“Hey!” He smiled wide as he walked to me, my feet already moving toward him.
“Hey!” I squealed and jumped into his embrace. Blake’s arms were around me instantly as we spun in a circle. He put me down and took a step back to look at me.
“Wait, I think you forgot something.”
“I did?” Confused, I looked down at the jeans, knee-high boots, and navy fitted pea coat I was wearing and over to the suitcase at my side.
Blake reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a long box. “I’m sorry I missed your birthday.”
My eyes were glued to the little blue box as he opened it. Inside was a silver necklace with a little diamond pendant. It was beautiful and sparkled in the morning sun. “Blake! It’s gorgeous!” I hopped up and down before throwing my arms around his neck. I had never been given anything so pretty.
“Every girl should get a diamond for her eighteenth birthday,” he said against my ear before lightly kissing my cheek. It was enough to send my senses into overload, so I took a step back and allowed him to fasten his gift around my neck.
“I love it! Thank you,” I said, admiring my new favorite piece of jewelry.
“You ready to go?” he asked while reaching for my suitcase. “Just one, huh? I’m impress—” He stopped speaking as he tried to lift the heavy bag I’d stuffed to the maximum. “Jesus, what do you have in here?” He grunted as he carried the case and placed it in the trunk. “I would rather you had packed two bags instead of only one. How the hell did you carry it?”
“Well, it rolls, so it wasn’t so bad. Hey, I was proud of myself for getting everything into one suitcase.” I shrugged, to which he only grinned and shook his head.
Once we were both settled in the car, Blake cranked up the engine and we roared away from the dock. He tossed a little black pouch at me, and I unzipped it to find a plastic bag of weed and a couple of thin cigars.
“One for the road.” He flashed me a dimple as I got busy rolling.
The summer before, I’d caught him smoking in the woods behind the house. Instead of ratting him out, I’d offered to keep my silence if he’d let me try it. He was reluctant at first, but I knew he didn’t care much for the alternative: a long discussion with my straight-laced, no-nonsense dad. After that, it became our thing. We would sneak into the woods almost every night, light up, and talk for hours. He would tell me about his school friends and their antics, or sometimes courses he was struggling with. I would tell him about new stories in my head that I would never have the guts to put on paper. He would encourage me, and in turn, I would encourage him.
Sometimes, we would lie on the ground and look up at the sky, not speaking at all. I would let my hand drift over to his and pretend to accidentally brush the back of his knuckles. Other times, he would lay his head on the top of my thighs, complaining that his shoulders were sore from his work out and would ask me to massage them. This was us, and we’d always preferred being alone together rather than with other people. We were loners in that way. It was our place, our time, and no one else was welcome.
Blake and I were headed to Pennsylvania, floating together in a cloud of comfortable, smoky silence while listening to the radio. I loved that it was just the two of us on the long ride, and it reminded me of the question I was dying to know the answer to.
“So, why didn’t your girlfriend come with you?”
He turned a lazy, half-baked gaze to me and shrugged.
“Blake?”
“We broke up.”
“Oh? That’s too bad,” I said, although I was jumping for joy on the inside. I was looking forward to having him all to myself for the next twelve hours. My Christmas wish had come true.
****
Of course, Blake made the drive in less than eleven hours. We turned down the road that led to the cabin that had been my family’s Christmas destination. Maggie’s parents purchased it when she was young and it was the place we all gathered once a year for the holidays.
Blake pulled to a stop in front of the house. Every time I saw the chalet style cabin in the mountains, it took my breath away. The wraparound porch and the view of the lake in the distance was well worth the long drive. In the winter, the cabin looked like it was sitting in the clouds. The weather was calling for snow, and I couldn’t wait. Being an island girl, I loved the sun and sand, but there was just something about spending Christmas in a winter wonderland that felt right to me.
The chill hit me immediately after I opened the car door, so I pulled my coat tighter around me and helped gather our stuff from the trunk. Blake used his key to unlock the door. The inside was as beautiful as the outside. There was a large, open sitting area with a sectional sofa and two brown leather recliners. It was the center of the house. The place we’d all spent many hours watching old black and white movies as the snow fell outside. There was a massive kitchen off to the left with a small table, an eight-burner stove, and two ovens, a necessity for our family feasts. And the formal dining room was off to the right, our battle ground on board game nights. The loft upstairs housed a pool table and a mini bar.
Blake and I split up in the foyer and went to our usual sleeping places. I set my stuff down in the smallest bedroom with two twin beds I sometimes had to share with Aunt Bridget while Blake went to the pull-out couch in the loft.
Hours of convenience store junk food had taken its toll. Soon we were both rummaging through the cabinets in search of real food for dinner. All we came up with were cans of soup left over from our last visit. Canned soup and stale crackers had never sounded more unappealing.
“Come on, Tay, let’s go out and get something to eat,” Blake announced, to my relief. A few minutes later, we were driving down the road back to town. It was dark out and the moon was bright. Tiny flecks of snow dotted the windshield as we pulled to a stop in front of a cozy restaurant we’d eaten in many times before. Once we settled into a booth in a far corner, a young waitress who looked to be in her teens took our order as she cast quick glances over to Blake. I knew exactly why she blushed every time he looked her way as he spoke. It was hard not to appreciate how devastatingly gorgeous he was. My fingers ached to reach out and touch the soft brown hair that fell over his forehead. The matching stubble on his jaw was equally as soft, that I knew from sneaking subtle touches during our nights in the woods. Sometimes I couldn’t believe he was the same boy I’d first met six years ago, until those deep blue eyes found mine, and my heart skipped a beat just as it did when I was twelve.
“So, do you think it’s going to snow pretty hard?” I asked as I shifted my attention from him to the window. The sidewalks had a light dusting, which meant we would have a white Christmas. It was one of the reasons I looked forward to coming here during the holidays. The weather never got cold enough for snow on the island.
“Nah. Just a few inches.” Blake plucked the straw from his cup and tossed it aside before taking several gulps of his soda. I stared at him while I contemplated asking him about Lucy. I needed to know where things stood with them.
“So, what happened with you and . . . what’s her face?” God, it was hard to even say her name out loud, so I pretended not to remember it. It was almost as if it made her a real person, and I wasn’t ready to accept that. The whole thing hurt a lot more than I thought it would.