First Christmas

by Trevor McCall

  Aubrey cut him off in mid-sentence, “Kyle?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stop explaining. It’s perfect. Rachel is going to flip out.” Aubrey got up and came over to look at the guitar with Kyle.

  “You think so?” Kyle asked for reassurance as he opened the guitar case so Aubrey could see inside.

  Aubrey beheld the beautiful black acoustic Gibson as she answered, “I don’t think so, I know so.”

  Kyle had an interesting thought. “Maybe if you end up sticking around here, we can take turns giving her lessons. We did have different techniques, maybe she would learn twice as fast with two teachers.”

  Aubrey hadn’t gotten that far into her thinking about her future yet. She didn’t want to rush it or commit to leaving or staying before she had a chance, when not under the spell of The Magic of Christmas, to work things out in her mind. “We’ll see on that one, mister. Besides, I haven’t picked up a guitar in ten years, and you were way better anyway.”

  “We both know that’s not true.” Kyle handed a Christmas card to Aubrey. “I want you to sign the card too. You did half the work; you should get half the credit.”

  Aubrey took the card from Kyle. “You make everyone’s Christmas better, don’t you?”

  “I try.” Kyle agreed.

  “I swear. If the whole world treated Christmas with the respect and seriousness you do, there’d be an end to all war.” Aubrey said it to be nice but was convinced it was also true. She fell silent as she thought about what to write on the card. She elected to go with a personal note to Rachel encouraging her to follow her guitar playing dreams, a small aside to Eric congratulating him on becoming a father again, and then a warm note to Jenna apologizing for dropping out of her life for so many years. She ended by promising Jenna she would correct that mistake in the coming months of the new year.

  Aubrey handed the freshly signed card back to Kyle. He pinned it beneath the strings on the guitar, closed the lid, and set the guitar and case combination in the crib. “You think they’ll find it in there?” Kyle asked.

  Aubrey laughed at Kyle’s silly question. “What ten-year-old aspiring guitar player, upon finding a guitar case in her house, wouldn’t open it to see if, maybe, just maybe, there were a guitar inside.”

  Kyle shook his head in agreement with Aubrey’s reasoning. “Just because my question sounds ridiculous when you defeat it with your superior logic, doesn’t mean it actually was ridiculous.” He picked up a heaping handful of Styrofoam and cardboard. “You good to finish up if I start loading the trash?”

  “Of course.” Aubrey said.

  “Great. I think we should shift this process into overdrive. It’s going on four o’clock and I don’t really know how long they planned to be in Marion.” Kyle started out of the addition, but Aubrey stopped him with another question.

  “Did you still want to write that note for the front door?” Aubrey asked.

  “Yes, I do. Thank you for reminding me.” Kyle set the trash he gathered together back on the floor and hunted around for something on which to leave a note. The back page of the bassinette instruction booklet was blank. Kyle tore that off and handed it to Aubrey. “I think you still have the pen, so write something on there to let them know they weren’t robbed, and I’ll pick up some tape while I’m in the truck getting rid of all this trash.”

  Aubrey accepted the paper from Kyle but didn’t immediately let his hand go. There were a couple more things on her mind. “Thank you for letting me help you today.”

  Kyle started in with an objection, “I’m the one that should be thanking…”

  Aubrey cut him off. “Hold on a minute, Kyle.” Now that Aubrey had his attention, she let his hand go. She wasn’t engaging in the empty gratitude of polite discourse. She had something important on her mind. “By letting me come and help you today, you’ve shown me more about what letting the Christmas spirit fill your soul means than any other person in my life, with the possible exception of my father. I can’t thank you enough for giving me that experience.” She looked at him with as much gravity as she could muster. “I want you to do something very unKyle-like. I want you to just accept my thanks.”

  Kyle understood. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “Now, before we leave Jenna’s house, there is one more thing I need to bring up.” She duplicated her previous look so Kyle could not mistake how much this meant to her. “I feel like I have to do it here because Jenna was the one who told me to ask… and ask… and ask. Until I got an answer.”

