Maybe This Christmas Read online

  Even though she really, really wanted to hug him. Now that she was standing in front of him, close enough to touch for the first time in a year, her heart clenched a little as she realized how much she’d missed him.

  “You look really good,” she said, trying to make her voice sound normal.

  He was wearing his hair shorter now, but with longer sideburns. The cowlick at his hairline still curled his hair off his forehead though, like a roller coaster loop-de-loop. Not everything had changed.

  “How’ve you been?” she asked, as if they were just two normal people having a conversation after a long separation. As if he was no different than anyone else she’d gone to high school with and hadn’t seen for a year. As if he wasn’t special, wasn’t her Lucas.

  “Oh, you know.” He shrugged. “Same as ever.”

  This was the most bald-faced of lies. Aside from the fact that his mother had left and his testosterone levels seemed to have kicked into overdrive, his whole demeanor was different. Closed-off. Weary. Shadowed. His face told the story of a difficult and painful year, even if his mouth remained clamped firmly shut.

  It all made her want to hug him even more.

  “You look good too,” he said, more out of politeness than like he actually meant it. “How’s life in Austin?”

  “Great,” she said without enthusiasm. “Good. You know.”

  He nodded like he did know.

  Alex could tell Lucas was even more uncomfortable than she was. He clearly didn’t want to be talking to her, which hurt, because Lucas talked to everyone, all the time. He loved talking to people. He was the friendliest, most open person Alex had ever known.

  Except he wasn’t actually that open. His friendliness was a feint. A way to get people talking about themselves so they wouldn’t notice how much he didn’t reveal about himself.

  Alex had noticed though, early on. One of the foundations of their friendship was that she wouldn’t let him get away with that crap. She had always been able to get him to tell her about the things he was trying to keep inside.

  Past tense. Had. They didn’t have a friendship anymore. The foundation had crumbled away.

  Alex’s mom came over to greet Lucas, and Alex took the opportunity to slip away to the kitchen on the pretext of getting herself a drink. She dawdled as long as she could, until her mother came in to check the turkey and sent Alex back to the living room with a plate of baked brie.

  Lucas was talking to Alex’s dad now. Which was weird, because her dad almost never talked to her friends. But then they’d never had Lucas’s family over for Christmas dinner before.

  Everything about this was weird.

  Alex camped out by the baked brie for the next twenty minutes, watching Lucas as he made small talk with everyone but her. He seemed more relaxed now, but the shadow was still there, hovering around his eyes. He wasn’t happy.

  Lucas was talking to her sister now. Or rather, Lucas was listening to her sister. Mia was chatting his ear off about something or other, gesturing excitedly as she spoke. Probably about the latest MTV reality show or something equally inane. But Lucas was smiling at her in that wide, open-hearted way he smiled at people—in the way he hadn’t smiled at Alex once today.

  It made her heart ache to think he might never smile at her like that again. That she’d broken something precious that had once belonged to her.

  Of course her mother had seated Alex next to Lucas. Of course she had. Because that made total sense, seating someone next to their ex at dinner.

  Lucas hadn’t spoken a word to Alex since they’d sat down to eat, other than to ask her to pass the rolls, so things were going great.

  Alex’s father was seated on her other side, which was no help because her father was deep in conversation with Theo about whooping cranes. Her father was obsessed with local birds, which was funny because he was a marine biologist who studied algae. She’d asked him once why he hadn’t become an ornithologist, and he’d told her he hadn’t been interested in birds when he was in school. He hadn’t fallen in love with them until later in life, after he’d already gotten his degree. So now he was an algae expert who was obsessed with birds.

  Theo was doing a good job of pretending to be interested in whooping cranes. Or maybe he actually was. Theo was very sweet and a little bit of a nerd. Whooping cranes might be right up his alley.

  Mia was seated across the table from Alex, between Theo and Mr. O’Hara, but she was talking to Lucas about all the colleges she’d applied to. Lucas was doing that thing he often did where he kept asking questions so she’d keep talking—not that Mia needed any encouragement—and Alex knew Lucas was doing it so he wouldn’t have to talk to her or acknowledge her existence.

  So she ate her mashed potatoes and her broccoli casserole in silence, desperately wishing her mother had offered her some wine. It was dumb that she couldn’t drink in her own home when she was only a few months shy of her twenty-first birthday. What difference did a few months make? It wasn’t fair when Lucas had been offered beer.

  “You’re wearing the earrings I gave you.”

  Alex was so surprised Lucas had spoken to her that she nearly spit mashed potatoes out of her mouth.

  She turned to look at him and reached up to touch her ear. She’d put the earrings on after she found out he was coming over. She wasn’t sure why.

  “I wear them all the time,” she said, lying. She hadn’t worn them since he gave them to her, on the night they’d broken up. They’d been covered with tarnish when she dug them out of her jewelry box, and she’d had to get the silver polish out to clean them.

