Our First Christmas (29 page)

Our eighth date was at Josh's house.

I arrived and parked in front of his home at seven o'clock. I sat in the quiet of my car before I climbed the steps. I pictured him inside, warm and snug in one of his sweaters, his shoulders packed in, his jeans packed nice, all cowboy Montana-y.

Ah, Josh,
I thought.
I lost you once when I kicked you out of my life. I don't know if I can lose you again without falling apart, piece by piece.
That was not part of Plan NL, as in, new life.

I thought of our green farmhouse. If it wasn't for the house, I would not risk ten dates with this man and getting hurt again.

Or would I?

Was it still all about buying my great-grandparents' house back again?

Nah. It wasn't.

Truth can be hard.

I wondered if I'd show him my red bra. It had a nice push-up.

 

“This is Date Eight, Josh,” I told him, after he'd made me a steak, potato, and salad. We sat on his couch, in front of a blazing fire. I love a gas fireplace, but there's something about a crackling fire that warms the soul up.

“I know, honey. Come sit with me.” He lifted me onto his lap, quick as could be. I felt his warmth, his muscles, that smiling, oh so enticing mouth inches away. I felt myself go limp, which would have been mildly embarrassing, had I had a brain cell left in my head. I touch the man and I go limp? Ah, but that's how it was.

“What do you say to a kiss, Laurel?” he murmured.

He smelled yummy. Like spices, wine, and chocolates, and Josh, safe and snuggly. “I say that if I kiss you I'm gonna be lost.”

“Lost in a good way?” He cupped my face with his hand.

“Yes, in a good way and a bad way.”

He grinned. “I want to get lost with you in a good way, baby, not a bad way.”

I did not have time to reply, as his mouth came down firmly on mine. I linked an arm around his shoulders, my chest against his, and slid into . . . us. I slid into Josh and me.

All restraint and “what the heck am I doing” and worries . . . gone. All brain cells . . . gone.

Delicious passion takes the place of thought when I'm with Josh every . . . single . . . time.

 

My night with Josh and our delicious passion did not end well.

We went from kissing to stripping, in not too many seconds. I took off my pink silky shirt, then I took off his, as he chuckled, exactly as he had predicted. My red bra went flying, his hands went north, I unbuckled his belt, he tugged at my jeans. He picked me up and carried me across the room to his bedroom. We rolled on that huge bed of his, the headboard carved with a blue heron in full flight.

I reached for him, held him close and tight, his mouth only leaving mine to forge hot trails down my body, which was precisely why mine left his, too. I could hear my own panting, and his, my legs wrapped around his hips, all clothes off and out.

And then, in mid-arch, in mid-kiss, in mid-mind-blowing passion when I knew we were going to consummate all this in another blaze of crazy lust . . . I froze.

“Oh no, Josh, no.” I could not do this. What about tomorrow? The next day? After the holidays when I wasn't here? I couldn't walk away after making love to him. . . .

“What?” he panted, his lips hardly leaving mine.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to run, I wanted to make love to him. “No,” I choked out.

“What . . . why, honey?” His voice was tight, his mouth an inch from mine.

“Don't call me honey.” I felt my heart clench. His face, planes and angles and kindness and confusion, about killed me.

“Laurel—”

I pushed at his chest and he didn't move.

“What's wrong?”

“Everything is wrong with this.” I pushed again and he lifted up.

I saw him clench his jaw, breathing hard, like me. He bent his forehead to my chest, then looked me in the eye. “We'll wait. I'm sorry. It's too fast, I shouldn't have—”

“Josh, please, don't blame yourself. It's me. It's always been me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you get off before I grab you again and change my mind?” I was close to tears. Close to making a fool of myself. He got off and I grabbed a blanket he had folded at the end of the bed and wrapped it around myself. I don't know why I did that; he'd seen everything.

Josh flopped straight back on the bed, rubbed his hands over his face, and took a long breath in.

The whole scene made me sad and sick.

I went searching for my clothes. I grabbed my white negligee, which was over the back of a chair, searched for my pink silky blouse, which had somehow hooked onto the door handle to his back porch, picked up the rest of my clothes, and went to the bathroom and dressed.

I realized I did not have my red bra, but I was not going to look for it now. I'd grab it and go. I shook as I dressed, then ran my hands over my messy hair. When I opened the door to the bathroom, hoping to make a quick getaway so I could get to my car and cry my eyes out, he was standing in the kitchen, jeans only.

“What is it, Laurel?” He was serious, and sad, like me. “Tell me.”

I folded the blanket and hurried it back into his bedroom and put it on his bed. “I don't want to talk about it. Do you see my bra?”

“No, I don't.” His eyes were firmly on mine. “What's going on, Laurel?”

