Page 57 of Single Dad's Christmas Cookie

Iswiped at tears as I left the kitchen and headed toward the garage. Once inside, it took a moment for me to find the truck that Bryan was so generously letting me borrow. He had more cars than I realized. The truck wasn’t what I expected. It wasn’t oversized and shiny. It was old and beat up and probably qualified as being vintage. But it wasn’t cool looking. It didn’t have the nifty rounded fenders that I thought of vintage cars as having. It was all squared off and a little dented, clearly a truck that had been well used.

I climbed in. I was dubious it would start, but it started without problem, and more importantly, the heater worked. It felt sturdy to drive. Unlike my little car that felt as if it would slide off the road in a stiff breeze, the truck felt secure. It wasn’t going to go anywhere unless it wanted to.

As I drove over the melting snow and slushy ice patches, I silently thanked Bryan over and over for letting me use this truck and not one of his fancy, expensive cars I would have been terrified of getting scratched. I pulled it into the closest availablespace at the apartment complex, locked up, and headed to my building and up the stairs.

Nothing had changed much. I couldn’t tell that the heat and the power had been off for over twelve hours. I had only been gone overnight, but this place no longer felt like home. It was as cozy and homey as any room from any mid-level hotel chain. Other than the fact that my underwear were left on the floor in the bedroom, it didn’t feel like I lived here. And it smelled funny.

It wasn’t filled with the smells of freshly baked Christmas cookies or the warm, savory scent of roasted meat. Nothing about my little apartment felt right. And it certainly did not feel like Christmas.

I hadn’t even bothered to put up a tree, not even one of those little two-foot-tall, pre-lit, fake ones.

There was no holiday cheer here. I had left all of that back at Bryan’s house with him and Amelia.

I grabbed one of the throw pillows that I had purchased in an attempt to liven up the place, and give it the personal touch, and sat on my threadbare couch. I hugged the pillow tight and started crying again.

Everything had gone so incredibly wrong. I felt like I belonged somewhere, that I had been wanted. I shook my head. That wasn’t reality. Reality was that the help doesn’t eat dinner with the family. The help isn’t friends with the family. I was nothing but a hired member of staff.

What happened between Bryan and me didn’t matter. It was nothing more than a visceral reaction to a potentially bad situation. I knew I was lucky that he had found me when he had. I knew exactly how lucky I was to be bundled up and set in frontof a fire. And I knew when he took me upstairs to his bedroom that it was simply a physical reminder that I was alive and had all of my toes. What happened between us was temporary, even more temporary than my cooking for him.

How was I going to do this?

Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should quit working for him and quit the school, pack everything up, and go back to Atlanta.

“Argh,” I groaned and threw the pillow across the room.

This sucked. This all sucked.

I got up, took my coat off, and turned the heater on. It came on with the smell of burning dust. I turned up the heat and crossed the tiny living room and turned on the TV. I had thought I was splurging on a large screen when I bought it. I realized how naive I had been. It wasn’t nearly as large as the TV in Bryan’s kitchen was. What I considered a splurge, he probably thought of as pocket change. I must have looked silly, being so proud in my self-righteousness of purchasing some socks off the angel tree when it was nothing to him to just buy up the whole damned tree.

I turned the sound up. Maybe with some noise and distraction, I wouldn’t realize exactly how alone and lonely I really was or how much of a fool I had made myself out to be.

An ad for car insurance reminded me that my car was broken down in a ditch under a pile of snow, and I wasn’t going to be able to get it towed out of there for another couple of days. I needed to call my insurance company.

I pulled out my phone and looked at the front of it. It was late. I didn’t want to be that person who called late on a holiday.Whoever was stuck working tonight was there for emergencies. They didn’t need to deal with my problems. My car wasn’t going anywhere. I could call in a couple of days.

I added that to my mental to-do list—call the insurance company. Right after I called the tow truck. Or maybe I should call the insurance company first so I could figure out where the tow truck needed to take my car? That made more sense.

“Oh, God, how am I gonna pay for all of this?”

I was barely making ends meet as it was. I couldn’t quit my job with Bryan. I needed that money for rent and utilities. Finances were tight already. Everything about moving up here had been a horrible mistake.

I still had my phone in my hands. When everything went wrong, there was one person who I knew would always make me feel better.

“Mom?” I whined into the phone as soon as she answered.

“Nova, baby, how are you? Did you get your car thing situated?”

“No, it’s still in a ditch. I’m not in danger, and the car’s not interfering with traffic, so they said they’re not going to get to it until after the holiday.”

“That’s right, you mentioned that. How are you going to be able to get around until you get that taken care of?” she asked.

“The guy I’m working for?—”

“The one you’re cooking for, yes, what about him? He’s going to drive you?”

“He’s lending me one of his cars.”

“That sounds like he’s very rich,” she said. She had no idea. To be fair, I didn’t fully grasp how rich he was, either.

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