Very Merry Married (Kringle Family Christmas)

Ben and I had gone shopping yesterday at lunch to the quilting store in town. Nothing as mundane as a fabric store in Salt Springs, but there was a gigantic quilting store. With not one square inch of bedazzled or sequined fabric.

“Can you believe this?” Ben asked, because he was a man after my own heart. He held up some red and white gingham and mouthed “So sad,” to me.

We made do with some red and green velvet and some pretty gold and silver gauze. At the cash Ben found a bag of silver sequins and held it up with hope in his eyes.

“Ben, honey, have you ever sewn sequins on something?” He was ten for crying out loud.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Ben said with a shrug, and we threw the sequins in with the fabric. Ben was a special kid and I would have loved to tell his parents all about how great their son was, but every time they came and got him, they walked past me like I wasn’t there.

Ethan, too, seemed to get swept up and busy in town stuff. We still hadn’t made it to the Christmas Jamboree or to Sweet Bliss for lunch, which was fine.

Good even.

Better this way.

We’d been full steam ahead, running toward a mistake of marriage proportions and we’d all ready done that once. We didn’t need the sequel. So I’d been avoiding him and finding reasons for us not to see each other. I came home from work every day and beelined upstairs. Last night he wasn’t even home when I came in. I didn’t hear him until almost midnight.

And at that point I wasn’t sure it was him, so I crept carefully downstairs only to see him standing at the front door, hanging up his coat and brushing snow out his hair.

“Ethan?” I said, and he turned to me and for one second I saw how tired he was. How long his day had been. It settled over him like dust. But when he saw me, he smiled, and my heart leapt.

Stupid heart.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t,” I said. “Did you have a bad day?”

“No,” he shook his head. “Not a bad one. Just a long one. You want to come down and have a drink with me? I’ve got a pretty good bourbon around here somewhere…”

I did want to have a drink. I wanted to sit down on his couch and have him put his head in my lap. I wanted to comb my fingers through his hair and listen to him tell me everything about his day, and then I wanted him to sit up and put my feet in his lap and rub them while I told him about Ben and the sequins.

Oh my god, I want that so much.

“No,” I said. “I’m going to head for bed.”

“Sure,” he said, staring at me, and all of his longing was right there on his face. And I didn’t know how he could be so honest with me. So vulnerable.

I could hear my mother’s voice in my head. Telling me if he really wanted me, he’d take me. He’d buy me gifts and feed me fancy dinners and…

He’d done that, hadn’t he? Boots and the lunches.

Still, I thought, my mother, so used to fitting into the tiny slots men made for her in their lives, wouldn’t understand how fucking appealing all his restraint was.

“Lexie?” he said and stepped forward. “Are you rethinking that bourbon?”

I was rethinking everything and I did not like it.

“Good night, Ethan,” I said and went back upstairs. I could feel his eyes on my little sleep shorts and my bare legs.

16

Ethan

Everything was going great. The inn was turning around. My father’s leg was healing. My two jobs as City Council president pro tempore and mayoral candidate, were pulling me in all sorts of directions and it felt like I was running out of hours in the day, but I was surviving.

The only thing going wrong was Lexie.

She’d strong-armed me into the friend zone. Or the boss zone? Whatever zone, I’d been pushed out of where I would like to be, which was in her bed.

In her.

And this was so messing with my head it was making me clumsy. And angry.

“How in the world is this my job?” I asked Paul as we pulled the hoses out of the barn. Jasmine was making the barn into some kind of winter wonderland location for a Christmas Eve event she was planning. Sledding, hot chocolate, skating, Santa Claus, carols, crafts.

I’d made the mistake of asking how it was different than what we did every year, and she’d said “Matt.” And now I was pissed off and somehow having to be the guy to flood the pond.

“I’m here,” Paul said. “And your father can’t do it.”