A Cliché Christmas

by Nicole Deese

  The second he parked, he jumped out of the truck and slammed the door.

  Um . . . this could be the worst date in history. No wonder he never made it to date number three.

  I jumped out of the truck after him.

  As my boots sunk into the snow, I watched him lean over his tailgate. And when he glanced up, the pain in his eyes caught me off guard.

  “No expectations?” His staccato words were smothered in hurt.

  He pushed away from his truck and trudged back toward me, snow crunching beneath his boots with each step.

  “I wasn’t talking about us, Georgia.” He stood inches away from me, his breath crystalizing in the cold air as he spoke. “I was referring to this life-altering project you want to take on.” He clamped his mouth shut and pulled at the back of his neck with both hands as I stood staring at him, dumbfounded.

  “How could you think I only wanted some sort of winter-break romance with you?”

  “I . . . I just thought—”

  He reached for my hips and pulled me toward him, his breath tickling my mouth as he spoke. “Stop it. Please.” He shook his head and leaned his forehead against mine. “Stop thinking so much. Stop telling yourself that what I feel for you isn’t real. Because it is, Georgia. There are so many things I want to say to you, but I can’t because you’re not ready to hear them. Not yet.” Weston’s deep breaths warmed my face.

  My body was limp with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify. Weston let go of me and took a step back, giving me space that I neither needed nor wanted at that moment.

  “Why not?” I asked, the snow falling harder, making small piles on my shoulders, hood, and boots.

  He studied my face and shook his head as a snowflake landed on his cheek and melted instantaneously. “Because you don’t trust me.”

  I forced my next words out, hoping I believed them. “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you?” he asked, his eyebrows pulling together. “Then stop worrying about having too many expectations for me—stop wondering if my feelings for you are going to last.”

  Had he been reading the script written on my soul?

  “I care about you, Georgia.” His breathy whisper cut through my many layers of self-preservation and doubt.

  Tears blurred my vision, and he reached for me again, his cool gloves brushing against my cheeks.

  “I want to believe that.” And I did.

  “Good, because someday I won’t be able to hold back what I really want to say.”

  His lips covered mine a second later. And our kiss opened up a rhythm inside me that I wasn’t sure existed until now.

  Something was happening to me . . . something as achingly wonderful as it was devastatingly uncertain.

  I was falling in love with Weston James.

  For the second time.

  Despite the intense start to the day, tubing proved to be the stress reliever we both needed. We’d ridden the lift to the top of the tubing hill a dozen times, but my legs ached from the little bit of snow-walking we’d done—and from the fact that I was completely out of shape.

  Cara would be griping at me right now for my lack of endurance.

  Weston warmed my frozen cheek with a kiss as we rode up the side of the mountain.

  “Remember that time we came up here with the youth group? I think it was sophomore year?”

  “It was. That was my last time here.”

  “Are you serious? Willa and I came up here at least ten times a winter. Our parents love to ski.”

  I smiled and shrugged. “Nan’s not a big fan of snow.”

  “Your mom, either?”

  I shook my head. “Nah.” Actually, she wasn’t a fan of much—until she met Brad, anyway.

  Weston squeezed me closer to him, not commenting.

  “I love it, though,” I said, dreamily.

  “Love what?”

  “The mountains. Sometimes I think it’s easier for God to hear us from way up here.”

  Weston kissed my temple as the ski lift came to a stop. “I think He hears you just fine, Georgia. Whether you’re on the beaches of California or in the Himalayas. He hears you.”

  I grinned at him, my chest exploding with a kind of satisfaction I hadn’t felt in . . . maybe forever.

  We hopped off the lift, and Weston dragged our tubes alongside him. As I watched his caveman-like stride, I caught a dose of the giggles. A big dose.

  “What’s so funny back there?” He stopped his trek and turned.

  “You look like you’re dragging a dead animal behind you after a hunt.”

  Before I could blink, my back was flat against the snow, and Weston was standing over me, gloating like a third grader who won in a game of Red Rover. Had he really just pushed me?

  “I may be small town, sweetheart, but I can hold my own pretty well . . . Wouldn’t you agree?”

  He held out a giant gloved hand to me, but I had no intention of getting up. If I was going down, so was he. As I faked a hold on him, I swept my leg behind his knee and rolled to the side. He came down hard.

  “Did I mention that Cara teaches yoga and self-defense?”

  Weston army crawled toward me as I squealed and tried to crab walk away from him in the snow. I needed to get away from his path of revenge. Too late.

  With one quick pounce, Weston wrapped his arms around my legs.

  “No! No! No!” I couldn’t breathe between my eruptions of giggles.

  “You started this, O lover of all things winter.”

  I tried to wrestle my way out of his grip, but my efforts were futile. As I sunk farther into the fresh layers of powder, large snowflakes fell from the sky, wetting my face.

  “Stop . . . wiggling,” Weston wheezed.

  “Never!”

  And then we were rolling . . . rolling . . . rolling.

  I heard several people shout at us, but we were a nonstop wheel of snow gear and childhood rivalry. As we separated, I knew exactly what he was going to do. Race me!

