Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  But Kristen was too upset to listen anyway.

  “Well, it looks like you were packing a hell of an attempt to turn me into Heather’s half-assed clone,” she interrupted, “complete with glitzy ads and a big-money bank account.”

  Her aggrieved tone confused him. Casey shook his head. “You will never be your sister, Kristen,” he said impatiently. “Everyone else knows it. No one else expects it. So why can’t you see it? Why can’t you just stop trying so damn hard to—”

  At the anguished expression on her face, he quit talking. He didn’t know what he’d said that was wrong, but he didn’t want to add to it. Determinedly, Casey clenched his jaw.

  “Stop trying so hard to do what?” she broke in, waving her arm in obvious despair. “Be happy? Be successful? Be pretty and talented and beloved? Is it so unthinkable that I could do all those things without turning into Heather?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s not unthinkable.”

  “Just unlikely. Right?” With all the bravado typically at her command, Kristen stomped toward him. She put her hands on her hips in a confident pose, but her eyes were awash in misery. “Just admit it, Casey. You, of all people, can be straight with me. You were hoping you could make me more like Heather.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He pulled her into his arms. Holding her felt like cuddling with granite. “I’ve never wanted you to be like Heather.” The idea baffled him. “Why would I—”

  “You could’ve fooled me,” Kristen interrupted coldly.

  “I’m sorry,” Casey said. When in doubt, an apology was always a good idea. “This is all a big mistake. I should never—”

  “You’re right. It was a mistake.” Kristen wrenched away from him. She looked up at him with teary eyes. “I thought you were different, Casey. I thought you wanted me for me.”

  “I do want you for you!” Knowing how deeply that was true, Casey caught hold of her hand. He squeezed it, remembering all the times he’d touched her—all the times they’d laughed. “How did this get so out of control? I blew off work to come here—”

  “Oh, that’s rich. Everyone knows Heather’s special is practically finished already. Tell me another one.”

  “I’m unraveling a million-dollar deal for you—”

  At that impressive figure, Kristen didn’t even blink. She took away her hand from his. “How much of that was your cut?”

  “Huh?”

  “You must have been owed a percentage for brokering the deal with Torrance Chocolates,” she went on with a stubborn jut of her chin. “For setting up ads with Heather and all the rest. If it had gone through like you planned, how much was your cut?”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t constructed that way.”

  “Wow. I guess I have everything wrong, don’t I?”

  Wary of her sarcastic-sounding statement, Casey nodded.

  “You just wanted to do me a favor, didn’t you?”

  Even more cautiously, Casey nodded again.

  “And you really just loved me all along. Right?”

  This time, Kristen’s words nearly leveled him.

  For the third time, Casey nodded. His throat ached. His heart felt hollowed out and useless. “Yeah,” he said. “I do.”

  Kristen actually scoffed. “You can’t even say it,” she marveled. “I thought you were better than that. Given your reputation and charisma. Given how much you stood to gain.”

  Casey had never regretted his reputation more than he did then. Desperate, this time, to somehow speak the truth, he looked at her squarely. “All I ever wanted was you.” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “And maybe a real Christmas.”

  Because now he knew what magic could be found in that stupid holiday. Before, as a kid, he’d only dreamed of it. Now Casey had tried a taste of the real thing. He wanted more.

  He wanted more with Kristen. But now, after this . . .

  “Am I supposed to believe that?” she burst out, gawking at him in evident incredulity. “From you? The twenty-first century Scrooge?”

  Casey shrugged. He couldn’t blame her for being skeptical.

  “I don’t usually let myself really want something,” he told her. Wanting something gave other people leverage. It gave them the ability to hurt you—to take things from you. Growing up, he’d learned that the hard way. He’d learned never to yearn for anything, like a Christmas present or a family. At least not openly. “But with you, I couldn’t help it. I really wanted you.”

  It had made him vulnerable, Casey knew. Too vulnerable.

  As though protecting herself from him, Kristen crossed her arms. “Right. You wanted me to help you get a lucrative deal. You wanted me to help you get in on the inside with Heather.”

