We lost sight of what once was, what we had wanted, what we had planned.
We lost sight of each other.
Everyone told us it was normal. We were high school sweethearts, married too young to know better. People fall apart. Marriages don’t always last.
But still, that divorce felt like the biggest failure of my life. It felt like everything I thought could exist in this world was no longer possible, like I’d been lying to myself all along.
It crushed me.
And though River showed no emotion, I knew it crushed him, too.
After we ate dinner, I offered to take care of the dishes — mostly because I was getting more and more anxious as each moment ticked by, and I needed something to do. When I finished, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Talking hadn’t worked, and there was no television to turn on for the noise I desperately wished for. It seemed River had decided to live the life of a caveman once I was gone — no Internet, no phone, no TV.
The only sound I was afforded was the storm raging on outside.
The wind whistled, the wood cabin creaked against the weight of it and perhaps the snow, too. It was so dark now that I couldn’t see anything out the window, but I stared out it anyway, absentmindedly petting Moose where he lay curled up on my lap on the couch.
“Can you please do something?” River said after a while, and when I looked over to where he sat at one of the chairs at the folding table, he was glaring at me over the pages of the book in his hand. “You’re driving me nuts with all that sighing.”
I hadn’t even realized I’d sighed at all until he called me out on it, but once he had, I realized it was all I’d been doing since I sat down.
“Well, what am I supposed to do? You don’t have a television. Or Internet. And apparently having a conversation is off the table.”
I could almost hear the grinding of his jaw as he turned his attention back to his book. “I’ve got a whole shelf of books over there.”
“I don’t feel like reading.”
“Well, read, or don’t read, I don’t care. But whatever you do, be quiet about it.”
I sighed, heavy and loud, just to earn myself one more glare over that book. I couldn’t help it. I smirked when he looked away again.
The only light left on in the place was a tall lamp in the corner, and it cast a warm glow over half his face, leaving the rest in shadows. I wondered how he could read with the light in front of him instead of behind him, and again found myself wanting to point that out and make his life easier by advising he switch chairs, but I held back.
Partly because with the way he sat now, I could study his face.
I couldn’t explain the rollercoaster of emotions I’d felt since seeing him out on the road. In fact, I wasn’t sure I’d allowed myself to feel anything at all until that very moment that I watched him reading, his brows bent together, frown firmly in place like the book he was supposedly taking so much pleasure in was actually bringing him great pain.
It just felt… odd, to be there with him again. To be around a cabin full of things that smelled like him, and yet nothing like the way our home used to smell when we had one together. He was the same boy I’d loved for most of my life, and yet he wasn’t a boy at all any longer.
When I blinked, he was throwing his arm around me after a baseball game, sweaty and smelly, but I leaned into him, anyway. I blinked again, and I saw him laughing under a handful of rice as we walked out of the church by the lake. Another blink, and he was holding me as I cried after burning my first attempt at my mother’s chicken casserole in our new home.
Every blink, a new memory.
I was lost in those tiny specks of time until River glanced up at me, those piercing green eyes finding mine, and I tore my gaze away quickly, looking out the window again.
I wished I was home.
I was supposed to be with Mom and Dad and my little sister, Beth. I was supposed to be eating pumpkin pie and watching Christmas movies. I was supposed to be listening to Christmas music as we all sat around the tree, or drinking hot chocolate on the porch, or decorating cookies like Beth and I did as kids.
I was not supposed to be stuck in an old cabin with my ex.
I fought the urge to sigh again as I looked around at the utter lack of Christmas cheer. He did have a tree in the corner, between the fireplace and the window, but it looked like it had been placed by someone else. It was in a stand without a skirt to cover it, and it didn’t have a single decoration on it — no lights, no garland, no tinsel or ornaments. And aside from that tree? There was nothing. Not a single stocking or wreath or even a freaking candy cane. The entire place was void of anything that would hint that Christmas was the day after tomorrow.
And suddenly, I had an idea.
“I know what I can do,” I announced, popping off the couch. Moose lifted his head and one ear, watching me in a sleepy daze before his head rested on his paws again.
“Oh yippee, it’s a Christmas miracle,” River mumbled.
I rolled my eyes, walking over to stand proudly in front of him. “I’m going to decorate.”
It was his turn to sigh, and he held his place in his book with one thumb before looking up at me. “Do what?”
“I’m going to decorate. You need some holiday spirit in here.”
He blinked. “I don’t have space for holiday spirit.”
“Sure, you do. I mean, you’ve already got the biggest part,” I said, pointing at the bare tree. “It’s just sad that you have that whole tree and not a single thing on it.”
River glanced at the tree with a look I couldn’t decipher, and then his eyes found mine again.
“Come on,” I begged. “You’ve got to have a box of Christmas decorations.”
The heavy sigh he let loose next made me smile.
“You do, don’t you? Where is it?”
“The loft,” he said, nodding up toward the ceiling behind me. I followed his gaze and found a small, triangle loft that fit with the roof of the cabin, settled right above the bed. I wasn’t sure how I’d missed it before, and I found myself wondering why he hadn’t done something with it. It didn’t look to be that large, at least from this angle, but it would be enough to have a small sitting area, or perhaps another bed, or a reading nook.
