Rebel Without a Claus

by Keira Candace Clementine

  ‘But it’s ballet revenue!’

  ‘Exactly. Breathe or I’m taking you home.’

  ‘Fine, but construction is stupid, and I blame you.’ She poked him in the chest.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You’re an architect, remember?’

  ‘It’s not like I’ve forgotten.’

  ‘You’re all pro-construction.’

  Christian threw up his hands. ‘I’m not overseeing the theater’s work.’

  ‘No, but it’s your people who are doing this to the ballet revenue.’

  ‘My people?’

  ‘Building people.’

  He pressed the back of his hand to her forehead. She was still very flushed. ‘Okay, you weirdo. Breathe, please.’

  Clara inhaled slowly. Then she smiled. ‘Thank you so much for this.’

  ‘Sure,’ he replied.

  They sat just behind the balcony railing as the ballet began—it was all children and toys and gingerbread soldiers. Suddenly, mice sprung up from the shadows, and it was then, in the fake living room of a fake Russian estate, that the battle truly began. The thing about gingerbread soldiers, though, the thing about all gingerbread, really, is it’s delicious. In fact, the whole point of gingerbread is its deliciousness. So the mice ate the soldiers, because they were not idiots and also because they were mice.

  It could have ended badly, this fight between the gingerbread soldiers and the mice. But then, an army of tin soldiers appeared, and since everyone knows tin is not delicious, even mice, this army was not eaten. That seemed like a good thing? Christian was a little hazy on the plot.

  At one point, Christian fell asleep and dreamed, along with drooling on his scarf, of dancing Sugar Plum fairies. Not one Sugar Plum, but hundreds, circling around him with hair spun from cotton candy.

  He awoke when Clara scrambled into his lap. Maybe she’d forgiven Christian, or maybe she didn’t have the energy to keep her head upright, now that the excitement of seeing The Nutcracker had not vanished exactly, but certainly mellowed.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Christian muttered in her ear, his voice husky.

  Clara replied, ‘Perfect.’

  When she was little, Clara came to The Nutcracker with her mother. When she was little, she’d spend the first act in teeth-gritted, fist-clenched wonder, and the second act asleep. She did the whole wiggle into her mother’s lap thing, straight after intermission, and she’d begin to snore. She missed the snowflakes and the Sugar Plum Fairy. But Clara wasn’t so little any more, and her mother was gone, and she’d seen all of The Nutcracker, even that elusive second act. Still, she’d miss it all—the Snowflakes, the Sugarplum—to sleep in her mother’s arms again, just one last time.

  Christian adjusted Clara a little, just so that he wasn’t squeezing her so tight. During the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,’ Clara lifted her head and looked feverish at the Prima ballerina, naturally—it’s the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.’ But then she became limp in Christian’s arms again, and he seriously questioned if he shouldn’t take her away from there, away from the stage lights and the orchestra and the crowd.

  The play ended. Everyone applauded. Soon, Christian found himself on the street, trying to place his bathrobe around Clara’s shoulders. He fussed over Clara, and she started to cry, hiccupping, like a child. ‘I’m going to walk home,’ she said, and she pulled away from him to march ahead, except her march was a little off, wobbly, like a toddler’s.

  ‘You sure you don’t want my robe?’

  ‘Too hot,’ she replied.

  If he had to let Clara walk home, then he'd trail behind her, hands shoved in pockets to keep away the cold. He’d keep an eye on her wonky footwork to make sure she didn't fall, but yes, he’d let her walk home. The people shivering past them probably thought she was drunk—that maybe she had tipped too much liqueur into her coffee. But then, Christian didn't care what they thought, as long as Clara didn't stumble, as long as Clara didn't fall.

  ‘You don’t laugh any more.’ She turned to look at him. ‘You used to laugh all the time.’

  Clara was delirious. Christian knew Clara was delirious. He shrugged.

  ‘I want a hot cocoa,’ she added.

  Christian closed his eyes and sighed. After he opened them again, he said, ‘You won’t keep a hot chocolate down.’

  ‘And a slice of apple pie.’

  ‘Is your appetite back?’

