A Guy Like Him

by Amanda Gambill

  “I have to go,” I said quickly. “But I still have questions.”

  “Come by my place, and I’ll answer them,” he said with a shrug, heading to the door. “I want to see you.”

  My face flushed again, and I was annoyed that he was the only person who seemed to be able to make me blush.

  “I’ll check my schedule and see if I’m free,” I said, turning away as he laughed and walked out of the entrance.

  “Where were you?” Lindy asked I sat down.

  “I had to go to the bathroom,” I said, looking around.

  Everything was the same, an exact replica of every previous year’s event. I wondered if people were even sitting in the same seat they always did, using the same bingo cards, choosing the same gifts, wearing the same sweaters that we all kept on hand, tucked away neatly in our closets for this exact day. I knew instantly that no one but me felt different in this moment. No one had experienced the jolt I just had, I realized, thinking of Dean.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “What in the world is all this?” Dean asked, laughing as he opened the door that night.

  “This,” I said, slightly struggling with the large box I was carrying as the bags on my shoulder slipped, “was the only way I was going to make it over here without being interrogated.”

  He smoothly took the box and bags from me, sitting them on the kitchen island. “Wrapping paper?”

  “I told my sister I was going to a friend’s to wrap presents,” I said, gesturing to the items. “And so, voila, here is my excuse.”

  “Why does your sister care where you are on a Friday night?”

  I shook my head, unable to explain in just a few words.

  “So anyway, I thought I could wrap presents during our downtime,” I said with a laugh.

  “Okay, cool, whatever you wanna do. Did you win any more bingo games or was I your lucky charm?”

  I rolled my eyes, choosing not to respond, and slipped off his leopard print jacket, brushing off a few snowflakes. “Here, thanks for letting me borrow it.”

  As I’d left for his place, Krista had stopped me, asking where I’d bought that jacket from.

  “Why? Do you hate it?” I’d asked, smoothing my hands over it, fiddling with a button.

  She’d shrugged, putting Christmas cookies in the oven before facing me. “It just doesn’t look like something you’d own. Is it new?” she’d asked, following as I gathered my bags and box of presents.

  “Um, yeah, I guess it’s new,” I’d said, trying to sound nonchalant, wondering if she could sense that I’d been slipping it on over different outfits in my room, trying to imagine how it could ever fit in my life, how it didn’t mesh with most of the clothes in my wardrobe.

  “Huh,” she’d said, her hands on her hips, looking at me.

  I’d been worried she knew something was different, that maybe she was realizing she’d missed something these past few weeks since she’d been so caught up in her own world. I’d wondered if she realized we hadn’t really talked in weeks. For a moment, I’d paused, looking right at her, wondering if she’d be able to tell, just like I’d always been able to read her, knowing her story like it was my own.

  “Hey, babe, can you grab me a beer?” Kyle had asked as he flipped through the channels on the television, stopping on a basketball game.

  She’d glanced at him, losing her focus on me. So I’d grabbed my bags and box, saying goodbye, that I’d be home late, not giving her an exact time, as she stepped back into the kitchen.

  Dean took the jacket, smiling at me as he draped it over an armrest, and leaned against the back of the couch. He reached out, laughing as he realized I was still wearing my Christmas sweater.

  I stepped toward him. “Oh, you weren’t serious about wanting to check out this sweater more?” I asked, cocking my head with a grin.

  “I feel like there’s a joke here about Santa bringing me what I want,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head. “I’m bad at holiday-specific dirty talk.”

  I laughed and draped my arms around his shoulders as he put his hands on my hips, bringing me closer, our lips meeting. I pulled away, stepping back, making him follow me to the bed as I dropped my sweater on the floor. Buying a lacy red bra was impractical, I’d told myself when I’d been in the mall waiting on my watch to be fixed. But I’d bought it anyway. And seeing the way he looked at me now, just the way I’d hoped he would, I didn’t regret the impulse purchase at all.

