“What brings you out here, Maple?” I ask, knowing it must be something important to have her come out all this way.
“I have something I wanted to ask you, actually,” she says, licking those pink lips of hers.
“Yeah?” I cock an eyebrow at her, running a hand over my thick beard, wondering what on God’s green Earth she’d have to ask me. The longer I stand there though, the more I get to thinking. Wondering about the last time she asked me a question. And how I’d answered. The no I gave her back in high school seems to echo around the valley.
“Can we talk inside?” I ask, not wanting to freeze my balls off.
“Yeah, sure, of course,” she says, dropping her keys in her purse.
Part of me wants to reach out and take her hand to make sure she doesn’t slip in this snow, but she clasps her hands together under her chin, and I don’t make a move, scared of breaking this spell.
I stomp my boots as I push open the door to my cabin. Sammy runs inside, curling up in front of the roaring fire. I let Maple pass and I follow her in, shutting the door behind us. Alone with her for the first time in a decade.
“Your place is really…” Her words trail off and we both look around the cabin. I don’t want to know what she thinks of this place.
A bachelor pad in every way. It’s just one room, but big enough for me and Sammy. We’ve got the fireplace, a table with one chair, a small kitchenette, a large-ass bed in the corner. Small couch. A stack of books. A basket of kindling. I know it’s not much. It’s modest, but mine. It makes me think about the house she lives in. The house she’s always lived in. Granny Charlene’s place up on the hill. Front and center on Jingle Bell Lane. Prettiest house in Snowy Valley and everyone knows it.
“Can I get you a drink?” I ask, needing something warm myself to distract me from the hot little thing in front of me.
“Sure,” she says. “That would be nice. I don’t drink coffee though,” she adds, just as I’m reaching for a box of Earl Grey tea bags.
“I know,” I say. “I remember.”
Her eyes open wider then, looking at me in surprise. She doesn’t know I’ve memorized every single detail about her that I’ve ever heard. She doesn’t know me. Not like I know her.
“I don’t know how you remembered something like that.”
There’s a pause, then the memories come flooding back. Afternoons in her granny’s kitchen, a warm house, cookies on a plate between Maple and me. I wish time could have stopped back then because those afternoons were the sweetest of my life.
“Your granny would always make you a cup of tea. It was the fanciest thing I ever heard. A first grader drinking tea out of a porcelain cup.”
“You wouldn’t drink the tea,” Maple says. “You always wanted a glass of milk.”
“Well, look at you,” I say, putting the kettle on. Not wanting to smile. Wanting to be stone-cold because being anything else means I might be in trouble. “Guess you still remember some things about me after all, don’t you?”
“Guess so.”
“Sorry, I don’t have fancy china,” I say, placing tea bags in two blue enamel mugs. The kettle whistles and I fill our cups, carrying them to the sofa, knowing there isn’t a second chair for her at the kitchen table.
She smiles graciously, the same way I’m sure she looks at each and every patron who stops at her soup kitchen for a warm meal every day. Everything about her is generous and poised like she could be a politician’s wife.
So, why exactly is she here right now with me?
With Sammy sleeping on her bed, and another human in my cabin, the place feels damn near cozy. I clear my throat, the thought scaring me. I live alone for a reason. I keep my world small for a purpose. No need to get all sentimental and start wishing to change that now.
“So, uh, what did you need?” I ask her, forcing myself to look at her, even though my heart pounds when I meet her eyes.
She bites her bottom lip, as if at a loss for words just like she did when she was a little girl.
It takes me a second, but I realize she’s blinking faster than a person generally blinks. A second to realize she’s blinking back tears.
“You okay?” I ask, frowning, hating the idea of her crying. I know she’s had a hell of a year, losing her granny. It’s been hard for everyone in town and this is her first Christmas without Grandma Charlene.
“I’m fine,” she says, swiping a finger under her eye. “Just, um, allergies.”