  Feeling frustrated, Casey stepped nearer. From outside her office, the holiday music and general diner hubbub continued, adding an incongruously jolly undercurrent to their argument. He’d tried getting through to Kristen. It hadn’t worked. Tough and guarded to the end, she’d done everything except accuse him of stealing candy canes from babies. What else could he do?

  You can’t even say it, he heard her jibing at him again, unknowingly cutting him to the quick—unknowingly making him feel more hopeless than ever. I thought you were better than that.

  “Yeah. I was just using you to get to Heather,” Casey lied. Darkly, he looked at her. She wasn’t the only one who could cut deeply. He’d just proved it. “Is that what you want to hear?”

  Motionless, Kristen stared at him. With more tears welling in her eyes, she gulped back a sob. “No. I wanted to hear that you want me, Casey. I wanted to hear that you love me.”

  Her vulnerability was palpable. It nearly broke his heart. Unfortunately, Casey’s inability to say those words was just as real. No matter how true they were, he just couldn’t risk it.

  He couldn’t risk it then, and he probably never would. He’d been kidding himself to think he could.

  “Come with me to California,” Casey said instead, trying desperately to regroup. Maybe if Kristen committed first—maybe if she showed him she cared—he would be able to find the words he needed. He would be able to tell her how he felt about her. “Have Christmas with me in L.A.,” he said in his most persuasive tone. “We’ll surf and shop and eat sushi in the sunshine, and if you really want tradition, I’ll throw some Christmas lights on a palm tree for you. Come on, Kristen. Please.”

  Please forgive me. Please rescue me again, the way you’ve already rescued me from hating the holidays. Please be with me.

  But Kristen only looked at him through tear-filled eyes. “I could do that,” she said, “if you loved me. If you loved me, I could take that chance. If you loved me, I could blow off Christmas for you. But since you obviously don’t love me—”

  She broke off, watching him as though hoping to be proved wrong. Casey couldn’t oblige. His heart felt just as inert as before. His mind refused to make him any more vulnerable than he already was. Why wouldn’t Kristen just come and be with him?

  Everything would have been easier then. There would have been no risk. No chance of being left alone and unwanted.

  “—or if you do really love me, you could just say so, right now.” She cracked a faint smile. “Christmas is the time for miracles, you know. Maybe this is a misunderstanding. Maybe we can start over. One good Christmas miracle and we’ll be—”

  “There’s no miracle big enough for this,” Casey said.

  With evident disbelief, Kristen stared at him. “But I—”

  “There’s no miracle big enough for me,” he added roughly. “I only wish I hadn’t started believing there might be.”

  Kristen went on looking at him, probably wondering—like he was—how things between them had gone so wrong, so fast. It felt as though they’d spent years arriving at this moment. Casey knew he would need years to get over it, once he got back to L.A.

  “Yeah.” Bleakly, Kristen nodded. “Me, too.”

  For a long moment, she gazed at him—al
most as if she was memorizing his features. Then, sadly, she walked to the door.

  “I think you should leave,” she said.

  Knowing she was right, Casey nodded. There was nothing else he could do. No action he could take. No fixing he could manage.

  With Kristen, he’d finally met his match. But the matchup between them wasn’t—as he’d expected—one hundred percent good.

  Miserably, he followed her to her office door. He couldn’t quit looking at her hand on the doorknob, knowing—surreally and unwantedly—that this good-bye wouldn’t mean “see you later,” the way it usually did between them. This good-bye would be forever.

  It would be the end of his hopes for the holidays.

  Casey hadn’t realized until just then that he’d had hopes for the holidays. But at that moment, looking down at Kristen’s bowed head and forlorn shoulders, he realized that he’d been hoping he and Kristen would spend Christmas together in Kismet. He’d been taking for granted this Christmas would be a merry one for him . . . because Kristen would be there with him.

  Now, she wouldn’t be there. That meant that Christmas could never be merry. Not for him.

  He should have been used to that, Casey knew. But somehow, the reality of it hurt twice as much this time.