  ‘Let’s find out. Pie! Hot chocolate!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pie!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, get the girl a slice of pie,’ a man said as he strolled by. Clara winked at him.

  ‘We’ll get you food at the inn,’ Christian said.

  Clara didn’t seem well enough to walk home, but she would have felt too trapped within a sleigh, too shaken about by the motion. This seemed the only option.

  They were both in bathrobes, but Clara looked chic in that scruffy, famous person off duty way, and Christian looked like a serial killer. In the day, he only wore Tom Ford, and at night he also only wore Tom Ford, because he'd once seen a movie directed by the man and could only think about the precision of a suit's tailoring in that one scene. It was probably near the start. Christian, of course, wasn't a serial killer—but the Mistletoe moms, jogging by with their twin carriage prams, were not to know this. He attempted to smile, which simply startled them more.

  ‘Have you ever considered that I'm right about Christmas?’ Clara roped an arm around Christian’s shoulder.

  ‘I've not heard of this Christmas.'

  ‘Okay, creep.’ Clara bopped his nose. 'Hey, how come you still look at me like that?

  ‘Like what?’

  Clara clawed her bathrobe, twisting her hands in its fuzzy wool. ‘Like you’re in love with me?’

  ‘Because I am in love with you,’ Christian replied, matter of fact.

  Clara laughed, and she failed to see that Christian did not, that his perfect Christian Thornton III frown stayed on his Christian Thornton III face.

  ‘I thought you would be at least engaged by now,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’

  Clara laughed again. Then she said, ‘Oh, yeah? What's her name?’

  ‘Magdalena.’

  ‘Pretty. What's she do?’

  ‘Lawyer.’

  ‘Cool. I like your imaginary fiancée.’

  Christian, of course, wasn’t joking—but Clara laughed, anyway. How would she know he was being serious?

  When they neared the inn, the snowflakes told Clara that she must dance, that she must replicate their waltz. If Christian had the impulse to dance, he'd find a dark room, and it would be a dark room empty of any witnesses. He’d play cheesy music, probably eighties stuff, and if the room had a mirror, any mirror, he might look at himself as he wiggled his bum up and down, in the light of his phone. But he would not dance in public.

  He didn’t join her in the waltz was the thing.

  ‘Christian, do you remember what you said to me?’ Clara said, panting, face pink from her twirling. She’d momentarily stopped dancing to cling onto his arm.

  ‘Yes. In excruciating detail.’

  ‘Hey, I didn't say when?’

  ‘Everything I have ever said to you mortifies me. Everything I have ever said to anyone mortifies me. I am an idiot.’

  ‘The first time we went out, you looked me straight in the eye, no rubbish, and said, “I like you. I can tell you like me, so I'd like you to take me out to dinner.”’

  ‘And you said no, but that someday you'd say yes. And then the next night we ended up kissing at Jennifer B's party.'

  'Yeah!’

  ‘That was a great party.’

  ‘No, I mean yeah.’

  ‘James, you need to—’

  ‘I would like to go out to dinner with you.’ Clara was staring at Christian now, her eyes solemn and intense.

  Christian found himself laughing. ‘You’re fifteen years late.’

  ‘Is fi
fteen years late too late?’

  ‘For you?’ Christian laughed again. ‘Listen, if I’m going to take you out, I’m going to take you out. That means I’m wearing a suit, I’m picking you up at seven, and I’m bringing you flowers. And then, Miss Clara James, I’m going to pay for everything. I know some woman don’t like when a man pays—’

  ‘I like it.’

  ‘Well then,’ Christian said, ‘it’s a date.’

  Clara beamed. ‘It’s a date.’

  Nineteen

  Clara liked to eat out, and she liked to eat in. Her mouth watered when she discovered a packet of pasta in a kitchen cupboard the way her mouth watered when Ridge took her out to an expensive restaurant.

  Christian could take her to Prancer’s, where they often went as teenagers because his inheritance was being held until he turned twenty-one, and it was cheap. But Christian was wealthy now, and on the nights he had off from work, he often ate somewhere posh and impressive. Impressive, he explained to Holly and Grace, was the vibe he wanted tonight.

