by Marian Snowe
“That’s not what I...” Tia leaned her head back against the headrest and then shook herself. “This is just weird, is all. Really, really, unbelievably weird.”
“Yyyup,” Meg agreed flatly.
“Look, I’m sorry I snapped,” Tia told her after a moment. “And I’ll—I’ll drop you off at home if you want. But... It sounded back there like you’ve bottle-fed kittens before?” Meg looked back over at her and nodded slowly. Tia cleared her throat. “I really have no idea how, even with what the vet told me. I don’t want him to die just because I was avoiding all this awkwardness.”
Meg opened her mouth in surprise. “Do you...mean you want me to stay with you?” she asked cautiously, as if she misheard and Tia might blow up at her for asking.
Tia’s cheeks flamed. “With the kitten,” she muttered. “At my house.”
There was a long silence while Meg digested this. Usually Meg showed exactly what she was feeling on her face, but right now, Tia couldn’t read her. Then again, why should she be able to after all these years? To even assume she might just showed how much this had thrown her for a loop.
“All right,” Meg said finally, and Tia felt a conflicting burst of relief and dismay. There was no getting out of this now, even if her conscience would’ve let her. Butterflies whipped up a storm in her stomach, but they weren’t just nervous ones. There was a sense of excitement, of anticipation, inside her that she hated and longed for at the same time.
Then Meg went on: “My parents’ house is probably too cold for a kitten right now, anyway. The heat was off. That and it has a hole in it.”
Tia blinked. “Excuse me?”
Meg’s mouth curved up at one corner and she chuckled ruefully. “You’re going to think this is insane,” she said, “but when I got here and my parents didn’t answer the door—they’re on a surprise cruise, by the way—I was afraid something had happened to them. So I broke a window to get inside.”
Tia bit her lip but couldn’t keep the laughter in. “That was such a ‘you’ thing to do.”
“It could’ve been anything!” Meg tried to look serious. “Carbon monoxide! Hitmen! Vengeful spirits!”
“Definitely that last one,” Tia said. “I can absolutely see your parents holding Satanic rituals in their basement.”
Meg laughed too, and a warm tingle went up Tia’s spine. How was it so easy to fall into the same rhythm they had all those years ago?
Tia didn’t want to. It would only hurt her again, and she was sure she couldn’t survive that. It was too much to risk.
Even for Meg’s laugh, for her dramatic humor, for those big, sparkling eyes that even now, sitting down, made Tia’s knees weak.
No, she wouldn’t let it become worth the risk.
Chapter Four
Meg
If, a few hours ago, Meg thought spending the night in her parents’ empty, cold house was going to be weird...the place she was spending the night now was a hundred miles into the Twilight Zone.
Tia used to laugh at her—fondly—for believing in fate. And after their relationship fell apart, Meg had stopped believing in it for a while. But she never stopped wishing that good things were destined for her. It was comforting to think that the Right Woman had to be out there, just waiting to find her at the right point in their lives, maybe in some adorable meet-cute where they’d get stuck together when their dogs’ leashes entangled like in 101 Dalmatians. Then they’d discover they both had a passion for Proust or something like that.
Except Meg didn’t have a dog. And she’d never read any Proust.
Meg just tried to ignore the fact that deep down, she always had this bleak feeling that she’d already lost the Right Woman because of a terrible misunderstanding.
Maybe, though, fate was finally kicking in after all this time? How else could she have found a freezing kitten in front of a farmhouse that, inexplicably, belonged to that same very specific someone Meg figured had left ages ago?
But if Meg was good at anything, it was in trusting to blind optimism and rolling with the situation. She brought the kitten inside Tia’s house and gently took him out of the carrier.
It was a beautiful place, this farmhouse. The dim, warm lamps felt like candlelight and there was a fireplace in the living room with a comfy-looking couch facing it. It was the perfect setting for exactly the scene that Meg had imagined earlier where they’d drink hot cocoa together and laugh, sharing funny stories long into a snowy winter’s night. She sighed at the thought.
