Page 44 of Christmas Crisis
Yesterday, when the photos of Stone and Naomi in Vancouver surfaced, I’d barely blinked. In them, he held her hand and pressed a kiss to her cheek in front of a little club in the Gaslamp district. My primary reaction was indifference. I wondered if Stone felt the same when he saw pictures of Leo kissing me at the arcade. Or maybe he hadn’t bothered to look at them.
I thought I’d gained a sort of peace with Stone, an ease. But that was merely a story I’d told myself.
I owed it to him to clean up this mess, whether or not I’d caused it intentionally, and then it was time to set things right. No more waiting game.
Not with Stone.
Or Leo.
The past nights sleeping in Leo’s arms had been both torturous and telling. I couldn’t be with him the way I wanted to be. But I also couldn’t keep pretending I didn’t want what I did.
There was a word for what I felt toward Leo. I’d read it in a novel once. Limerence. Unrequited love. The concept wasn’t a perfect match, since Leo loved me back in his way. Also, I wasn’t obsessed to the point of paralysis. My limerence was gentler. I desired someone who didn’t desire me back. And as much as I respected Leo’s right not to want me, the intensity of my own feelings was becoming a pain I could no longer live with.
I’d used Stone to assuage the disappointment of not being able to be with Leo—I saw that now—but it hadn’t worked, and it needed to stop.
After the holidays.
For the next four weeks, I planned to indulge myself like the Leo addict I was. It was probably unhealthy, torturing myself this way. I probably needed therapy, but I didn’t care. If this was the closest I’d ever come to being his girlfriend, I was going to enjoy it. I was going to pretend that Leo wanted me in all the ways I wanted him. And I was going to do it in my favorite place in the world. At my favorite time of the year.
When we got to Marley and James’s house, I was unsurprised to find they’d already put up a ton of exterior lights. Leo practically tripped off the front porch when he stepped on the themed welcome mat, which blasted “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”
I pulled the key from the fake rock near the door. Flipping on lights along the way, we walked to the kitchen and deposited our grocery bags on the counter.
“I can’t believe they did all this before they left,” Leo shouted from the living room as I put the fresh food in the fridge, and I knew he was taking in the decorations.
“Don’t play like you haven’t met Marley.” I laughed. “She starts in early November, and everything is up by Thanksgiving. The only thing missing is a live tree, which I’m sure they’ll get next weekend.”
Leo popped his head into the kitchen. “There’s already a tree.”
I snorted. “Um, that’s tree number one. I guarantee you tree number two is set up downstairs in the family room. Tree number three will be the live one.”
“Wow. I thought it was over the top last year because of the engagement party.”
“The themed onesie duos didn’t clue you in that she’s more than a little crazy about the season?”
His eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I forgot about that.”
“By ‘forgot,’ you mean pushed the embarrassing memory into the darkest recesses of your mind?”
“Hundred Percent.”
I threw bags of chips into the basket in the pantry. On the top shelf, I saw stacks of red decorative glitter and peppermint candy melts and realized my sister had already started assembling ingredients for Christmas cookies and treats. “Honestly, I’m glad she’s like this. It’s something she and our mom had in common. I don’t think Maureen and I would have kept all the holiday traditions alive if we’d been left to our own devices. Marley’s sort of been our anchor like that.”
He went back into the living room to put on a record, commenting about how weird the house seemed without Bambi and Oscar, Marley and James’s dogs. It was nice that mentioning my mom no longer felt like an arrow to the heart. I’d healed a lot in the two years since Leo and I first talked about my grief in the carport, drawing some of that strength from our friendship.
After a quick dinner of chicken and rice, we watched TV until I started yawning. The house had two guest bedrooms, and his face flashed when I suggested we share the bedroom by the kitchen.
“Your childhood bedroom?”
“You remembered,” I said. “It wouldn’t make sense to mess up both of them, since they’ll be expecting us to sleep in the same room.”
After we brushed our teeth, Leo put on his pajamas in the hall bathroom while I did the same in the bedroom. I turned my head when he stepped wordlessly through the doorway, a flat look on his face, before stumbling to his usual side of the bed. He stood by the mattress, punching the pillow to fluff it. I fanned myfingers in front of my chest, the air in the small room thick and heavy.
I wasn’t sure why we were tiptoeing around each other. We’d been okay in his apartment.
“Why does this feel so awkward?” I forced a laugh.
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Because it’s different in Marley and James’s house.”