  ‘Are you going to kiss Clara?’ Grace eyed her uncle with suspicion.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Christian said, his stomach flipping at the thought.

  As Christian put on his favorite tuxedo, his James Bond tuxedo, which was white, he thought about Clara.

  At no point had he accepted the rejection. He realized this now. Fine, he hadn’t lingered in her world, which was the world they’d built together as kids. He hadn’t called her repeatedly, or lurked outside her home in the garden, or perhaps in his old Audi like some creep. But he had stubbornly clung to the idea that Clara was wrong, that eighteen-year-olds were not too young for marriage if the eighteen-year-olds were them. This pride Christian had felt about their love, this smugness, it hung still from his clothes, like smoke from a campfire.

  Now he had set up a Narnia-themed dinner for them. He’d constructed a lamp-post overnight, because this was Christian, and he had the money. Truthfully, the lamp ran not on the town’s electricity but on a little generator hidden beneath the snow, so it wasn’t that much of a drama. It was amazing the things you can find online. The scarf he wore he’d found in a closet. It was red, this scarf, and woolen—because that’s what Mr. Tumnus wore, the first time he met Lucy in the woods.

  Christian loved that Clara had ended her relationship with Ridge. But he’d heard her crying herself to sleep the night before, and that upset Christian, because he’d told her she was better off without the dead weight, which had started her crying in the first place.

  Tonight—well, tonight he wouldn’t mention Ridge. He’d mention the tea, the hard-boiled eggs and the toast and the sardines, which he’d set up in the sitting room. Yes, it was a weird meal, but it was the weird meal Lucy and Mr. Tumnus ate in Narnia. He’d mention the parcels, each wrapped in brown paper, that awaited Clara there, three early Christmas presents. Clara needed to work through stuff, Christian knew, but couldn’t she work through stuff in the inn, stuffing her face with the food taken straight from her favorite novel? Yes, of course.

  ‘I'm cooking dinner,’ Christian said when Clara arrived.

  ‘Excellent. I'll order pizza.’

  ‘I’m not going to set anything on fire,’ Christian said, ‘this time.’

  ‘Sorry, I’ve already decided on a Neapolitan.’

  Clara wanted to know what Christian planned to cook for dinner—how he intended to overcome his poor culinary skills to provide her with something edible. ‘You always had someone to cook for you,’ Clara told Christian, and she was correct. Even when Christian’s parents died, even when he moved in with Hunter, there was a live-in cook to provide for him.

  Christian didn’t dignify her concern with an answer. Instead, he slipped off his white dinner jacket and tried to place it round Clara’s shoulders, even though she frowned. ‘Would you stop being so stubborn for once in your life and take my damn jacket?’

  Clara sighed. ‘This is a nice blazer.’

  ‘I should hope so. It’s Tom Ford.’

  ‘Oh, when does he want it back?’

  ‘No, he’s—the designer? Tom Ford?’

  Clara shrugged. Christian led her out past the lamp-post, which she loved, and draped her in white faux fur as he settled her at the table he’d set up for their picnic. They ate the sandwiches Christian had prepared earlier, and while making a sandwich wasn’t technically cooking, he still felt a sense of pride. And throughout dinner, Clara opened up to Christian in a way she hadn’t since they were teenagers.

  Clara worried about her fertility. They called mothers over the age of thirty-five geriatric, after all. Geriatric, like the aqua joggers Clara saw at her community pool, taking classes in the water because the water created a low-impact exercise. Some people take years to conceive, Clara told Christian, and she felt as though she didn’t have years, and why did men get to wait and wait and have children in their fifties with twenty-two year old law students? And why did fathers over the age of thirty-five geriatric never get called geriatric?

  Clara still felt like a child, like she couldn’t possibly carry a child and then keep a child alive in those precarious early months when babies seem about as unbreakable as the finest porcelain. She wanted to become a mother in her late forties, but she wanted to carry a child, too. She wanted to become swollen and radiant with the child she’d made with her husband, the man she loved. Not the man she’d married simply because he seemed sensible, while a clock ticked behind her as if she were Captain Hook and fertility was Tick-Tock the crocodile who had bitten off her hand.

