Page 68 of Holiday at Home
My jaw drops. “Simon.”
“What?” He shrugs, hands stuffed in his pockets like a boy caught with a slingshot. “I can’t keep pretending brown water is coffee. I just can’t. Tomorrow we’ll go out and I’ll buy you some proper beans and your life will be changed from this point forward.”
Something tells me that’s true, though I doubt the espresso machine will have much to do with it.
“It’s not brown water,” I say, even as I laugh and examine the list of features on the side of the box.
“Okay, my turn,” I say quickly, then hand Simon a small box wrapped in craft paper and twine. “Open carefully.”
He does, like he always has, like paper is worth saving. Inside is a framed picture, the one from the ornament he had me hang on the tree all those weeks ago. We were young, happy, so deeply in love. His arm around my shoulder, me leaning in close, him pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“You were right,” I say as he lifts it from the box. “It belonged in a place of honor.”
Simon’s eyes soften as he traces our smiling faces under the glass. “It’s perfect.”
“There’s something else.” I gesture toward the box. “It’s small and maybe silly but…”
He lifts the tissue paper and there’s the softclunkof something hitting the cardboard. A smile lifts his lips as he reaches in and pulls out a key.
“I had to sneak down last night and rewrap the gift, but I kinda figured, why not just move you and your stuff in here? We’ve lived apart long enough.”
His smile deepens. “You sure?”
I nod. “Very.”
Nora and Robbie exchange one of those married glances and suddenly need to refill coffee and cocoa; Nash announces loudly that the remote-control car needs a pit stop “with marshmallows,” and takes his noise machine with him into the kitchen. The room is temporarily quiet, except for the low hum of Christmas carols and the obliging pop of the TV fireplace.
Simon reaches behind the couch and pulls out a small, flat box wrapped in red paper with a gold ribbon. He holds it between us like a dare. His eyes are steady, even if his hands aren’t.
“You weren’t the only one sneaking around with last minute gift ideas,” he says. Those ocean eyes hit mine and I’m suddenly certain I’m about to get walloped… in the best possible way.
I carefully take it, peel back the ribbon, tear the paper, and lift the lid, then draw out a stack of legal pages. For half a heartbeat, the room tilts as I take it in. Clean letterhead, neat paragraphs, the cold language of “rights” and “assignments.” But every single line is split through with thick black ink. Not a tidy strikethrough. An obliteration. Whole sections X’d until the paper puckers.
My brows furrow. “What’s this?”
“Turn it over,” he says, voice low.
On the back page, his handwriting has taken over where the law gave up. It runs at a slant like he didn’t pause to make it pretty, like he needed to get it down before courage wavered.
New proposal: We do this together. Not a coffee shop for me and a bakery for you. But our old dream come to life. Co-owners. Co-dreamers. Co-everythings. I’ll handle the pieces I’m good at. You do the things only you can do. We build a place that tastes like home and feels like Christmas in July and October and every Tuesday.
P.S. I ordered aprons. Yours says Boss Lady. Mine says Guy Who Listens to Boss Lady.
I half-laugh, half-sob. It’s the sound you make when something heavy gets lifted all at once and the air rushes back into your lungs.
“You’re sure?” I ask, though I can already feel the answer in the room, the way the morning steadies around us, the way the tree seems to lean in to hear him say it.
“Vi.” Simon moves closer, everything about him stripped down and honest. “I came here to take the thing we made and make it mine. That’s the truth, and I hate it. But then I walked into your bakery and saw you, I remembered what the dream actually was. Us. Together. Doing what we love with who we love in a town we love. I want as much of that life as you’ll let me have.”
The world goes very quiet. There is nothing in it but him and me and the sound of paper settling in my lap. For one strange second I think of proofing dough—how you let it rest, how the waiting makes the miracle. How you can’t force rise; you can only create warmth around it and trust what’s inside to do what it was made to do.
“Is this really happening?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“Just say the word.”
Nora and Robbie reappear with mugs they definitely didn’t need to refill, pretending they haven’t been loitering just out of sight. Nash barrels back in and crashes into the pile of wrapping paper with an excitedwhoop!
My mind presents a litany of what ifs followed by a thesis on what could go wrong. Instead of pushing them away and pretending everything’s fine, I look to Simon and tell him exactly how I’m feeling.
