Chapter Seven
JASPER
You can’t really avoid the bed in a place this small.
It’s one room, the cottage—not unlike the hotel room I’d have been staying in tonight, had things gone to plan—and while it’s true that there’s some unfinished details about it, mostly Gil and Romina had been underselling it. It’s warm and obviously freshly painted; the line of cabinets that form the small galley kitchen are bright white and brand-new; the love seat and coffee table only look gently used.
And the bed—yeah, it’s also brand-new, not even made up, which is why I’ve got an armful of snow-dusted sheets and blankets when I step farther into the room behind Kristen. We’d insisted on coming out here alone after the meal, assuring the Dreyers we didn’t want them facing the wind unnecessarily. It’d been a good decision—not just because the wind was, in fact, worryingly powerful, Kristen’s body leaning into mine as we’d walked, both of us trying to shield her face from the whipping snow, but because it’s better that none of them see the way Kristen and I seem newly frozen in place by that bed.
I think it’s a full-size.
“I could take the love seat,” she says.
“Oh, sure. Let’s have this argument again,” I deadpan.
And for the second time in a week, she surprises me.
She laughs.
“Oh my God,” she says through a gust of it. “This is really ridiculous. We’re snowed in.” She laughs again. “We’re snowed in and I—I kissed you!”
“Kris,” I say, still standing there with those blankets, watching her laugh and feeling my heart lurch happily in my chest at the sight of it. “Are you all right?”
She’s braced herself on the love seat as she nods, leaning forward slightly with her laughter, her hair dusted with snowflakes, her cheeks flushed pink again, and I feel myself smiling too.
“There’s only one bed,” I say, and she practically howls.
“Gil thought we were married.” She presses a hand to her chest. “What would Carol say?”
“She’d probably plan an office party. She’d wear a wedding-themed sweater. She’d put ‘Going to the Chapel’ on her computer speakers.”
She has to sit on the arm of the love seat after that, wiping her eyes. It’s the best part of my day, seeing her laugh like that. I should set down the blankets, but I can’t. If anything, I hold them tighter to my chest, the wet of the melting snow sinking through the fabric of my coat.
But after a few seconds she quiets, her face falling at the same time she moves to the side, sitting fully on the cushion now. Her eyes drift to the window—it’s nearly nine, full dark, but the drifting snow, combined with what I worry is some fresh snowfall on its own—gives the outdoors an almost eerie lightness.
“It doesn’t look good for tomorrow, does it?”
I move on instinct, setting the stack of linens on the bed and stripping off my coat before coming around to sit beside her. It’s a small piece of furniture, suited to the space but not so much to either one of us, who’re both above average in height, and definitely not so much if we’re trying to avoid more of the physical contact that had seemed—at least to me—to fill up the Dreyers’ living room with pheromones.
“Maybe it’ll clear.” I watch the space where the cream wool of her coat presses against the starched blue cotton of my shirt.
She purses her lips, her expression doubtful. She sits forward, takes off her coat, and tosses it over the arm before settling again. Back at the house, she’d been the one trying to cheer me, to contain my frustration about my having gotten us into this mess. But now that she doesn’t have to put a face on for anyone, I can see how upset she is. It hurts to see her this way, but it’s also a reminder. Kris can show me this because—even in spite of the way it’s been between us since that kiss—we’re friends. We’re that close; we know each other that well.
“Hey.” I nudge her lightly with my shoulder. “Tell me what you’d be doing. If you were with your family right now, I mean.”
She rolls her head my way, looks up at me through dark-lashed eyes, her mascara a little smudgy. She gives a halfhearted shrug. “The usual stuff.”
“What’s the usual stuff?”
“You don’t like Christmas. I saw you drink that hot cider. You made this face.” She pulls her lips to the side, scrunches her nose slightly. This time, I laugh.
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You only kept drinking it to wash down the cookie.”
“It was dry!” I nudge her again, and the missing, it’s less now, the way it always is when we spend time together this way. As more than colleagues. “Anyway, I want to know. The usual stuff.”
Kris takes a deep breath, and the action sinks her closer to me, her head almost resting on my shoulder. “Well, we’d make cookies. They’re my grandmother’s recipe, sour cream sugar cookies, with vanilla frosting. They’re not dry at all.”
