Page 73 of Seeds of Christmas
“It’s a promise.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling. And she’s staying. And her ankle will have time to heal.
I count that as a win.
“Oh my god, is that a puzzle?”Rhi’s eyes light up when she spots the box on the shelf.
I follow her gaze. Sure enough, there’s a jigsaw puzzle tucked between some old board games and a stack of field guides. The box shows a mountain landscape. It looks like it has about a thousand pieces.
It looks like torture.
“Yeah,” I say carefully. “Looks like it.”
“Can we do it?” She’s already reaching for the box, an excited energy radiating off of her. “I love puzzles.”
“You do?”
“My family always does one on Christmas Eve. It’s tradition.” She’s opening the box, dumping pieces onto the coffee table. “We compete to see who can finish their section first. My sister usually wins, but last year I got the entire sky done before her.”
She’s smiling. Genuine, unguarded, happy.
I hate puzzles.
Puzzles are tedious and frustrating and I have exactly zero patience for finding tiny pieces that might fit together.
But she’s looking at me with big doe eyes and I’m completely incapable of saying no.
“Sure,” I hear myself say. “Let’s do a puzzle.”
“Really? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“I want to.” Lie. “Puzzles are great.” Bigger lie. “Love puzzles.” The biggest lie I’ve ever told.
Her smile gets wider. “This is going to be fun.”
It’s absolutely not going to be fun.
But she’s happy, and I’d suffer through a lot worse to see her smile.
We’re maybea quarter of the way through the puzzle—Rhi’s done most of it; I’ve successfully placed about six pieces—when she asks the question.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You mentioned an ex. The one who... things ended.”
“Kath, yeah.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind talking about it.”
I don’t mind. Which is weird, because usually, I do mind. Usually, I deflect or joke or change the subject.
But with Rhi, I don’t want to.
“It wasn’t that serious,” I say, fitting two pieces together. They actually match this time. Nice. “We’d been dating for like four months. College thing, you know? We went to parties together, hooked up, occasionally studied together. It was fun but not...” I search for the word. “Not deep.”
“Okay.”
