“There’ll be plenty of time for fun once I graduate.”
But her words scrape an open wound. The anniversary of my mother’s death is coming in a few weeks, and I’ve been thinking about the promises she dragged out of me on her deathbed. I haven’t lived up to them, and I can’t help thinking she’d be disappointed. Every year I tell myself that I’ll keep my promise once I’m more financially stable. Get a little farther in school. When my life’s more stable. But I can hear her voice in my head—the one from when she was strong and cancer free—telling me I’m making excuses and letting her down.
Again.
But I don’t have time to dwell on sad things. Lord knows I’ll have plenty of time over Christmas. Alone in my one-bedroom apartment, splurging on a steak and baked potato and watching While You Were Sleeping with my grumpy, long-haired cat Maybelle.
The next half hour flies by. Maggie, Bethany, and I work like a well-oiled machine until the line dwindles down to just a few customers.
I’m wiping down the espresso machine when Lauren, a legal assistant from the twenty-ninth floor says, “Oh, my word, Maggie! The Christmas decorations are even better than last year!”
“That’s all Finley,” Maggie brags. “She’s chock-full of Christmas spirit!”
“Finley decorated all this?” Lauren asks, glancing around the store.
“She sure did!” Bethany pipes up. “She’s decorated the place for the past three Christmases and adds to it every year. Isn’t it something?”
“The owner gives me money each year to add to it,” I admit, blushing.
“She loves Christmas,” Maggie says. “Like looooves it.”
“It’s true.” My face heats even more. “It’s my favorite holiday.”
“Understatement of the year,” Bethany says.
I shrug as I take Lauren’s cup from Maggie. I’m surprised my coworkers don’t expand on why I love Christmas, but I’m grateful. My heart feels more tender than usual today.
“She makes a lot of this stuff,” Maggie says. “Isn’t she talented?”
“I also thrift a lot of it,” I add, starting Lauren’s peppermint mocha.
Thrifting helps stretch the meager budget I’m given each year. When I first started working here, the decorations were sad—tired tinsel and cheap stockings with our names in glue and glitter. I asked for a couple hundred dollars to fix it up, convincing the owner it would be good for business. She’d been so pleased that she’s given me a few hundred dollars every year since. The past two years, the decorations have drawn foot traffic. Passersby spot them through the street windows and come in to admire the display, usually purchasing a drink and sometimes a pastry.
Now the dining room has two full-sized artificial trees, chock full of ornaments in different themes, several smaller trees scattered around, snowmen and Santa figurines, a working train, multiple reindeer, and a whole host of other decorations. I even paint holly and snowmen on the windows. I do it all on my own time—which Maggie thinks is unfair—but I don’t mind.
From early November to mid-January, it makes me feel a little closer to my mother.
But now I’m thinking about Mom again. Our Christmases were always meager, but we still decorated, even if it was just homemade ornaments. It was our favorite holiday, and her most fervent wish was to go north for a real white Christmas with all the trimmings.
But money is always tight for a single mother, so we never made it happen. We kept putting it off to “someday.” Then Mom was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer at the start of my senior year. The treatments and hospital visits whittled what little we had and left me with a debt so enormous it’s taken me six years to crawl out.
Promise me you’ll live, Finley. Promise me you’ll take chances and have fun.
Taking chances has been impossible while holding down two jobs and community college part time. And having fun? My sweet neighbors count, but I know that’s not what she meant. Still, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. In a few more months I’ll have the debt paid off, and maybe I can finally breathe.
Then I can have fun.
Who am I kidding? I still have two years of college, and after years of juggling credit payments, I swore I’d never be in debt again. I’ve only taken the community classes I could afford to pay outright, but most community colleges don’t offer bachelor’s degrees in nursing. Tuition will take a leap, and since I refuse to get student loans, unless I get the Freeman Scholarship, I might not even go.
I hand Lauren her drink and glance up to check the line. And that’s when I see him.
Alex from the twenty-eighth floor.
He’s with his business partner, Roland. They rarely come in together, and both are usually in earlier, so they must be on their way back from a meeting. Roland’s a huge flirt, and Alex…
Alex is a conundrum.
I’m immune to most men’s charms, but he gives me butterflies. Tall, dark, and handsome, sure—but there’s something else about him. Something I can’t figure out.
