Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Nicole

Christmas Eve came on too quickly. I’d never dreaded Christmas nearly this much—never dreaded it at all, as it happened, because I was the kind of soft lesbian who liked twinkling lights and cozy evenings in front of the fireplace—but now it was my timer on how much time I had left with Brooke. An alarm to wake me up from a beautiful dream. I was a morning person, but this was one alarm I couldn’t stand.

“I’ve been wondering, Nicole, dear,” my mom said, as I helped her clean up from the Christmas Eve celebration at the lodge. Outside the kitchen windows, the sun sank low over the mountain horizon, the last sunset before Christmas. I normally watched it with giddy excitement, but today it was a heavy feeling in my stomach as I set the plates down in the sink and turned to my mom.

“What’s wrong?” I said, and she gave me an odd smile.

“Now, I didn’t say anything was wrong. I’m more wondering what’s right. You, my darling, have seemed to be very happy lately. And very spending-time-with-Brooke.”

“That’s not an adjective, Mom.”

“Let your mother adjective-ify a word.”

“And that one’s not a verb.” I turned back to the window. “You know, we both cottoned on a while ago to the fact that you and Mrs. Carston were trying to get us together.”

“What are you talking about?” she laughed, her voice strained.

“Come off it,” I said, shooting her a look over my shoulder. “You’re so busted.”

She sighed, picking up her cup of tea and leaning against the counter, staring out the window. “It’s just… Brooke always completed you, Nicole. She was just… the other half of you. When I heard she was coming back to Mountain Crossing, I was just as nervous as I was excited, because I was worried things might have changed, you two might have grown in different directions. But you’re even happier together than you were before. And I just want you to be that happy forever.”

I went back to scrubbing the dishes, just trying to pour my focus into them, forget about everything else. “Brooke,” I started, not even sure where the sentence was going, “is a very wonderful person… and a very talented artist.”

“I think this town could use a musician, don’t you think?”

I sighed, setting down the dishes again and turning back to her. “Mom, she doesn’t live here. She lives in Charlotte. And I’m not going to tell her to just… uproot her entire life and move here to stay with me.” I dropped my gaze to the floor, my voice falling off. “Even if I really want to.”

“Oh, Nicole, baby.” She set down her tea, and a second later, I found myself swept up in her arms, pulled in for a tight hug. “You’ve always been a bit troublesome on the surface, but deep down, I know you’ve always just wanted to avoid getting in anyone’s way. That’s why you got a cabin all the way out there in the woods when you could well have just stayed here as long as you liked—why you’re always listening to everyone around you and never talking about yourself. You’ve always just wanted to make sure everyone else is okay before asking for something for yourself, but look, darling, it’s really okay to ask for what you want. And it’s okay to get what you want, too.”

I buried my face in her shoulder. “Ugh, Mom. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not going to cry on you like this.”

“We never stop being kids. We just get tall, and start having bills.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. “I still… wasn’t fully recovered from Sabrina leaving. She was wonderful. She was so many things, and when she left, I told myself I wasn’t doing that anymore. And then Brooke… Brooke came back, and I did it again, but so much harder this time, because Brooke is everything. She’s what I always wanted. And she’s going to leave, too. I knew she was leaving, but I still…”

She stroked my back. “There, there, baby.”

I grunted. “Come on. You’re really making me feel like I’m five years old.”

“Oh, no. You were all uptight at five, convinced you were made of steel and ready to take on the world. It’s nice to know you’ve learned to soften up a little since then.”

I chewed my cheek. “I’m supposed to be excited. It’s Christmas tomorrow. I love Christmas. But I just keep thinking about how Brooke is going to…”

She squeezed me gently. “Then I think you should be telling Brooke this, too. Tell her you love Christmas, and you should be excited for it, but you just keep thinking about how much you wish she’d stay. Ask her for a Christmas gift.”

“Of what, her whole life? I’m not asking her to throw it all away for me.”

“You’d hardly be the first lesbian to have a long-distance relationship, Nicole. From what I understand, by lesbian standards, Charlotte is basically right next door.”

I was quiet for a while before I murmured, “Do you think it’s okay? For me to… ask her something like that?”

“Well, worst she can say is no.”

That wasn’t true, though. The worst-case scenario would be for her to say yes and not mean it. For her to stay with me just because she didn’t want to hurt me, didn’t want to disappoint me, and just throw away her own dreams to make me happy. The worst thing wouldn’t be losing her, it would be making her lose everything.

But I couldn’t tell her that. Couldn’t tell her that yes was so much scarier than no, because I fell hard and went all-in, and other people didn’t.

“I guess so,” I said, quietly, pulling away. “I’m so sorry. Thank you. I’ll, uh… get back to these dishes, then?”

“Very proper of you, dear. You must have cried two whole tears. Ready to brush it off, apologize for the impropriety, and wash dishes again.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Have you seen me with sappy movies? I cry like I’ve got two leaky faucets.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” she said, putting her hands up. “You’re positively devastated when something bad happens to someone else, even a fictional person who you know will have a happy ending. But when something bad happens to you, well, that’s just the natural order of things, after all, isn’t it?”

