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There is nothing she’s said since I opened my door to find her beautiful and stunned on my doorstep that resonates with me like these words. Pity. She knows the sting of pity.
And suddenly I want to know—need to know… “Why would they pity you?”
She looks out the window, her eyes focused on the snow that darts against the glass. She’s looking, but I know she’s not seeing.
She doesn’t seem to notice when I move closer at the sight of wet glassing her eyes.
I want to touch her, to pull her close. I want to hold her. My hands twitch where they hang at my sides, she looks so small in her pain and it’s been so long since I’ve longed to truly comfort a woman, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to begin.
She saves me from the turmoil as she drops onto the couch, pulling her knees into her chest. She looks even smaller like this as she swallows hard, her eyes still fixed on the window. Her tears don’t fall when her pink tongue pokes out to quickly wet her lips. Even like this, even through her hurt, I want to taste her mouth. I want to kiss away her pain, pulling it inward, shouldering it. Devouring it.
She hugs her knees tighter, seeking a comfort I itch to give. “I lost my mom and dad a couple years ago. It was close to Christmas. A drunk driver.” She whispers the last words as I feel my body tighten. “I spent that first Christmas alone. I didn’t want anyone around. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to cry—I needed to grieve and—my whole world had been torn away but the world was still this cheerful, jolly place. I couldn’t deal with it. I closed my doors, and I cried through the holiday. I screamed my grief into my pillows, I cursed God,” her voice quiets as she admits, “I hated God.”
“I’ve been there,” I tell her, and when her eyes come to mine, explain, “Hating God.”
“Oh.” She forces a smile. “I suppose we all have once or twice.”
“What happened the next Christmas?” I have to know.
Her eyes shine. “I wanted to be happy. For them. For me. Because I was still alive, and I didn’t want to disappoint them by living like I’d died too. I did my best to be happy.”
“And?”
“I failed,” she says simply, so simply. “I agreed to spend that Christmas with Katie. She loves me, I love her. Her family loves me, and I love them. But they were all worried about me. I get it, I do. They pity me, and I get that too. But that just hurts so much worse. It makes the pain fresh again. This is my third Christmas since they’ve been gone, and I wanted—I just wanted to make it good. For me and for them.” She pulls in a deep, sharp breath as her eyes pin mine. There’s determination and strength in the deep of her whiskey eyes as she says, “So, no. I won't spend Christmas with Katie and her family this year. I don't want to. I would rather spend Christmas alone in my tiny trailer, with my tiny Charlie Brown Christmas tree than to spend it with a family I don’t belong to who looks at me with pity because I don’t have my own to spend it with.”
She’s so much more than she appears at first glance. And at first glance, she’s breathtaking. Still, all I can say as I stand there towering over her as she sits, tiny and beautiful and breathtaking on my couch is, “Right.”
I’m a damn fool.
I know I’m a fool when she pushes up from the couch and I catch the warm scent of vanilla spice as she moves away from me. “Well, I’m exhausted. If you don’t mind, I’m going to go to bed early.” Her voice lowers, “Maybe tomorrow the blizzard will have relented enough you can drive me into town. Or I can catch a taxi.”
As she disappears, the scent of vanilla spice lingering in her wake, I find myself hoping we get snowed in for the next week.
ChapterSix
Sadie
I wanted him to ask me to stay.
It's the first thing I think when I wake up. My first thought is that I had wanted him to ask me to stay.
Last night, after I told him about my parents, about the Christmases I had suffered after their loss, I had hoped—ached—for him to ask me to stay. I didn't want him to let me leave to go to bed.
And I didn't want him to let me leave at all.
I wanted him to ask me to stay for Christmas. For this Christmas—as had always been my plan.
It’s ludicrous, I know. I don't know why I want that. I don't know what it is about this man that I ache to be around. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. And we don't mesh.
I try to see good, and I think he sees bad. I try to make lemonade, and I'm pretty sure he hates lemons. You can't have sunshineanda storm. And that's what we are; I'm the sun and he's the dark, raging, angry storm. We won't work. Wecouldn'twork. Not even as friends. I don't know what Lucy was thinking. I suppose she's hopeful, being that she is his mother, and she wants him happy.
If I look at the situation objectively, maybe I can even understand. A little. Not entirely, but a little. I'm no mother. I'm not sure I'll ever be a mother, even though I've always wanted kids. But I can't say that if my child was hurting, I would do nothing to stop that hurt. Even if that something was insane. Totally crazy. Ludicrous.
Lucy aside, I do want to stay. I can imagine Christmas in this house, with this man, being beautiful.
If he could get over whatever it is that makes him so angry, so dark and stormy, maybe he would like it. Me. Christmas together. Maybe we could become what Lucy hoped we could become—friends, if nothing more.
I don't know why I'm thinking of more. He clearly doesn't think that way about me. He's made it obvious. More than obvious that he doesn't want me here. He definitely wasn't welcoming when I showed up on his doorstep. I wonder if he's talked to his mother. I wonder if he's tried.
