It Happened One Christmas, page 25
I was maneuvering the drone past the skating rink when I saw them—Ben’s broad shoulders and narrow waist. His thick hair. Her long blond hair, a coat over her turtleneck dress. Their bodies close. I steadied the drone.
“What’s happening?” J-P asked. “Where is it?”
Their heads were a breath away from each other. She was talking. He was nodding. Then he was talking and she was shaking her head. Don’t panic, Zoey.
I willed my heart to stop racing.
“You have to move the joystick,” J-P said.
But I couldn’t move the joystick. I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.
Delphine put a hand on Ben’s arm. That same arm I’d taken so many times, when I was scared or worried. The same arm I’d kissed and touched last night. Ben scratched his head with his free hand, but didn’t remove her hand.
And then Delphine leaned toward Ben. I stared, as the next seconds happened in slow-motion. She said something to him and he looked away, toward the bonfire. And then he turned his head back to her. A split second later, her hands were on his face, pulling it toward her. I tore off the VR headset.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, looking around. “You get it back.”
J-P took the headset. A moment later the familiar whir returned. J-P caught the drone when it was waist high.
“Come on,” I said, hurrying back up the steps toward the house. My foot slipped on the still-icy path, but I caught myself before I fell.
I turned back to make sure J-P was with me. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I just knew I had to get out of there. At the front door, my hand grasped the knob and I pushed it open to let J-P inside. Antoine was singing in the doorway. “I’ve got to go away…”
I thought of Ben and me, finishing the lyrics. But I was in no mood for that now.
Antoine hugged an older woman, then turned to leave. “You again!” he said. “It was great to meet you.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked.
“Sadly. My grandmother’s in a nursing home in Ottawa. We always raise a glass at midnight.”
I nodded and moved out of the way for him to pass. I stood, frozen, on the front doorstep. Should I go back inside, and face the humiliation of being at this party with Ben, while Ben and Delphine got back together? But how could I leave? Where could I go?
I’d been a fool to think I could fit in. This wasn’t my family. These weren’t my friends. This wasn’t my town. I was a fraud. An interloper. It had been a huge mistake to stay.
I had to get out of there.
Antoine.
“Antoine!” I yelled, hurtling down the front steps. “Antoine!” I waved my arms. His back was to me. “Wait!”
He turned and I hurried toward him, my feet slipping on the thin layer of ice that had formed on the walk. He was standing beside a silver sedan.
“Can you…” I huffed. “Take me with you?”
“Avec moi?”
I nodded. “Yes. I’ll go anywhere.” I couldn’t believe I was saying that. After all I’d just gone through with Ben. But I couldn’t stay.
“You’re leaving the party?”
“So are you,” I said.
He held up his hands. “No more questions. All right, hop in.” The lights on the car flashed as he unlocked the doors to the sedan.
I hurried around to the passenger side and climbed in.
“I’ll just heat up the car while I’m scraping the windows,” he said.
He started the car, then got out. As soon as he shut the door, the tears started to flow. There was no stopping them. Why had I been so foolish to let myself think that my moment with Ben would change anything? He could never want me, not when Delphine was still in the picture. They had history, a lifetime together. We had three days, and just one night.
And on another level was this Réveillon, this town, these friends, this family, this Christmas. How could I think any of it was for me? I’d tasted it, so many years before, that holiday in Chelsea. But clearly something I’d done, or something about me, my upbringing, my parents, some as-yet diagnosed darkness in my soul, was keeping such a holiday, and such happiness, from me.
The door opened and Antoine climbed back in.
He looked over at me. “All right, to the—” He stopped. “Oh no. What’s wrong?”
I waved a hand in front of my face and then looked out the window. “Allergies,” I mumbled.
“To heartbreak?”
“Something like that.”
“You sure you want to leave? It’s Christmas Eve.”
I sniffled. “That’s exactly why I want to leave!” I exclaimed.
“Well”—he shrugged—“then you’re in the right place.” He pulled on his seat belt and slowly backed out of the driveway. “So did you want to come with me to Grandma’s?”
“Any chance you know where the mayor of Wakefield’s cottage is?” I asked hopefully. Antoine looked confused.
“I’m afraid Ben is the only mayor I know.”
“I was just sort of kidding anyway. Do you think you could take me to the airport?” I asked. “Maybe I can still get a flight out tonight. Or I’ll just stay at an airport hotel till the morning.”
“So you and Ben…?”
I shook my head. “There’s no sense competing with Delphine. You saw her.”
He looked at me quizzically. “Yeah, I saw her. I also listened to her go on and on for hours, too. Man, that girl really likes herself. But she’s Delphine. Everyone loves Delphine.”
I nodded. “That’s what I thought.” I looked out the window, willing Antoine to drive faster.
“Zoey, who cares if everyone loves Delphine? Seems to me Ben thought you were pretty special.”
“You talked to Ben?” I sniffed.
Antoine turned left, onto a dark road. I’d forgotten the power was still out. Being at Xavier and Geneviève’s house had been an escape from reality. At least, for a bit. But it wasn’t real life. It wasn’t my life.