As it was, it was dark and ominous and not inviting in the slightest.
I turned back to him, expectant.
“Look, you can do whatever you want to do, so long as you leave me alone.”
He went back to reading like I wasn’t even there, and as much as I didn’t love the idea of climbing up into that loft without any help, the alternative was to sit back down on the couch and stare out the window for eternity.
So, with a shrug and a fuck it, I got to work.
I knew River was watching me. It didn’t matter that his eyes never left the pages of his book as I climbed the creaky ladder up to that loft, he was watching me. He hadn’t flipped a page when I peeked down at him once I’d made it to the top, and his jaw was set like it was made of stone.
Stubborn ass.
I used the flashlight of my phone once I made it up into the loft, carefully sidestepping the massive cobwebs that cluttered the stacks of boxes until I found what I was looking for. There were two old and musty boxes falling apart and splitting at the edges, but they were both faintly labeled Christmas.
I smiled in victory.
At least, until I realized I had to figure out a way to get them down the ladder now.
I chewed my lip, lifting each box to test the weight before I looked down at the ladder, and then back at each box.
When I glanced down at River, he was looking at me, too.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he grumbled, slamming his book down and using the table to hold his spot, just like it had been when I first walked in. Then, he stomped over to the bottom of the ladder and climbed a few rungs, holding his hands up toward me. “Hand them down.”
I wanted to do a little fist p
ump of victory again, but knew I was testing it already, so I just silently handed down each box with a smile that River didn’t return.
As soon as the boxes were on the ground, River was back at the table and his nose back in his book.
I lugged each box over closer to the tree, taking a moment to warm my hands by the fire. Moose was up and excited again, wagging his tail and sniffing the boxes. I watched him with a smile for a long moment before I opened the first one.
When I did, I lost the ability to breathe.
I’m not sure what I expected. Maybe it was to see some lights, some ornaments, some holiday trinkets from the dollar store in town. Maybe I thought I’d find some old Christmas décor that he’d rummaged from a yard sale. And maybe part of me was curious to see just what kind of décor he’d picked out, once he didn’t have me around.
But I never expected to open that box and see all of our old Christmas décor staring back at me.
I glanced at River once the box was open, but he was focused on the book, and he turned the page just as my eyes found the box again. My hands trembled with my next breath, and I reached inside, pulling out each item one by one.
Our lights, the white and blue ones I’d picked out to go with the theme I’d always wanted on my tree.
Our tree skirt, navy blue with silver and white trim and a beautiful, stitched snowy scene.
Our ornaments — the silver bell my parents had given us, the Santa-hat wearing Star Wars figurines I’d given him as a gift our second year together because I knew it was his favorite series of all time, and even the two little reindeer, one with a bow in her hair, holding each other, with our names and wedding date written in black ink below them.
Our First Christmas.
My eyes stung with emotion I hadn’t felt in years, and when I glanced back up at River, he was watching me.
“You… you kept our stuff,” I said quietly, stupidly.
River’s only acknowledgement was to close his book — softly, this time — and then he made his way over to where I sat by the tree. He reached inside, pulling out one of the Star Wars ornaments and turning it about in his hands.
I watched him for a long moment, wondering why he would have kept them. When I left, I assumed he hated me. He hadn’t fought for me to stay, that was for damn sure, and he didn’t show a single ounce of emotion when I brought up what I wanted, when I asked what he wanted, when I got so tired of waiting for an answer that I gave him an ultimatum.
Come with me…or let me leave without you.
And he chose the latter.
My next swallow was more difficult than the last, and I reached for the other box, cracking the top open with my stomach in knots over what I might find inside.
And when I saw what was on top, I gasped.
My eyes flicked to River, who watched me with his brows pinched together and frown firmly in place. I let our gazes stick for a moment before I turned my attention back to the box, pulling out the old, worn quilt on top.
“River…” I whispered, shaking my head as I pulled the fabric into my chest. I inhaled the scent, and a flurry of memories assaulted me like the snowflakes falling on the ground outside. I closed my eyes, soaking it in, and when I opened them again, they met River’s. “The Christmas Blanket,” I said softly, a smile spreading on my lips. “You kept the Christmas Blanket.”
He swallowed, and the corner of his lips tugged up just a smidge — almost so imperceptibly that I wondered if it happened at all. Then, he shrugged, his eyes on mine.
Watching.
Waiting.
And with just that look, those emerald green pools took me back in time.
Ten Years Earlier
It was our first Christmas Eve as a married couple.
In my head, I’d always imagined what this would be like. I pictured us in our own home, with our own tree, and our own Christmas decorations. I imagined how we would decorate outside — would we put lights around the door and across the roof? Would we have a Nativity scene in the yard? What would the wreath on our door look like?
Blame it on all the fairy tales I’d read, or the fact that my parents were a real-life fairy tale, but my imagination had run wild since I was a little girl, thinking of all the possibilities.
