The Christmas Blanket

My chest was still tight, eyes bouncing back and forth between his when he cleared his throat and scraped the last of his eggs off the plate and onto his fork, shoveling it into his mouth. “What about you?” he asked. His eyes flicked to mine, but then he shrugged, as if he didn’t really care, even though he was asking. “Been seeing the world like you wanted to?”

I smiled. “Some of it, yeah.”

He took a sip of his coffee, running his thumb over the handle for a moment. “What’s it like?”

My rib cage squeezed painfully around my lungs. I hated the way that question sounded so defeated when it came from his lips, the way he couldn’t even look at me when he asked it.

“Weird. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Awful. Incredible.” I stared at my own hands. “It’s hard sometimes, being alone, traveling alone. I’ve had more than my fair share of breakdowns. But…” A smile found me then. “When I’d go on a hike and reach a stunning vantage point, or talk to someone from a different culture — even through a language barrier, or taste a food I’ve never tasted before, or hear a new type of music I’d never heard before…” I shook my head. “It’s like I can’t even remember the hard times it took to get there.”

My eyes found River’s, and he wore a subdued smile. “What’s been your favorite place so far?”

“Italy,” I answered quickly. “Hands down, Italy. The food, the wine, the people, the landscape… they have it all. There’s country, and beautiful coastal towns, and bustling cities.” I paused, rolling my lips together before I looked at him again. “Would you maybe want to see some pictures?”

River frowned, looking down at his coffee mug even though it was empty now.

I didn’t wait for an answer before I grabbed my phone off the bedside table where I’d plugged it in, pulling up my photos from Italy. I pulled my chair over next to River’s, showing him the first one.

“This was in Tuscany. I stayed on this gorgeous farm with a lovely family. They let me stay for free as long as I worked.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said as I swiped through the pictures, showing the Tuscan hills and cypress trees. “What did you do for them?”

“A little of everything, kind of like you,” I said, nudging him. “I’d cook, clean, pick grapes, shake olives off the trees when the season came. I’d do the shopping in town. Sometimes, I’d babysit.” I shrugged. “Whatever they asked of me.”

“I can see why it’s your favorite,” River said, swiping through. I noticed that he paused longer on the photos I was in rather than the ones I wasn’t. “You look happy.”

“I am,” I whispered.

River swallowed, handing the phone back to me.

“Want to see more?”

His frown was so severe, you would have thought I’d just asked him to make the choice between sticking a fork through his arm or his leg. But his eyes found mine, and he nodded — just once.

What was left of my coffee grew cold as I showed him album after album, picture after picture on my phone. I told him stories of the families I’d stayed with, the crews I’d worked with, the houses I’d watched over in exchange for a place to stay, the hostels that had creeped me out more than once, and even the time I slept in an open field in the south of France because of a transportation mishap.

I showed him pictures of castles and reefs, of skyscrapers and beaches, of hidden hiking trails and bustling bars.

And with each new story I told, I asked him for one of his own.

I wanted to know how he spent his free time, to which he answered with a multitude of things that surprised me. He’d fallen in love with reading, and fishing, and he’d even picked up skiing, though he said he was still figuring it out. He was trying to teach himself another language and had decided on Mandarin, mostly because everyone said it was one of the most difficult to learn.

And I wanted to know about our friends, the ones who weren’t on social media. He filled me in on how everyone around town was doing, the drama and the gossip — well, as much gossip as River would partake in, anyway.

It wasn’t a lot of talking, and sometimes we’d have long stretches of silence between us. But it felt good to talk at all, to ask questions and actually get responses.

To be asked questions in return.

At one point, I even called him on it. See? Isn’t this nice? To which I received nothing more than a wry smile before he turned the attention back to one of my stories.

“And how are your mom and dad?” I asked after maybe an hour had passed.