  Lucas looked at her like he knew she was lying, but he didn’t say anything. The old Lucas would have called her out for a lie like that, but this wasn’t the old Lucas anymore. She didn’t seem to know anything about this man sitting next to her, or what was going on inside his head.

  He hadn’t even told her his mother had left. Alex wanted to ask him about it, to ask how he was coping and if he was okay, but it didn’t seem like the right time with his father and brother sitting across the table.

  Alex tried to think of something else to say to Lucas. Something pleasant and conversational and normal. How did other people do this? How did Lucas do this all the time with other people?

  Before she could think of anything, Mia started rambling about Honey Boo Boo, of all the goddamned things, and Lucas politely turned his attention back to her.

  After dinner, Lucas volunteered to wash the dishes, and to Alex’s surprise her mother took him up on it. Usually she didn’t trust anyone outside the family to handle her good china, but apparently Lucas had moved up a rung or two in her estimation.

  Alex waited until everyone else had filed back into the living room before joining him in the kitchen.

  “I’ll take that,” she said, holding her hand out for the dessert plate he’d just finished rinsing.

  His eyebrows lifted slightly, but he handed her the plate as requested. “Thanks.”

  “So…” Alex said as she dried the plate with a clean dish towel. “How’ve you been?”

  “Fine,” Lucas said, passing her another plate without meeting her eye.

  “I meant…because of your mom. That must have been hard.” She wished she was better at this sort of thing. She’d never been a sparkling conversationalist, but also it had never been hard to talk to Lucas before.

  His mouth pulled down in a frown as he shot a sideways glance at her. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m drying dishes.”

  Lucas stared at her, one eyebrow slightly raised, as he waited for her to answer the question he was really asking.

  “I’m trying to be a friend,” Alex said.

  “Why?”

  She didn’t have a good answer prepared, so she said, “Why not?”

  Lucas went back to washing dishes and didn’t respond.

  Alex reached over and shut off the water. “Lucas.”

  He turned toward her, his face tensed
up like he knew what she was going to say and knew he wasn’t going to like it.

  “I miss you.” She waited for his face to un-tense, but it stayed exactly the same. Actually, no. It might have tensed a little more.

  “I’m still here,” he said. “My phone number hasn’t changed.”

  “I could say the same thing.”

  He shrugged. “I guess it’s not that simple.”

  “I hate this. We’re supposed to be friends.”

  “But we’re not, are we? Not anymore.”

  “Can’t we be that again? Go back to the way things used to be when we could talk to each other?” She missed talking to him. She hadn’t realized until tonight just how much she’d missed having Lucas in her life. Sure, she had lots of new friends, but it wasn’t the same. None of them were as easy to talk to as Lucas was—or as he used to be, anyway.

  And Alex could see he was in pain, and she knew he probably hadn’t talked to anyone about it, because that wasn’t his way. Without her around to force it out of him he’d keep it all bottled up, letting it eat away at him from the inside. He needed her, and she needed him to let her be his friend again.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think I can do that.”

  She’d never fully appreciated how much it must have hurt him when they broke up. At the time, she’d let herself believe it was for the best, that it was what he wanted too. But that was because it had been what she wanted, and she was too relieved to think about it more closely than that. She should have known. She should have paid more attention, instead of letting this distance develop between them.

  “Lucas, please. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better friend to you this year. Can’t you give me a chance? Can’t we try to be friends again?”

  He looked like he might be considering it, and for a second she almost thought she’d changed his mind, that he would agree to give their friendship another try…

  “We’re different people now,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing’s the same anymore.”

  “I don’t accept that.”

  “It’s still true whether or not you accept it.”

  Alex opened her mouth to say something—anything—in rebuttal, but then her father wandered into the kitchen with his coffee cup and she snapped her mouth shut.

  “Don’t mind me,” her father said. “Just looking for some Bailey’s for my coffee.”

  Alex went to get the Bailey’s Irish Cream out of the fridge for her dad, because otherwise he’d take ten minutes to find it.

  When she turned back around, Lucas was gone.

  She didn’t get another chance to talk to Lucas alone. He purposely stayed in the living room with the others, until his father announced it was time they should be going.

  Alex trailed her parents out to the porch to see them off. “Are you going to the beach later?” Alex asked Lucas before he could slip away entirely.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, and followed his dad to the car.

  Four

  Lucas

  December 25, 2013

  It was cold and raining on Christmas Day. Cold enough for Lucas’s dad to turn the truck heater on for the drive to the Bonners’ house. A Willie Nelson Christmas song played over the car radio, but in the F250’s back seat Lucas’s brother Theo was humming along to a completely different song playing on his earbuds.

  The windshield wipers squeaked as they dragged across the glass. There was a chance of sleet tonight, and Theo was convinced they’d have a white Christmas. The last time it had snowed on Beaufort Island was Christmas Eve 2004 when Theo was six. Lucas wasn’t holding his breath.

  Lucas’s knee jiggled with impatience as they hit their third red light in a row. He couldn’t wait to get to the Bonners’ house and see Alex again.

