He had given her that to marry another man, and looking at it now made his chest hurt.
He felt like he was standing on the edge of something. Much like he had been when they had gone zip lining. But he couldn’t put a finger on it. Or maybe he didn’t want to.
So instead he took her hand, and let her out of the hotel room, down to the lobby restaurant.
“At Christmas time all this gets decorated,” she said, gesturing around the lobby.
“I bet it’s great,” he said.
“Yeah. I’d love to come up sometime but...” A sad look crossed her face. “This is so beautiful,” she said, sitting down at the table. There was an elaborate five-course meal for dinner, so they didn’t have to look at a menu or place their orders. He realized he didn’t much care what he ate. He just wanted to watch her.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“Do you remember the Christmas that we spent in the barn?”
He let out a hard breath. Of course he remembered it. He remembered it every year. But with feelings more than specific, clear thoughts. Because sometimes thinking back to when they were kids was painful. And not for the reasons that thinking about his childhood often was, but there was something about them that hemissed sometimes, and he had never been able to say what that was.
Possibility.
He pushed that aside.
“Yeah. I remember.”
His dad had decided that he was too stressed out to have Christmas. Hadn’t had a Christmas tree. He had been subtle about it, but he had somehow shifted the blame to something Justice’s mother had or hadn’t done. The details didn’t matter. Only that he was somehow responsible for the kids being disappointed, but he had managed to lay blame on their mother.
He couldn’t remember if they had been angry with her. He hoped not. Because the next year she had been gone, and sometimes he did wonder if their own behavior had led to that.
But then, it was just another reminder that you couldn’t trust anyone. That the people who were supposed to care didn’t.
At least, not in the way they should.
Except for Rue.
She reached across the table and took his hand, the way that she had done always, even before this. Even before they had become lovers. “You got me the best present.”
“I didn’tgetit for you. I made it for you.”
Her eyes went glittery. “You made that?”
It had been a necklace that he had fashioned out of a leather strap and some sea glass that he had found.
“I thought... I mean I guess I don’t know what I thought. I was only nine. So, I guess I didn’t reallythink it through.” She took a shaky breath. “You got me my only present. My parents were being so volatile that year. We didn’t have any money, because they spent it all on alcohol and... I don’t know. Whatever else they spent it on. I’ve never fully understood them. Not what they did with anything, not what they wanted out of what they did, I just never understood. I still don’t. Because they just keep on living that way.”
“Maybe it makes them feel alive. Being that angry.”
What he hated was that he almost understood her parents then. Because he had decided not to care about anything, and the years passed without much to mark them by. When life didn’t have intensity, it was like a smooth stretch of water, endless and unchanging all around you.
No wind. No movement.
No purpose.
He would’ve told Rue or anyone else that he didn’t need things to change. That he had found his spot in the middle of the lake and he was happy with it. With the lack of resistance. With the way things worked.
But right then, he envied the way that her parents could try, explode, cling together. He envied that passion.
He looked at her, his chest clenched tight, and he tried to ease it by taking a deep breath.
“All I know is we had a Charlie Brown Christmas tree and we sat in the barn and sang carols. And I’ve never been so thankful for anything as I was for you that Christmas. Because you made something so awful feel magical. Justice, what you and I had, never even felt like second best. It felt like real Christmas magic.”
