A Snowflake Wish

by Renee Harless

  “For the time being.”

  Ah, so he is without a steady job, she thought to herself.

  Or at least she thought she had said it to herself, his answering chuckle let her know otherwise.

  “Actually, I’m a dentist by profession, but my grandparents run this place and asked for some help during the holidays.”

  With her spiked heel proverbially shoved into her mouth, January babbled, “Well, that’s very. . .”

  “Kind. Thoughtful. Considerate. Selfless. Any of those would fit nicely.”

  “Hmm. . .” she mumbled as she took a step toward the Christmas trees, leaving her friend to fend for herself in the Santa’s Workshop.

  January had hoped that she would be able to leave the conversation with some pride intact, but the stranger wasn’t on board with that idea. He quickly followed in step behind her.

  “You seem like someone that has come here with a purpose. Let me help, and I can get you out of the Christmas section before you break out in hives.”

  She tried to ignore him, but as she glanced down at her hands, she noticed that they were turning red and splotchy. The rest of her exposed skin most likely looked the same. January took a mental note to research being allergic to Christmas when she arrived home.

  Quietly, she said, “An ornament,” as she continued to take in each of the trees. There were classically decorated designs, beach-themed, some in a specific color, others using natural décor. Each was beautiful in their own way – as much as it killed her to admit.

  She could feel the man’s stare on her profile as he studied her. Admitting that he wasn’t going to leave anytime soon, January wove an invisible white flag in surrender and turned slightly toward him.

  “I get my parents an ornament for Christmas every year, and I forgot.”

  “What style do they have?”

  She blinked at him as if he had just asked her to solve world hunger.

  “Um. . .Christmassy? I don’t know, I just find something shiny, and that’s that.”

  The man chuckled at her response, which caused her already pink skin to flush in embarrassment.

  “Let’s stick with something classic then.”

  He gestured toward a tree in the far back corner that could have been a dead ringer for her parent’s tree. She followed him toward the lush Fraser draped in red ribbon and white pearl garland.

  January narrowed her eyes as she scanned each and every ornament, taking the time to walk around the tree twice until the perfect one came into her sight.

  It was a delicate gold star inset with smaller stars. Nothing too fancy, but it would be a nice addition to their tree.

  Without thinking, January opened her mouth and asked, “What about this one?”

  She hadn’t realized how close the man had been standing next to her, January’s mind was focused on finding the gift for her parents. But with his new proximity, the smell of his cologne wafted beneath her nose. The sandalwood scent mixed with the fragrant smell of the tree left January in a haze until his arm brushed against hers as he pulls the ornament free from the branch.

  “This is a beautiful piece. Good choice.”

  She was afraid she was mistaken, but their closeness seemed to have affected him as well. His voice was deeper than before, grainier. In the back corner of the store, it was almost as if they’re in their own little world.

  January looked up at him as he hung the star from his fingertips. “Thanks,” she whispered, licking her lips out of habit. His eyes darkened as they followed the path of her tongue.

  “There you are!” a perky voice shouted from around the tree, startling both January and the man, almost causing him to drop the gift.

  “January, did you find anything?” she asked and then turned her gaze to the stranger, her eyes widening as she took him in. “You sure did,” Samantha voiced without thinking.

  Trying to diffuse the situation, January said, “Samantha, this is. . .” until she realized that she didn’t know his name. Luckily, he chirped in and extended his hand. “Deckard.”

  “He was helping me find an ornament. He is the owner’s grandson,” she finished explaining.

  Her friend’s face fell slightly, but then immediately reverted back to instant happiness as she took in the star ornament still dangling from Deckard’s fingers.

  “Come on,” he suggested as he led them toward the registers. “I’ll ring you out. Now, I can have this engraved with something special for you, if you’d like. I can have it delivered tomorrow.”

  January only paused for a moment before deciding that it would be a nice touch. “Sure, just something generic is fine. Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays will work.”

  He rang up the gift and the additional charge for the engraving, then the two women watched as Deckard tore off a green piece of paper and started making notations on the page.

  “Okay, all I need now is a name and address for delivery,” he asked expectantly.

  “January Douglas at 5 Belle Street, Pineville, Ohio.”

  “Great. And now that I know your name and address, January, can I take you out for dinner tomorrow?”

  She stared at him stupidly, wondering why this man would want to take out a Christmas grump like her.

  “No, I have a boyfriend,” she said, hoping to knock the cocky man off his pedestal. But instead of looking put off, he appeared more determined; the gleam in his eyes glared brighter as he met her steely gaze.

  “No, she doesn’t,” Samantha chimed in, and January began to consider sending her friend’s present back to the online store it came from.

  Rolling her eyes, January adds, “I’m not interested.”

  But, of course, her best friend wouldn’t let her off the hook that easily. “Yes, you are. Every woman within a ten-mile radius would be interested.”

  “Stop talking, Samantha,” January chastised.

  Deckard’s hand covered his mouth to keep the chuckles from escaping. Turning her gaze back to the man, January added, “Sorry, I’m just busy the next couple of days.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I’m sure we’ll run into each other during the festivities.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me,” she bemused loudly as she turned herself and Samantha toward the door.