  “Damn, Skye,” he said, his voice full of desire. “Just when I think I have you figured out, you surprise me,” he said, pushing me down on the bed, kissing me even more passionately than before.

  As we laid in bed after, him lying the opposite direction as me — back on track with Rule 4 — I lifted up on my elbows to look at him.

  “Did you mean what you said?”

  He looked at me, confused. “What did I say? I think I blacked out once you took off your sweater.”

  I laughed, staring up at the wood-beam ceiling. “That I surprise you.”

  “Oh,” he said, and I felt him roll on his side. He brushed his fingers against my leg. “Yeah, I did.”

  “But what did you mean specifically? You said just when you think you have me figured out? Who do you think I am?”

  He kind of laughed. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m definitely not trying to label you. You’re a cool dichotomy. Somehow wild and carefree, but also this planner-obsessed princess,” he said with a laugh, lightly kissing my skin. “But I don’t really know you, so it doesn’t really matter what I think. How did you get this?”

  I lifted up, confused. He rubbed the scar on my knee with his thumb. I laid back down, closing my eyes, the memory flashing in my mind — the feeling of the wind as I ran, the smell of a crisp autumn in the air, falling down hard, the loud smack on concrete, my sister asking why I couldn’t just be happy for her.

  “Um, I don’t remember.”

  He lifted up, and I felt him looking at me. “You really don’t remember how you got a scar like this? No memory at all?”

  I sat up, grabbing a blanket to cover my knee. “I don’t know, Dean.”

  He looked at me, his brows furrowing. “You can say Rule 1. You don’t have to lie.”

  I rolled my eyes and stood, pulling on my jeans, turning on the heater as I walked over to the canvas that had appeared on his easel.

  “It’s blank,” he said from the bed before I stepped in front of it.

  “What’s it going to be?” I asked, staring at the empty white space.

  He shrugged and pulled on the rest of his clothes, grabbing a woven blanket from the floor before moving to the couch. I nodded, stepping away from the easel, wondering why out of all the hobbies he could have, he chose something like this.

  We stayed silent as I set up my gifts and supplies on the floor next to the heater until I asked to borrow a pen.

  “Sure, what kind?” he asked, picking up a jar of pens and pencils on his coffee table. As he did that, I noticed the Sun Meadows folder sitting half-haphazardly in front of him. I looked at it and then him, wondering why he’d been there and if he was really going to tell me.

  He sighed. “Okay, you get two questions. But first, what kind of pen do you need?”

  “One that writes?”

  He looked at me blankly. “They all write. What are you writing on? What are you doing with it? I have several types. Brush, fineliner, ballpoint, fountain, graphic, drafting, reed.” He laughed as I stared at him, somewhere between impressed and stunned. “I can keep going if you want, but I think I lost you.”

  “Is that how I sound when I talk about numbers?” I said with a laugh, rolling out some wrapping paper on the floor.

  He laughed. “Yes, totally. I never know what you’re saying. Are you doing gift tags?”

  “Yeah, I think I have stickers or something to write on in one of these bags,” I said, cutting a perfect square to wrap earrings my mom had admired months ago when w
e’d been shopping together.

  “I’ll just make some for you,” he said, not really asking, as he sat on the floor and opened a sketchpad with thick paper.

  I paused, my hand hovering over my half-wrapped present.

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. “I want to.” He glanced at me. “Plus, my pens are too nice for stickers,” he teased.

  After just a few moments, he handed me a gift tag with a maroon and gold border, a holly bundle sketched on the top, “To” and “From” in a perfect script, just like the envelopes. “Thoughts?”

  I smiled. “It’s perfect.”

  We sat in silence for a while, the only sounds between us the paper crinkling and his pen on paper. I smiled, wrapping a box with several ties for my dad, as he absentmindedly hummed ‘Jingle Bells.’

  “Dean,” I said slowly, holding back a laugh, as he groaned, realizing what he was doing.

