The 14 Days of Christmas

“It says nothing about you,” he said, pushing my escaped hair back from my face. “No decent man leaves a woman without an explanation.” He shifted so he was on his side opposite me. “You haven’t heard from him since?”

I shook my head. “Six years, and all I have to show for it is a bin bag of discarded belongings.”

“You still have his stuff?”

“The things he left behind,” I clarified.

He drew his eyebrows together. “You haven’t burned them or at least thrown them away?”

“Lemon says I need to get angry and do some ritual burning. But I’m not an angry person. I like life to be good. I want to be happy.”

Sebastian looked at me, his lips pressed together, his brow furrowed. “Being angry doesn’t have to make you an angry person. Anger can drive you forward, push you over the brow of whatever hill you’re climbing.”

I shrugged. That wasn’t how I was wired. “You use anger like that?”

“I try to. Try to use it as fuel rather than have it control me, like it did my father.” He shook his head. “His temper was legendary. He lost numerous jobs over it, not to mention friends and his wife.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He died a long time ago. I was twenty. At his funeral, I remember thinking that I wouldn’t let myself become him. I wouldn’t let my anger control me like it had done him. But I still have it in me. I’ve just learnt to use it to make me better. That’s the point, Celia. Don’t pretend it's not there—because it’s in all of us. Just direct it. Harness it. Use it. Setting fire to your arsehole-boyfriend’s clothes might just set you free.”

I laughed and cupped his face in my hand. “Thank you. Maybe I’ll hire you to do it for me.”

“So instead of getting angry and getting over him, you’ve decided that if this year’s Christmas is perfect, it will make up for how thoroughly awful last year was for you?”

“I suppose. I need proof that what happened is in my past. That Christmas isn’t a ruined holiday for me and I can look forward to good ones again going forward.”

“In reality though, you know that one bad Christmas doesn’t make them all bad, just like a broken-down car doesn’t neutralize an evening with good company and a blistering array of Christmas puns.”

I narrowed my eyes and tried not to smile. I knew he secretly loved my puns.

“So maybe it goes deeper than that,” he said. “Are you trying to trick yourself into believing that life will get better if you have a good Christmas?”

Was that what I was about? “It’s an anniversary of sorts. Not just of Carl leaving but of what I thought was going to be my future going up in flames. Before, I was certain of how the next five years were going to go. For the last year, I’ve not known what direction I’m headed. Maybe a great Christmas will allow me to break free of this limbo I’ve been living for the last twelve months and move forward.”

“You want the Christmas magic to show you your future,” he said, putting together all the pieces of what I’d confessed. Even if it sounded ridiculous, which I was afraid it might, Sebastian didn’t say so.

“Maybe.” I’d always loved Christmas, but my appreciation of the season had shifted into a new gear this year. Sebastian was right. I was hoping for a Christmas miracle.

“Even if it felt like you had your life with Carl planned out, you didn’t know for certain. You just thought you did. That certainty you had was just an illusion.”

My heart thunked in my ribcage as if I’d done an emergency stop and it wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. I sat up on the bed. I couldn’t think straight lying down. I’d never thought about it that way, but Sebastian was right—my future had never been mapped out like I’d thought. Maybe at some point, Carl thought we’d be married too, but something had changed in him. His future shifted. Mine had too. “Our futures are always shifting,” I said, almost to myself.

“Death and taxes are the only certain things in life, so Benjamin Franklin said.”

The way Sebastian said it seemed so matter-of-fact, but it felt to me that he’d just explained quantum mechanics in a way that actually made sense.

“I suppose.”

It was a Christmas miracle.

And Sebastian had made it happen.

Sebastian leapt to his feet. “Can I have your car keys? I need to get something.”

I was still too busy processing the implications of what he’d just said to ask him where he was going. “Sure, they’re on the dresser.”

“I’ll be two minutes.”

“Sebastian, your coat,” I called after him but it was too late. He was gone. Had I bored him?

I slumped back down on the pillow and texted Lemon. Do I drive men away?