Mom smacked him with a dish towel. “Be nice. She’s trying.”
“Trying to kill me?” He set forks by their plates and then dug in. The casserole had just the right amount of hot sauce, and he reached for the orange juice.
“Oh, you!” She sat down on the stool next to him and started eating. “Who was in the driveway?”
“It wasn’t our driveway. It was next door.”
She brightened. “Ethan and Collin? We’ll have to stop over and ask Collin what Santa brought him.”
Ethan was Lauren’s older brother, and Collin was her nephew. Funny how, after all these years, he still referenced them by their relationship to her. Like she was the center of his world concerning that family. Well, she’d been gone for five years–it was time to change things.
Also, there was no way was he stepping foot in the Hall house this Christmas. “It wasn’t Ethan.” He swiped his lips and picked up his cup, talking more to it than to his mom. “Lauren’s home for Christmas.”
“Oh?” Her tone implied a lot. She kept her eyes glued to her plate. “Did she come alone?” she asked, as detached as one would ask if the mailman had stopped by when all they expected was junk mail.
He shook his head. “She brought a boyfriend.”
“You don’t know he’d her boyfriend,” she scolded. “They could be work buddies or neighbors. Maybe she invited him because he didn’t have anywhere else to go. She always had a soft spot for strays.”
Jacob barely refrained from rolling his eyes. “They were fogging up the windows of his expensive car.” He leveled her with a look. “She doesn’t have that soft of a heart.”
Mom lightly whacked his arm. “You! Stop being salty.”
He chuckled. Another one of Mom’s time fillers was volunteering at the middle school as a helper in the art class. She picked up on some of the kids’ phrases and even used them correctly–mostly.
Mom stared at her plate. “Are you going to go over there? Say hello?”
“We’re too busy today.” He shrugged off her implication that he should go over. Whatever chance he’d had with the world’s most perfect woman, he’d messed it up when he was an eighteen-year-old idiot. “Speaking of which, you’d better get your hair done. I’ll do the dishes.”
Mom glanced at the clock and then shoved away from the counter. “Christmas cookie crumbles! Look at the time.” She dashed off to her bedroom, patting the back of her blonde bob.
Jacob smiled after her. Each day, she acted more like the mom who’d created a childhood full of wonderful Christmas memories.
Most of which included the little girl who lived next door. “Lauren,” he repeated her name to test it on his lips. It’d been years since he’d let himself feel the disappointment that came from losing her.
She looked so good.
Did she still smell like cinnamon and roses? Such a strange combination, but it was hers and hers alone. The cinnamon was from her house. Mrs. Hall was always baking. One perk of being best friends with Lauren was having full access to her kitchen at all hours of the day. He ate more after-school snacks at her house than at his own.
The rose scent came from a lotion she wore. He’d bought her a tube of it one year for her birthday, and she never ran out. He snorted at the thought. Never ran out? He was naïve. She’d had to have bought more over the years.
He paused–considering the possibility for the first time.
Why didn’t he realize it back then?
Girls didn’t buy themselves things they didn’t like. And, usually, if a guy had bought it for her, then it meant she wanted the guy too. The signals had been there. He’d just been too young and dumb to notice. He thought they had time…
He got up from his seat. None of that mattered now. She’d iced him out after graduation. It’d been cruel and left a scar.
Enough time had passed that he didn’t burn inside when he thought of the weeks he’d tried to talk to her, and her lips were sealed. If there was one thing he’d learned from losing his dad, it was that you shouldn’t hold on to grudges. The past was best left there and let go.
Except… he had questions. Maybe, one day, they’d be able to talk. That would be amazing. He hurried to clean up and then went to the front room and blew out the scented candle.
Mom came out a second later, her hair even smoother than before. They bundled up and made their way to Main Street. “I’ll meet up with you later.” Mom turned left and headed for the senior citizens’ center.
Jacob tucked his hands in his pockets and plowed on. Main Street was quiet at this time of day. The sing-along would be in the park in the middle later that night. They called it a park, but it was a square of grass in front of the civic center. At the end of the street stood the old white church. It needed a coat of paint, and the bells hadn’t worked in years. A for sale sign hung on the front door. The building was drafty and old, but he’d always liked the stained glass windows. Lauren had once said she wanted to be married there.
He was so busy contemplating the church that he wasn’t watching where he was going and bumped into Santa Claus.
