Page 36 of A World Without You
So now, here I am, drinking eggnog and stuffing my face with Muddy Buddies—thank God they’re made with rice cereal—while watching my second made-for-television Christmas movie because who cares about having a heart-healthy breakfast during the holidays?
I see the end of this motion picture from a mile away—that’s the beauty of a Christmas movie. It’s predictable and safe. Guy meets girl. Girl falls for guy. They sing Christmas carols, and then, BOOM: happily ever after because Santa Claus said so.
I’m holding out for Holly Kringle in this one, though. She’s smart and funny and...oh freaking no...she just called her fiancé in Chicago, and he isn’t going to save her from the corn farm in rural Illinois, but good news: she is going to save the town book store.
I’ve seen this all before far too many times on screen, but what’s worse:I lived it.
The farm boy, Kris—the spelling with a K is very much my own assumption—just confessed his love and tried to kiss her. She said no initially, but then!Oh, there’s always the regret...she ran back to the town Christmas party—because, of course, there’s one of those—to find him, and she just said she isn’t going back to Chicago to be with her fiancé.
“Dumbass!” I yell, throwing a handful of Muddy Buddies at the screen.
I turn off the TV and groan, wondering why I inflicted such self-torture. My masochistic tendencies come out when I’m grieving. Or sad. Or just plain sick of myself and my choices.
Graham crosses over my mind like a well-timed joke. His deep brown eyes. His perfect smile. The way his butt looked in Wranglers. The way he filled out a flannel and the way I filled up his arms. His kind heart that tried to love a complicated person like me.
I’ll miss his heart. I will. Because even if he didn’t love me well, I truly believe he did, at some point, loveme.
Then I think of my dream the other night with Colin.
But we only have a few weeks left.
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came out. It was like trying to scream in a dream—it just doesn’t happen. Soon, I was hurled back into this world, and it once again felt like a feverish encounter of everything that never happened.
I pull my pillow over my face and let out a groan scream until my phone rings, and I surreptitiously peek out from under the black gingham pillowcase.
Bennett’s name lights up on the screen. “Hello?”
“Get out of bed, take a shower, and go buy some slacks and a new pair of heels, Liv. You start Friday.” Bennett gets straight to the point—he hates phone calls.
“How did you know I haven’t showered, and I’m still in bed?” I ask because he is eerily specific.
“Because I know you. You’re mopey,” he responds, his voice deep and unmoving.
“Am not,” I say, knowing I very much am.
“You got in a friend fight with McKenzie Wallace in third grade and hid in a treehouse for two hours. Our moms started a neighborhood search party.”
“That was reasonable. She told on me for dropping the d-word to Mrs. Morris and my parents—”
“You stuck a worm down Melanie’s shirt and had television taken away for the month, and you acted like it was the end of the world.”
“The punishment was harsher than the crime,” I argue, picking chocolatey powdered sugar from my teeth.
“You didn’t go on the annual camping trip when you were in eighth grade because the boy you had a crush on asked someone else out to the eighth-grade dance.”
I gasp. “How do you know that? You were in college!”
“Because it was the last year I went on the camping trip, and only half of us were there, so it felt weird.”
“Aww, I ruined it for you,” I chastise.
“Yes,” he says, and I let out a soft laugh over the line. “Now, please quit moping and get ready to work on Friday.”
“I seriously got the job?” Genuine shock laces my voice because I know what bombing an interview is like, and this one was a nuclear explosion. I haven’t interviewed in well over five years. At the end of the interview with Tony and Clarisse, I simply said, “I don’t interview well. But I work hard, and I won’t let you down.”
They smiled condescendingly because, let’s be honest, I was interviewing for a temp secretary job, not the VP of Sales when the store is about to go under if they don’t do well this Christmas season.
“Yes, you seriously got the job. They need a secretary to help out with the contracted marketing team they’re bringing in to get ready for the Birthday Sale this Summer. You’ll mostly be answering phones and fetching coffee—so...sorry,” he says, but my heart beats with delight. “And then doing a lot of end-of-year filing.”
