Page 23 of Holiday at Home
I freeze just inside the door, causing Simon to bump into me. He puts a hand on my lower back—a gesture both familiar and strange, welcome and unwelcome. It grounds me and sends my pulse skittering through my veins at the same time. He drops his hand to deliberately step in front of me, almost as if shielding me from the blast of sound and energy.
“Definitely a bad idea,” I whisper with a small shake of my head.
“I got you, Vi. Don’t you trust me?”
“I used to,” I manage. “Not so sure anymore.”
He bobs his head in resigned acceptance. “Consider this a rebuilding exercise.”
With a twinkle in those baby blues, Simon takes my hand, threading his fingers with mine, and leads me toward the kitchen. Memories flood through me as I remember years of Christmases here, in this house almost as familiar as my own.
Simon’s mom, grandma, and a couple women I don’t immediately recognize are bustling around the stove—stirring pots, setting out plates, all talking at once but miraculously following the conversational threads anyway.
“Mom?”
Without turning away from the pot, Daphne Holiday lifts a hand over her shoulder, waving her manicured fingers. “Could you hand me that can of tomatoes, Si-Guy?”
“You got it, Mom.” Simon drops me a conspiratorial wink, gives me the can, then places his hands on my shoulders and physically guides me to stand beside his mother.
I hold out the tomatoes and she takes them without so much as a glance my way. “Thank you.”
Incredulous, Simon looks at me and shakes his head. The glint in those familiar blue eyes resurrects feelings of playfulness and belonging. They flare to life in my belly.
Warm.
Welcome.
And oh, so needed.
“You’re very welcome, Mrs. Holiday,” I say, sweetly.
Daphne bobs her head, keeps stirring, and then—like she’s just now processed her son’s oddly feminine voice—turns to me with a question in her eyes that shifts into wide, open excitement. “Violet?”
She looks to her son, then to me, then to his hands on my shoulders. A knowing, meddling-mother smile spreads across her face. “It is incredibly good to see you.”
So much hides under those words I don’t even know where to begin, but I hug her because I love her and I’ve missed her dearly. When she releases me, Simon’s grandmother watches with the same meddling expression.
“When I said I didn’t think you could do much better than Violet,” Nana Holiday says, “I didn’t mean you needed to go out and fetch the young lady.”
Go out and fetch…? I cock my head at Simon, and he waves his hands as if to erase the moment, an adorable look of embarrassment pinking his cheeks. It reminds me of the day he asked me out, this kid who was always calm and in control a literal nervous mess, blushing and stammering.
The memory softens my heart.
A flurry of activity sounds in the other room—one group cheering, another exclaiming in aggressive disappointment. The women in the kitchen all shake their heads in unison, like they’re hooked into the same thought waves.
“Steve always did take Pictionary one step too far, didn’t he?”
“That he did,” Daphne says. She glances at Simon. “Why don’t you take Violet around and reintroduce her to everybody? Dinner will be ready when it’s ready.” She turns back to stirring her pot.
Simon dutifully introduces me to the relatives who remember me—each greeting a mix of nostalgia and warmth—before we end with his dad, who pulls me into a hug that nearly lifts me off my feet. Afterward, Simon finds a quiet corner for us to escape the bustle. We sink into a pair of armchairs near a TV flickering with the image of a crackling fire, the room filled with the scent of roast beef, sugar, and cinnamon. Plates of food balance on our knees, wine glasses within reach, laughter rising and falling around us. It’s cozy and chaotic in that distinctly Holiday family way—people shouting across the room, kids darting between legs, someone starting a carol in the wrong key—and yet, somehow, with Simon beside me, it feels like the most peaceful place in the world.
I turn to him, intent on thanking him for inviting me, but the words die on my lips.
His gaze is locked on mine, his lips pulled into a soft smile, but it’s his eyes that catch me… blue and wistful and glimmering with all the goodness I used to adore.
After a heartbeat, he breaks eye contact to take a long drink of wine.
“So, uh, the bakery looked good,” he says, like this isn’t the strangest thing that’s happened to either of us in some time.