Hallmark movies and Instagram moments: making everyone’s actual lives look like crap. Meg carried the kitten over to the fireplace and sat down in front of it with the kitten in her lap.
“Let me light a fire,” Tia said. “He probably needs to stay warm, right?”
“It’s a hundred times better in here than it was in the mailbox, but a nice fire wouldn’t hurt.” Meg stroked the kitten gently with one finger and he mewled pitifully. “He’s so tiny. What should we call him?”
Tia crouched in front of the fireplace, setting up the kindling and tinder to start the fire. Moments later, she had a good little blaze going, and she put a larger piece of split log onto it.
“We should name him?”
“Well, of course,” Meg replied. “We can’t just keep calling him ‘the kitten.’ I follow plenty of cat fosterers on Instagram, and they always name their fosters.”
“You know I’m not very creative,” Tia said after a pause. “I have no idea what to call him.”
Meg scoffed. “Bullshit you’re not. Oh, sorry, kitten,” she said, covering his little ears with two fingers. “You always say that, but who came up with our gourmet breakfasts at the dining hall every Sunday?”
Tia dropped her eyes, and Meg wondered if it was just the firelight that made it look like she was blushing. Was it cruel to talk about what they used to do when they were together? Meg couldn’t help it; it just came out. Sitting here with Tia, it felt like no time had passed at all.
“I don’t know if I’d call that creativity,” Tia said with a shrug and a weak smile. “More like terrible judgment.”
“Hey, I like Eggos with chocolate syrup and blueberries. And Nutella. Whipped cream and bananas and peanut butter all on the same plate. Or remember that time you put gummy bears on them?” Meg grinned. Maybe a little bit of gentle teasing would make the atmosphere in here less tense?
“They ruined the texture!” Tia laughed. Meg felt a spark of victory.
Tia was so pretty when she laughed, and the years hadn’t changed that a bit. Her wavy hair, tucked up in a bun, curled in little tendrils around her ears and at the back of her neck. Meg loved running her fingers through Tia’s hair, especially when they lay together in Meg’s bed in her little single dorm room. Was she still as soft, Meg wondered? Had time—and apparently working on a farm—roughened the hands that used to caress Meg’s thighs and cup her cheeks (both sets)?
Heat spread slowly in Meg’s stomach and she forced those thoughts back. That was never going to happen again.
“You’re deflecting,” Meg shot back. “Name the kitty, Tia!”
“Oh, lord.” Tia sat down cross-legged on the rug and reached over to stroke the kitten nestled in Meg’s lap. Then she realized how close to Meg her hand was and she pulled it back quickly. “How about...” She chewed on her cheek as she searched. “Kitten...Kringle? Oh, good God, no, that’s terrible!” Tia slapped her face with a groan.
Meg cackled. “And you say you’re not imaginative!”
“That’s not imaginative, it’s painful!”
“Well,” Meg said after a moment. “You sell Christmas trees, right? What kind of tree is your favorite?”
Tia shrugged her eyebrows. “I never really thought about it. I almost got squashed by a blue spruce today, though, so I just love those,” she said sarcastically.
“How’s Spruce for a kitten name?” Meg bent down and put her finger beneath the kitten’s chin as if she was asking him.
�
��It sounds like Bruce, which is absolutely the last name I’d expect for a kitten,” Tia told her.
“Perfect, then.” Meg smiled impishly. “All right, can you take our friend Spruce while I go make his bottle?” She picked up the bundled towel and passed the kitten over to Tia, who took him as carefully as you would pick up a baby bird. She looked a little nervous about holding him, and Meg couldn’t stop the rush of fondness that spread through her chest. “Just don’t squeeze him like a lemon or let him fall out and you’ll be just fine.”
Tia leveled a look at her, well aware she was being teased, but her frown faded when she began to pet Spruce’s belly. Meg fixed the bottle of kitten milk replacement and came back over. She sat down and Tia transferred Spruce back into her lap so she could feed him. He latched onto the bottle immediately and his ears began to wiggle as he drank.