  She’d reached out to him a few times after they saw each other last Christmas, but it had taken Lucas until the summer to finally get over himself and respond. Maybe he’d been punishing her a little, but he’d also been protecting himself. He’d needed to know she meant it.

  But Alex had been persistent, texting him every month or two. At first it was just a simple Hi or How are you? which Lucas had found easy to ignore. It was when she advanced to sending him funny pictures and dumb jokes meant to make him smile that she’d eventually worn him down.

  The meme that had broken the camel’s back was a picture of two cats humping while a third stared into the camera in horror. Lucas had laughed at the stupid thing until he’d cried, and then he’d texted back: What. The. Fuck???

  Knew that one would get you, Alex had replied.

  After that it had been surprisingly easy to start talking to her again. Not a lot. Not like they used to. It was more like tentative overtures than actual conversations. Testing the waters. But it was better than nothing. Maybe it was even the start of something. He didn’t know what, but he knew he missed having her in his life.

  I can’t wait to see you, Alex had texted him last week. I have to tell you something.

  Tell me now, Lucas had replied with his heart in his throat.

  It’s the kind of thing better done in person. I’ll see you soon.

  Only Alex hadn’t come home until the day before yesterday, because she’d been put on the schedule at the coffee shop where she worked part time. And since then she’d been so busy with family stuff, and Lucas had been so busy with his family stuff, that they hadn’t been able to see each other.

  Until today.

  In a few short minutes he’d see her again. As soon as he could, he planned to drag her off somewhere they could talk in private and find out what she had to tell him.

  He’d been trying not to let himself think about it too much, because otherwise he’d go crazy. But now that it was imminent he couldn’t think about anything else.

  She probably doesn’t want to get back together. It’s probably something completely different.

  Something that had nothing to do with him, like she’d dyed her hair pink or decided to change her major.

  But what if it did have something to do with him? Like maybe she was transferring to a school somewhere closer like Corpus Christi or Houston. Or maybe she’d found a job in Beaufort for next summer, so they’d be able to spend time together again.

  If she came home next summer, Lucas wouldn’t work so much. He’d tell his dad he needed more time off. He wouldn’t waste their time together. He’d make more time for Alex. He’d make as much time as she wanted.

  Lucas’s father turned down the radio and cleared his throat. “Theo can you take those things off for a minute?”

  Theo didn’t seem to have heard, so Lucas turned around and nudged his brother.

  “What?” Theo said, pulling out his earbuds.

  “I need to tell you boys something,” their father announced. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, and Lucas felt a pit yawn open in his stomach.

  Whatever it was must be bad. Was the business in trouble? Was his dad having health problems? Or maybe Grandma Jean—had something happened to her?

  Theo put his phone down and leaned forward between the two front seats. “What’s up, Dad?”

  Their father glanced over his shoulder at Theo, then back at the road. “Your mother and I are getting divorced. I filed the papers last week.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say. I’m sorry? Congratulations? It’s probably for the best?

  His parents had been separated for a year and a half, and it was pretty obvious his mom wasn’t coming back. But maybe it hadn’t been obvious to his dad. Maybe he’d been hoping all this time that she’d change her mind and come back to them.

  Leave it to Dad to drop a bomb like this on a five-minute car ride just before they spent the day at someone else’s house. He could have told them this morning after they’d finished opening presents, or last night when they were eating tamales, or pretty much anytime over the last week. Instead he’d chosen a moment expertly timed to forestall too much conve
rsation.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” Theo asked, and Lucas wished he’d thought to say that.

  It shouldn’t be the youngest child’s job to check in on everyone else’s emotional well-being, but that was their family dynamic and had been even before their mother left. Theo was the empathetic one. The one who always knew when something was wrong, and knew what to say to make it better. He was the only one who didn’t seem to have trouble talking to their father.

  Lucas was great at talking to pretty much everyone except his dad. Somehow, whenever they were together the words that usually came so easy to him dried up. It was like his dad’s reticence was contagious. Or maybe he just knew his father preferred silence to conversation, and Lucas didn’t want to disappoint him.

  “Yeah,” their dad mumbled. “I’m fine. This has been coming for a long time.” He glanced over at Lucas, then back at Theo in the rearview mirror. “Are you two okay?”

  “I just want you to be happy,” Theo said. “Both of you.”

  By all accounts, their mother was deliriously happy out in California. She’d already been promoted to vice principal and was dating an organic farmer.

  Their dad was tougher to get a read on. There wasn’t a single day in Lucas’s memory that his father had seemed outwardly happy, though he must have been happy sometimes. He just never showed it. Which made evaluating his current level of happiness difficult. He didn’t seem any less happy now that their mom was gone though. He seemed the same.

  His dad cleared his throat. “Lucas?”

  Lucas looked out the rain-spattered window and shrugged. “Like you said, it’s been coming for a long time.”

  “Can I sign you up for a dating app now?” Theo asked hopefully.

  “No,” their father said, scowling. “That’s not happening ever.”