Christmas At The Riverview Inn

by Molly O'Keefe

  Last night he’d had to look away, plunge his hands into the hot, soapy water to distract himself from the ache that memory gave him.

  I should go.

  It was honestly his first thought.

  Before everyone woke up, he should just pack and leave a note and hit the road. He’d been invited to spend Christmas in Montreal with an ice skater he met two years ago. He and Ingrid kept in touch and spent holidays together when she was single and he had nowhere else to go.

  He cooked. She trained. They had extremely athletic sex. It was not a bad arrangement.

  If he stayed, things would get messy. That was just the reality of staying anywhere. But here the threat of messiness was…well, it was more of a guarantee. With Max.

  With Josie.

  God. The dreams he’d had of her last night. Against his leg, his dick twitched.

  Calm down.

  Though there was a sort of poetry to masturbating to the idea of her in the same room where he’d done it seven million times.

  He still wanted her. Maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

  Not just the idea of her or the memory—but her. The flesh and blood woman sitting across from him at that table, unable to make eye contact.

  It felt inevitable. And reckless. And…mean? He wasn’t sure about that. But there was an edge to his desire for her that hadn’t been there when they were young. He wanted to take all of their innocence and smash it. And all that restraint he’d shown for so long? He wanted to tie her up with it.

  Oh god. That image.

  He wanted to make good on all the promise their relationship had had. He wanted to be sweet, so sweet. The sweetest, like they were still virgins.

  And he wanted to hurt her. And be hurt by her. He wanted raw and filthy and wrong—and then he wanted to walk away. From the boy he’d been. The girl she’d been.

  His messed-up memories of that night.

  Yeah. I gotta get out of here.

  It just wasn’t worth it. He’d shown his face. Told some stories. Hugged some people. He could leave with a clear conscience. Thanks, Helen, for the invite. It’s been fun, but I can’t stay.

  He would text her that from the road.

  Texts from the road were his calling card. He never stayed long in any place, and when he left it was no one’s business but his.

  Cameron sighed and sat up, running his hands through his hair. He’d spent a year getting made fun of for his man bun so he tried to avoid that length now. But it wasn’t always easy to find a barber, or sometimes even a pair of scissors, in his life on the road less taken.

  It was too short for a bun, too shaggy for Alice’s kitchen.

  He pulled on a pair of loose sweatpants and a T-shirt. Found a pair of socks that were mostly clean (laundry was always an issue when you only had a few of everything) packed up the rest of his stuff and headed downstairs.

  The lodge was beautiful and never more so than at Christmas. The wooden walls and high ceilings were made for pine trees and blinking Christmas lights and roaring fires in the fireplace.

  At the foot of the stairs he sighed, bag in hand.

  Alice was making breakfast. He could smell coffee and baking bread. He could hear her humming off-key, taking bacon out of the fridge.

  For him. He knew she was doing it for him.

  And he might have adopted a love ‘em and leave ‘em attitude over the last seven years, but he couldn’t do it to Alice. Again.

  He took a deep breath. Cool air. Christmas tree. Faint woodsmoke from hundreds of fires like last night’s. The smell of the Riverview Inn at Christmas. In a few hours Alice would put the mulling spices to simmer on the back of the stove and it would smell so good you could take a bite out of the air.

  Stay, he thought. Just…stay. For a little while. What could it hurt?

  And he put down his bag. Another lesson learned from his years on the road—he could leave anytime. Once he’d let that be his code of conduct, it was pretty freeing. Stay for a while. Go when things got too tense.

  Owe no one anything.

  He pulled his phone and his little tripod out of his backpack. The coffeemaker was in there, that one Josie gave him. Blackened by a million fires. Beat up from the time he’d dropped it off Half Dome in Yosemite.

  The number of times he’d thought about replacing it…countless. He’d been sent other camping stoves, other coffeemakers, and he used none of them.

  With a hard jerk he pulled the drawstring taut on the top of the bag, hiding his life from view.

  “Hey,” he said, walking into the kitchen to find Alice exactly where he expected to find her. Standing at the stainless-steel counter, cookbook in front of her, coffee cup in hand.

  “Good morning,” Alice said with a smile. Sunbeams highlighted the years that had passed, but in a beautiful way. Almost holy.

  He sighed at his melodrama. That was the problem with him and this place. Why really it had been good he’d left. His attachment, his perspective, was unreasonable. He’d never been able to see these people clearly. It was all hero worship in his head.

  And lust for a girl who could never be his.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Like I need a cup of coffee.”

  “You know where the pot is,” she said.

  He poured himself a cup and sat down on one of the stools on the edge of the stainless-steel island.

  “What…what are you doing?” she asked as he set up the phone and the tripod.

  “I think you know what I’m doing.”

  “Cameron.”

  “Five questions, Alice. We’ve never done it.”

  “Oh my god,” she sighed. “What’s my hair look like?”

  She had a wild rooster tail on top and it was seriously hilarious. “Fantastic.”

  Scowling at him, she patted down her rooster tail.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  “No.”