  “It’s your fault, you got me in the Christmas spirit,” he said, lightly pushing my shoulder, making me blush. “Distract me so I’ll stop. You should take off your sweater again.”

  I laughed. “No, I’m cashing in on those two questions now.”

  He made a face, looking at his sketchpad. “That’s way less fun.”

  “Why were you there?”

  “Well, I told you my dad is sick,” he said, his gaze focused on what he was doing. “But I guess I could have been more clear … he has middle-stage dementia. So I was checking out the place, so when it gets worse,” he said with a shrug, not finishing his thought.

  I opened my mouth, unable to form words, completely shocked. I had assumed sick meant a fever or a cold. I would have never thought he meant something like this.

  “I know,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It sucks. I told you it’s a mood killer. You should probably take off your sweater again,” he said, glancing at me with a half-smile.

  I laughed, covering my mouth with my hand. He grinned at me as I turned to face him on the floor, growing more serious.

  “I had no idea,” I said quietly.

  “That’s kind of the goal,” he said with a laugh. “It’s not really something I tell girls I’m hooking up with. One more question,” he said, cutting out another gift tag.

  I thought about this, unsure what I wanted to know. Unsure why he was being so open with me, wondering what happened to Rule 1, when I couldn’t even open up about my scar. I wanted to ask more about his dad’s diagnosis, but I figured I could research information later and try to piece it together on my own. I wanted to know something I couldn’t look up.

  I took a breath. “Okay, why were you alone?”

  He sat down his pen, no longer focused on his paper.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I guess I’m asking you about the rest of your family,” I said slowly, thinking of my mom, my dad, my sister. We couldn’t go two Sundays without having dinner together. I talked to one of my parents, if not both, at least once a day. Krista had been by my side since I was born. I couldn’t imagine going on a tour like that alone.

  “I don’t have any other family,” he said with a casual shrug. “It’s just my dad and me. He has a part-time caretaker, and his neighbors are pretty cool about the whole situation. That’s who called me the other night because I guess my dad went to their house thinking it was his. But yeah,” he said, picking up his pen again. “It’s just us.”

  “What about your mom?”

  He raised an eyebrow, a teasing smirk on his face. “Nope, you’re all out of questions. You still feel like not telling me about your scar?”

  I looked back down at my presents, realizing I’d finished wrapping gifts way earlier than I’d planned. Somehow, I always got my timing wrong when I was with him.

  “You don’t have siblings,” I said, moving to sit next to him. “So you wouldn’t understand.”

  He shrugged, drawing a wreath on a tag, adding small red dots of cranberries to the tiny design. “Okay, let’s switch to dinner party questions then. Was that Amendment 1.2 or 1.3? What is your favorite Christmas tradition?”

  All of our traditions were so regimented, seemingly lifted from every classic holiday movie. Sometimes it felt like we were all just going through the motions. He switched pens, adding more dimension to the wreath by layering a darker green in small strokes, as I scanned through my memories.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t overthink it,” he said easily. “Just whatever part makes you happiest. It can be stupid or small.”

  I thought harder. “Okay,” I said after a minute. “For background, you have to understand that my dad is this super buttoned-up, CFO character. He doesn’t break tradition, he doesn’t play around, that whole vibe.”

  Dean nodded, listening.

  “So when I was really little, I guess I wouldn’t stop begging for us to open presents on Christmas Eve, just once, you know? My mom and sister were totally against the idea, saying that we should stick to tradition, why would we change things up after all these years. You would have thought I was asking them to burn down our tree or something,” I said with an eye roll, making Dean laugh.