  “Aubrey, I swear,” Kyle knew what she wanted, “I would tell you in a heartbeat if I could.”

  Aubrey shook her head, “that doesn’t make sense to me, Kyle.” She put all of her emotion into the pleading look she sent across the space in the addition. Why, oh why, wouldn’t he just answer? Why wouldn’t he tell her what he was hiding?

  Kyle’s shoulders slumped before Aubrey’s eyes. Abject defeat colored his expression. He looked like he lost something valuable and had given up hope of finding it. “I know, Aubrey. Believe me, I know it doesn’t make sense to you. But I feel like you have to trust me on this one. If you won’t trust me, then trust what I know you’ve been feeling the last few days. I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. You want another shot at us, the same…” Kyle lost his voice for a moment. What he had left to say would make him infinitely vulnerable. “You want a chance at us the same as I do.”

  “I’m sorry, Kyle. It’s hard to give in to this feeling you know I’m feeling when I can’t help remembering that old feeling I felt. The feeling of you being there beside me, and then you being gone forever.” She didn’t want to lay him open wide. It wasn’t her intention to hurt him, but she saw the pain her words caused. She couldn’t turn away from it, though. She had to make him answer.

  “I don’t know what to say, Aubrey. I cannot give you what you want. It crushes up my soul to have to say it, but I cannot give you what you need. At least, not right now. Not, this Christmas.” Kyle’s gaze sunk to the floor.

  Aubrey had never so thoroughly deflated another person. Remorse coursed through her. As crazy as it was, she did trust him. She didn’t know why. She just felt it in her heart the way the blistering sky feels about the sun it loves. She still needed to know, but she convinced herself, she didn’t need to know in that very minute.

  Aubrey reached her hands up and placed them on Kyle’s cheek just below his dejected eyes. “Kyle Immanuel Morgan.”

  “Yes.” He gave her a look that willed her to love him back the way he loved her.

  “You are an immovable object.” Aubrey whispered.

  Kyle shuddered. He screwed his eyes shut so he would not cry in front of her. “And you are an unstoppable force.”

  She pulled his face down to hers. “You are right. There are feelings for you in my heart.” She turned his head to the side and kissed him on the cheek again. “I will trust you… for now.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Greta stood at the living room window pointing her remote start key at the space where she thought her SUV would be and pushed the button. She knew it wasn’t necessary to aim the device at the car while she did this, but she did it anyway. She also hated she couldn’t tell if the car was running or not after she hit the button. It was one of those things you had to trust was going to happen. It reminded her of this Christmas with Aubrey and Kyle. She would just have to trust the results she wanted between them were also going to happen.

  Those things seemed to be on the right track given the way Aubrey came home from her day out with Kyle. Scott would have been so happy. Greta wished he were still here to see everything he wanted for Aubrey come to pass. She quit that horrible job that crushed her soul and did not fit her personality. She quit the horrible fiancé that crushed her soul and did not fit her personality. The difference between the Aubrey Kyle brought home to Greta three nights ago and the Aubrey he brought home to her this evening was undeniable. Those two Aubrey’s were light yea
rs apart. Greta knew she owed it all to Kyle.

  Greta walked from the window to the foot of the stairs. She raised her voice and directed it upwards. “I started the car, dear. It should be nice and warm in five minutes or so.” The only thing that worried Greta about the plan for this evening was getting to and from the Peterson Christmas Tree Farm. If there were no new snow it would be okay, but Greta hadn’t been lying to Kyle when she begged him to pick Aubrey up at the airport in Charlottesville because of the wintry forecast. She really did hate driving in snowy weather.

  Aubrey replied in an equally raised voice from somewhere upstairs. “Be right there, mom.”