I looked away. “Somehow, I get the feeling you’re not endorsing this school of thought.”

“Very sharp, my dear.”

I went back to scrubbing dishes. “I’ll… talk to her about it tonight,” I said, quietly, like I was afraid of my own voice—afraid of the things it could do, afraid of how much influence it might have had over another person’s life.

∞∞∞

“Stargazing, are we?” I said, coming up the rough stone steps to where Brooke sat staring up into the night sky, a cup of hot cocoa in her hands. Thick, snowy foliage crowded in around us—this was close to the lake, where everything grew wild and fast. When I’d texted Brooke asking if I could see her tonight, she’d told me to find her at the frog crossing, and here I was, at the little spot where we’d been nine years old and set up a little dirt road over the stone steps after watching a frog cross there. We’d been convinced we were nature architects then.

But for right now, that little strip of dirt was gone, and the weathered stone steps squeezed in on an overgrown, long-forgotten path among the brush, overlooking the lake in tiny glances between the trees. I sat down on the step next to Brooke, who was dressed in a loose camel cardigan I’d gotten her from Tiffany Carter at the winter market. Those big brown doe eyes were turned skyward, but when I sat down next to her, they locked on me like I was the only thing in her world.

“Hey,” she said, looping an arm around my waist. “Merry Christmas Eve. You look beautiful tonight.”

And just like that, everything I’d planned—coming out here and confronting her about what we were, what was going on, what would happen after this—it all disappeared into that desperate need for everything to be perfect like this for just one more night. Maybe through Christmas, too. Would it be too much to ask for things to be this perfect for Christmas, too?

“Well, look who’s talking,” I said, tugging on her cardigan. “Told you you’d love it.”

“You know me so well,” she said, shifting closer, resting her head on my shoulder. She moved a hand up my back and into my hair, idly combing through the loose strands down my back, and I shivered under the touch.

“What are you even doing out here sitting in the woods on Christmas Eve night? Could it be the time has finally come for that plan of ours to catch Santa?”

She laughed, planting a kiss on my cheek. “Santa isn’t real, sugarplum.”

“What?” I turned to her, a hand to my chest. “Christ, woman. Give me some warning before you drop a revelation like that.”

“I just came out here for a little peace and quiet,” she said, turning her gaze skyward again, and I followed, up to where the stars glimmered in the gaps between the trees. “I’ve been thinking more about that song I showed you in Smoky Mountain the other day.”

I slipped a hand around her waist and into her pocket on her other side, pulling her into me tighter. “Any sudden breakthroughs? Hit upon a revelation and sang about it like you’re starring in a musical?”

“Do I look like a musical-theater type, Nicole?” She nudged me. “I wish things worked in sudden breakthroughs. More like fumbling around trying a thousand different wrong things until I realize two months later that one of those things wasn’t half-bad and needed revisiting.”

“Well, I think you’re doing amazing.” My heart hammered in my throat despite the lightness of the conversation, the weight of things unsaid hanging from me. Stay with me. I wanted to ask her a thousand times, and I wanted to never have to ask once for fear of what could come. “But sometimes you do just need a mix-up, shake things up and see what happens.”

“Well, Mountain Crossing’s been a good one,” she said. “Really thought I had it all figured out back in Charlotte. But the further I go along, the more I realize I don’t have the first clue what I’m doing.”

“Do any of us?”

She snorted. “Maybe not. When I was last here—I didn’t even have a clue what a person’s thirties were. I think I just figured people disappeared at thirty, and my twenties were where I had to live it all. Here I am, thirty-one years old, and realizing now that there’s no need to rush so damn much, because…” She shrugged. “Life’s long, isn’t it? Feels like I went on a day trip to NYC and crammed in as much sightseeing as I could, woke up the next morning and realized I was scheduled to be there ten years. What was I hurrying so much for? What am I still hurrying so much for?”

“Ah, big-time city girl came back to her small-town roots and learned to slow down.”

She looked back down, meeting my gaze with more power, gravity in her expression than I expected. “And met again the one she said she’d be with forever, as a kid. Aren’t I living all the clichés?”

My heart missed a beat. It missed the next one, too. It wasn’t going far in band. My breath caught like a rag in brambles, and nerves flooded me until I felt like I was fourteen years old and going in for a math test again. “Should we kiss under the mistletoe or something, while we’re at it?” I said.

She quirked a smile at me. “Well, we’ve kissed plenty other places. Might as well.”

I physically could not bear it one more second. I took a sharp breath and blurted it out like it was one syllable. “Brooke, I don’t want you to leave Mountain Crossing.”

Speaking the words felt like breaking glass. I tensed up, my heart pounding, waiting as the shattered pieces settled, and slowly, Brooke dropped her gaze to the ground.

“So we’re talking about this now, huh?” she said, just a whisper, and I steeled myself.