  I pushed myself to keep rolling, even when the tubing slopes came into view on my right.

  I didn’t care.

  Neither did he.

  I wasn’t going to be the first to stop.

  Neither was he.

  Finally, after what felt like an eternity being stuck on the teacup ride at the state fair, we both came to a stop.

  We lay on our backs panting as the world spun above us. Weston crawled toward me slowly. He looked as dizzy as I felt.

  When he was next to me, his heavy, snow-encrusted arm snaked its way across my midsection.

  “Did I win?” he asked, breathlessly.

  I closed my eyes, smiling as I tried to control my vertigo.

  “I think so.”

  “Yeah?” he whispered. “What did I win?”

  My heart. “I’m not sure you’re ready to hear it yet.”

  Weston’s laugh was winded. “Touché. You’ve always had such a smart little mouth on you, Georgia.”

  “Yes, but you like it.”

  “Mmm. That I do,” he said. “That I do.”

  When his mouth crashed onto mine, I knew his goal: to show me just how much he liked it. Unfortunately, our make-out session lasted only as long as it took for the snow in our coats, pants, and boots to start to melt, which wasn’t long at all. It turns out that when one rolls down a giant hill of snow, one takes in quite a bit of the stuff.

  “Come on, Miss Mistletoe.” Weston reached a hand down to me as he stood. “We need to get back to town.”

  Wet, cold, and completely exhausted, we made it to the bottom of the hill, my smile never fading.

  And just maybe it never would.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  To my utter amazement, the storm came early.

  Weston rarely showed signs of n
ervousness, especially behind the wheel. But when he slowed to a crawl around a tight bend in the road, I could feel the stress radiating from him. A focused silence replaced our banter and jokes. Though it wasn’t even four in the afternoon, the sky was an opaque gray mass. The snow was so thick that even the brake lights in front of us were no longer visible.

  And we still had twenty miles to go.

  Even with chains and Weston’s superior driving skills, navigation proved difficult. I prayed we’d make it home before dark.

  Suddenly, Weston jerked the truck to the right, narrowly missing a car that was stopped in the middle of the road. “What the—”

  He maneuvered the truck over to the narrow shoulder on the right.

  “Stay here. I need to figure out what’s going on. Might be a stalled car.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “No, you won’t. Stay here, Georgia. The hazard lights are on, and you’re more visible here than you are walking around outside or standing behind that car waiting for someone to plow into us.”

  Though I didn’t want to be left alone, I conceded. His look certainly didn’t say, “Let’s negotiate on this one.”

  As Weston blurred into the ominous wall of snow, I slipped my cell phone out of my satchel to call Nan.

  No signal. Urgh!

  I counted the seconds until the windshield was completely covered with snow, a solid screen of white. Fourteen seconds. I flicked the wipers on to clear it away. And then I started counting again.

  Eleven minutes passed before Weston returned, the tip of his nose rosy from the cold.

  He slammed the door. “Bad news.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not a stalled car. It’s an entire lineup of cars. I talked to a driver a ways up—before he lost reception, he got a text saying there was a major accident near the exit for Lenox. Do you have coverage?”

  I shook my head. “No, I already tried.”

  Weston exhaled and rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry about this, Georgia.”

  “It’s not your fault. It’s weather—it’s fickle.”

  “Yeah, but I knew it was coming. It’s probably going to be a few hours until we can make it home at this point. I haven’t seen any plows out yet.”

  I watched the blades of the wipers as they scraped against the windshield.

  “If there was a closer exit, I’d pull off, but you know as well as I do, there’s nothing. I’m guessing they’ll close the pass to oncoming traffic if they haven’t already. When this all freezes tonight, it’s gonna be a huge mess.”

  I bit the corner of my lip.

  “You thinking about Nan?”

  “Yeah, I’ve just always hated the idea of her being alone during winter storms.”

  Weston’s chuckle rumbled low, blending with the muted sound of the engine. “That town treats Nan like a queen. She’s far from alone, I can assure you of that.”

  He was right. Most likely, her phone was already ringing with neighbors checking up on her to make sure she’d stocked up on supplies.

  I reached behind my seat. “Well, it’s a good thing I snatched this giant container of Nan’s cookies from the counter before we left.”

  Weston pulled onto the road again, keeping his hazard lights on. “Yeah, those might end up being dinner and breakfast.”

  My laugh faded the second I realized he could be right.

  An hour and a half and approximately two car-lengths later, our hope to make it home before the sky completely blackened vanished as frigid wind gusts continued to pummel Weston’s truck.

  The only contrast to the darkness that enveloped us was the falling snowflakes caught in the glow of the headlights.

  We’d already played a riveting game of Would You Rather?—which, of course, was filled with the most absurd and ridiculous scenarios—and then we tried to guess the story of the family in front of us because the two dark-haired children in the backseat continually turned and waved to us.

  And then I had a thought. “I wonder if they’re hungry.”

  Weston glanced down at the cookie container on my lap, and we exchanged a knowing look. “You want to be the Cookie Santa?”