  Calling out to her once more, Deckard said, “I’m hoping to see you soon, January Douglas.”

  With her hand pressed against the glass of the ajar door, January peered over her shoulder and did something completely unexpected.

  She returned his smile.

  Chapter Two

  “I really need to learn to switch the station before I go to bed,” she mumbled with her face pressed into the mattress as her pillow did little to suffocate the racket blaring from her alarm clock. Her morning was starting the same as it had the day before. Finally, she was able to reach over and smack the snooze button, ending the musical torture.

  Just as she settled back into her pillow, the doorbell rang, and a guttural moan escaped from deep within her chest. January rolled out from under the covers and began shuffling at the pace of a sloth away from the bed still calling her name. The front door seemed farther away than she remembered.

  The delivery driver usually didn’t drop off at her house until the afternoon, but she supposed that with the holiday season he needed to start delivering earlier.

  Without a single thought paid to her appearance as she passed the hall mirror, January ignored the way her bare legs were left exposed from beneath the oversized T-shirt that barely skimmed the underside of her butt. She didn’t even care that her hair hung in a lopsided ponytail at the top of her head or that there were black smudges under her eyes from the makeup that never seemed to wash off completely.

  Nope, she just didn’t care since the only visitor she expected was the seventy-year-old delivery driver that had been with his partner longer than she had been alive. He wasn’t going to ogle her. Plus, he had definitely seen her worse off. Like the
time she had woken in a vomit-induced hangover after drinking herself silly the night before. Which was justifiable considering she had learned that her previous boyfriend was engaged three weeks after their breakup.

  Her eyes remained closed as she twisted the knob to her front door, the cold metal against her palm doing little to wake January from her sleep-deprived mind.

  “You’re here early today, Chuck,” January moaned as she opened the door wide and greeted the delivery man.

  “Not a morning person?”

  Her eyes flew open in a flash at the sound of the voice on the other side of her porch. That sleep-deprived mind started flickering with memories of her attire, or lack thereof. January attempted to step back behind the door to cover her exposed legs, but her brain was still filled with haze. She ended up stumbling around her own feet until she tripped and landed on her backside, giving the attractive man from yesterday a spectacular view of her navy blue panties.

  “You’re a funny little thing, aren’t you?” he joked as he tucked the small box under one of his arms and extended the other to help her off the floor. Not wanting to embarrass herself further January accepted his help, but as her palm settled against his she couldn’t ignore the spark of awareness that zinged through her body at his touch. She wondered if he felt the same flicker of electricity, but January was too timid to ask. But when their eyes met, his darkened gaze gave her the answer.

  “Um. . .yeah. . .mornings and I don’t really get along. No matter how many hours of sleep I get, it always feels like zero. I even had a sleep study done and. . .I’m babbling.” She tended to prattle on endlessly when she was nervous, which wasn’t something that happened often, but with Deckard standing this close to her in her home and very little separating them, her mouth went off with a mind of its own.

  Nervously she reached up to tighten the ponytail drooping on the side of her head but instead knocked her elbow into Deckard’s chin.

  “Oh gosh, I’m so sorry,” she apologized as she tried to grasp his chin between her two palms. Not wanting additional injuries, Deckard clasped her wrists in one of his large hands.

  “It’s okay. I came by to bring your ornament. If I shipped it, the package wasn’t going to arrive until Monday. This seemed like the easiest solution at the time. Though I wasn’t prepared for bodily injury.”

  “You should always expect the unexpected with me.” A stiff wind kicked up outside, hurling chilled air into her house. Shivers shot down January’s limbs. “Um. . .do you want a cup of coffee or tea?”

  Deckard let go of her wrists and stuffed his hands into his front pockets as he scanned her face, searching for something that left January’s skin heated even with the cold air swirling around them.

  “Yeah,” he said, shocking her back into the moment. “That would be great, thanks.”

  She reached around him to shut the door, ignoring how her body was only a few inches away from his at the moment, and then gestured for him to follow her toward the kitchen. With an extra sway in her step, knowing that he was looking at her backside, she stepped down the hallway at a leisurely pace.

  “Is this your family?” he asked.

  Apparently, he wasn’t looking at her bottom, after all, she thought.

  “Yeah, that was from Christmas two years ago.” Her parents had bought them all matching sweaters, even for the babies, and hired a photographer to snap a few hundred photos. She looked at the image over Deckard’s shoulder, trying to see it from his perspective. Everyone looked perfect, happy, excited - except her. She looked. . .

  “You look miserable.”

  Yes, that was exactly right. She looked miserable because she was.

  “I hate Christmas.”

  That had him spinning on his feet to look at her in astonishment.

  “What? No one hates Christmas.”

  “I do,” she told him as she turned away and walked back to the kitchen, hoping that the handsome but inquisitive man would follow. She grabbed two plain mugs from the cabinet and poured the coffee from the carafe.

