Leigh-Ann hesitated before taking a bite of her pizza. “You got me a present?”
Not yet, but that’s neither here nor there. Carrie totally had time left to figure that out. Totally. “Of course I have! And I’m gonna watch you unwrap that thing on Christmas! Although now is the time to tell me if your family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, I guess.” She glanced at the small tree again. “But, you know…”
“Hm?”
“I can give you a good reason to celebrate.”
Leigh-Ann swallowed her dinner. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Santa-themed lingerie. I’ve got it. I’m gonna wear it, and you’re gonna see it.”
She expected Leigh-Ann to give her a mighty eyeroll. Instead, Carrie received a laugh hard enough to shoot half-chewed pieces of pizza across the room.
“You laugh,” Carrie said, “but I’m telling the damn truth.”
“Would you shut up about sexy Santas and pick us something to watch on Netflix? We have this rare occasion of watching whatever we want without my parents commentating on our tastes or hovering over us while we snuggle on the couch!”
“Yeah, and that’s why I’m talking about me wearing lingerie for you on Christmas, ya dingus!”
Leigh-Ann almost dropped her pizza onto her chest. Carrie picked up the remote and watched the Netflix logo appear on TV.
“All things considered,” Carrie said, “I think this will be a nice, low-key Christmas. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“You sound like you’re forty instead of nineteen.”
“Hey, when we’re forty, we’ll have our own place and can wear all the lingerie we want around the house!”
Leigh-Ann whipped her head around. “You think we’re gonna be together when we’re forty? That’s, like, in twenty years.”
“You gotta have hope, right?”
The soft look Leigh-Ann gave her made Carrie fall in love all over again. While it was twenty years too soon to determine whether their high-school love affair would last until middle age, they definitely did not hold back on nuzzling noses and curling their arms around one another while watching a cheesy Christmas movie.
Chapter 3
MIKAIYA & ARIANA
The wind chill was worse than the frost on the ground. When did that frost get there, anyway? It hadn’t been there when Mik drove down to Wal-Mart. Hell, the whole day had been a balmy forty-four degrees! Was it really winter already? Frost on the ground as soon as the sun went down behind the mountains?
She sat in the warmth of her truck although the vehicle had quieted. The zipper of her rain jacket was caught in its own teeth. When she finally got it unstuck again, Mik’s elbow slammed into the rolled up window and showed no mercy to her funny bone.
Must have been one of those days.
She stared at the house before her, hand curling around the plastic Wal-Mart bag filled with groceries. The living room was dark, but a light flickered back in the kitchen. All of these houses on this street have the same layout. Ranch-styled. So was the house Mik had grown up in over on Colorado Street. Back when she was a kid, Mikaiya thought nothing of how every street had its own architectural aesthetic, based on when it was developed and what the mayor of the time envisioned for the future of Paradise Valley. The Victorians of Florida Street made as much sense as the ranch houses on Colorado Street, or the fenced-in bungalows of Idaho Street. After being gone for ten years, however, Mik now looked up and down the street wondering what the hell people had been thinking thirty, forty, however many years ago when they first broke ground on the freshly asphalted Ohio Street.
No matter how many months passed since her return, Mikaiya couldn’t get over how foreign her hometown felt. She also couldn’t believe it had almost been a whole year since she got back together with her ex-girlfriend, the young string-bean she had left waiting for her when they were only eighteen and naïve of the world beyond their insulated little dome.
Not a string-bean anymore. Mik had to face the wind chill when she saw a familiar figure in the darkened living room window. Right. She had come here for a reason. Not like her truck wasn’t normally seen on this street anymore. Gossip died about nine months ago. Right around the time some other girl in town started dating a celebrity. That was way juicier than Mik and Ari’s old drama.
Holy Christ that is freakin’ cold! She slammed the driver’s side door shut and hustled up to the welcome mat, scuffed from years’ worth of dirty EMT boots. Mik may have busted a little too much ass, however. As soon as she lifted her foot to put her hand on the doorknob, the frost got the best of her, and she slid across the concrete path between driveway and door.