  ‘You’d look cool with a hook,’ Christian told her.

  ‘I know, right!’

  ‘You’ll find the right man,’ Christian said then, but what if she didn’t? What if she, Clara, the woman who desperately wanted to carry a child, simply ran out of time? So much of conceiving a baby was out of her hands, really. The meeting and the connection and the dates and the text politics and the balance between overt affection and neediness, and that was just the dating. She would have to date! Her! Clara! The girl who didn’t care to hear men talk about themselves, because then they weren’t talking about her. How many fantasy football teams did she need to hear about before she could talk about Anne of Green Gables? No, dating was terrible.

  Anyway, Clara picked up her toast and spread the butter and topped the butter with sardines and a sprig of fresh dill. She needed to relax. She needed to surrender. She said something else, but Christian couldn’t concentrate because he was thinking of all the men Clara might marry, all the men who were not him and even some men who were not men anymore but ghosts.

  Then Christian tried to tell Clara what the last fifteen tears were like, how he’d thought himself indifferent to her, how he was never indifferent at all. But the words felt hot and clumsy in his mouth, and Clara deserved more than hot and clumsy. ‘I missed you,’ he managed to say. ‘I think I missed you a lot.’

  ‘You think?’ Clara said with a smile.

  But Christian felt humiliation welling in his stomach. He’d loved the woman who sat before him now for the past fifteen years. Fifteen years! But then, if having to humiliate himself meant having Clara in his arms, then he would proudly—proudly!—humiliate himself. ‘I cannot pretend any longer, Clara,’ he said. His voice was half anguished, half desperate. ‘I love you. Please don’t tell me that I am too late, that fifteen years is fifteen years too long. I am selfish, yes. Arrogant, most definitely. I have resented you and I have resented myself and—’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I love you. I love you even more now than I loved you fifteen years ago, when I asked for your hand in marriage.’

  Clara smiled.

  Christian felt something between terror and ecstasy. He took her hand for the briefest of moments, and when he let go, he flexed his fist, remembering the ghost of her touch.

  ‘Christian?’

  Clara turned, still smiling, to see who had called out. Christian followed her gaze, his h
eart in his mouth. It was Magdalena. She stood on the porch of Milleridge, with one hand on her hip and the other clutching her phone.

  ‘Christian, what on earth are you doing?’

  Clara looked between Magdalena and Christian, a small crease forming between her eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ Clara said, ‘but how do you know Christian?’

  Magdalena said, ‘I’m his fiancée.’

  ‘Oh,’ Clara replied, ‘we have that in common.’

  Christian walked into the inn with his hand on the small of Magdalena’s back, like they weren’t five minutes away from breaking up.

  He felt generous now—and a little wistful. He realized that he’d never felt more for Magdalena than a smug pride in knowing that they were the only two people in the world who had the world figured out. Who knew that children were annoying and love was stupid and Christmas was for losers with bad taste in music and coffee and sweaters. How foolish he’d been.

  It was brighter in the sitting room, thanks to the crackling fire, and hotter. Magdalena dropped her purse into a moth-eaten armchair and turned to face Christian, frowning. The bag was Chanel, a gift from Christian to celebrate her last promotion. At first he’d bought her a purse from a trendy vegan boutique, thinking Magdalena, who loved dogs and horses and sometimes bears, would be pleased with an ethical selection. But the vegan purse was made from mushrooms, and Magdalena had turned up her already beautifully turned up nose.

  ‘Mushrooms are for risottos, not handbags,’ she’d said, so Christian returned the purse and purchased the Chanel. It was expensive, but expensive reflected well on Christian. It made him appear wealthy, which he was, and generous, which he was not.

  ‘Magdalena. What are you doing here?’ Christian asked, since Magdalena had folded her arms and moved to the fireplace, where she stood without a word.

  ‘Yes, hello, Christian. Lovely to see you again.’ She looked him up and down. ‘One of your coworkers turned up at my office. He told me some ridiculous story about you being secretly engaged to a woman from your hometown. I called and called, but you didn’t pick up.’