Page 83 of A World Without You
DREAM 7
Sunday, December 17th
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ICHOKE ON COFFEE,sputtering and coughing over the omelet in front of me. My embarrassed eyes scan the table and the room around me. I quickly realize I’m sitting across from Colin at a table meant for two in the lodge’s restaurant. He’s reaching over and asking if I’m okay. A hand is on my back, and I follow the slender trail of limb to see it’s attached to McKinley, who’s standing over me, concern in her eyes, while none other than my ex-husband Graham pours water from a glass bottle into an empty glass.
Of all the ways I’ve entered this world, this one wins for shock value. The coughing spell isn’t over, and my eyes scan the room as I chug the water and try desperately to gain my composure. My eyes land on Santa Claus himself, standing in the corner next to a flocked Christmas tree and wooden sleigh, surrounded by bundled-up kids, holding a basket of candy canes next to a sign that says,Naughty or Nice.
All I can think is I am naughty in the worst way.
“You okay?” Colin is next to me now, and I’m embarrassingly sipping the water, nodding through tears and straining against another cough to where I’m sure the veins on the side of my face are bulging, and my lips are turning purple.
“Give her a minute,” Graham’s voice says, and I close my eyes against the familiarity of it. He was always an expert at ignoring people during their coughing fits, pretending like it was nothing. No comment. No wincing. No asking if they’re okay. Just handing them water if he can and taking three steps back until the person resumes the conversation.
It was one of his better qualities.
Finally, I take a breath and say, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I swear I’m not sick or anything. I just...”
“Wrong pipe?” McKinley finishes for me, and I nod.
Colin kisses the side of my head. “Anyway, what do you think?”
I stare at Colin, then glance at Graham and his new girlfriend, each looking at me for an answer. “About what?”
“Hitting the slopes with us,hun!” McKinley says, chipper and smacking on her chewing gum.
“Oh! Great! Sounds great,” I grit out the last word.
What else am I supposed to say? Pressured by three grown adults asking if I want to ski with them while I eat a Christmas omelet and choke on coffee a week before Christmas, of course, I’m going to say yes even if it sounds terrible.
“Great, we’ll meet you up there?” Graham says slash questions.
I narrow my eyes on him as he zeroes in on me. It almost feels telepathic. I see him, and he sees me. But neither of us mentions anything about us, nor does anyone mention my tumble on the mountain, which, I assume, happened last night.
Colin nods and says something else I don’t care to hear before Graham and McKinley leave me with the only person I want to spend time with.
“This’ll be fun,” Colin says, plopping the last of his croissant in his mouth.
“We don’t have to hang out with them,” I say, and he shrugs, wiping his mouth with a napkin. I lean closer. “It seems very unlike you to want to spend time with random people when it’s a holiday getaway for us.”
I don’t really know that, though. The Colin I remember only got so much time off and didn’t like to spend it with anyone he didn’t deem as important to him—a select group of friends and family members. Sometimes getting him to spend time with my family was even hard.
Colin’s gray-blue eyes land on me. “We’re bound to see them up there. I’m not going to be weird and say,no, thank you, I don’t want any more friends.”
A laugh tumbles out of me. “Actually, I was thinking that’s exactly what you were going to say.”
He grins, steps around the table, and leans down to kiss my neck. “What are you going to do without having me all to yourself?” he murmurs against my neck.
There’s laughter in his voice, but I find no humor in his words. I swallow, and my gaze focuses across the room to the lobby of the lodge. Graham is waiting for an elevator, staring at me with hints of jealousy in his eyes like he still has a claim on me. But in this world, he never did. Even still, I can’t shake the way he looks at me. Like we share a secret. I’m sure we do. I just wonder what it is.
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THIRTY MINUTES LATER, we’re on the lift climbing up the mountain. The sky is clear and blue, and the sun is glistening off the snow. The mountain range is covered in a thick blanket of white snow and I am never not mesmerized by its beauty.
“Could you imagine living somewhere like this?” Colin asks.
“Like a lodge?” I ask, stepping off the lift.