The fire crackled and a gust of wind whistled in the chimney, and Meg started to feel like the silence was growing uncomfortable again.
Tia apparently thought the same thing, because right then, she asked, “So what have you been up to since...?” She trailed off awkwardly without getting very far. Even approaching the subject of their breakup was totally off-limits, it seemed.
Meg quickly picked up the slack. “I worked a few different jobs over the years to save money,” she said. “And then I started taking acting work. That’s what I’ve been up to for a long time now.”
“Really? You did always want to be an actress,” Tia said, watching Spruce settle into nursing. She kept her eyes on the kitten as if she was avoiding looking into Meg’s face. “I don’t think I’ve seen you, but I never get around to watching a lot of TV or movies.”
Meg snorted softly. “It’s not that. I just haven’t been in anything popular, not in a way somebody’d recognize me. Like pretty much every other actor, I was a dead body in an episode of CSI: Wherever once. I had a string of bit parts. I did a series of commercials for stupid stuff like dandruff, or laundry detergent, or allergy medication. And one for car insurance. Not the funny kind, though,” she added with an eyeroll.
“You didn’t get many interesting jobs, then?” Tia asked.
“Oh, no, that’s not what I meant!” Meg widened her eyes knowingly. “The commercials were plenty interesting, just not in a good way. The dog in the allergy medication one had seven stylists. Seven. And the one human stylist was shared between me and the other two actors.”
Tia choked on a laugh. “Wow.”
“And that dog was the least of the divas I worked with. ‘Worked with’ being used loosely. ‘Worked in proximity to’ is more like it.” Meg held Spruce wrapped carefully in his towel while he finished the bottle. “The guys were the worst. People act like women actors are spoiled and catty—and some of them totally are—but the men just have this sense of entitlement.” She put on a low, smarmy voice. “‘I just can’t concentrate on my art if I don’t have my ultra-filtered sixty-dollar bottle of water imported from Iceland and flown here by endangered rainbow butterflies.’ That was the guy I had to pretend to be screwing in a supply closet just to set him up as a bad boss.”
This time Tia’s laughter was loud. “I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you,” she said after catching her breath.
“You should!” Meg chuckled. “My career was a comedy of errors.”
“Was?”
Meg grimaced and put the bottle aside so she could help Spruce into a comfortable sleeping position in her lap. “I’m through with acting. I came back home to surprise my parents for Christmas, but they surprised me by not being here at all.” She glanced over at Tia and caught her gaze for just a moment. The eye contact made Meg’s heart give a sudden thud. “Of course, not as surprised as I was by seeing you here.”
“Heh, yeah,” Tia replied faintly, looking away. She fidgeted with the hem of her jeans and then reached over again to pet Spruce with the back of one finger. “Have you seen much of your parents?” she asked.
Meg wondered what was behind that question. Was it just small talk to keep the silence at bay or did she remember what Meg’s parents were like and why things were super uncomfortable between them half the time?
“Nah,” she answered. “Not really. They’ve always been pissed that I didn’t want to ‘settle down,’ i.e. find some nice boy and become an obedient housewife. You must remember what they acted like to you.” Did Tia remember? She’d been on Meg’s mind pretty constantly for years, but who knew how soon Tia moved on.
“Yeah,” Tia replied, answering Meg’s question. “Like I wouldn’t last out the year.” Then she added quickly, “Like no relationship with a woman would.”
Meg cringed internally. She and Tia had lasted out that year...but not many more. “So, no,” she said. “I haven’t seen much of them since I moved out after college. Honestly, I found people I’d rather spend Christmas with, and I think they felt the same way. But after everything with my career, I just felt like I wanted to...mend bridges, I guess?”
She watched Tia’s face. Mending bridges... That could easily apply to the two of them, whether Meg meant it to or not. But would Tia take it that way? Did Meg want her to?
The bigger question was: should Meg want her to, considering how much Tia hurt her?