“Josh, I'm not . . . I'm not here to get . . . to get involved with you again.”

His face moved back, as if I'd slapped him. “Why not? Everything we had before, we still have.”

“No, we don't.” We have my memories and my damage and my abandonment issues and I don't even know where I'm going to live.

“We do. I don't know what happened here tonight. I don't know why you pulled back, but I'd like to know.” He walked over to me, stood too close. “I want us to start over.”

“Start over?”

“Yes. I've wanted to start over with you since I saw you the first day. I didn't tell you, because I knew you weren't ready to hear it. I'm not willing to play games here anymore. I don't need more of”—he waved his hand toward the bed—“this. We certainly don't need to make love now, you can have all the time you need, but I want you to know where I want to go from here and I need to know how you feel.”

Start over. With Josh. I couldn't. It had almost killed me to push him out of my life last time.

Maybe you wouldn't have to push him out again?
I asked myself.

No, I would. “I don't think so, Josh.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'm not staying here, in Montana. I'm leaving after Christmas.”

“Give us some time, Laurel.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“I can't.”

“Why? And don't tell me you don't want to talk about it. That's not working with me. Don't shut me out.”

“Josh, it's simple. We were together years ago. I'm here temporarily.” Maybe. “I'll leave and go back to LA. I don't fit in up here,” I don't think I fit in anywhere, “and I'm sure you don't want to live in Los Angeles.” I sure didn't.

“I would if I had to.”

“You would?” He would do that for me, for us?

“Yes. Is there someone else?” He didn't like that idea, I could tell. Not one furious bit.

“No. I'm leaving.” I turned. I would leave without my red bra. I snatched up my purse on the way out.

“Laurel, don't go. Please. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Don't do this again—”

I pulled on the door.

“Are you kidding me?” he said, his deep voice so ticked. “You're leaving, you're running
again,
you won't talk this out?”

“Yes, I'm leaving.” I yanked open the door, he pushed it shut. I turned around to yell at him, then saw the tears in his green eyes, frustration and sadness mixed. He had never been afraid to show emotion. He pulled me into his arms, kissed me hard, and gentle, possessive and loving, until both of us were breathing hard and I was blubbering.

“Damn it, Laurel, sweetheart. Stay. Please. Talk to me.”

“No. I'm not staying,” I sputtered out, wiping at my tears.

This time, when I opened the door, he didn't stop me, but those high-octane emotions followed me right out to the car. I could feel them, feel him.

“Drive careful, Laurel.”

Why did he have to say that? It brought on the waterworks. I had never been able to get that man out of my head and heart. He was stuck there. He always would be.

But I would leave Montana.

Wouldn't I?

Two days later, when my mother, aunt, and I had ten completed aprons for our new “Naughty Aprons for Naughty Women” line, I said to them both, “Get your cowgirl boots on, grab your cowgirl hat, and let's go outside.”

The snow shimmered. The red barn rose from piles of pure white. The fence posts were covered, icicles hung from the roofline, and the horses' breath created white puffs. We had ourselves a winter wonderland, perfect for, as my mother said, “a soft porn apron photo shoot.”

My mother and my aunt, The Apron Ladies, were naked beneath their colorful, but sexy, aprons.

“Shoot quick, honey,” my mother called out.

“Glad I have my cowgirl boots on,” my aunt said, “but every other part of me is getting frostbite. Including my ya ya. Here we go, Laurel. Snap away.”

The new aprons we sewed were flat-out sexy, flirty, and fun. One had a red silky bib and a red lace skirt propped up by layers of white gauze. We called it, “Red Hot Mrs. Claus.” My mother modeled it with her black cowgirl boots and a Santa hat.

Another apron, with red and green hearts, had two holes where, when tied in back with a red velvet bow, a woman's bust would push through. This was called “The Bust Out Apron.”

A third apron had a pink heart for the bib with a black silky skirt. M
Y
ANSWER IS YES,
S
ANTA
, was embroidered on the bib.

I took tasteful photos. For example, I did not take a full frontal of my mother when she modeled the apron with her bust busting through. She held up two red apples, strategically placed.

My aunt modeled the lacy Rockin' Your Reindeer apron holding sprigs of mistletoe in front of her chest, the horses in the background.

My mother and aunt modeled the other aprons on hay bales. They lifted a cowgirl boot onto the back of a snowy fence post. They posed on their tractors. They leaned against the barn, their cowgirl hats pulled low. They sat on their horses, Trixie and Lee Lee, wearing only their “Seductive Elf” aprons and boots and hats.

I also took photos of them in their old-fashioned farmhouse kitchen, cooking. As with the outside shots, they held cookbooks, mixing bowls, and giant wooden spoons over key areas.

