Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(88)

“It’s Christmas Eve’s Eve,” he explains. “It’s almost eleven.” I squeeze the handle of the door. “I know.”

“Were you going to come?”

“Well, I was putting on my coat and boots, and had my hand on the door when you rang the bell.”

He grins and looks down. He’s nervous.

He puts the bag down. “So, ah, I started my way there, on my own, and then I was thinking it was only three blocks from your place, and they haven’t cleared the sidewalks. It would be nicer, I thought, if I took you there?” He closes his eyes. “Fuck.”

“You were afraid I wouldn’t come?”

“I didn’t think I was.”

We both look out at the street, the snow coming down so fast you can almost hear it as it falls on the drifts and inches already over the ground. It’s cold. Dark, even at eleven in the morning.

“It’s seems kind of early for mashed potatoes,” I say.

“Okay. We could do something else? Coffee? Or, I can come back later.”

I hold open my door. “I was thinking you could come in.”

“Oh, sure.” He starts in, and then I remember something.

“Wait. One thing.”

“What’s that?”

I look at him, his face a little worried, his thin coat that forces him to hunch against the cold. I stick out my hand.

Evan takes it. “Nice to meet you, I’m Evan Carlisle-Ford. I’m an OT at LSU, and an amateur photographer.”

“Jenny Wright, microbiologist. I live here on Lincoln Street.”

“Jenny?”

“Yeah?”

“Before I kissed you, I should have told you I knew you were Lincoln.”

I turn his hand up and stroke over his palm. The look in his face is almost too much. I can see the small thing in his face that will start the whole origin of our world, and even though it was all I have been thinking about, I can hardly breathe.

“Except, I knew a lot more than just Jenny Wright was Lincoln, when I kissed you.”

“What did you know?” I whisper.

“That I’d fallen for you. Then that day, when you fell in the courtyard—”

I meet his eyes, he has questions for me, what I’d asked for that day, and what he’d given me. “You weren’t just—available,” I whisper.

He looks down. “Okay. I’m glad. Obviously, I would have given you anything, anyway. But I’m glad it wasn’t just some reminder of the fact of life. It wasn’t like that for me, even like it was. I didn’t want to just be some reminder that there is something nicer in the world. I didn’t want to just be another kind of guide out of some darkness for you. I—”

I take a breath, and it is so hard to. “God, Evan, I’m sorry, I—”

“No, no. My point is, I didn’t want to be just this safe guy you could grab the shoulder of so you could walk out of whatever mess you’d found yourself in, but I was willing to be, if that’s all it was. I want you to know that. I wanted you to understand my willingness, but I also want you to understand what it is I want. I don’t want to table that, I want to talk about that Jenny, I want to talk to you about what I want.”

It’s hard to keep him in focus. The snow’s bright, even without the sun. My tears are faster than the snow, and I’m trying to hold them back, my throat aching. “Okay, you can. You can tell me. What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

“Jenny Wright.”

He says my name, low and fierce. Grabs my wrist, then slides his hand over mine.

He looks up at the overhang covering my stoop. “Most of the time, if we’re lucky, all through life, we never really know anybody because, I think, it’s only possible to know someone if they’re losing.”

I rub my hand across my face. “I don’t want to lose.”

“I know. My mom didn’t want to lose, either. She fought and fought. She fought so long, eventually I thought I had to fight for her. But what I didn’t get then, is that she fought so long she figured out what she was fighting for, which was ordinary things, like the love she enjoyed with her kids and her friends, and by then, it was okay, she could rest in that. She could be comfortable knowing she had managed some kind of life that meant so many people loved her, that she was always going to lose that love, that like all of us, she was always going to die, but that she didn’t have to fight for it to enjoy it, to know it.”

“I fought you.”

“I know. And your fight has been so beautiful, Jenny. When I saw the pictures on your desk, realized you were the same woman who I was crushing on over the Internet because she liked to see, liked to understand things, and then, after I had been with you in your lab, seeing what it was you were fighting for, that’s when I knew I couldn’t help you.”