Page 9 of A Cozy Kind of Christmas
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SIX
JILL
Owen snored contentedly, his head resting on Jill’s shoulder. He’d popped in his headphones, melatonin, and a meditation soundtrack at takeoff and drifted off into a deep sleep before they’d reached their cruising altitude. Jill was alone with her thoughts over miles and miles of the Atlantic Ocean. And her thoughts were a swirling mess right now. Should she tell him the truth? Would it even matter? Or would he be on the next flight back as soon as they landed?
She stared out the window, watching pillowy clouds float by. Being this high up in the air should give her a new perspective, but it didn’t. She was in love with Owen. There was no doubt about that. He loved her, too. Not only did he tell her every day, but he showed her in a thousand tiny ways—getting up first to brew a strong pot of coffee and bake his famous Irish biscuits that he’d serve her in bed on a tray with a cup of fresh squeezed orange juice, a pat of butter, and a side of raspberry jam.
Or the ultimate test of love—sharing the last bite of a gooey chocolate brownie with her.
When Jill struggled to make space for her art, he’d built a custom roll-out studio complete with lighting and a special rain shade. No one had ever made her laugh the way Owen did—deepbelly laughs that sent tears streaming down her cheeks until her sides ached, and they would crumple on the floor in a tangled, chuckling mess.
He was romantic in his words, too. Every year at Christmas, he wrote her a letter on the same cream cardstock, decorated with sweet doodles of pine trees and sprigs of holly. She’d kept each of them like treasures, pressed into the pages of her journal. She’d tucked them into her carry-on bag at Owen’s urging because once—in passing—she happened to mention the letters to Meg.
Big mistake.
Meg was the ultimate romantic and a sucker for a good love story.
“Yearly Christmas letters, Jill? That’s the sweetest thing ever,” Meg had gushed. “I feel like there’s a story there. A holiday feature, or maybe even a full-length novel. Will you please let me live vicariously through you? I want to see them! They say the best inspiration comes from real life, and this is giving serious rom-com vibes.”
Jill had blown her off at the time, but Owen kept mentioning it. “Show them to Meg. Take another look. She’s texted me twice to ask about them.”
She’d packed them at his insistence.
Could Meg turn the letters into something more?
Maybe.
If anyone could, it was Meg.
Her friend was a wordsmith who had a way of pulling readers into her writing, making them feel like they were part of the story.
But what was the point? There was a huge looming issue. Her future with Owen was uncertain. Their love story wasn’t going to last. No happy ending was promised. It would take a lot more than Meg’s quick wit and clever pen to turn her current disasterof a love life into something worthy of a novel—more like sad, sappy fiction and no one wanted a story of heartbreak during the holiday season.
He mumbled in his sleep, his head falling gently onto her shoulder. She stared at his chiseled jawline and scruffy stubbled cheeks, a small smile spreading across her face.
Owen wasn’t the type of guy she’d imagined herself with in her youth. Not like her college boyfriend, who went on to do exactly what her parents had expected—attended law school and landed a job at one of the high-powered firms in Portland. Nope, Owen was a free spirit. An artist. He dabbled in everything from poetry to piano, but his real passion was solving problems through his art, like Jill’s outdoor rolling studio.
When she once mentioned that she preferred the quiet morning hours to paint, he created a custom sketchbook with prompts and morning meditations for her—one for each day of the week. After she complained about needing breathing room in the camper, he painted a mural on one wall to give the illusion of an open forest with her favorite poem hidden in one of the trees. Once, when he forgot what to pick up at the grocery store, he built a magnetic chalkboard shaped like a paint palette for their camper van, which was hand-painted with their favorite foods. He called it “functional still life.”
Owen didn’t just make art. He used sentiment to create stunning, real-world solutions for her every problem. Like a modern-day MacGyver, he could fix anything and turn trash into showpieces.
His art didn’t bring in much money. And that had been fine with her. They had time, but now, suddenly, they didn’t.
Her mind drifted to packing earlier. She had crouched next to her rolling studio, looking for her favorite scarf, and the back corner of the van caught her eye—another new surprise from Owen. He’d mounted a hinged wooden shelf against the wall,painted in a soft, mossy green. Fold it down and it became another workspace. Fold it up and you could see a mountain scene he’d sketched of the Pyrenees mountains at dawn. A note taped to the shelf read:So you’ll always have a window to the world, even when you can’t find one.
The plane bounced with a touch of turbulence. Jill pressed her palm against her stomach, her heart hitching. He didn’t know about the baby. About San Francisco. About how untethered she felt.
Owen solved problems best with paint, never-ending patience, and scraps of unused wood.
But this?
This wasn’t a forgotten grocery list or a pretty nature mural.
Her entire future was pressing up against her ribs, demanding to be acknowledged.
Her thirtieth birthday was fast approaching, and it felt like she’d flipped a switch. Everything was sped up in overdrive. The realization that she was entering a new era was starting to sink in. And for the first time in a long time, Jill wasn’t sure if love alone could fix their problems.
