wouldn’t know. I stir my drink at the counter, back turned to her, until the mix is dissolved in the hot milk and I spray a mountain of whipped cream that could rival Carmen’s, stealing the seat right next to Sloane. She eyes my mug, not bothering to hide her judgement.
“Cheers,” Carmen giggles, clinking her mug into mine.
“You don’t think that’s too much?” Sloane says, her thick brows playfully scrunched together as she cocks her head at me, and Carmen starts to push back. “For an adult man,” she clarifies, and I take a size gulp of both the toppings and the chocolatey drink.
“Shouldtoo muchbe in an adult man’s vocabulary?” I ask, mentally betting on the way it’ll fan the flames under her skin.
Like fucking clock work. Her eyes narrow on me as her blush deepens before she glances away. I shouldn’t care that I can make her feel anything at all, but I do. I do, and that she ended up here, snowed in on Christmas, feels like some fucked up cosmic punishment.
Something hard slams into my shin, and I look across the table to see my mom’s brows trying to tell me something through gestures. She slightly tilts her head toward Carmen, who’s lost in the peppermint swirl happening in her mug.
“I’m sorry you have to miss out on your family’s traditions this year,” Mom tells Sloane, cutting me out of the conversation all together as punishment for my not safe for the little ears joke.
“Oh, it’s fine. They probably won’t even miss me,” she shrugs, flipping her hair over her shoulder. She really believes that, I realize, when nothing in her gaze shifts even a little.
Christmas was always this monumental thing in our house. Luis would make us carol; Mom would make these cookie tins that we’d be forced to pass out, door to door; we spent the entire first week of December decorating together each night after school. We’d pick out our tree together, watch holiday movies every weekend, get matching pajamas. It isn’t like that anymore, not since Luis passed, but I’d never be able to say my family wouldn’t miss me. Of course, they would.