The door swung open. Ari’s large figure leaned against the doorway, her bare muscles unperturbed by the December chill as she posed in nothing but jeans and a fitted Paradise Valley Emergency Response T-shirt.
“Mik, Mik,” she scolded, while Mikaiya caught her balance and slowly brought herself out of the splits. “If you want me to sweep in and pick you up, there are better ways to get my attention. Biffing it on my front lawn is simply embarrassing.”
Mikaiya brushed her dirty hands on her jacket as soon as she was back on her feet. “Yeah, thanks for the help. Love you, too.”
Ari kicked open the screen door and held out her hand. “Watch the edge of the mat there. I about cracked my skull open the other morning.”
After clasping her girlfriend’s hand and taking a mighty lunge toward the doorway, Mik mused, “How embarrassing is it for one of the town’s only EMTs to get another called on them?”
“Depends.” Ariana closed the door, bringing Mik into a warm room. Those baseboard heaters sure know how to heat up a house. Mikaiya appreciated the lazy if not slightly more expensive route in Ariana’s house. Abby was always harping at her granddaughter to get a “proper fire” started in the living room. Which meant chopping wood. And arranging the wood. And crumpling up copies of The Paradise Valley Reporter and The Oregonian. At least I get to stay a little toned in the winter… Ari was the first person to comment on how sexy Mikaiya was chopping wood. Too bad it took her a whole day to get one fire’s worth of wood. “If it’s something like a stroke or a terrible but badass accident, you get commiseration. If you smacked your thumb with a hammer or drank too much at a party, you’re never gonna hear the end of it for the better part of a decade.”
Mik placed the plastic bag on the Formica table in the kitchen. Ariana snapped it right up and pulled a skillet out of the cupboard. Did she just get off her shift? Bit late for it, huh? It was six-thirty. Ari was supposed to be off at five, but if they got a last minute call, she could sometimes be out until eight, depending. “Where’s your roommate?”
“Down at the bar having a guy’s night with some buddies.” Ari pulled a pair of chicken breasts from the bag. “We’ve got the place all to ourselves tonight.”
Mik slumped down into one of the chairs at the table. “Let me guess. This was part of your grand plan? Get your roommate out of the house so you can get loud with me?”
Ten years ago, such a cheeky joke would have sent Ariana Mura under the nearest bed in absolute embarrassment. Now, however, she turned around and gave her girlfriend an enthusiastic two thumbs up.
Mik should have figured.
That was only one wild example of how their dynamic had changed over the past ten years. Ari wasn’t the only one who had changed since high school. Mikaiya wasn’t exactly the socially aggressive cool-girl-athlete she had been at Clark High School. Going to college in the city and making a 9-to-5 name for herself, never mind navigating a depressing dating scene, had brought her ego down a few notches. It had also made her slightly neurotic, as Ari loved to remind her every time Mikaiya kept reparking her truck in the supermarket lot until she was happy with her alignment. Or how she couldn’t stand to have her closet in disarray, when her high school bedroom had been a mess and a half. Ariana may have looked different and acted a bit more confident, but deep down she was still the same gi
rl who never bothered to clean her room and wanted to believe in love.
She had also learned how to cook better, but that wasn’t a surprise, either. If there was one class Ari had excelled at in high school, it was home economics, which for some reason made her acquaintances laugh now. I guess that’s because they don’t know the real her like I do. Those were the facts that made Mik smile whenever she worried that she and Ariana had still grown too far apart.
“So I’ve been thinking about something,” Ariana announced when she sat down to have dinner with her girlfriend. While this was far from a romantic date, Mikaiya appreciated the normalcy of sitting down to dinner with someone who knew her so well. It was different from having dinner with her grandmother, or Skylar. They didn’t get her like Ari did. They didn’t have the complicated history with Mik. Ariana and Mikaiya may have had their crap to sort out, but it had been far from a bad year of getting to know one another again and making up for missed time over the past ten years.
God only knew what Ari was thinking, then.
