You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology

by Karina Bliss

  “Have you ever thought about staying in Salt Lake?” she asked as they turned onto the main highway.

  “What? No.” He shook his head as if to emphasize his point. “I’ve had this idea of a trip planned ever since Curtis and I decided to sell Terry. I’m not giving it up.”

  She looked back at her phone, disappointment sinking her heart like the Titanic.

  “Looking forward to the falls?” he asked, his voice chipper, insensitive to her hurt. But of course he wouldn’t know. He was still operating under the rules of their original agreement.

  “Yeah,” she said, determined to spend the drive from the ice caves to the waterfall reminding herself of her dream and how close she was to it, Marc or no Marc.

  Chapter Ten

  “Are you sure you know how to get to the falls?” Selina asked, her voice as doubtful as her expression as she gazed out the windows at the sagebrush dotting the side of the road.

  “These are the directions I found online. And my GPS is sending me to the same place, so this must be it.” But he really wasn’t very sure of it, either. There wasn’t much out here besides the sagebrush and large houses spaced almost a quarter mile apart.

  “Have a little confidence in technology,” he said. “After all, technology failures led me to you, so even if it’s wrong, it’ll be right.” At the memory, he broke into a wide smile. “Besides, we went over that massive canyon about ten minutes ago. The falls have to be around here somewhere.”

  They started to descend into the canyon. Then they passed a closed pay station for the parking lot. They were in the right place. The town’s website had said there was only a fee during the summer. They had their pick of parking spaces and there wasn’t anyone else with them as they walked out to the viewing area.

  “Huh,” Selina said. “I’ve heard of Shoshone Falls, of course, but I’m not sure what I expected.”

  Massive gray stones stepped down from the river before morphing into a cliff that plunged over two hundred feet. Water streamed over the cliffs, not in one big sheet, but in several smaller waterfalls spanning the breadth of the canyon. On the far side of the river was a red-roofed white building that was probably several stories tall but was dwarfed by the magnitude of the cliffs.

  The view was pretty, no question about that. But it wasn’t the massive flow of water they had both expected. Less disappointing than not seeing wolves with the Wolf People and a closed submarine museum in the middle of northern Idaho, but still . . . At least Selina was with him.

  Marc pulled out his favorite phone. The website for the falls was still up and he skimmed the information again. “Ah. The falls are best viewed in the late spring and early summer when the snow runoff is at its highest. We should come back.”

  She made a noncommittal noise. Her face was as unreadable. Still, it wasn’t a no, and this was probably the best opportunity Marc would have to broach his idea.

  “I’ve had a great time today,” he said. “And yesterday, with you at the bird sanctuary.” He gathered up all his excitement, then took a deep breath so that he didn’t bowl her over with his enthusiasm. “After Snowdance, I’ve got hotel rooms booked all around the Rocky Mountains, with a week in between each place for driving around and seeing the sights. You should come with me. I’ll bring you back to Salt Lake. Or Denver. Or Tahoe. Or whatever city you want to be in when we’re done. Come have fun with me.”

  She blinked, and his heart sank.

  “I’ve got plans,” she said.

  “Since when?” Being lost felt like a waste of time and the e-mails he was getting back about his project were disheartening, but it was all okay with Selina next to him. The idea of her not being there was suddenly unbearable.

  “Since we left the caves. Babe’s friend can rent me a room in Salt Lake. It’s near some bus lines so I can get to work once I find something, and it’s not far from the community college campus. It’s not much, but it’s everything I need right now. And my professor thought me working in the gallery was possible. His friend needs someone on a part-time basis. With a waitressing job, I could make it work. Maybe even to save up a little money. Get my independence back.”

  The word independence registered in his mind but not before his heart fell out of his body and landed at his feet with as much force as he imagined went over the falls in front of them at peak season.

  His mind climbed around and over that word, trying to figure out why she would choose to live in a rented room, ride the bus, and work two jobs when she could be driving around the west with him, skiing at some of the best resorts in the world. “I’ll pay for your ski lessons,” he offered. “It’ll be fun.”

  She leaned forward to rest her arms on the railing, then looked over her shoulder at him. “It’s not the ski lessons or the hotels or the meals. Or the fun. I don’t think you’re having fun.”

  “I’m having fun with you.” He folded his arms on the railing, too, their skin barely touching. He needed to touch her, to know she was still next to him, at least for this moment.

  “I guess.” She shook her head, her blond hair bouncing around her face. The hair that had caught his attention only a couple of days ago. The hair he might never see again.

  “No,” she corrected herself. “I see that you are. But you’ve never stopped checking your phones, and it’s not like you’re not scrolling Facebook. You’re waiting for an e-mail saying you can be let back in to the project that you sold. And if that e-mail comes through, well, I’m sure you’ll do as you promised and get me to whatever city I want to be in, but you’ll drop this man-of-leisure act in a heartbeat and every minute more you have to spend fulfilling your promise to me will be time you resent.”