  “Cream or sugar?” she asked with her back turned to him as the sound of one of her barstools screeched along the hardwood floor. She scooped unhealthy mounds of sugar into her coffee, and after grabbing the creamer from her fridge within arm’s reach, she poured a decent amount into her cup. She liked her coffee sweet and light.

  “Black is fine,” he replied.

  January brought the other mug of coffee to her center island and handed it over to Deckard, but he wasn’t going to let her free so easily.

  “Tell me why you hate Christmas,” he demanded, relenting his hold of her fingers on the mug handle.

  “Don’t you need to work?”

  “I have time.”

  Under her breath, January murmured, “Of course you do.” She didn’t like to talk about why she hated Christmas. It was her burden and hers alone. And to most it would seem silly, but to her it had been a problem that followed her around from day one, and she couldn’t shake it.

  “Would you believe me if I said it was because Christmas doesn’t know how to stay in its own holiday realm? Like, why can’t Christmas stay after Thanksgiving? I saw decorations before Halloween had even happened. I mean, what is that about?”

  “While I don’t disagree with you, I’m not sure that’s why you hate Christmas.”

  For some reason, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell this gorgeous stranger that helped her find a last-minute gift for her parents and had done nothing but irritate her with his Christmas cheer. He did something to her that made her want to spill all of her secrets, the ones she kept buried deep inside, particularly the one that January hadn’t even shared with her best friend, Samantha.

  “I can see you thinking really hard over there,” Deckard pointed out as he took a hearty sip of his coffee. “If you don’t want to tell me now, maybe you can tell me over dinner tonight?”

  “You’re relentless, aren’t you?”

  Shrugging his broad shoulders beneath an olive-colored Henley, January failed to keep from rolling her eyes as he said, “I usually get what I want.”

  “And you want me?” she asked, not waiting to hear his answer as she dumped her drink into the sink and set the mug down. Boyfriends were bad news for January. She couldn’t give them the attention they wanted, and most wanted it more than even she did. And with her distaste for the holidays, they usually found an excuse to stop coming around. So she stopped trying to date. There was no point. No one could love a Christmas grump, that’s what her last boyfriend had said.

  Just thinking about how he had dumped her the day after Thanksgiving and quickly found himself engaged just before Christmas irritated her more than Deckard being in her kitchen asking ridiculous questions. Anger began to roll off of January in waves.

  “You really want to know why I hate Christmas?” At his silence, she continued as she stepped around to the other side of the island, putting space between them. “No one knows my birthday is December 24.”

  His eyes widened in shock at her confession, and she bit back a smug smile at Deckard’s reaction.

  Stuttering, he began to ask, “But your name is. . .”

  “Yep.” Completely irritated with the fact that she confessed something so personal, January turned her back on Deckard and moved toward her bedroom until her kitchen and Deckard were out of her sight. “You can see yourself out,” she shouted just before she slammed her bedroom door shut behind her.

  It took January a full hour to calm down, dawdling like a toddler as she stood under the warm spray of the shower. She tried her damnedest to stop thinking about the man sitting in her kitchen, the complete stranger she just blurted one of her darkest secrets too.

  And it wasn’t that the secret was all that deep and sinister, but none-the-less it was a secret that she kept buried deep inside. It affected her life daily, not just hating Christmas but falsifying so much of herself to blend in with her family.

  Finally, her skin turned
into something resembling a wrinkled raisin and January forced herself to step free from the shower. She paused and took a deep breath, waiting to hear if any noise was coming from the kitchen, but locked in the bathroom she couldn’t hear much of anything, even with the exhaust fan turned off.

  Slowly, January peered her head out around the bathroom door leading into her bedroom, and finding the room clear, she shuffled her towel-clad body over to her dresser. It took only a short time for her to tug on a pair of dark denim jeans and a loose cowl-neck sweater in a shade of bright red. Regardless of her feelings about Christmas, red was always one of her favorite colors, and as the sweater settled against her neck and shoulders, she couldn’t help but bring the material up to her face and cuddle the soft cashmere.

  She spent a few more minutes zipping her brown boots up her calves and swiping the wand of mascara across her lashes, then she knew she had to face the music.

  Quietly, January stepped out of her bedroom and stepped down the hall into the kitchen. Knowing she had zero reasons to feel the pang in her chest as she took in the clean mugs resting on a drying rack beside the empty seat or the package Deckard had brought with him placed in the center of her kitchen island, her breath escaped her lungs anyway. He had done what she had asked – he left.

  With a few minutes to spare before January needed to head toward the office, she took the small box off the counter and swiped her finger under the delicate gold sticker holding the top in place.

  The soft white tissue paper protecting the ornament easily moves aside as she dipped her hand inside to retrieve the gift. Locating the string first, January unhurriedly tugged it out of the box, revealing the golden star in all its glory. The light coming from the kitchen window reflected off the corners of the metal while spun from her finger.

  As it made its way in a full circle, January noticed the engraving on the backside of the ornament. It was a beautiful quote about a star of wonder that January remembered from one of the many Christmas carols her mother loved to sing.