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It seems that even on Christmas we’re going to spend our time doing what we usually do when we’re together. Eating and watching TV. It’s not as if anything is open, but even if it were I wouldn’t want to go.
Technically, this is our second Christmas without Mom. But I was still in the hospital this time last year so I don’t think either of us noticed, as awful as that sounds. I remember Sage setting up a mini Christmas tree in my room. I’m not sure it was allowed, but no one told him he had to take it down either.
My phone buzzes with text messages rolling in from my friends and extended family wishing me a Merry Christmas. I’m selfish enough to have ignored all of them. Although, I did send Ansel a thank you for the incredible piece he made me—a flower, a dandelion to be specific, crafted out of pieces of wood like the art I admired so much at the museum when he first brought me.
When the movie ends, neither of us moves to start the next one.
“Sage?” I hesitate to ask.
He turns his head in my direction. “Yeah?” His look is skeptical.
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?”
His brow furrows. “What would make you ask that?”
I flick my fingers lazily. “You dated before, in high school, and college, but not now.”
He rubs the back of his head. “Haven’t had time, I guess,” he admits, almost confused himself. “You know what hell work has been. There hasn’t been enough of me to give. Why?” he probes again, wondering why I’ve gone down this sudden train of thought.
“I was thinking about how quiet it is with the two of us.”
“Yeah,” he muses, looking around sadly, “it never bothered me before, though, when it was only me, but thinking about you leaving for college … I don’t like the idea of being here alone again.”
“Sage,” I say his name slowly. “I’m not going to college.”
His eyes widen, almost looking horrorstricken. “But you applied. I helped you mail them. I—”
I hold my hand up, silencing his rambling. “I specifically told you I’d send in applications, but I wasn’t sure I would go. I still don’t want to Sage. That’s not going to change by the time I need to accept.”
“Dani,” he begins, “college … it’s what you should do.”
“What I should do and what I want to do are two very different things. I might not know exactly what I do want to do instead, but I know going to college right now isn’t an option for me.”
His mouth opens and closes, his breaths quickening.
“Don’t be mad,” I beg. The last thing I want to do is fight with my brother on Christmas. Frankly, I don’t want to fight with him any day, but on a holiday feels especially hideous.
“I’m not … mad.” But the way he bites out the last word has me thinking the opposite. “I’m…” He thrusts his fingers through his hair. “Mom wanted you to go to college. That’s what she expected and wanted for you. If you don’t go … it’s dumb, but I feel like I’m failing her.”
I shake my head rapidly back and forth. “Sage, no. Things are different now. That was my plan too at that time, but the shooting, Mom dying … it set up my life to take a different route. I’m not saying I’ll never go to college, but I’m not going now. I don’t want to be a lawyer anymore and I need time to figure out who I am and where I fit into the world.”
“Well,” he blows out a breath, “I know one thing for sure.”
“What’s that?”
“No matter what alternate path you take, or choices you make, you’ll always be Dandelion Meadows. I love you, Weed.”
I scoot over, laying my head on his shoulder.
“I love you too, Herb.”
We interlace our pinkies, a silent promise to stick together through whatever is to come ahead of us.
Lachlan might be the man I make most pinky promises with now, but Sage is the one that taught them to me, and my brother has never broken one.
I hope Lachlan doesn’t either.
Chapter Forty-Seven