“What will the neighbors say?” my mother said, then she and her sister laughed until they howled. They couldn't care less what the neighbors said about them. Ever.

“How will we control the men now? They'll beat down our door,” my aunt said, wriggling her bottom in a black frothy apron we called “The Strip Tease.” “It's hard enough as it is!”

I downloaded all the photos and we chose our favorites. The photos showed my mother and aunt's curves and smiles, but they were classy, daring, sweet.

“We don't look perfect, but we're perfectly beautiful,” my mother said. “I'm glad to be alive, glad to have a body, glad to be a Montana woman.”

“A body is a gift, not something to self-criticize,” my aunt said. “And The Apron Ladies are delighted to be showing off their gifts.”

I studied the photos later. My mother and aunt were in their sixties. They weren't shy about posing; they weren't shy about their bodies. They were proud. Their strength, humor, and courage came shining through. I wiped my eyes. I loved my aunt and mother and their lust for life and living as they wanted to live.

I sent the photos to Josy, the web designer.

Josy called me fifteen minutes later, sniffling. “Your mom and aunt . . . the expressions on their faces . . . I love it, I love them, their house and barn and the horses and the beautiful aprons. I love their lives in Montana. Get ready for the orders, Laurel, they're going to come rolling on in.”

 

On Monday Josh called me. I did not call him back. My heart squeezed up tight, and I felt despair start to swirl. I should call him. I couldn't. I should. I didn't. There were so many things stuck in the middle between Josh and me and I couldn't seem to move them.

 

After our car accident, which I knew I had caused, and his stroke, which I also knew I had caused, I fell hard into a guilt-driven depression. All I felt was black around me. A total loss of hope. I couldn't see the light around my father's shaky right hand, the paralyzed left side of his body, his wheelchair, his helplessness.

The first five weeks were slow going for my father. There were many medical problems, many trips back to the hospital, some through the emergency room. We cried together. I wiped his tears and nose.

He could only grunt at first. He would wink to spell out words. One wink was an
A,
two a
B,
and so on.

When we were alone I said I was sorry a hundred times. He responded with love and kindness. When he could write again he wrote, in wobbly letters, “Not your fault. Mine. All mine.... Lousy father to you. Will be better father soon.... I love you, my Laurel. . . .”

I did not return to college. I moved into my father's house when he was in the hospital and in the rehabilitation center to help Chantrea and babysit the boys.

Wicked stepmother Chantrea, who was no longer wicked, was so grateful she broke down. Chantrea had to keep the restaurant going. They could not lose the restaurant, the income, and the health insurance they had through it.

I got the three boys off to school, visited my father at the hospital or rehab, then worked in the restaurant as a waitress for the lunch shift. I cleaned and cooked at home.

When my father came home from rehab in his wheelchair, I took care of him all day, and the boys after school. I took him to therapy, gave him his medicine, dressed him. Chantrea told me, repeatedly, that I was, “the best daughter. My good daughter. You”—she pointed to her heart—“you here forever. Heart daughter. Me and you.”

My mother helped, as did my aunt Emma, and Aunt Amy, all resentments and anger toward my father over their divorces long gone. Camellia and Violet helped, too, when they came home from college, both telling me they felt so guilty for still being in school.

I said, “You don't need to be here, I do. He saved my life.” I didn't tell them the truth, about the fight, the unforgivable things I said, how I'd distracted him from the road, I was so ashamed.

Josh came to see me often at my father's home. He helped with the boys. He brought me flowers and tried to interest me in
National Geographic
and other travel magazines.

I pulled my hand away from his. I pulled out of his embrace. I was cold. I hardly spoke. I could hardly look at him.

I had almost killed my father. He had saved my life. I would now save him. I would do everything for him. There was no room around my crushing guilt and debilitating remorse for Josh. I hated myself, and when you hate yourself you cannot be in a healthy relationship.

I finally told Josh not to come by again.

His eyes filled with tears. “Damn it, Laurel. What the hell is going on? I know you're upset about your dad, but I'm right here. I'm trying to help you.”

“You don't need to help. I can do it myself. I don't have time to be your girlfriend, Josh. I don't have the energy.”

“What do you mean, you don't have the energy? I'm coming to you. I'm trying to make things easier.”

“You're not making anything easier.”

He looked both stricken and frustrated. “Sorry, Laurel, I'm trying.”

“Quit trying.” I hated how mean I was to him, which told me, once again, that I was a hateful person who didn't deserve him. “I'm not going back to college because I'm going to stay here and take care of my dad.”

“Laurel”—he shook his head, stunned—“you have to go back to college.”

“Why? For you, Josh? So you can have me there to sleep with?” I cringed at my own words. I knew they weren't true.