  Greta went back to the window to see if she could make out whether the car was running. It would be disappointing to think they were getting into a nice warm vehicle if, when they got out to the driveway, they realized the car was ice cold because Greta failed with the remote start key. It wouldn’t be the first time, but it always irritated her when it happened. Greta looked through the front window toward where she knew the car was parked. Her house jutted out to meet her driveway and when Greta parked as close as she could to the sidewalk that led to the front porch, physics prevented her from seeing her SUV. She thought, just maybe, she could see snow melting where the exhaust pipe was likely to be emptying its contents onto the ground, but that could be wishful thinking. She could step out onto the porch. Couldn’t she? That would solve the problem.

  Nope. She wasn’t going to do it. She would trust the car was running just the same as she would trust Scott would be able to continue to help her deliver on The Magic of Christmas from his perch up there in heaven. In fact, she would make the fact of whether the car was running or not into a test for her belief. If she got out to the car and found it to be running, everything she planned would work out perfectly. End of story. If she got out to the car and it was not running, well… Greta, being the superstitious person she was, did not see the need to spell the alternative out in black and white.

  Besides, there was no way the car wasn’t started because there was no way things weren’t working out perfectly. In fact, the only reason Kyle wasn’t coming to pick them up in his four-wheel drive tank was because he and Aubrey lost track of the time while they were together during the day. He couldn’t make it to his house to get changed, make it to Melissa’s house to pick up his mom and Tim, make it back to her house to pick her and Aubrey up, and still make it to the Peterson’s by the six o’clock start time for Dolly’s A Christmas Carol. The only reason people lost track of time when they were together like that was when they really enjoyed each other’s company.

  Greta turned around as she heard Aubrey enter the room with her. “Wow, Aubrey, you look beautiful.”

  “Thanks mom, you look beautiful too.”

  Greta wanted to dispute the claim she looked beautiful but that would have made the conversation about her. Whereas tonight, and this Christmas in general, was meant to be only about Aubrey. She let the comment stand. “Don’t forget, this performance is going to be outside in the frigid cold, if you need to borrow anything from my winter collection you better get it now.”

  “Thanks, I wasn’t thinking about and would have forgotten. I’ll go to the closet and pick some things out.” Aubrey said.

  Greta stopped her before she could leave. “I’ll meet you at the car. Just pull the door shut behind you. It’s already locked.”

  “Okay, I’m right behind you.”

  Greta put on her coat, hat, gloves, and scarf and hurried out the door. She wanted to get to the car before Aubrey so she could know the result of her superstitious wager by herself. It would give her a chance to recover if for some reason she had let The Magic of Christmas down by not properly starting her car.

  Greta exited the house and put her ears into her best approximation of bionic mode as she crossed the porch and crunched her way into her driveway. To her astonishment, she wasn’t picking up any throat gurgling sounds coming from the SUV. She couldn’t believe it. As superstitious as she was, she knew she also wouldn’t be able to refrain from ruining her evening with worry if it turned out she hadn’t gotten the car started.

  She narrowed the distance between her and the SUV to twenty feet when she glimpsed the first hint of red coming from the taillights. Those lights couldn’t be on unless the car was started. It wasn’t going to be a disaster after all. Ten feet from the car and her heart swelled as she saw the glow from the interior lights. It was also at this time, she detected the faint sound of throat gurgling that signified her car was, in fact, running.

  She glanced at the sky as she let her silent fears slip into the starlight. It was going to be okay. Nothing would sway her from this conviction. As her hand gripped the door handle of her SUV, her heart returned to a normal rate of beating and she exhaled the breath she had been clamping down on over the last couple of seconds. She opened the door and climbed into the pleasantly warmed environment of her successfully started vehicle.

  In the porchlight she saw Aubrey make her way along the sidewalk. She did look beautiful. Of course, she had been beautiful when she came that first night too, but this was different. Kyle had said, the other morning, that beauty was in the eye of the beholder. He had only been half right. The other part of beauty started in a person’s heart and radiated out from them based on the healthiness of their spirit. It was not for nothing Greta spoke of Aubrey’s old job and her old fiancé as soul-crushing. It was truth. Her release from the weight of those two things made Aubrey radiate.