  “No, I want us to be.”

  The twinkle in his eye filled my chest with warmth.

  We put on our gloves, hats, and scarves as if we were about to trek across the Alaskan tundra instead of a single car-length.

  As we approached the vehicle, the driver rolled down his window. There was a look of quiet apprehension etched into his features.

  “Hi,” I said. “We couldn’t help but notice your kiddos in the backseat, and we wondered if we could share some cookies with you all? My grandma made them for us last night.”

  Weston’s hand pressed on my lower back as I spoke, and the gesture warmed me from the inside out.

  The woman in the passenger seat leaned over her husband’s lap and smiled at us through his open window. “How sweet of you! We’d love some.”

  “Yeah! We’re starving!” One of the kids in back exclaimed, a double gap in his smile where his front teeth had been.

  “What you mean to say, Cooper, is thank you,” the woman scolded.

  “Yes, thank you,” he echoed immediately.

  The little girl next to him nodded excitedly and reached for two cookies. Both parents took a few as well.

  “Merry Christmas to you all,” Weston said. But as we started to turn back, the doors of an SUV opened and a couple of guys headed toward us.

  “Hey . . . are those cookies you’re handing out?”

  I smiled up at Weston and shrugged.

  “Sure are. Would you like some?”

  “Yes, thank you! We’ve been up at Mount Bachelor skiing all day—thought we would grab dinner on our way home, but it doesn’t look like that’s gonna happen.”

  Weston shook the driver’s hand and held out the container of Nan’s oatmeal-raisin cookies to them both. They grabbed several each, and I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. Nan would be overjoyed.

  “Merry Christmas!” we called after them.

  As we passed the family in the car again, we heard a familiar sound: Christmas music. They had tuned into the nonstop Christmas music station, cracking their windows to release the sound into the snowy mountainside. The lyrics to “Silent Night” rang out crystal clear. The ski guys in front of them tuned into the station as well, the sound pouring from their open windows and sunroof.

  And then the car in front of them turned on the Christmas music—the trend had caught on quickly.

  Once we got back in the truck, Weston tuned in as well. With the windows open, the symphony of Christmas was everywhere.

  I inhaled a sharp breath as my soul stirred in a way it hadn’t in years. Even Weston was quiet, experiencing a similar attitude of reverence. As the song continued, the volume intensified. Though there was no way of knowing just how many vehicles were participating in this spontaneous outpouring of Christmas spirit, in my imagination there were thousands of cars. Weston took my hand in his, and together we listened, tears gathering in my eyes as I soaked in the sound of wonderment.

  “Does this beat your Holiday Goddess clichés?”

  I nodded in response, because the truth was, that it did. By miles.

  Weston shifted his body toward me, his attention shifting with it. “How did you spend Christmas as a kid?”

  “Well, Christmas as a kid wasn’t anything like my screenplays, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Weston’s head bobbed slowly, his eyes alight with understanding. “I’m not asking about your screenplays. I’m asking about you.”

  Even with the window open, the air grew stuffy—claustrophobic even. I unwrapped my scarf and pawed at the frayed ends. “My granddad died when I was a toddler. I don’t remember him, but Nan sa
ys he had a strong faith and a big heart—one that simply gave out too soon. He loved Christmastime. He’d dress up as the town Santa and give presents to children.” I glanced up at Weston, who was staring at me intently. “Nan took his spirit of giving very seriously, but she made a point to teach me that one should be generous all-year-round, not just during the holiday season. For that reason, we didn’t—and still don’t—participate in gift giving on Christmas Day. Instead, we volunteered at shelters, baked cookies to give away, and helped families in need.” I realized how selfish I sounded. “But I’m not complaining about that—”

  “I don’t need a disclaimer, Georgia. Go on. What about your mom?”

  “Um . . . my mom.” The truth was a thickening mass that I couldn’t swallow away. He rolled up the windows then and waited.

  “She didn’t usually spend Christmas with us.”

  Weston’s frown armed my defenses. “What do you mean?”

  I squirmed in my seat, wrapping a loose thread around my finger. “What I mean . . . is that she worked really hard to keep me on task during the school year. She felt it was her job to push me academically. But when I had breaks, she took breaks, too.” Okay, maybe that didn’t sound as normal as I wanted it to.

  “Took breaks?” Weston questioned.

  I nodded, licking my chapped lips.

  “You mean, from you?”

  My hands tingled with unease. “She knew I had Nan.”

  Though Weston refrained from saying more, the tension in his shoulders and face was enough to make me want to jump out of the truck. I’d never had this conversation with anyone. It was as impossible to articulate as it was to understand. My mom wasn’t abusive or neglectful, she wasn’t mean or menacing . . . She was just my mom.

  “But you are her daughter, Georgia.”

  The words chafed my heart, rubbing it raw.

  A short horn blast startled us both, and a line of brake lights suddenly illuminated a path of movement before us. Weston huffed, released my hand, and put the truck in motion. We rolled forward slowly, tires crunching against the freshly fallen snow beneath us.