He looked like I'd slapped him. “No, Laurel. Not so I can sleep with you. For
you.
For your education.” We argued and it became more and more heated until we were yelling at each other.

“Why do we have to break up because you're not going back to college this term, Laurel? Because you're going to be here? We can call, we can e-mail. I'm only two hours away. I'll come up.”

“No, we're breaking up now.” I was so filled with pain already, it was simply one more swipe to a battered, deadened heart.

“What? Why?”

“I don't think that you and I should be together anymore. Find someone else. Play basketball. Be in your rodeos. Start that Salmon Fly business you're always talking about. I can't be with you.”

Josh was moving on and moving up, like I'd always known he would. He was an excellent athlete and student. He was tough. He would end up with his engineering and business degrees and become someone.

I might very well never get to college, much less finish. I was a girl who had been so mean to her father she damn near killed him. I was young, devastated, emotional, and exhausted. I was in no shape to continue our relationship.

I didn't deserve him. I didn't deserve anything.

He argued with me, I argued back. He cried. I didn't.

Then I lied, because he kept arguing. “I don't love you anymore, Josh. I'm sorry. I've changed my mind.”

“You've changed your mind?”
His rolling anger covered his hurt, but I could see it. He lost color in his face, swore up a storm, we fought and yelled, then he left, his truck peeling out in the driveway.

I experienced such a profound feeling of loss that I lay down on my stomach, in the driveway, and cried.

Before he went back to college, he came over to my father's one more time. When I saw him I wanted to drop into hysteria and stay there. The boys were running around, and I was feeding oatmeal to my father, whose mouth was still frozen in that half smile. I was wearing a messy sweatshirt and saggy jeans. I didn't have makeup on, and my unwashed hair was held in a ponytail.

I was sleepless, as my father needed care during the night. I was pale. I was gaunt. Depression had landed like lead.

Josh was kind to the boys and my father. He looked like he'd lost weight, too. He looked miserable. I was shut down so hard from losing the man my father used to be and from losing Josh that I could hardly breathe.

He hugged me and said good-bye. I left my arms at my sides, unresponsive. “Can we be friends, Laurel?”

Friends? With Josh? That would never work. “No.”

“E-mail me, Laurel, or call. Or visit. We need to talk.”

I nodded.

“You're not going to call or e-mail or let me visit, are you?”

I shook my head.

“We're not going to talk, are we?”

I shook my head again.

He swore, said, “I can't believe this,” and then, “If you change your mind, Laurel . . . I'm here. Anytime.” He kissed me, on my lips, hugged me tight, one of his tears hitting my cheek, then turned on his cowboy boots and left in his truck.

He was headed back to college, off to a life I used to share with him. A life where I went to his basketball games and we met for meals in the cafeteria and walked around campus, hand in hand, and snuck into the library late at night and made love between the stacks of books. We also made love in his dorm room, in the locker room of the gym, and in the basement of the science building. We had friends together and English lit. A life.

It wasn't my life anymore.

I went back into my father's house, yanked up my jeans, and finished feeding my father his oatmeal through his crooked half smile. He patted my hand with his good hand, then wrote, “Go with Josh.”

I shook my head. “No, Dad. I'm here with you.”

“Go.”

“No.”

I wiped a tear from his cheek, then from my own.

 

On Wednesday Josh e-mailed, asking to meet for lunch. I lay down in front of our towering Christmas tree with the gold beads and red ribbons, hands over my face. James and Thomas lay on me, moaning, as Zelda the frightening cat had just scared them.

My despair over Josh kept swirling.

 

Our Naughty Aprons for Naughty Women grabbed the attention of our local news team and newspaper, then the state newspaper.

We arranged a date and time and the photographers and journalists all came out to the farmhouse. I told my aunt and mother that the local paper was not the place for them to make their “naked apron debut.”

My mother argued. “A woman's body is something to embrace, not hide.” She sewed a straight line down a silky black apron with a sassy skirt that would barely cover a nude bottom. The top half looked like something a stripper would wear.

I argued back. As I could not control them and their antics, or how they would look in the newspaper and online mostly naked, and those photos are forever nowadays, I tried to be convincing.

“But we're all about being proud of our age,” my aunt said. “And not letting men define what is beautiful.”

“We'll let you win this one,” my mother finally agreed. “Because the photographs they take won't be near as good as yours, honey. You know how to work the shadows so nicely, too.”

Oh, that I did.

When the reporters and photographers arrived, I stood back and let 'em go. My mother and aunt were hilarious in their flirty aprons, jeans, sweaters, and cowgirl boots and hats.

A few of the things they said on camera and to the newspaper reporters: “All naughty women need a naughty apron to get through the holidays.”

And, “Make cooking seductive and sweet, and remember, you're in charge of your kitchen and your bedroom.”