  “So I gave up on fighting it and just accepted that’s how things were with my family. But my dad … he never protested the idea,” I said slowly, clearly remembering him staying silent on the couch, a little grin in his eyes. “Once my mom and sister had gone to bed, he sat next to me where I’d been pouting on the couch and handed me a big cup of hot chocolate and one tiny present. I’d never been more excited in my life. And every year since, he and I will sneak out to the couch at exactly 11:35 p.m., share a cup of hot chocolate, and exchange one small gift. But it’s not about the gifts, though,” I said, looking down at the paper in front of me. “It’s just, like, the only time I feel like I’m on the same page with my dad…” I trailed off, ending with a shrug. “It’s stupid, I know. But something about it is fun.”

  “It’s not stupid. I get what you mean.” He sat down his pen and smiled at me. “But would you tell that story at a dinner party?”

  I laughed, shaking my head. “No, definitely not. I’d probably say roasting marshmallows by the fire or watching a classic movie in matching pajamas with my family.”

  He laughed, his eyes the richest brown, like the best chocolate in the world, all his attention on me. He reached out, brushing his hand against my cheek, tucking a piece of my hair behind my ear.

  “What’s your favorite tradition?” I asked quietly, realizing after a beat that he wasn’t going to kiss me.

  “I’m not a tradition kind of guy,” he said, twirling a pen between his fingers, it lightly clinking against the rings he wore.

  I scoffed, telling him that was a cop-out.

  “I don’t think I ever had the same holiday experience year after year. And now I think traditions involve more planning than I’m willing to do,” he said with a laugh.

  “What about your favorite Christmas memory? A one-time thing?”

  He looked at me, thinking about this, and I felt myself getting lost in his gaze, fighting a sudden irrational urge to touch him, to pull him closer. I looked away, focused on drawing a perfect square on scrap paper instead.

  “Well, I guess one memory I always seem to think of during winter, on nights like this, is when I was like six or seven,” he said, placing his pen on the scrap paper, adding a few lines to my square, turning it into a box. “It’s the first time I remember it snowing on Christmas Eve, and I was so excited,” he said with a laugh.

  I smiled, thinking of a little Dean jumping around in the snow.

  “But it was super late, nearly midnight, Christmas Eve was almost over, and it just didn’t make sense to get all dressed and go out. Find gloves and hats and shit since I always lost those things, like, the minute I got them.”

  I laughed, nodding, easily able to believe that. I drew a few dots on the box, and he made a couple strokes, crafting a perfect bow.

  “But my dad didn’t
care, he was like, let’s go, we have to check it out. We grabbed whatever we could find to keep warm. I mean, I think I was wearing his suit jacket and oven mitts or something,” he said with a laugh, handing me a different colored pen.

  “So what happened next? Did you just play outside?” I asked, coloring in the bow he’d created.

  “Yeah, we walked super far out in our backyard, just playing around, taking it all in. We built a snowman in the dark, the moonlight our only source of light because we didn’t think to grab flashlights. But the coolest part to me was after I made a snow angel, totally out of breath from running around like a crazy kid, I was just staring up at the sky. And I asked my dad if he thought we were going to see Santa.”

  I smiled, thinking that was precious.

  “And my dad said, ‘no, son, Santa isn’t real.’”

  I laughed, covering my mouth, and Dean glanced at me, laughing.

  “Yeah, I know, he just totally burst that bubble. Apparently when I was younger, he and my mom used to argue about whether to raise me to believe in Santa. My dad hated the idea that I would believe in something that wasn’t real. So that night, he told me that Santa wasn’t real, but we could still see some amazing things in the sky. He pointed out every constellation he knew, and I remember he said that I never had to make something up for it to feel magical. That magic exists in real life, I just have to notice it or create it on my own.”

  He picked up another pen, connecting dots I’d drawn with delicate lines. I sat down my pen and smiled at him.

  “That’s incredible.”

  He glanced at me and kind of laughed. “Yeah. It’s cool because, as an adult, I know that we could have just waited until morning to play in the snow. But he knew he could create that unforgettable moment for me, right then, right there, and he did. It just felt like … all those books or movies and you’re like, there’s no way real moments exist like that,” he said with a laugh, shaking his head.