  “That’s not . . .” He was going to say it wasn’t true, but it was. And he wasn’t a liar. “I won’t get an e-mail inviting me to work on the project.” His heart was already on the ground and admitting the truth felt like his heart was now being kicked over the rocks. By feet shod in cleats. “I applied for a job at the company that bought Terry. Curtis sent my application back to me with an e-mail that said, You’re making a fool of yourself.” He clenched his fists in frustration. “I don’t know what else to do besides keep driving around and skiing. I’m done with the project of my life.”

  He felt hollow and full of holes. Anything that got poured into him was going to drain right out. A sieve. A waste.

  “Your choices aren’t just get back on the project or be a man of leisure.” Her brows were crossed in confusion, wrinkles covering her forehead. “You can do something else.”

  “Something else like you’re doing? Finding a waitressing job and going back to community college?” His anger burned through the holes littering his body as he said the words, and it didn’t feel good. Nothing about this conversation felt good.

  It all felt wrong. As if he was being dumped when they weren’t even dating. Only it wasn’t like the other times he’d been dumped. Once, in college, he’d felt like a child being denied a toy. And then when he was working on his project, a woman had dumped him because she never saw him. She must have been right, too, because he didn’t remember missing her.

  But Marc wanted to have fun with Selina. He wanted to explore with her and get to know her better, see those moments when she was relaxed and when her face puckered into the strangely hot irritation that made her lips purse.

  They weren’t a couple, and all she was asking for was their original agreement, but he still felt as though he was being rejected because he was at odds with himself. As though there were some defect in him that made him unworthy.

  It’s not because you’re lost. It’s because you’re not trying to find yourself.

  All the code running through his mind suddenly finished processing and his brain flashed with a result. She’d said something about him that was both true and something he didn’t like, and he’d responded by throwing accusations at her.

  Not a way to plead his case.

  He was silent for moment,
letting the noise of the falls wash over him and the icy winter water cool the ashes his anger had left behind.

  “Maybe my plans don’t look like much to you,” she said. “Maybe it looks like I’m just replacing my Idaho life with a Utah one. But my goal was to get away from my stepfather and my small town, and I did that. I might even have a chance to live my own dream and work in a gallery, something I never could have done in Athol. And I won’t be dependent on you for everything I eat and every bed I sleep on. That’s as important as my dreams.”

  Without his anger at himself now roaring through his ears, reason managed to sneak in. She had a dream and she had the chance to pursue it. Even if he could get in the way of that, he wouldn’t want to. One dream of his own life was done; he needed to find a new one. And she was right. He wasn’t even trying to find something. He’d given himself the winter of every skier’s fantasy, and he was going to blow it because he’d decided he couldn’t be happy without Terry to work on.

  He had to at least try for something more. He had to make use of his winter hiatus to step away from Terry and see what he wanted to do next, figure out who he was without Terry to work on or Curtis to work with. And he couldn’t hang around Selina, using her as a crutch to distract him from the fact that he was treading water just as much as she had been.

  That realization hurt, though not nearly as much as the knowledge that he might not see Selina again. That realization burned.

  She turned her face away from him to the waterfalls. Shoshone Falls in winter wasn’t the massive Niagara-like sight he’d been led to believe, but the water cascading over the rocks soothed the rough edges of his soul. The sight was no less beautiful for being different from what he’d expected.

  “When we get to Salt Lake and you drop me off at the house with my room, I’ll have reached one of my goals, and I’m on my way to creating new ones. Bigger ones,” she went on. “So maybe achieving just one goal doesn’t look like much to you, but at least I’m not stopping there.”

  He nodded slowly. “I get it. It took me awhile, but I get it. And I get that you’re making progress and I’m not. And that I’m relying on you to distract me.” Sadness pulled at him, a sinking feeling that seemed to drag at his muscles and bones. “I guess I need to figure myself out on my own . . . So let’s get you to Salt Lake.”

  He put his hand on her back, thinking they would return to the parking lot. Instead, she leaned into him for a hug, resting her head on his shoulder. He laid his head on the top of hers, the smell of hotel shampoo filling his nose. He’d have to avoid staying at that same chain of hotels for the rest of his winter trip because he wouldn’t be able to resist opening the shampoo just so he could smell this moment, remembering her in his arms.

  She sniffed a couple of times, and he realized that she was crying. When he was younger, it might have bothered him. Emotions had been scary and code had been clean. But now he understood her strength and admired the way she pushed through her troubles to carve out a life for herself. If crying was a part of that, then he admired that, too.

  He didn’t know how long they stood there, but when she finally pulled away, he knew it hadn’t been long enough. She had come into his life like a feather, blown in by the wind, when he needed her strength and she needed his freedom. And she was leaving just as softly.

  They walked to the car in silence. In fact, they drove the four hours to Salt Lake City mostly in silence. What was there left to say?

  Chapter Eleven

  The winter sun was setting as Marc drove them down a series of narrow residential streets lined with bungalows. Selina peered out the window at her new neighborhood—at least for the foreseeable future—trying to read the people who lived in the houses.

  In early December, much of the greenery was dead, but there wasn’t any snow to cover up the brown plants and dry grass. There was smog, though. She hadn’t realized that Salt Lake City had so much smog. The gray haze wasn’t the crisp mountain air that she had expected.