“Should” never had much of a place in Meg’s feelings. All she knew was that right now, sitting in front of the fire in this cozy farmhouse with Tia felt like a dream come true. Maybe that was foolish, unrealistic, even a little cruel, but it was what it was.
If Tia thought anything about the bridges comment, she didn’t show it. She just stared into the fire. Meg scratched Spruce’s back while he slept.
“I always figured you’d move away too,” Meg said softly. “You hated the idea of going back to live in the sticks after college.”
“I did move away,” Tia said. “I was a small business consultant in Hartford for years. I always planned on getting my own business up and running, but time kept going by and I just...didn’t.” She shrugged.
Meg sat up straighter. “What kind of business were you going to have?” In college, Tia always wanted to run—
“A bookstore,” Tia answered at the exact same moment that Meg asked the same words. They both smiled in surprise, but then the tension flattened them again. “Yeah, a bookstore,” Tia repeated, avoiding Meg’s eyes. “I never got my shit together, though. There was always something to take care of first, something else that needed to be over and done with before I started in earnest. Then a relative went and left the Collins tree farm to me.”
“It’s kind of like you did get your own business,” Meg commented. “You’re continuing one.”
“Not the kind of business I’d choose,” Tia replied sourly. “But I couldn’t refuse. My parents put pressure on me, and I’m too stubborn. Too much pride, I guess. So here I am.” She spread her fingers at the house around them.
“Kind of fitting, though.” Meg tried a smile. “Right, Poinsettia?”
“Kind of laughable, more like,” Tia muttered. “If I had my way, nobody’d know that was my name at all. But people in Elliot Creek don’t forget anything, especially when you want them to.”
“You told me before the rumor mill did,” Meg said, her voice gentle. She didn’t think before she opened her mouth; it was just something she’d felt proud of when they were together, and it came to mind as easily as it had back then. It represented the kind of trust that their later relationship desperately could’ve used.
Maybe it had been the wrong thing to say. Tia didn’t look at her, and Meg despaired over her idiot mouth. Was she seriously reminiscing about how good they’d been together? About how, back then, Tia trusted her enough to offer what she considered to be such an embarrassing detail of her life?
“Well,” Tia said after a long pause, “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Meg’s shoulders tightened and her stomach started to clench up. It was coming, she could tell. The animosity and the distrust. The fallout of their breakup had
been all the worse because it ended in a blink, no hope of closure.
“Did you ever think you’d end up back here in Elliot Creek, of all places?” Meg mused. She didn’t look at Tia either; she just slowly ran her fingers over the kitten’s black and white fur. He purred in her lap, a little tickly sound between the pops of the logs in the fire.
Tia answered immediately. “I didn’t want to.” Her voice had an edge to it and Meg was certain now that she’d pushed too far. Tia’s mouth tightened in a frown. “Sometimes life just drops a person somewhere.”
Again, Meg couldn’t stop herself. The words were out before she knew it. “Like fate?”
Tia scoffed. “I really don’t think it’s that. More like a twisted coincidence. My luck’s always been terrible.”
Meg felt a little dizzy as a wave of humiliation trickled from her head to her toes. Twisted coincidence. Tia had said earlier that this was “really, really weird,” but that held none of the same scorn.
“You believe in luck but not fate, huh?” Meg asked stiffly. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. When had Tia ever been fair about what happened? Unsurprising or not, it still hurt.
“They’re not the same thing at all,” Tia said. She pulled her knees up and drew them close to her chest. “Luck’s just random. It can be good or bad and it doesn’t reflect on whether you’re good or bad. But fate’s filled with judgment. It’s just a crutch for people who don’t want to take responsibility for themselves.”
Meg had been embarrassed before to hear disdain coming from Tia after all this time...but now it felt like the air in her lungs was drying up with anger. Her hands started to shake and she balled them into fists over her knees.
“I realize that what happened was really shitty for you,” she said, finally baring the matter. “But you never once gave me the chance to defend myself. I’m really starting to lose my sympathy for what you went through seeing as you don’t seem to have any for me.”