Instead, River and I were in a run down, one-bedroom apartment on the east side of Wellhaven, with a busted heater and a small, sad Christmas tree that we only had thanks to the local tree-seller taking pity on us and giving us one of the rejects still left over just a few days before Christmas.
I stared at that tree from my spot on our old couch, a hand-me-down from my parents, and felt my heart ache a little. There were only two ornaments on the tree — one from my parents, a silver bell, and one from his parents, two little reindeers that said Our First Christmas with our names and wedding date underneath it.
I was eighteen. River was nineteen.
It’d all seemed so romantic, getting married right out of high school. River was everything I ever wanted or needed, and I didn’t care that our wedding was modest, or that we didn’t get to go on a honeymoon, or that we couldn’t immediately buy a big house with a big yard and a big porch and a big white fence. This one-bedroom apartment was fine by me, as long as he was in it.
But now, staring at our barren tree, with my feet so cold I thought they’d fall off at any moment even wrapped up in two pairs of socks and tucked under Moose’s fur where he lay at my feet on the floor, I wondered if we’d rushed it all.
Would it have been smarter to wait? What if we would have gone to college first? What if we would have saved up for a big wedding, and a long, luxurious honeymoon in the Bahamas?
And what would it be like to be in a little house, with a real Christmas tree, and real Christmas decorations?
As it was, I worked down at the supermarket in town — usually only thirty hours a week. River did odds and ends jobs whenever and wherever he could. Sometimes he was a plumber, sometimes a car mechanic, other times an electrician or lawn mower or forest clearer. If there was a job in town, River found it, and he worked it with a smile — even though I knew he was tired, and the days were long, and it wasn’t what made him happy.
But he did it for us.
We saved up every penny we could after the bills were paid, but somehow, that savings would disappear no sooner than we had it saved up. The car transmission would go out, or Moose would have to go to the vet, or someone in town would go through a hard time, and we’d help in whatever way we could.
And now, it was Christmas Eve, barely above zero degrees outside with another round of snow fluttering in, and we didn’t have a working heater or a fireplace or even a single strand of lights on our Christmas tree.
River sat down next to me on the couch once he was out of the shower, one that was absolutely necessary after a long day of work. He couldn’t even afford to take the holiday off. I leaned into his fresh scent, his body still warm from the water. He wrapped me in his arms, and I sighed, laying my head on his chest with my eyes still on the tree.
“I wish I could jump inside that head of yours,” he said after a while, rubbing my arms to keep me warm.
“Trust me. It’s not fun in here.”
A soft chuckle left his chest. “Talk to me.”
I shook my head, leaning into him more, just wanting to be held. And River obliged me for a long while before he kissed my forehead and pulled back, still holding me, but with enough space that he could look at me, too.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“You’ll think I’m horrible,” I said, trying to bury my face in his chest, but he held my chin to stop me.
“Try me.”
I sighed, looking at the tree. “I just… I’ve dreamed about this for so long, what it would be like to have my first Christmas with my husband. I always pictured a beautiful tree, like the one my mom always has. All the lights and the ornaments and the candy canes. And I imagined decorating a wreath, and a yard, and baking pies all night long on C
hristmas Eve.” My eyes welled with tears. “But here it is, Christmas Eve, and we both worked all day. We’re exhausted. We don’t have the money for any Christmas gifts, let alone decorations, and we’re going to your parents’ for breakfast and my parents’ for dinner because we wouldn’t have any sort of holiday meal otherwise.” I sniffed. “And I’m so cold, and so sick and tired of being so cold. If we were in a house, we’d have a fireplace. But all we have is a broken heater and that small space heater in the corner that barely does a thing,” I said, gesturing to the little box doing its best to fill our apartment with warm air.
My bottom lip trembled as River ran his thumb along my jaw, and I leaned into his palm, my eyes finding his.
“I don’t mean it to sound ungrateful,” I said. “I just… is it awful to say that I’m a little sad that this is our first Christmas Eve?”
River shook his head, a gentle smile on his lips. “I’m a little sad, too.”
At that, my eyes found his. “Really?”
He nodded. “It’s okay, Eliza. It’s okay to be sad, to want more for us. I want more for us, too. I wish…”
He stopped, his next words seemingly strangled by emotion, and I squeezed his hand where he held me. His eyes looked longingly at the tree, and then he sighed, squeezing me once more before he stood.
“Wait here,” he said.
He disappeared into the bedroom, and I wrapped myself up as much as I could in my sweater, tugging it over my knees, too. Even with a beanie on that covered my ears, I was still shivering, and I missed the warmth of River’s arms around me.
When he returned, he held a large box in his hands — wrapped haphazardly in newspaper with a bow made out of shoestring. Moose hopped up and circled River with the box, trying to sniff at it.
I laughed when River sat it on the couch between us. “What is this?”
“It’s your Christmas gift,” he said with a shy smile. “I wanted to wait until tomorrow morning, but… well… I think tonight is better.”
The Christmas Blanket: A Second-Chance Holiday Romance Page 3