Anxiety creeps in. Since that Gage-instigated kiss, I’ve had this growing clarity, and I’ve been sure it’s the same for Taylor. This open wanting is a new thing for us, and I knew it might be awkward for us to figure out how to talk about it. But now, as I study the tightness around her eyes, the furrows in her forehead, I wonder if I’m wrong. I’ve been gone for four years. What if I’ve lost the ability to read her? “Do you want to say something now?”
“Let me make sure I understand.” Her voice is measured.
Anxiety buzzes louder. This isn’t a promising start.
“Four years ago, we were sloshed on my mom’s stupid strong eggnog, and we kissed on that porch.” She points over her shoulder without even looking. “You left town the next day. You have been passing time with European bikini models—”
“African and South American too.” Wrong joke if her sharp look is anything to go by.
“—and avoided your parents on Christmas for four years because deep down inside, kissing me freaked you out. Do I have this right so far?”
Trouble is coming. “Yes?” She gives me a hard look, so I say it again, committing to it. “Yes, that’s right.”
She sets her mug down. “Now you’re here, four years later, and we have another awkward mistletoe kiss, and you have an epiphany. You had feelings for me before. They’ve apparently been, what, dormant for four years?”
I open my mouth to answer, but she holds up her hand. “No. It’s fine. You have this epiphany, and you decide to start teasing me about it, and you come on this reindeer mission with me because why, Levi? Am I supposed to see all that too and be into you, and everything is fine?”
I’m not smiling anymore. “I’m . . . not sure. Maybe?” She glares at me, and I try to explain. “We’ve always been on the same wavelength.” When she frowns, I shove my hand through my hair, trying to sort through all this. What has been obvious for the last few days suddenly feels . . . not. “Am I the only one who felt something? Because if that’s true, I’m sorry.” The weight of that hits me in the chest. “I shouldn’t have assumed. Or projected. I shouldn’t have been teasing you. And—”
She cuts my words off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Stop. Stop it. It’s not . . .” She leans over and buries her face in her hands.
All the warmth of “inside hugs” is turning to a hot wash of acid. “Tay.” I reach over to touch her shoulder. “I blew this. Let me fix this. I’ll—”
She surges to her feet. “Levi William Taft, you are the most frustrating man I have ever known. Ever!”
That last “ever” is almost a shout, but she isnotdone.
“Do you know how many crushes on you I’ve cut off? How many times I’ve felt myself slipping over the edge of something and hauled my emotions back to safety? How many stupid girlfriends I’ve watched you date who were all wrong for you? How many times I’ve had to scrub that first mistletoe kiss from my memory banks but it keeps coming back?”
“No?” Okay, so I’m in trouble. But I wasn’t imagining things. There is a spark there. I have no idea where that leaves us in this moment.
“SO MANY TIMES.” That’s as close to a yell as it can get without being a yell. “But you decide after one near brush with catching feelings that you’d rather disappear for four years than deal with it, you get burnt out reporting from countries I’m still not sure exist, you come waltzing back into town, and you decide now you’re ready for these feelings, and you’re going to snap your fingers, and I will just WHAT, Levi? What did you expect me to do next?”
I am not a stupid man. I do not answer the question. Still, she has given me a lot of information in that monologue. Information that is not without hope. But now is not the time for follow-up questions. I say nothing.
“Answer me, Levi. You want me to do what?”
Oh, wrong tack. Definitely say something. “I thought you would realize you have feelings too and admit that our moms called it from birth?” I say hopefully.
She doesn’t smile. But I’m trying not to because the “crushes” she’s been fighting . . . I don’t think crushes come and go and come again. If this is a thing that stays, and she keeps pushing it down, maybe that’s not a crush. Maybe you don’t get crushes on someone you’ve known your whole life when you’re twenty-six. And maybe if it’s only a crush, it won’t still be holding on when you’re thirty.
This is probably different for me because I never “knew” how I felt in the thinking part of my brain. But it was always in thefeelingpart of me. It drew me back here. And it got through to the thinking part of my brain when I walked into Bixby’s and Taylor threw herself into my arms. I’d closed them around her, and I started to understand.
I realized I’d known it four years ago, so there was no thunderbolt. It was more like . . . seeing things clearly.
“I’m going outside,” she says. “In my coat, and big boots, and snow hat, and the stupid gloves your mom sent that I thought I wouldn’t need, but she was right, and I don’t know how she does this. I don’t want you to come with me. I’ll be back when I’m back.”
“That’s fair,” I say. “But at what point is it okay for me to assume I should organize a search party if you haven’t returned?”
“Never. I’ll make sure I can see this house or the Egbert house. I won’t get lost. But I’m not coming in until . . . until . . .”
I hold up my hands in asay no moregesture and keep my mouth shut.
She practically stomps to the door and wrestles on her snow gear. She pulls a beanie down on her head, and it makes her hair poof to the sides. I know that she is very angry, but this beanie has a yellow pompom on top, which is generally more in keeping with Taylor’s disposition. I decide to take it as a sign of things to come, and I keep a serious expression until she disappears through the door, which she closes quietly behind her. Taylor is not a door slammer, not even when she’s as mad as I’ve ever seen her.
Except Idoknow Taylor well. As well as I know any other soul on the planet. I’m pretty sure she’s not mad. My gut says she’s scared. If I can get her to talk to me about why, we’ll solve this.
I consider her scowl as she left.