  It might take a few more weeks to complete her project, but Greta felt she had succeeded in the greatest portion of her Christmas mission. Aubrey was happy. She had jettisoned the things in her life that were holding her back. She might not be on her way to being a multi-millionaire corporate executive, but that path wasn’t making her happy. It was crushing her spirit. ‘A person could have all the money in the world, but if they did not have happiness, they were poor in spirit.’ Scott had said that, whenever he turned down a promotion, or ignored a job opportunity that would have given them more money. As Aubrey opened the passenger door, Greta knew, by the look in Aubrey’s eyes, Scott had been right about that one.

  *

  Kyle stood at the passenger door of his truck extending a hand up to his mother as Aubrey and Greta entered the field that doubled as a parking lot at Old Man Peterson’s Christmas Tree Farm. Greta pulled into the spot beside Kyle’s. This time she left much more room between their vehicles than the last time they were parked beside each other. Kyle gave them a small wave as Greta shifted her SUV into park. The smile that lit his face was aimed at Aubrey. She reflected his smile back. This caused his smile to spread even wider.

  Melissa stepped down from Kyle’s truck looking a lot like ‘the Michelin Man’ of winter clothing. She was one of those people who always had cold feet and hands, even in the deadening heat of August. If not for the chance she thought it posed to help her son find love, or at least closure with Aubrey, she would have declined this evening in the elements. It sounded like a proper form of craziness to her for grown people to submit to remaining outside for an extended period of time when the temperature was hovering around twenty degrees. She was ‘taking one for the team’ as the young people said, but she wasn’t happy about doing it.

  The problem was, she dressed so warmly in preparation for being so cold that, while in the truck, she had begun to overheat. As she put her feet on the snow-covered ground, she felt herself overcome by crankiness that would only lessen if she let a little bit of it out with her voice. “Oh my goodness, Kyle. I have never been so glad to be out in the freezing cold night air of December. Another moment in that truck, and I believe I would have spontaneously caught on fire.”

  Mr. Clarke opened the passenger side rear door and stepped down beside Melissa. As he did this, Aubrey and Greta opened the doors on their SUV and stepped to the ground themselves. Greta gave Melissa a small hug as Aubrey walked around the front of her mom’s car so she could
join the group. Mr. Clarke leaned conspiratorially into Kyle’s headspace. He whispered this into Kyle’s ear so Melissa wouldn’t hear. “Listening to your mom narrate the ride over here from the back of that big behemoth of a truck of yours was the most fun I think I’ve had in two years.” Mr. Clarke clapped Kyle on the back. “Thank you so much for that opportunity, son.”

  Aubrey appeared next to Kyle. She effortlessly took his hand from Mr. Clarke. Kyle felt his heart throb in his chest as Aubrey’s gloved fingers wrapped around his. “Your hand must be so cold.” she said.

  All five of them walked toward the big bonfire which was an unmistakable visual signal of where the audience was meant to go in order to witness the performance. Greta, Melissa, and Mr. Clarke led the way. Aubrey and Kyle followed a few feet behind them. They were close enough to maintain the integrity of the larger group, but not so close they couldn’t have a private conversation if they lowered their voices.

  “I forgot my gloves, Kyle said.”

  “You want me to ask mom if she has an extra pair in the car?” Aubrey asked.

  Kyle shook his head, “I’ll be fine. Besides, you know they wouldn’t fit,” he said.

  Aubrey accepted the logic of his refusal. She dedicated herself to walking along in silence beside him while allowing herself to soak up this feeling of being alive that he generated in her. She breathed in the crisp mountain air, filled her eyes with the beauty of the starlight. Finally, she couldn’t stand how precious it all was to her and was forced to speak. “It’s such a beautiful night,” she said.

  Kyle noted the clouds beginning to cover the moon which rose on the horizon. “Those clouds rolling in from the west look like they’re going to give us fresh snow for Christmas.”

  Aubrey pushed her body up into Kyle’s in a sort of half hug. In her mind she was celebrating the idea of more snow. “That would be so wonderful.”