Page 19 of The Christmas Yes List

He nods. “That it is.” He sucks in a breath. “And what do you do?”

“Did. I did data entry. Up ’til a few days ago when my boss tried to make me commit fraud.”

Now this has seriously interested him. “And what happened?”

“I quit before I could cave.”

“Good for you.”

There’s a break in the trees at last, and I turn the wheel ever so slightly to the right at a fork in the road. James’s words rumble against my stomach in a way that makes me pathetically appreciative. It’s ridiculous to be affected by a near-stranger’s words. It’s ridiculous to find myself fighting a smile at his compliment. But here I am.

I act nonchalant, of course, but the reality is, I halfway expected him to say the things that have run around my head the past few days since the incident. You should’ve said something. You should’ve reported it. You’d been there for six years, Chloe; you should’ve stayed and fought. You’re a coward.

Yet he didn’t point out a single one of my coulda, woulda, shouldas.

Instead, it feels like he subtly acknowledged how hard the situation was and that it took strength to avoid temptation. His very sincere “Good for you” carried the weight of a thousand meaningful words. My shoulders rise, a touch lighter than they were before as I take in a cold breath of frosty fresh air.

I guess that was pretty good of me, wasn’t it? It’s not every day somebody gets tempted with riches and fame (okay, riches and fame according to the scale of my life) and says no for the sake of integrity.

Houses begin to dot the streets as we near the center of town. There’s one grand stretch of picket fence, and snow perches precariously on each picket instead of the apples that rest there during the festival in October and windmills in May.

Maple Hills is not known for being an affluent community, but it is a hardworking, joy-filled town, and more houses than not are full of colorful string lights and lit trees peeking out from bay windows. The modest craftsman houses built in the early 1900s all hold front porches as big as their insides, keeping up with a time when pretty much everyone spent their evenings in a rocker with tea in hand, just waiting for a friend to walk by.

In Maple Hills, life has continued in that subdued, simple sense of a hundred years ago. We’ve just added air-conditioning.

“So what do you plan to do now that you’re here?” James says.

“You mean, now that I can’t dive back into the dullest job on the planet?”

“Naturally.”

I shrug. “That’s the big question. I didn’t finish college due to some . . . extenuating circumstances.” I decide not to elaborate that I dropped out because my boyfriend at the time enthusiastically believed cryptocurrency was the way of the future, higher ed was a scam, and aluminum hats should be worn near microwaves. “I don’t have a specialty, really, aside from basic computer usage, so—” I shrug again and hear myself sounding more tragic than I’ve intended. “I don’t know.” Oh geez, Chloe. Stop self-victimizing.

And here comes the self-berating spiral.

“Well,” he says thoughtfully, “perhaps you are in the unique position to tackle it from another angle then. On the plus side, you aren’t tempted to restrict yourself to career pathways because you already spent years and thousands of dollars on degrees and training. You get to freely consider what it is you want to do.”

There he goes again. Defusing the situation, even such a slight one as this, with the flick of a few words that shift the spotlight of the conversation. Help me see it from a different angle.

“That can be anything,” he continues. “Consider this your jumping-off point.”

Then he’s silent again, sitting there with his hands folded in his lap as though he’s happy to let me take all the time in the world to respond.

Is there anyone on the planet more comfortable with silence than this man?

“Are you sure therapy isn’t your calling?”

He smiles but says nothing. Like he knows I’m deflecting and he’s not going to fall for it.

Well.

He certainly carries quite a bit of quiet self-confidence, that’s for sure. Now that I think about it, he may be the exact opposite of me. In the hour I’ve known him, it’s become clear that he couldn’t care less what I, or anybody else for that matter, think about him. Fascinating.

I wonder, with mild jealousy, what that freedom must feel like.

Which reminds me—The Christmas No List is waiting.

I grit my teeth at the thought. The urge not to bother this man after the embarrassment of the whole dance-in-the-snow incident is strong, and I’m even more disinclined now that I’ve learned a bit about him and he’s moved from “stranger” to “semi-stranger who is also surprisingly nice and intelligent.” I don’t want to ask him something that makes me look ridiculous. I really, really don’t want to look ridiculous to him.