“Yeah?” Mik asked. She poked at the baked chicken and the creamy mashed potatoes. While it may not have been the best homecooked meal she ever had, it sure beat yet another night of takeout pizza. I love you, Sky, but oh my God. Skylar getting that job at the pizza pit was both a boon and a curse upon the Marcott house.
“We’ve been back together a year, yeah? I mean, I think it’s been going pretty good, especially now that people have stopped treating us like some weird anomaly.”
Mikaiya snorted. “You’re not wrong.”
“We also got no complaints about where the other person is in their life or, you know, what we get up to in private…”
“I’m never going to get used to you so blasely referencing sex like that.”
Ari acted as if she heard nothing. “You think it’s time we take the next step?”
Mik dropped her fork. “Excuse me?” she whispered, the heat draining from her face.
“I’m talking about living together, Mik. Don’t know what you think I mean.”
Marriage, dumbass! What the hell else could it mean? For Heaven’s sake, they had been “engaged” when Mik skipped town a decade ago. This was a couple that did not casually talk about moving in together without marriage being on the table. Because, deep down, we’re still two idiot kids who don’t know anything about the world.
“It makes sense, you know,” Ari said, almost defensively. “We’ve both got the income. If we cohabitate, I can put you on my insurance instead of you paying so much for your self-employment stuff. We already spend most of the week together. Hell, you’ve got so much crap on my side of the sink that I keep getting crap about going femme on the guys!”
Mikaiya held up her hands before Ari could really get going. “I’m not opposed to it, okay?” she said. “Honestly, I’ve thought it a couple of times myself over the past few months, because what you’re saying is true.” Especially the health insurance part. Seriously. “But I never brought it up because, you know… my grandma…”
“I’ve thought about that, too. I know she needs family living with her. I also know she’s got a lot of medical problems I know a bit about. Which is why I was thinking…” Ari scratched her head, a sign that she feared Mik’s upcoming reaction. “Maybe I should move in with you and your grandma. Having an EMT around would be good for Abby, and it’s not like she doesn’t know me well.”
Mik looked down at her half-eaten food. “I’m sure my grandma wouldn’t mind if I put it that way, but what about Skylar? We’re already at full capacity in that house. Even if you move into my room, that’s gonna be a cramped house.”
“What’s brilliant is that Skylar could take over my part of the lease here. I’ve already talked to my roommate about it.”
Sighing, Mikaiya pinched the bridge of her nose. “I don’t think Skylar could afford the rent here. She doesn’t make much at the pizza parlor, and she’s got student loans like I do. Right now she’s living rent free at my house.”
“Whoa. I had no idea. I thought she was paying for something, at least.”
“She provides a good amount of food…” That was one way of putting it. “But my grandma’s social security and my income goes to most of the bills. Not saying that having you around to help out wouldn’t be huge, especially for me and my stupid loans, but Skylar…”
Ariana folded her hands in front of her plate and briefly gazed out the darkened kitchen window. “As long as you’re on board with the idea, eventually. It’s okay if we have to wait. I just, you know… I was also kinda worried that you would hate the idea of living together. I’m ready for a change. Not only in our relationship, but in my life. Having you come back to town was the shakeup I needed, I guess. Now I wanna make my next set of plans.”
“When did you become the super responsible one?” Mik asked.
“When I had to be.”
That was all she said about that, but Mik knew what she meant. When I skipped out on you, and suddenly you had to figure things out all on your own. She reached across the table and took Ariana’s hand. Forgiveness may have been given, but Mik would spend the rest of her life trying to make it up to the girl whose heart she had broken.
“We’re gonna move in together before you know it,” Mik said. “And I can’t wait.”
Although that brought a small smile to Ariana’s face, Mikaiya couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to Skylar in the fall-out. As much as she hated to admit it, Skylar was probably looking at a hasty move back to Portland as soon as she put in her full year in Paradise Valley. One year ago, I would have been right behind her, like she was right behind me when we moved here. Not now. Mik was back home, both in step and in heart.
She couldn’t imagine leaving again. Not when she held the hand of the one person who meant more than any memory she could make in another place.