  “You were right about Christmas in Kismet,” he told Kristen. “It really gets to you. Right here.” Casey thumped his hand on his heart. Then he gave her a lingering, regretful look. “Have a merry Christmas, Kristen,” he said. “I hope you get everything you want this year.”

  Then Casey squared his shoulders and took himself away from her office before he did something he might regret . . . before he forgot how strong he was supposed to be and just broke down completely.

  Chapter 23

  Kismet, Michigan (aka Lonely Town)

  Christmas Heartbreak: Day 9

  Once the news broke about Heather’s “hipster impostor” (aka Talia) and her dreadlocked “bohemian boy toy” (aka Walden) and everything her friends had done to save her Christmas, Kristen should have had a pretty hard time feeling sorry for herself.

  The only trouble was, she still did. Feeling woebegone and bereft, she sleepwalked through her days and wept through her nights. At home, she ripped off her snowman-print flannel sheets because they reminded her of Casey. At work, she suspended all production on her top-secret custom pie-in-a-jar (ditto).

  Instead of thinking about Casey, missing Casey, and wondering why (oh why?) Casey couldn’t love her back, Kristen immersed herself in every Christmas activity she could find, hoping that caroling and sleigh-riding and eggnog-quaffing would make her forget. She invited over all the fifth graders from Kismet Elementary School and redid the Galaxy Diner’s windows with a tableau featuring the Abominable Snow Monster and Hermey—the nonconformist elf from Santa’s workshop who wanted to be a dentist—because those characters’ misfit qualities suited her self-pitying state of mind. She wallowed in snow and icicles and naturally growing Midwestern evergreen trees. She gloried in Christmas lights and Kismet’s frozen-over lake. If someone had offered her a plate of California-style sushi, Kristen figured belligerently, she might have kicked them in the face. That’s how much she didn’t want to think about what she was missing.

  Unfortunately, her full-Christmas-immersion techniques didn’t work. Because every time she smelled gingerbread, she thought of Casey and his toppling-over gingerbread skyscraper. Every time she saw a paper snowflake, she remembered Casey’s scissors-wielding joy at his first-time creation. Every time she passed by her desk at the diner and glimpsed the RESERVED sign she’d snatched from Casey’s designated booth on the fateful day he’d left, she felt her heart turn over with grief and knew that forgetting Casey was as impossible as ignoring Christmas.

  Both were in her heart. Probably for good.

  But knowing that didn’t help. Not when the situation felt so hopeless. Not when days had gone by and she still felt as though she’d never be happy again. That’s probably why, a few days before Christmas, when Kristen felt another one of those I-miss-Casey pangs, she actually gave in and picked up that RESERVED sign. Because it reminded her of him. She imagined she could almost feel Casey’s fingertips touching hers, transmitting warmth through the injection-molded plastic table tent that held that handwritten sign, and for an instant, she felt better.

  Then Gareth wandered in. He cast a knowing glance at the RESERVED sign she was hugging to her heart. “Do you want me to take that?” he asked. “We could use another sign holder to post the rules for the Yuletide Drunk Yahtzee tournament tonight.”

  Aghast at the thought of ripping out Casey’s RESERVED sign and replacing it, Kristen hugged the sign even harder. “No!”

  She was all in favor of carrying on their pre-Christmas tradition of bringing together all their family and friends—especially those, like Walden, who didn’t have anyone else locally to spend the holidays with except their Galaxy Diner pals—for a night of togetherness, games, gift-exchanging, and raucous holiday music. But there had to be limits. Right?

  “Right,” Gareth said, echoing her thoughts. Her friend grinned. “I didn’t think you’d want to part with that.”

  “Not because of any . . . special reason!” Kristen hastily assured him. “I just think there are plenty of rules posted already. We don’t want people to feel constrained or anything.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Wearing a compassionate look—and the diner’s designated Santa hat, because they all rotated wearing it—Gareth came closer. He hugged her. “Things will get better. I promise. Eventually, you’ll quit missing Casey, and life will go on.”