“I… yes,” I said, before I could talk myself out of it. “We’re talking about this now. Brooke, ever since I came back to Mountain Crossing, it’s been—it’s been wonderful. Sure, there’s been some bumps and bruises, and, uh… sometimes you need to drive two hours to get to something. You know, there’s ups and downs to everything. But I’ve been really happy here. It’s felt like home, like family, like everything easy and comfortable and right, but all along, it’s felt like something was missing.”

“High-speed internet?”

“Well—we get that too. I mean, most of the time. Details.” I shook my head. “You were the other half of me while we were kids here, you know. Sure, Daniel and I did everything together too. Sure, my family’s great, even if they’re a bit… pushy sometimes. And I got on well enough with the other kids. But… you know. It was really you and me, and being back here has been wonderful, but a part of it’s been missing, and having you here, I’ve realized it’s been you. Mountain Crossing isn’t just my town, it’s our town. Home isn’t just a place. It’s who you’re with, and for me, home is being with you.”

She chewed her cheek, looking out at the lake. “I… don’t know if I’ve got a good sense of what home is. It was easy as a kid. Home was where my parents fed me, and where I could shut a door and block the cracks around the door with towels and play the guitar as much as I liked. But growing up, when the world is yours and you can do anything, I think it gets a little more nebulous.” After a pause, she glanced back to me and said, “But Charlotte’s the closest I’ve gotten. It’s where I know people, and it’s where people know me. It’s where I have a future.”

“I’m not telling you to give up Charlotte,” I said, quietly, looking down.

“But—in a sense, you are, aren’t you?” she said. “You want us to be together. But you’re not leaving Mountain Crossing, and we couldn’t be in a long-distance relationship forever, so at some point, it comes down to me leaving Charlotte.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t really know if there was anything to say. She was right, and that was the hardest part. “So,” I said, finally, quietly, “this is it for us? Just this one Christmas, and then all of this, it’s gone?”

She sighed, leaning back against the next step up, staring into the sky as a cool wind brought the smell of dried leaves swirling over us. “Nicole… I want to be with you. I’ve had a really amazing time here, and you’re just… you’re amazing, in a lot of different ways. I’ve never felt with anyone the way I feel with you. I think you’re right that, more often than not, home is a person. You feel like home to me more than anywhere I’ve ever been.”

“Then come home,” I whispered, but I didn’t even buy it myself. I didn’t want to convince her. I wanted her to want it herself.

“I just don’t know how I can, Nicole. I have a career.”

Full of busywork and meetings you can’t stand, and hardly any of the actual work you like. The thought floated bitter in my mind, but I just nodded. “I know. Just… can’t we at least try? Even with the distance, just… try?”

She sighed, and the air felt charged, intense, like every part of me could have snapped at the smallest touch.

When she took a long breath, I braced myself for the worst, but what she said might have been even worse.

“Maybe,” she breathed.

Maybe? That was just hopes waiting to be dashed. I looked down, squeezing my hands into fists. “If the answer is no, Brooke, please just say so. I’d rather be let down clearly than be… dragged along into false hopes.”

She put a hand on top of mine. “I don’t know, Nicole. I thought I knew everything coming back to Mountain Crossing. Now I’m realizing I don’t know a single thing.”

I bit down on the inside of my lip until it hurt. “I know where this leads, Brooke,” I sighed. “We’ve been working towards it all month, haven’t we? Me just trying to inch you towards staying, you just slowly creeping back away… I can’t make you stay. And the last thing I’d ever want is to pressure you.”

“I’m not just trying to avoid saying no. I don’t know. It’s a lot. It wasn’t easy for you to decide to move back to Mountain Crossing, was it?”

“No,” I mumbled, tracing patterns on the stone with my fingertip. But you weren’t there, I thought. If you’d been there, I’d have gone in an instant.

Would I, though? I could have just gone to Charlotte with her, but we both took it as a given that I wouldn’t uproot my life like that. Maybe I really wasn’t any different.

“It’s getting late,” I said, checking my phone to make sure it actually was. I’d just said it to get out of this, to get away from it all. “If we’re both gone too late on Christmas Eve night, I’m sure everyone will assume we eloped. They’ll have a wedding party for us when we get back if we’re not careful.”

“Doesn’t sound half-bad, though,” she said, pushing herself slowly up to her feet. “Cake and gifts and we get to dance.”

“Still just as cunning as ever, squad leader,” I said, taking her hand as she helped me up to my feet. We paused there, hands together standing right in front of one another, in that uncertain pause where I didn’t know if I could kiss her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking away, breaking the moment with a step back.

“Don’t be.” I paused. “You know I like the cunning.”

“I’ve got a new version of the song,” she said, heading down the path. “I’ll play it for everyone at the lodge tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait,” I said, even though the weight in my stomach drowned out all my excitement. When we got out to the strip of dirt road where our cars were parked side-by-side—her pretty laser-blue car now streaked with more than a little dirt and grime—it felt like a bad ending to a sad movie, disappointment and a million unresolved things in my chest. “Guess I’ll see you then.”

She shot me a tentative smile. “Merry Christmas, Nicole.”

I closed my eyes, opening my car door. “Merry Christmas.”