I shift, pushing myself farther into the seat, resting my own head against the back of the cushions. “Cookies, all right. I’d try them.”
She snorts, and it sounds like the rare times she’s gotten a little tipsy around me—one late-night delay at an airport bar, one too many beers during a ballgame. “My dad’s a singer, did you know that?”
“I did.” She told me once, not long after we first met, out at a bar in Houston with Ben. He may have asked all the questions, but I remember all the answers. Mac Fraser. Classically trained at a conservatory somewhere in Ohio. Now, singing for fun in an eighties cover band, playing on Thursday nights at some dive bar outside of Lansing. His favorite song is “Eye of the Tiger.”
“So we sing, usually on Christmas Eve. Most of us are terrible, but he and Malik are so good they drown the rest of us out.”
“Singing,” I say. “Sounds awful, but okay. What else?”
“Kelly and I, we watch Hallmark movies. A lot of them. You know what Hallmark movies are?” She too pushes back into the cushions, sets her feet—narrow and high-arched in the black tights that wrap her long, shapely legs—on the edge of the coffee table. I’ve already forgotten the question, which is okay because she keeps talking.
“Basically, one hundred and twenty minutes of pure sugar, right into your eyeballs. Cupcake shops, Christmas parades, some zany dog with a jingle bell collar. Happily ever afters. They are great.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Sounds like it.”
She nudges me this time, but doesn’t pull back after she leans. She’s fully resting against me, her head heavy on my shoulder. “Lots of snowed-in scenarios in these movies. You wouldn’t believe it.”
I shrug. “Guess I would, now.”
She laughs, quieter now, and we settle into silence. The restless sleep of the last week, the early morning, the travel, the stress of everything from the day—I can feel it catching up to me, maybe to both of us. My eyes droop slightly, the weight of her body warm and comforting. There’s only a couple of lights on in here, one above the kitchen sink, one small, shaded fixture beside the bed I’m still trying not to think about.
“Jasper,” she says.
“Mmm?” I know I should get up, know I should deal with that bed, convince her to get in there alone. But it feels so good here, quiet words between us and soft cushions beneath our bodies. So close to my fantasy that I wonder if I’m already dreaming.
“How come you don’t go home? For the holidays, I mean?”
I resist the urge to shift, to move away from her, though my eyes blink open, and I stare up at the still ceiling fan above us. I clear my throat. “I’m not welcome there.”
I feel her head tip to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the ceiling. I think she’ll ask me why, but she chooses a different tack, a smarter one—one that’s more likely to keep me talking. “What’d you used to do, then? When you were welcome?”
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes again. It’s been so long since I’ve been there for a Christmas, almost seventeen years. “Mostly we celebrated Christmas Eve.” Too many chores to do in the mornings, no matter what day it was. “My dad’s brothers and their families would come out to the ranch. All fifteen of my cousins.”
“Wow,” Kris says. “Must’ve been fun.”
My lips tug into a smile, in spite of myself. “Could be, yeah. We made a lot of trouble.” No running in the house, no snacks before dinner, no shaking the packages, no going out to the stables. Every rule, we broke, and almost always I’d be the ringleader. Because back then, that’s what I was used to being.
“We’d have a big barbecue dinner, and pineapple cake my aunt Sarah used to make. Then church.”
“Sounds nice.”
“It was,” I admit.
“Do you miss it?”
I don’t let myself miss it, I think. I only ever let myself miss you.
“No.”
We’re quiet again for long minutes, and I wonder if Kristen’s dozed off, if maybe I’m dozing a little too, feeling the time stretch unusually with fatigue, pleasure in her body next to mine.
“What are we going to do about the job?” she whispers finally, and her voice sounds so worried. The job. This one with the Dreyers, the firm in general. The job has always been between us, but for once I don’t want the reminder. This night—the close of a long day at work, ending with quiet talk about our families—it feels simple, natural. Natural in a way that makes me think about the other layers Kris and I could have between us, if only I could stop being so afraid of what would happen if it went wrong.
So this time, I do the unexpected thing. I move my hand from where it rests on my thigh and reach for hers, linking our fingers together. I hear her breath catch slightly, but before I can wonder if I’ve made a mistake, she squeezes my hand slightly, her cool palm pressing against mine.
“We’ll worry about it tomorrow.” I squeeze back.
I fall asleep thinking about Christmases—past, present, future.