Chapter 4
SKYLAR
A queasy feeling settled into Skylar’s stomach as she sat along the wall of Heaven’s Café. I really hope I’m not getting sick. She encountered so many people during the day that it was a miracle she hadn’t fallen ill yet that season. How many customers came into the pizza parlor with snot on their hands and scratches in their voice? Then they handed her cash and cards covered in germs. Nobody in Paradise Valley offered a free flu shot. You had to go out of town for that, which blew Skylar’s mind – she was so used to popping into the local Walgreens or CVS everywhere else, but nothing like that existed in tiny towns like this one. So I haven’t gotten it yet… and neither have most of the adults in this town. Skylar drummed her fingers on the table, waiting for Mik to come back from the register with a hand-drawn number shoved into a wire stand.
“You okay?” Mikaiya asked.
Skylar finally succumbed to taking off her coat. She piled it next to her on the bench she shared with every table along the wall, and hoped that nobody wanted to put their stuff in that spot sometime in the next hour. The only reason she agreed to having lunch with Mik that Sunday was if her friend promised they didn’t have to interact with anyone else.
“I’m fine. Promise.”
Mikaiya got up again when the barista on duty called out her latte. She hung out at the counter long enough to pick up Skylar’s coffee as well. A bit of foam spilled onto the table when Mik sat back down and slowly pushed Skylar’s coffee in her direction.
“You haven’t really been yourself lately, you know?”
Really? They were doing this in public? When Mik had the whole weekend? She was lucky that Skylar didn’t have to be at Paradise Pizza for another two hours. Because answering that question could take… a while.
“I know,” Skylar said. “Sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing? All I care about is that you’re doing okay. Is it your job? It can’t be easy, and I know you’re not getting paid great.”
Oh, but it’s minimum wage in a state with high minimum wage! I’m practically jumping for joy! Skylar couldn’t think that with
out a tinge of sarcasm in her brain. That’s how bad it was.
“Guess I’m in a rut. Kinda like how I was in a rut back in Portland.”
Mik’s face fell. Surely, she had known the answer! Wasn’t like they hadn’t been friends for several years, since their PSU days when Mik was a naïve country girl and Skylar was That Californian who lit up a room. They became friends because of their shared interest in the English department – and from attending a few of the same parties that were popular in their corner of campus. How strange was it that, since college, Skylar had become more reserved and Mik was the social butterfly? If she could be called that, anyway. Mikaiya was sort of forced into socializing both at her old marketing job and in her hometown, where everyone knew her, whether she liked it or not.
“I’m sorry things didn’t go the way you planned when you moved here,” Mik said, before sipping her latte. The maple leaf the barista had drawn with the foam spiraled beneath Mikaiya’s lips. “This place is… weird. Even for a small town, it’s weird.”
“You hear that a town is built on lesbian drama, and you think it will be the twist on rural life you’ve been craving since you watched your share of Hallmark holiday movies.” That’s how Skylar knew she was in a real rut. She had no desire to watch A Knight to Remember. Should have been right up her alley! “I mean, don’t get me wrong, Mik, it’s not a problem with the people, really… more like… the small number of them.”
Mikaiya snorted into her latte. “Yeah. Tell me about it. What do you think the best part about getting the hell out of here was?”
Skylar cocked an eyebrow at the friend she had learned so much about over the past year. “Here I thought it was getting away from your ex-girlfriend.”
Mik had that look on her face that implied she should have seen that coming.
“Anyway, I guess I don’t really have to tell you that I’m thinking about moving back to…” Skylar stopped. She had almost said Portland, but that wasn’t quite right. She hadn’t been happy there, either. I thought my problem was that I needed to get out of the city. Head to the countryside where life is slower and simpler. Fresh air. Fresh food. Turned out most of the food was more processed than the city’s, and the air was full of so much pollen that Skylar had gone from pills to shots that past spring. “Maybe I might go back home. To California. Although the thought of paying rent to live in ground zero of climate change isn’t really appealing, either.”
December Wishes (A Year in Paradise Book 12) Page 2