I step into the street, then stop.Pretend restraint is honor.Pretend distance is good for her.
Then she looks up.It’s nothing, just a flick of her eyes to the window, but it cuts me open.I swear she sees me through rain and reflection, right down to the part of me that still believes in whatever comes after sorry.
Ragged breath out, courage in.I push the door.I walk in.The bell is a cheap jingle.The heat hits like a hug I didn’t earn.She’s right there, close enough to smell sugar and mint.
“Humbug,” she says, careful.
“Jack,” I say, voice rougher than I like.“You look good.”
She doesn’t smile.Doesn’t swing, doesn’t run.Just holds the counter like if she lets go, she’ll hit the floor.“What do you want?”
I want a hundred things I don’t deserve, I think.I don’t say.“Coffee,” I say.“Black.”
She pours.The cup shakes just enough to make me hate myself more.I slide cash across.She tries to hand change back and I won’t take it.We stand there, two cowards in a room full of cinnamon rolls.
“You look tired,” I say, and instantly bite my tongue.Fuck, what am I doing?Insulting her?I run my hand through my hair.
She takes it in stride.“You look like you haven’t slept since… I saw you in Evervale.”
“Not much,” I admit.
We talk about nothings like they’ll save us.Weather.The bus schedule.The price of sugar lately like we’re old people on stoops.The kid on dishes drops a pan and swears.She laughs, small, unguarded, then bites it back, like joy is something she owes someone else.
Not me.
A man comes in wearing a city badge.He orders like he’s sorry he’s alive.I step aside.She moves, smooth and quick, all business.I take my coffee and go because I’m smart enough to know the first cut is cleanest.
But I don’t leave town.
I take a room at the Pine City Motor Lodge, the kind of place that has rates by the hour.The clerk clocks the beard and the cut and decides to be friendly.“Weekly rate?”
“Nah,” I say.“Couple nights.”
For days, I park a block away and drift the edges, never right at the glass again.Nights, I walk past her building and keep going, like a wolf checking fences.I leave one small thing where she’ll find it and never see me do it.A red-and-white peppermint ornament, cheap plastic, hung on the knob of the bakery’s back door with a twist tie like it blew there.
I call no one.I drink coffee until my hands buzz.I smoke behind the motel where the dumpster sweetens everything with rot.Trina rings twice.I watch her name blink and burn out.Frost texts a photo of Evervale’s new tree, lopsided, lights wrong.
I don’t respond.
He writes:You forget how to hate Christmas?
I thumb back a middle finger.
On the third night I cave and call Sugar.She doesn’t bother with hello.“You better not blow up her life.”
“Just watchin’ her,” I say.
“Creepy.”
“Making sure she’s safe.”
A pause.“Who’d want to hurt her?”
“Trina,” I say automatically, though I’ve not been really worried about her following through on her threat.
“Well, that’s one reason she’s hiding.”
“I’m another.”