  “It’s going on already!” Emphatically, Kristen plunked down the sign. “I’m fine! I mean, I should be proud of myself, right? I stood up for myself by turning down that deal with Torrance Chocolates. I protected my diner, and I made sure the whole world knew I didn’t want to be like Heather by saying ‘no’ to doing those ads with her. I made sure Casey wasn’t taking advantage of me by making him leave.”

  Gareth peered at her. “Do you feel proud of yourself?”

  Grumpily, Kristen frowned at him. This was what she got for having such caring and intuitive friends. She couldn’t hide anything from them—not even her own private heartache.

  “No,” she groused. “I don’t feel proud of myself. Not yet! But I’m pretty sure it will kick in soon, and then—”

  “If you don’t feel it,” Gareth said gently, “then maybe it’s not happening. Maybe you’re not proud of yourself for making those decisions. Maybe there’s more going on here.”

  Kristen scoffed.

  “I wonder what that might be?” Giving her a warmhearted look, Gareth pulled off the red felt Santa hat. He tickled her cheek with its white fluffy tassel. Then he plopped the hat on Kristen’s head. “Don’t you?”

  “No.” Annoyed, Kristen infused that single syllable with all the sarcastic world-weariness she could muster. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. All I ever wanted was for my Christmas to be back on track, and that’s happening now. Heather has apologized for her part in everything—”

  “That’s all you wanted?” Gareth interrupted skeptically. “A nice Christmas?”

  Kristen crossed her arms. “Yes.”

  “That’s all you wanted,” her friend prodded. “All.”

  “Fine. Maybe I wanted more, but that doesn’t matter, either,” Kristen told him. “Casey left town, remember? Evidently, once his big chance at cashing in vanished”—with both thumbs, she pointed at herself—“he didn’t see any reason not to get the hell out of Christmastown.”

  Gareth grinned. “‘Christmastown’? You sound just like him.”

  “I do not.” Kristen made a face at Gareth. She put her hands on her hips. “For that to happen, Casey would have had to have had a long-term effect on me. And that’s impossible.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “You know, it sure would be nice if somebody burly would haul those kegs of mulled cider out front.”

  This time, Gareth laugh
ed. “You do know that you just did Casey’s ‘tell,’ don’t you?” He mimed rubbing the back of his neck in apparent thought. “Are you troubleshooting me?”

  “No,” Kristen said defensively. His idea that she’d copied Casey’s “tell” was preposterous. “But everybody will be getting pretty thirsty later.” Promisingly, she added, “There’s nothing quite so thirst-quenching as a nice hot cup of mulled cider.”

  Gareth shook his head. He eyed the kegs, which were standing at the ready in the hallway near Kristen’s office.

  “I’ll take them out front,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Kristen felt like whooping. She’d won!

  Maybe she was getting to be a little like Casey after all.

  “But before I do,” Gareth said, “I’m going to tell you something that somebody once told me. Maybe it’ll help.”

  “Hmm. Store Christmas lights on a reel so they don’t get tangled?” Pretty soon it would be time to dismantle the displays. And Gareth had been looking at her office lights . . .

  “No. That’s not it.”

  “Um, keep your wrapping paper tidy with a slit-open paper-towel tube on it for storage?” she guessed. She was kind of an expert at Christmas tips and tricks. “It’s like a cardboard bracelet for your giftwrap—a bracelet that prevents rumpling, but doesn’t tear like tape or a rubber band.”

  “No.” Somberly, Gareth stepped closer. “Somebody once told me that—despite what everybody always says—it doesn’t take ‘work’ to make a relationship flourish. It takes trust. And it takes courage—courage enough to show yourself to someone else, then stand beside them while they do the same. Even when it’s hard.” Gareth nodded. “And believe me, it’s always hard.”

  “Ha. If that were true, I’d have the most rock-solid relationships in the world,” Kristen joked. “Because I have no trouble getting naked in front of people.” She offered a lascivious wink. “Especially when it’s ‘hard.’”