  “The neighborhood looks nice,” Marc said, sounding relieved.

  The last leg of their trip had been four hours of uncomfortable silence, with only minimal talking when they stopped for gas and a snack. Selina hadn’t known what to say, and she suspected Marc hadn’t, either. Now he sounded both reassured and grateful for something to talk about.

  Multicolored Christmas lights covered the railings of the porch of the next house, and the light by the front door was on. She looked at the number on the mailbox and took a deep breath. They were really here.

  When they pulled to a stop at the curb, the front door opened. A woman of Babe’s age, nearly as thin as Babe was large, walked out. “Selina?” she asked, walking toward them.

  Backlit by the setting sun, the woman was hard to see, but her voice sounded kind. Of course, Selina would trust Babe with anything, so any friend of Babe’s had to be good people.

  “Yes,” Selina said as she climbed out of the car. “It’s me. And you’re Pam?”

  To her surprise, Pam rushed up and enveloped her in a hug. “It’s nice to meet you, my dear. Babe and I are old friends, back from when her first husband was in the Army. She’s always spoken so highly of you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you, too.” Selina turned to look at Marc, who had walked up to them. “And this is Marc. He gave me a ride down here.” That seemed like such an understatement for what he meant to her. “And a friend.”

  Still an understatement, but a better one. He was her rescuer, but now with her own room to rent—arranged by her—she was going to be her own rescuer. The thought gave her strength and hope for the future.

  “Nice to meet you, Marc,” Pam said, shaking his hand. “Why don’t you get Selina’s bag and come in to the house? You can set it in her room.”

  Marc and Selina dutifully followed Pam into the house and to Selina’s new bedroom.

  “This is nice,” Marc said, and Selina realized that he’d been more worried about her than she had been. That realization was made sweeter because he wasn’t trying to stop her and he hadn’t used his worry or dire threats to try and convince her to stay with him.

  Like the rest of the house, the room was very clean, if simply decorated, and filled with old, worn furniture. It was clear Pam took pride in her house, though she didn’t seem to have much money to spend on it.

  “I’m so glad you had a room to rent,” Selina said.

  “Honey, you’re helping me out as much as I’m helping you. I don’t know if Babe told you, but I’m still paying off medical bills from cancer two years ago. This income will be very helpful. And the food-and-utilities split works for you?”

  Selina nodded.

  “Good.” Pam put her hands on her hips and gave a curt but not unfriendly nod. Like Babe, Pam seemed to be a woman who didn’t let warmth and love get in the way of practicality. “I’ve got a lease printed out over on the dining table. Can’t be too careful with these things, even if you are a friend of Babe’s.”

  “That seems smart,” Selina said.

  As Selina followed Pam out of the bedroom, Marc put his hand on the small of her back. The simple gesture of support meant more to her than she could ever express in words. He stood by her as she read over and signed the lease.

  “I’ve got dinner on the stove. Selina, you’re welcome to have some. Marc, do you want to stay for dinner?”

  Selina tried not to hope for another hour with Marc, but that was as impossible as not needing to breathe.

  “No, thank you. I called Snowdance and arranged a room for tonight. I’d like to drive up the mountain before it gets too dark.”

  “I’ll walk you out,” Selina said quickly. She didn’t want him to leave without having a chance for them to talk privately. They didn’t need an audience for the end of this relationship.

  Out in the cold, standing by Marc’s SUV, Selina shivered.

  “Feel okay about this situation?” he asked.

  “Yes. It will be good.” She wasn’t si
mply saying that; she actually believed it. Pam was kind. She’d seen the bus lines down the street. There were almost always waitressing jobs available, and then there was a matter of college, of course, but that could wait a couple of months. She might get a job at a gallery, and if not, she could volunteer at one of the art museums. Babe was already working on selling her car, too, so the money from that would give Selina a little safety net.

  “More than good,” she said, her voice stronger in the crisp night air. “I’m in a much better place right now, and I have you to thank for it. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

  Being here, she realized that it hadn’t even been the money that had been keeping her in her hometown. She had needed a push. And a pull. Gary had provided one; Marc had provided the other.

  Only, it wasn’t just gratitude that was welling up in her chest. Marc was the man she had needed at the time, but in another life, in another situation, she would have liked to develop their relationship more. The affection warming her down to the tips of her toes could turn into love if she let it.

  He put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing up and down her arms and along her biceps, generating even more warmth in her body. It wasn’t just the touch. It was his touch.

  “I understand that you don’t want to come with me for the whole winter. You have a life you need to start here. That makes sense. But could I call you when I’m done with my travels? Maybe swing by to see you?” His expression turned serious in the dim light coming off the porch. “I like you, Selina. I like you a lot.”

  Her chest swelled at that news, puffing out with pleasure until she was afraid she would pop the zipper on her coat. Thinking he liked her had been one thing; hearing him say it filled a different need entirely.

  “I didn’t just want you along with me for company and the chance that we would have sex again, just so you know . . .” he continued. “I wanted you along because I think we could have been something. That maybe there was a future here.”