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The song’s slow tempo draws a few couples from the crowd to the dance floor. They hold each other and sway along, a few more joining in with the next verse.
“I know you don’t dance…” Mackenzie’s voice is quiet, and although the question never leaves his lips, I answer it anyway.
“I would love to.”
He holds out his arm as if telling me to lead the way. I weave through the crowd and find an open spot off to the side. I wasn’t lying at the Gladstone when I told Mackenzie I was a terrible dancer. I have two left feet and no natural rhythm. I worry about where my hands will go, where his hands will go, if I’ll actually make good on my previous threat and step on his toes. But when he takes me into his arms, all of those spiraling thoughts fizzle out. He’s so sure of his movements. When his arms slide around my waist, it’s as if they’ve been thinking about exactly where they’d go if given the opportunity. I follow his lead, reaching my arms up and around his neck, lacing my fingers together behind his head as we begin to sway. My cheek finds that spot just under his collarbone that I claimed that night on our roof.
His winter jacket is thick and puffy, but even through the layers of down, I swear I can hear his heart beating. It sounds like a drum, blending with the guitar, telling my feet when to move perfectly in time with his.
It begins to snow again, but there’s no frigid wind this time, only big fluffy flakes floating down from the sky, making it feel like we’re inside a snow globe.
It’s the perfect ending to the perfect Hallmark day—except for one thing.
There’s another reason I like Hallmark movies—one I didn’t dare mention to Mackenzie because it’s cheesy, cliché, and—given our situation—a little too on the nose. I watch them because the heroine is always a little broken. Sometimes, she’s a workaholic or depressed and down on her luck. Sometimes, she simply doesn’t believe she’s ready to love. But the love interest still wants her despite her flaws, or even because of them.
“It will come when your heart is ready to carry it” was one of Larry’s favorite sayings and those words play on my mind as the song comes to an end and the crowd bursts out in applause, myself and Mackenzie included.
“Are you ready?” He nods toward the parking lot, where the snow has turned the cars into indistinguishable mounds of white. “It might take us a little longer than we planned.”
I know he means the car and getting the tree, but I can’t help but think about him, the song, and whether I’m ready to carry anything more than I’m carrying already.
I adjust my purse and feel the weight of my new ornament. It makes me think of Larry and the day of the eclipse, how I missed out on another experience with him because I refused to be open, and how if I had the chance again, I’d do it all differently.
“Yes,” I tell him. “I’m ready if you are.”
23
We stop at Benjamin’s Tree Farm on our way home. It is so picturesque and adorable that I half expect a dashing duke to come galloping out of the forest. Mackenzie lets me pick out what I think is a small Fraser fir, until we have to bungee cord it to the roof of the car and I realize I may have gotten a little too excited.
It’s so thick and heavy that we’re sweating by the time we get it home and up the stairs to the apartment. We set it up in the stand, and Mackenzie leaves me to decorate while he returns the Zipcar to its spot in time for the next renter.
Having never had anything more than my apartment-size trees, my decorations are limited to the eighteen I have collected since I started my ornament collection tradition at the age of ten. Although I love how they all look against the blue-green boughs of the Christmas tree, there’s a little pain in my heart knowing I’m still missing one.
“Hey.” Mackenzie steps into the apartment with red cheeks and hands. I swear I can feel the chill waving off him from the other side of the room.
“I’m going to change.” He nods at his bedroom door. “But do you want to finish our movie?”
My eyes dart from him to the couch and back to him again, my mouth suddenly going dry.
“Sure.” The word comes out like more of a croak. I clear my throat. “Why don’t I make some popcorn?”
He nods and disappears behind his bedroom door.
I retreat to the kitchen, not even sure if we have popcorn but grateful for the excuse to do anything other than overanalyze what is about to happen next.
We’ve watched TV together before. That protocol is established. The couch is big enough for us to both sit comfortably without unnecessary touching. But the touching feels necessary tonight.
I open the cupboard and find a pack of Orville Redenbacher, the origin of which is unknown to me. I tear off the plastic and pop it into the microwave.
Mackenzie and I have gotten closer these last few weeks. There is something about the nature of texting that makes it easier to share thoughts. Maybe it’s having time to think before answering or the absence of a physical reaction. I don’t know if that intimacy translates to our couch. According to the little green timer on my microwave, I have a minute and twenty-three seconds to figure it out.
The microwave beeps just as Mackenzie wanders back into the living room. Part of me was hoping that he’d emerge from his room shirtless in those low-slung sweatpants I have thought way too much about for the last four weeks.
The sweatpants are there, and they are as glorious as I remember, but he’s wearing a dark brown beanie hat, a pair of wool slippers that look like they were knit by someone who loves him very much, and a thick cream fisherman’s sweater with a collar fastened with a single wooden toggle. It’s hands-down the hottest sweater I have ever seen in my life.
“I’m still freezing,” he says when he catches me looking at him, then walks to the chair, pulls the Hudson’s Bay blanket off the back, and sits on the couch, spreading it out on top of him.
I’m grateful he’s busy with the TV remote because as I pour the popcorn into the bowl, my hands shake.
