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Maggie wasn’t nearly as confident that Katie was interested in her as Mariana was, but the confidence was comforting nonetheless.
The world around her glowed magically with decorations. At this time of year, even the lights from buildings around the city felt like holiday decorations to Maggie. They glowed warm and bright in the inky evening sky, and, in any other circumstance, Maggie would be glowing with them. She loved this time of year. She loved the twinkling lights. And she loved how much happiness they brought Katie.
But, faced with the suddenly long walk to Katie’s apartment, her legs feeling like they were being weighed down, she was struggling to muster her usual joy.
Katie was the one who’d invited her over. Their conversations had been more careful and vaguely awkward than usual lately, they both knew it, but Katie wanted Maggie to come over for a late dinner and Maggie knew she needed to pull the Band-Aid off.
She’d rehearsed what she wanted to say with Mariana—all while at Mariana’s home, with her partner and kids whirling around them in a storm of Christmas excitement. Seeing Mariana had helped, but being with the kids and catching the magic of Christmas—writing letters to Santa and visiting his grotto—had really helped put things in perspective too. Life was so big. Maggie remembered when she’d been an excited kid, desperate for Santa to come. She knew the magic, the impatience. And she knew how quickly all of that could pass you by. Life was too long to live without the things that felt like magic in them.
Christmas didn’t always feel the same these days as it had when she was a kid, but she hadn’t forgotten that magic, and she knew what felt like that in her life. She knew she wasn’t willing to let it go just because things had become a little awkward.
So, there she was. On her way to Katie’s, her fingers playing with the written-out speech in her pocket, and her heart filled with terror and hope.
It was a little like the time she’d woken up as a child to sounds from the living room downstairs. She hadn’t been able to tell exactly what the sound was, but she’d known it was Christmas Eve, and she’d known without a doubt that it was Santa and his elves at work downstairs.
She’d also known she wasn’t supposed to wake up. Santa came while you were sleeping.
She’d pressed her eyes together so tightly they hurt, buried her head under the covers, and breathed fast as her heart pounded in her chest, a mix of excitement at knowing Santa was there and terror that she’d ruined everything by waking up.
Even in the time since she’d learned exactly what was going on that night—and the fact that she hadn’t ruined anything, but her father had ruined an expensive crystal vase—it had never occurred to her that anything in her adult life would make her feel that exact same way again.
She turned onto Katie’s street—so familiar and so strange all at the same time—and wondered whether it was because so few things in adulthood felt like you wanted to believe in them the same way you did with Santa as a kid.
Mariana was the friend who still believed with her whole heart, who had lists of reasons he had to be real. Maggie was the kid who couldn’t quite believe but wanted to so badly. The only difference was that, this time, they were believing in Katie, not Santa.
And Maggie did believe in her, in almost everything in life. Katie was the one thing Maggie would never not believe in. But, when you thought that highly of someone, when you loved them so much, how were you supposed to believe they loved you back? How were you supposed to believe you were enough for them to give up their carefully crafted life for? How were you supposed to believe you were anything other than the kid waking up and ruining Christmas for everyone?
She rang the buzzer for Katie’s apartment, shivering as she watched her breath swirl in the air around her.
It took longer than it usually did for Katie to answer. Although, to be fair, it had been some time since Maggie had even bothered ringing to be buzzed in. She had a key. She just let herself in.
She hung her head. She was here to try making things better and she was already making them weird before she’d even gotten into the building.
“Maggie?” Katie’s voice eventually said through the speaker.
“The one and only,” she replied, attempting to sound bold, brave, and, frankly, just as normal as she could. She knew she was doing a terrible job of it, but just the sound of Katie’s voice had her heart pounding painfully.
“Uh, yeah. Come up.”
The door buzzed and unlatched. Maggie walked through it but she couldn’t stand the nervous humming in her skull. Something wasn’t right. And it wasn’t just in her head. She could hear it in Katie’s voice.
When she’d invited Maggie over, she’d called. They’d spoken on the phone and she’d sounded absolutely fine. A little nervous, perhaps, but nothing like she did now. Maggie knew it wasn’t just distortion over the intercom either. Something was genuinely wrong.
She stared at the white lights wrapped around the topiary in the lobby as she waited for the elevator. There was no telling what was waiting for her upstairs, but she really hoped Katie was okay.
The elevator had never felt so slow in her life. Sometimes, they felt too quick when she was with Katie, when she was attempting to cling to the time they had together. Now, it seemed to crawl down to her and crawl back up like it didn’t even want to take her to Katie’s apartment.
She hoped it wasn’t a bad sign.
Eventually, she made it. She held her hand in front of the door. She could let herself in. It would be the normal thing to do. But, ridiculously, she’d set a precedent for tonight by buzzing from downstairs.
She took a deep breath and knocked.
The door whipped open too swiftly, startling Maggie and sending her reeling backwards a few steps.
She looked at an unfamiliar face with wide eyes. “Uh. Hello?”
The guy on the other side of the door grinned and the smile was familiar. It was warm and amused and so very, very Katie. “Hey. Maggie, right? Welcome to the party.”