“Well, texted mostly. And it was mostly him. You know he asked me to go pick Delphine up, right?”
“He did?” My head was resting against the window, but at this, my eyes darted to look at Antoine. When did Ben text Antoine? We’d lost cell service so long ago.
“I see you looking over here with interest,” Antoine teased. I looked out the window again, but I couldn’t help smiling. “I wasn’t supposed to be working until now. But there was no way he was going to go get her. Didn’t want to send the wrong message to her—or you. He paid me my regular fare rate. I probably shouldn’t have charged him, seeing as he’s my cousin and all, but if I never charged someone who was related to me I’d never make enough to pay my rent. And I had to miss half the party.”
I was still focused on the part where Antoine said that Ben hadn’t wanted to send the wrong message. But what kind of message did he think kissing her sent to her—and me?
Had they actually kissed? I didn’t know, of course, but her hands had been on his face. She wanted to kiss him. And it didn’t seem like he was trying to pull away. Not that I’d stuck around long enough to see how that scene ended.
“Stop,” I said.
“Huh?” Antoine looked over at me.
“Sorry, can you stop? Like, stop the car? I want to go back.” I nodded as though agreeing with myself. “I need to go back.”
Antoine stared at me for a moment, but then a slow smile crept across his face. “Thatta girl.” He slapped the armrest between us and pulled the car to a stop, then threw it into reverse, looking in the rearview mirror. “Hmm. Actually, that’s going to be a problem.”
I looked out the window, trying to see what problem Antoine saw. Was the road too narrow to turn around? I twisted in my seat. A bright white light looked like it was moving toward us, and there was a roaring sound in the distance that got louder with every passing second. “What is that?” I said, craning my neck.
“Looks like someone’s coming up the road behind us on a snowmobile. I’m gonna pull over, let them pass, and then we can turn around.”
I nodded, trying to be calm, but inside I was full of nervous energy, like a kid on Christmas morning, waiting to open their stocking. I could barely keep myself from jumping out of the car and running back to the house.
I turned in my seat, watching as the single white light grew bigger and brighter. When it got close, it swerved off the road to the passenger side of our car. I thought of Ben and I, bumbling along on the snowmobile earlier today. Just a few more seconds and Antoine would be able to turn around.
The snowmobile stopped and the driver cut the engine. The figure was clad in a puffy black coat, black helmet. He flipped up his visor. And my heart lifted in relief.
Ben flung a leg over the snowmobile just as I threw open the door and stepped out into the snow. He removed his helmet and set it into the crook of his arm.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“I could ask you the same thing. Why did you leave?” His face searched mine for an answer. It was full of concern—more than I’d seen these past three days.
I looked for the right words. I wanted to ask him what had happened—or rather, why what I saw between him and Delphine had happened. I wanted to fight for him, to tell him how I felt about him, but only if he was going to be honest in return. What if he denied it all?
But then you’ll have your answer.
“I don’t know what you saw or if this is what you saw,” Ben said before I said anything, “but Delphine and I didn’t kiss. I want you to know that.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure I could fight for him. If he wanted to be with Delphine I wasn’t going to convince him to be with me instead. But I also wasn’t going to leave without telling him how I really felt—something I’d never done in other relationships. But I needed to. Relationships weren’t equal. Someone often loved someone more. All I could control was my own feelings for Ben. And I needed him to know. “I don’t know how you feel about Delphine,” I sniffled, “and maybe it was just when we were trapped together, the rest of the world blocked out, that you felt something for me. Maybe seeing her again stirred up emotions, or whatever, and that’s beyond my control. But you should’ve thought about that before you asked me to stay. Before you sold me on this idea of a new type of Christmas. With your family and your friends. It wasn’t fair to me to put me in that position. If I didn’t already feel like an outsider, you made me feel ten times worse.”
Ben’s face crumpled. He nodded as though accepting that he had ruined whatever we might have had together.
Tears streamed down my face, like a frozen river suddenly thawed. Ben’s eyes were glassy. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I know,” he said solemnly. “And I’m so sorry. And I’m glad you said that. You’re right.” I searched his face for more information. I might be right, but was I right that his feelings for Delphine were back?
He looked away, into the distance. I waited. What was he going to say?
He turned back to me, his dark eyes intense. “Delphine and I have such a history. You know that. And that’s not something I’m going to pretend doesn’t exist. We were together for a long time. It’s a fact. But that’s what it is now. History. Those years with her, and what she and I went through in the end were awful for me, because I felt like she ruined our plan. But if there’s one thing I learned from Dad dying, it’s that life doesn’t go according to plan. And that I can only control a little bit of my life. And the rest, I’ve got to learn to adjust.” Antoine cut the engine on the car. The air was silent.
“Delphine leaving felt like she’d taken a wrong turn off the road we were on together and I was trying to steer her back on course. But whose course? What I learned was that we’re all just driving on our own. You can’t drive your own car and someone else’s at the same time. Or snowmobile or whatever you’re in.” His lip turned up slightly. “Sometimes people just need to take a different path and actually, it’s for the best. Because what Delphine did was show me there are other paths out there, some of them leading to the same place, and some of them going in completely new directions.”
