Chapter 4

“Ifucked up, didn’t I?” I ask Don.

It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m at my brother’s house outside of Atlanta. I barely made it, given the snow that’s lingered on the streets, but I felt a powerful need to blow town. It’s depressing as hell, being here, away from almost everything I care about except for him, but at least we have a perfectly good bottle of scotch to pass between us. That bottle is almost empty now, and we’re sitting on the couch, watching the empty corner where neither of us bothered to put up a tree.

I should have listened to Cole and made Don come up to Highland Hills. Jane would have been with us, at least, and Christmas is depressing as hell if there are no kids around to get excited about commercialism.

You should have stayed to talk to Brittany, you dick.

I should have. I know I should have. But I dropped her off at her place without saying another word, mostly because I didn’t know what to say, even in my own head.

Brittany is…she’s special to me—and the feelings that jolted through me when she kissed me freaked me the fuck out.

I don’t usually let women become special to me. I can’t. Because every time I even think about letting someone in, I remember getting that call from Cole after his wife died. I remember seeing my big brother sobbing because he didn’t know how he was supposed to go on. I was useless at dealing with any of it. Even more so when my parents died.

I’m not a shoulder anyone should lean on.

Brittany deserves a man who can be a fucking adult, and I don’t know how. At least not in any of the ways that matter. I might want to beat every last asshole who’s wronged her into ground beef, but that’s not an adult thing to want either.

Seeing her with that necklace on lit something inside of me. It made me feel like I had some sort of claim on her, whether I deserved it or not. Fixing her car had felt the same way.

It made me feel impossibly good, to be honest, but all of those good feelings were smothered out by the dipshit way I handled things. It’s just…

I don’t know how to keep people anymore, and if I lose her—

It’ll be the kind of sting that I feel every day, especially when I pass the brewery. Because I don’t think I’ll be able to go in anymore if I lose the last of her respect for me. Hell, Cole will probably bar me from going, because he’ll assume, quite rightly, that it’s all my fault.

Don hits me in the arm with the near-empty bottle, and I take it. “You need this more than I do, brother.”

I”m not so sure I buy it. Moving to Atlanta was Don’s way of leaving behind the pain of losing our parents and of what happened to Cole’s family, but it’s found him anyway. Pain has a way of doing that. Still, I take the bottle and swig.

“Maybe I should text Brittany.”

He barks a laugh. “And tell her what? That you’ve been dreaming of her sweet pu—”

Anger rips through me, and I shove his arm. “Don’t talk about her that way.”

It was obviously a mistake to confide in him, but I couldn’t tell any of this to Cole—and I needed to unload it on someone.

“Sorry, sorry,” Don says, lifting a hand. “Tipsy. So are you.”

“I guess I should wait,” I admit, even though that inner voice is telling me I’m a coward. Still, I take out my phone and check it. There’s a message from Cole—a photo of Jane sitting in front of the Christmas tree. I flash it at Don, and I’m guessing we both feel the same amount of terrible that we’re not there with them, instead of here feeling miserable and sorry for ourselves.

“Next year,” I say. “We’ll spend it with them next year.”

He grabs the bottle from me and hoists it up. “To Christmas. To Mom.”

My throat feels strangled as I watch him take a slug, then I grab the bottle from him and do the same. “To Mom. Though I’m guessing she wouldn’t like this one damn bit.”

“No,” he says, retrieving the bottle and waving it at me. “She wouldn’t like you dicking around, either. She’d tell you to get your shit together and tell that woman how you feel about her. Mind you, that’s not the same as me telling you.”

No, he wouldn’t. He’s avoided relationships as much as I have. As much as Cole did, before he found Holly.

“Maybe we should do something Christmassy,” I say, even though neither of us is fit to drive.

He laughs. “I got a pine in the backyard. You want to take an axe to it? I’m all for it.”

He probably figured I’d tell him no, but taking an axe to something sounds like exactly what I need right now.

“Yes, let’s do it.”

“You’re off your ass,” he says, but he sounds kind of delighted by it.

Probably. But I feel like breaking something, and we should have a tree, shouldn’t we?

“Let’s get us a tree,” I insist.

Don’s still laughing, but he sets down the bottle, like he’s getting ready to spring into action. “You really think two drunk assholes should handle an axe? You’re taking this lumberjack thing too far.” He runs a hand over his jaw, indicating my short beard.

“It’s definitely not a good idea. If we had good ideas, we wouldn’t be here by ourselves while everyone else we love is in North Carolina.”

His mouth hitches to the side, and he gets to his feet, only a little unsteady because both of us know how to handle our alcohol. My father always said it was the Irish in him, and his father had rubbed his gums with whiskey when he was teething.

“Well, let’s go make some mistakes, brother.”

I get up, too, smiling now, because this feels like something. It has the hallmarks of a memory that won’t be steeped in regret—so long as we don’t have an accident with the axe.

“Let’s do what we do best,” I agree.

We pull on our winter coats and grab some work gloves and an axe from the garage. Don grins at me and goes back for the rest of the Scotch.

Out in his backyard, there’s a wimpy pine tree—a real Charlie Brown of a tree.

“We’re coming for you,” I tell it, because maybe I’ve had more Scotch than I realized.

We take turns with the axe, our breath making little puffs of white air as we go at it. Don makes me laugh when he starts whistling “O Christmas Tree.” It feels damn good to be doing something, even something stupid. Maybe especially something stupid.

It doesn’t take long for us to get the tree down.

As soon as we do, Don starts laughing again. “What are we going to do with it, brother?” he asks. “I don’t have a tree holder.”

I laugh with him, letting the axe fall onto the snow with the Charlie Brown tree. “Prop it up in the corner?”

He grins at me, then hoists up the ragged trunk of the tree and nods for me to take the other end. “We’re good at this Christmas shit.”

“Yeah, we are.”

We take our Charlie Brown tree inside and prop it up in the corner, just like he said. It looks sad and listless, so I grab a pot from the kitchen and fill it up with water. Stick the sad tree inside of it.

Don is standing and watching me, and he rubs a hand over his jaw. “What do you say we make some popcorn and string it together? Give it a little window dressing.”

It was something our mother used to do, and I feel a warmth in my eyes I’m absolutely not going to let turn into tears. “Fuck, yeah,” I say. “But we need some Christmas Vacation to get this party rolling.”

Another old tradition we’d left behind.

So we turn on the movie and make the popcorn, and soon we’re stringing it using the needle and thread Don keeps to fix buttons on his work shirts.

It feels…good, and even though the tree still looks stupid as hell once we’re finished, I like it. It feels like it’s exactly how a tree should look. I take a photo of Don and me in front of it, posing like idiots, and send it to Cole and Jane so they’ll know that we’re okay. Or, at least, we’re okay now.

When I get into bed that night, my mood is about ten thousand times better than when I started the day, and it hits me like a blow to the chest that there’s one person I’d like to tell about all of it.

And she probably hates me.