  He grinned and pressed the record button. “Alice Mitchell,” he said. “Head chef of the Riverview Inn and the person who taught me everything I know about peeling potatoes. Five questions. Ready?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your comfort food?”

  “Tomato soup and grilled cheese.”

  “Something you’d never eat again?”

  “Horse sashimi. If I’d known what it was the first time, I wouldn’t have had it.”

  “Best thing about Christmas?”

  “A house full of family and the first bite of the first sugar cookie.”

  “Someone dead you wish you could have a meal with?”

  “Your mother.”

  Stunned, he didn’t realize what she’d said at first. And then it was his turn to scowl and he turned off the camera.

  “That’s not funny,” he said.

  “I wasn’t trying to be. She died when you were so little and I imagine her sometimes, wherever she is, worrying about what became of you with your dad. And I would like to tell her that you are all right. You turned out pretty amazing.”

  Again, the urge to leave was powerful, and like she knew that, she did what she’d always done when he wanted to leave.

  “I have a job for you,” she said as she laid bacon down on her pan in even strips.

  “I figured.”

  She shot him a smile and he found himself smiling back, and the thing about his mom faded into the distance.

  “We’re making lasagna, focaccia, and salad.”

  “Easy enough.”

  “For two hundred people.”

  His jaw dropped.

  She laughed and patted his shoulder. “I missed that face.”

  “Are you serving that many here?”

  “No. We’re delivering it tomorrow to the families at Haven House and then taking what’s left to the Methodist Church.”

  “How far are you?” he asked, and because he’d learned kitchen management from this woman, he was already making lists.

  “I’ve made coffee,” she said with
a smile.

  He laughed. “Well, put me to work. I’m at your disposal.”

  She sighed and leaned over to pat his cheek. “I missed this face.”

  “I missed you, too,” he said. More than he’d realized.

  She sighed and looked up at his hair. “What’s happening…” She twirled a finger toward his head. “…with that?”

  “My hair? It’s personal expression.”

  “I’m all for personal expression but that’s a problem.”

  “You have a hair net?”

  She shook her head.

  “How about a haircut? Anyone around here good with scissors? I thought Stella—”

  “Josie used to cut your hair,” Alice said, turning away from him to check the bread in the oven. “Remember?”

  Remember?

  He’d put those memories away, having abused them more than was good for a man.

  “She’d sit you outside and put a sheet over your shoulders.” Alice took out the bread she’d baked, poking at the crust before putting it back in. “You’d look like you got in an accident with garden shears—remember?”

  “Yes,” he said tightly.

  Alice was silent and he made the mistake of looking over at her.

  Here it comes…

  “We really fucked up both of you that night,” Alice said. She shook her head, her face pale and pinched.

  “I’m not fucked up,” he said. Though even as he said it, he wondered…maybe it was a lie. Maybe? Who lives all this time out of a backpack? All he knew for sure was that memories of Josie were so painful he just didn’t think them anymore.

  Like they’d been erased.

  “You’re saying…” He couldn’t say her name out loud. “…she is?”

  “She hasn’t been back here in five years,” Alice said, looking over at him with damp eyes. “You left that day and you never came back. How is that not fucked up?”

  “You and I saw each other,” he said, getting to his feet. “France that summer and San Francisco for Easter.”

  “But you didn’t come back here,” Alice said. “The Riverview was your home and I took it—”

  “You didn’t,” he said. “You didn’t take anything.”

  “Then Max did.”

  “Alice. Stop. I left. I made the choice. Me.”

  She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue some more, and frankly, if it was going to be like that—he would leave.

  The back door swung open and there, suddenly, was Josie. As if their talking about her had summoned her. She had her laptop and the charging cable was around her shoulders, like she’d killed big game and was bringing it home for the whole cave.

  When she saw them, a breathless moment of panic flashed across her face, and then the fakest fake smile spread over her mouth.

  It was like looking at a stranger. A familiar stranger.

  He got very occupied pulling his camera out of the tripod.

  “You’re coming because of the Wi-Fi?” Alice asked, the emotional woman of a second ago gone, and it was just Alice there, sipping coffee and taking the bread out of the oven.

  “Yeah, the house—”

  “Is a dead zone. Come on in. You want coffee?”

  “No. I’m all right,” Josie said. Her eyes met his and bounced away, and the smile on her face became so sharp it looked painful.

  Standing there, she looked like New York. Fully plugged in and wearing black. Buzzing with a kind of frenetic energy. Even at 8 a.m. Too thin. Like all the extra that a person needed to feed a life outside of work was gone. And it was just work.

  He glanced away, embarrassed to have noticed so much. Or, really, to think that he knew anything about her.

  Her phone rang and she dug it out of her pants. “Yes. Yes. I need another second. No, I’m not on the moon. It’s just…gimme a sec.”

  Josie raced through the kitchen, cables trailing, phone pressed to her ear.

  When the door swung shut behind her, the kitchen was silent. Too silent. He could practically hear Alice’s brain turn.

  “You should go talk to her,” Alice said. Slices of bacon began to sizzle in the pan and Alice poked at them with the long-tined fork she’d been using to fry bacon for as long as he’d known her.