The snow was falling more heavily now, forming a thin layer of white on Ben’s brown hair. But there was no wind and it wasn’t cold. It felt like being inside a snow globe. Though I’d always pictured that as a happy scene. And what was happening right now—I wasn’t so sure how this was going to end.
“What I’m trying to say is…” Ben scratched his beard. “Delphine and I had our story, and it’s over. Whether you’d been at the party or not, I wouldn’t have kissed her. Because the story I’m focused on now, it’s you. She knew that. I was telling her that. I think all she really wanted was one last kiss, but I thought of you. Our story. Delphine is my past. But you—Zoey, you’re my right now.” His eyes were fixed on mine. I wanted to look away, and at the same time, I wanted to look deeper into his eyes, to his soul, to know that what he was saying was true, that it was coming straight from his heart.
And yet—right now? That’s what he was willing to give me? “Right now feels so temporary,” I said between sniffles. “And I’m not pushing you for more, but…actually,” I swiped at my tears. “I am. I want more. I deserve more.”
Ben nodded. “You do. And maybe ‘right now’ isn’t the right thing to say. Maybe it doesn’t feel big enough. But to me it feels real. ‘Right now’ is about living in the present. Being here together. Not letting this moment slip by, but also planning for the future. Because that present, it’s ever changing, and we get to choose how we spend it. Every minute with you feels fresh and exciting and full of possibilities. You know I’m so trapped in tradition, but you make me want to break out of that, to try new things. To make our own traditions.”
“I do?” I said.
He nodded. “Except Christmas Eve.” He thumbed at the house. “Christmas Eve in snowy Chelsea? That’s a must. As long as we’re doing that together.”
I shook my head and laughed. A snowy Christmas with Ben? Yes, that was what I wanted, too. “I guess what I mean is ‘right now’ is…now.” He took a step closer. “And now. And now and—”
I put a finger to his lips, then stepped closer to him, the toe of my UGG touching the toe of his boot. “I get the idea,” I said, biting my lip.
Snowflakes had settled on the tips of his lashes. I reached out and wiped them away with my thumb, then let my hand linger on the side of his face.
“So what does this mean? Will you take right now?”
“Right now sounds pretty perfect.” I pulled his face toward me. His skin was cold, but his breath was hot on my face. Our lips met, softly at first, and then with more intensity. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me closer. Eventually, we pulled apart, and I caught my breath. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas,” he said.
“There is just one thing I need,” I finished the line, and smiled. “One point for me.”
“Me too,” he said, and then pressed his lips to mine again and I melted into the kiss.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christmas Day, 9:00 a.m.
“Merry Christmas,” Ben said in my ear. I rolled toward him. He was sitting on the side of the bed, holding a mug, steam wafting into the air. His room was bright and airy, the sun streaming through the floor-to-ceiling window that looked out onto the balsam firs of the tree farm.
“Mmmm,” I said, stretching and sitting up. “How did you know that coffee in bed is my favorite thing? Especially when someone else brings it to me.”
“Oh this? This is for me.” Ben lifted the mug to his lips. “You want coffee, it’s down in the kitchen.” He stopped before taking a sip, then smiled in that way that made my stomach do snow angels. “I’m kidding.” He passed me the cup.
I held it with both hands and took a sip.
“But how did you—?”
“Power’s on. It’s a Christmas miracle.” He leaned forward, his hands on either side of me, and kissed me. First on one cheek, then the other. And then on the lips. I sighed happily.
“Oh, that’s great,” I said, smiling as last night flashed across my mind. Ben and I sitting side by side at Midnight Mass in Chelsea’s Gothic-spired church, listening to the choir sing “Chanson de Noël.” Walking back along the main street to Rendez-Vous for hot cider over a bonfire that Lise and Henri had made out front of the café. Eventually, making it back here, to Ben’s home.
“Mm-hmm. It means we can play Christmas music while opening our stockings.” Ben turned and called for Simon. A moment later, Simon burst into the bedroom. In his mouth he carried a red knit stocking. His eyes were wide, his ears straight up, his tail wagged—as if he knew he was playing an important role in Ben’s plan. I felt giddy. But also felt caught off guard, embarrassed that Ben had somehow thought to get me something—how?—and I had nothing for him.
“You got me a stocking?” I said in awe.
“I heard you love getting a stocking on Christmas morning. That it’s one of your favorite traditions.”
I nodded and sighed. “Yes, but—”
“But nothing. We celebrated Christmas Eve for me. Now we celebrate Christmas morning for you.”
He took the stocking from Simon’s mouth with one hand, and scratched him under the chin with his other hand. “Good dog.” Then he handed the stocking to me.
The wool was soft in my fingertips. I passed Ben my coffee cup and put the stocking on my lap. “But I didn’t get you anything.”
“I don’t need anything,” he said. “You’re here. That’s all I want.”
Simon lumbered up onto the bed and snuggled up beside me, taking up half the bed. Ben took a sip from my mug and then placed it on the nightstand and picked up a small remote control. A moment later, the familiar chorus of Nat King Cole singing “The Christmas Song.” He nodded to the stocking. “All right, now we’re set. Go on, open it.”
