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He pauses, and I hear him take a sip of something. “You shouldn’t have said anything.”
“What? Why?”
“Because now I want to see you.”
“You can’t see me.”
“I can do whatever I want. You know that.”
I huff into the phone, not knowing what to say to that. This is why I don’t usually talk. There’s no winning with him. “I don’t want to see you, Chris.”
He takes it in, staying silent for a few seconds.
“She’s gone, Ella. I broke up with her.”
I didn’t even know it was possible for my heart to beat any faster. I’m near having a heart attack when he talks again. “Luke is blacked-out drunk on my sofa. The twins have gone back to their respective fiancés.”A beat.“And you and I are awake.”
“Not for long. I’m going back to bed—”
“I know you had a terrible Christmas Eve. Let me make it better.” A desperate sigh leaves him. “Please, Sweets. You know I need to make sure things are good for you.”
I put up my defenses, reminding myself there’s a reason I’m miserable every single day. Him.
“I don’t need you to make anything better. I’ve moved on, Chris. You should too.”
I hang up on him like I always do. I thought I’d never have the strength to talk to him and still stay away.
Maybe I’m stronger than I thought. I haven’t moved on, but it’s good to know I’m capable of not running back to him the second he offers.
He broke up with her.
It doesn’t matter. From what I know, he’s been unhappy for four years. He and Megan met during their freshman year at Harvard. Chris just started law school at Yale, and she followed him there. Luke told me every single time Chris manages to get away from her for the holidays, he tries to break up with her, but the second they get back to college she gets him back.
He's weak, and I’m not. I will stay away.
I notice a notification in my texts and open it. It’s hard to ignore the disappointment that it’s not Chris insisting on seeing me.
See, this is why you shouldn’t have engaged in the conversation.
I eye the message of my regular SFU fuckbuddy.
Matias: You up?
“Does no one just sleep on Christmas Eve anymore?” I mumble to myself.
Matias is from Stoneview too, like most of us at Silver Falls University. He doesn’t live too far from here. My thumb hovers over my screen, but I end up exiting the app and putting my phone back on my bedside table.
I never had typical Christmases. Traditionally they were. The roast turkey, the decorations, the lights. We even wear Christmas sweaters on the twenty-fifth while we silently open the expensive presents my mother carefully picked for us and paid for with my dad’s dirty money. A car, diamonds, a freakingapartmentin N.Y.C. Those are the kind of ridiculous things we get.
But the magic of Christmas, the love, the family time. We never get that.
My parents leave before lunch on the twenty-fifth every year. Off to their villa in Barbados. When Luke and I both lived here, we’d invite his friends over and watch Christmas movies in our media room. We’d spend the day eating and watching one movie after the other. When Luke graduated and moved to L.A., he started leaving on the twenty-fifth too. He didn’t really think about it. He hates this house as much as I do, and he always has work to do in L.A. The pressure my father puts on him is no joke.
I’ll be alone again by lunchtime tomorrow.
It’s on that thought that I fall asleep.
4
