How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

This was stolen time. A stolen Christmas. I could keep it but I’d never get another one.

11

Sam

The dream came like it always did. Noah, my spotter, my pain in the ass, the mouthpiece who, when shit hit the fan, is the steadiest goddamn hand I’ve ever known. We’re lying flat on our stomachs in a gully so shallow it couldn’t even be called a depression. He isn’t wearing his ghillie suit, but a neon hat and gold chain necklace.

“What are you doing?” I ask, agitated, trying to keep my head down, my heart rate low. My voice nearly inaudible.

“You gotta loosen up,” Noah says, practically yelling. Practically standing on his head. “We’re fine.”

“Get down.”

“Sam. Whatever happened to your dad?”

“My dad?”

And then, in slow motion and from far away, I see the flash of a muzzle. “Get—”

And then Noah’s head is in pieces and there’s a burning pressure on my head and my skin….

“Sam!”

I jumped up, the dark cloying. Suffocating. I was cold and hot, and the worms were alive under my skin. A hand touched me in the dark and I smacked out at it. There was a muffled cry and a thump.

Stop. Breathe.

The dream vanished. Reality snapped back cold and hard.

“Oh, fuck, Sophie,” I said. There was thin sunlight coming in through the curtains, the room not as dark as I’d thought it was. Proof that my dreams were so powerful that I couldn’t see what was real and what was the misfiring of the chemicals in my brain. “Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” she said and turned on a lamp.

“I hit you.”

“My hand. I’m fine. How are you?” She got up on her knees, naked and bathed in golden light. She reached for me, her fingers touching my arm, and I wanted it to be okay. I wanted it to feel like it should, like it had.

But it was all wrong. What was good was now terrible and I flinched away. And her face—her beautiful face—fell. And her hands jerked back and the room was suddenly cold.

“I’m…” A mess. Broken. Sorry. So fucking sorry.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She smiled as best she could and got off the bed. She grabbed the robe over a chair in the corner and pulled it over her body. Then she stood there, near the chair, pulling the tie around her waist tighter. “I’m going…” Away. Just away. She didn’t say it, but that’s what I heard.

“Okay.”

And she was out that door so fast, and without the tension of her there I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands.

Sophie

I went to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen to make coffee, because that was what I did every morning. I did it to keep my hands busy and to stall. I was stalling.

Stalling to figure out what to say.

How to say it.

Your mom told me…

Are you okay?

Can I help?

I want to help.

I love you so much. So much.

Sam came out, wearing the T-shirt he’d never taken off. His boxers. He didn’t smile at me, just walked over to the beige heap of his coveralls and picked them up like he was going to pull them on.

“You’re leaving,” I said, sounding breathless and sad and I hated it.

“Yeah. Mom—”

“Right.”

“Are you okay?”

“You didn’t hit me.” My wrist stung where his wrist bashed into mine. But he hadn’t hit me. Not like he thought.

“It’s the nightmares,” he said, shaking his head. “They’re…”

I waited to see how he could finish that sentence, how much he would tell me. How far he would let me in. It was crazy to me how deep we’d gotten with each other in the dark of my bed and on the kitchen island. But here, now, talking about what was wrong with him, what had happened, he gave me nothing. We were strangers.

It was like I’d given up our friendship when we became…whatever we were right now. Like we could be friends or we could be pseudo lovers but there was nothing in between.

Unless I fought for it.

“New?” I supplied, and he nodded, looking down at his feet. “Insomnia, too.”

He looked up at me, his eyes sharp, and I nearly flinched. “Your mom…mentioned it. PTSD.”

He started pulling on the coveralls, yanking them up his legs like they’d done something to upset him when I knew it was me that had upset him.

“Don’t be mad at your mom.”

“I’m not.”

“Can you talk—”

He shook his head.

“Please don’t leave like this,” I whispered. “Even if we never…” I shook my head, swallowing the razor-sharp lump in my throat. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“We are, Sophie. We are friends.” His voice was saying goodbye, the way he looked at me—all of it was goodbye. He glanced down at the kitchen island, like the imprint of our bodies was etched there by fire. “And it was amazing, Sophie. It was.”