  “She seems pretty busy,” he said with a laugh, pretending to be relaxed. Pretending the idea of talking to her didn’t make him ache. Pretending he didn’t owe her…something. An explanation. An apology.

  “Hmm,” Alice said.

  “What does that mean?” he asked with a laugh. Alice’s hmms had a whole subversive language all their own.

  “Used to be a time you guys wouldn’t shut up.”

  “Well, I’m not sure we have much to talk about anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah…I mean…we went pretty different directions.”

  Alice actually gaped at him.

  “What?”

  “I think you went in exactly the same direction, just in different ways.”

  He shook his head and crossed over to the counter where he’d learned how to peel potatoes—lots of potatoes—and make a piecrust and season a pork roast. Where he’d made dumplings and friendships.

  “I think she needs someone to talk to,” Alice said quietly. “I think…I think something is wrong with her.”

  Don’t care. Don’t. This is a path you do not want to take.

  But the word came out anyway. “Wrong?”

  She shrugged. “It’s just…a hunch. You gonna help me with this dinner?”

  “It’s why I’m here,” he said, grateful they weren’t talking about Josie anymore. Grateful to be put to work and kept busy.

  And soon he was mincing garlic and browning sausage.

  Aware, every second, that Josie was just through the doorway.

  JOSIE

  Crisis averted.

  Josie blew out a breath.

  So much energy, she thought. So much energy, and for what?

  To keep a contestant struggling with an addiction problem on the show because she has a million Instagram followers? They’d agreed to pay for a sobriety coach and Josie had put her foot down that it would be a sobriety coach the production company chose. They’d fallen for that before. The previous year a contestant had brought a “sobriety coach” who was actually his dealer.

  She felt a question—the question—the one she didn’t like, looming at the edge of her consciousness. What am I doing?

  She started a new email to Dan and Joanne, her I Do/I Don’t bosses.

  You know, she wrote, we could actually tackle issues of addiction if we changed the focus of the show to something along the lines of my pitch. I know that you’re discussing the merits of my idea and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. And I’m here to answer any other questions you have or work over some of the ideas. It’s a way to do something bigger. Something better. We should schedule a talk in the New Year.

  She hit Send, buoyed again by the strength of her idea. The power of pulling them out of the gutter and putting the show—and herself—on a different path.

  “Josie?” It was Alice bellowing on her way in from the kitchen. “I need you.”

  “What do you need?” she asked, turning to look over the edge of the sofa to see Alice come in with Cameron behind her. His hair was long. She hadn’t realized it the previous night. It came down to his chin. He looked a little like Leonardo DiCaprio in the Titanic movie.

  And thin gray sweatpants.

  And a body with muscles that filled out the sleeves and shoulders of his shirt.

  Good god, it just wasn’t fair what the years had done to Cameron. They’d taken a good-looking kid and turned him into a heart-stopping man.

  “I need you to do something with him!” Alice said, pointing at Cameron.

  And now…honestly, objectively, that wasn’t dirty. It was just Josie and her dirty mind and the gray sweatpants that made those words seem dirty.

  But Cameron’s cheeks turned pink a
nd he couldn’t meet her eyes, and that made it all worse. Better?

  She wasn’t sure.

  “His hair!” Alice said. “The boy’s dropping hair in my tomato sauce and I can’t have it.”

  “If you have a ponytail holder,” he said to Josie, “we’ll let you get back to work.”

  “I don’t. But Iris must be around here—”

  “Cut it,” Alice said. “Cut his hair. Like you used to.”

  “Oh…that’s a terrible idea,” Josie said.

  “Well, it’s the only way he’s working in my kitchen. Gabe’s clippers are still in the back bathroom. This can be handled in five minutes.”

  “By shaving his head?” Josie cried.

  “It won’t be the first time,” Cameron said with a sigh. “Josie would you mind helping me?”

  “Sure,” she said, and Alice nodded like it was all settled, and before Josie could even make sense of it all, she was in the bathroom with Cameron, about to shave his head.

  They were alone. Really…really alone. She could hear him breathing over the sound of her heart pounding. And she didn’t know if she was strong enough to do this. To be close to him like this.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he said, reaching for the clippers. His hand was bigger than she remembered, and he had a fingernail going black from some trauma she wanted to ask him about. “Josie?”

  She sucked in a breath at the sound of her name in his voice.

  “You okay?” he asked and his voice was light. It was even joking, a little. Like everything that had happened between them hadn’t happened, and she realized that was the way to handle this. The two of them just had to pretend none of it…that night, the kiss, his leaving, seven years of silence…none of it happened.

  “This really seems like a bad idea,” she said, trying to give reason one last shot.

  Cameron looked up at her from where he sat on the toilet, a towel around his neck.

  “I don’t know,” he said with that crooked smile. “Seems kind of familiar.”

  “I messed it up when we were kids, too. Remember the Mohawk fiasco of your senior year?”

  “I loved it,” he insisted. “I loved it so much.”

  “No one loves a ratty lopsided Mohawk in their senior pictures.” She considered the boy he’d been. “Except you.”