She hated herself enough for all of them.
Chapter Seven
The previous night had been fun with her parents and Deckard. Unlike most events with her family, January didn’t feel overshadowed by her siblings and their amazing achievements. Not even her parent’s grilling Deckard about his life and job made January feel any less significant. Of course, how could anyone fault a man that was a doctor and looked as dreamy as Deckard did?
Her mother was smitten with him after he explained how he was helping his grandparents during the solstice season at their shop. Her dad fell for the man when Deckard offered to help remove a fallen tree from her parent’s backyard. As if she hadn’t already felt like she was falling head over heels for him, her parents had to approve of him too. It was only going to make it so much more difficult when he left on the twenty-fifth.
She had ushered both Deckard and her parents from her house after they finished the pizza, much to Deckard’s surprise. But she was struggling coming to terms with how she was feelin
g and what she knew was going to happen when he left. January needed space and time to think if she was willing to risk the hurt.
When she woke the following morning she texted Deckard and declined his invitation to spend the solstice celebration with him and his family. He continued to message her after the initial declination, but January was too embarrassed to answer. She ended up spending the morning in bed feeling sorry for herself.
Lying in bed reading a book seemed like a good way to keep her mind off her new boyfriend and how she was being a complete bitch to him at the moment, but of course, the book she was finishing up from a year ago was an epic romance that left her crying at the end of the story.
She had thought about taking a long bath, or wrapping herself in a layer of blankets and settling in a chair on her back porch watching the snow fall, but neither of those seemed appealing. She was depressed about the fact that she was falling in love with a man that was going to leave. Her heart set her up for failure. January thought that maybe there was something she could do to get him to stay, but there wasn’t much that she, or Pineville, could offer him.
This feeling was slaying her and she felt she had no say in how her future would turn out. But January knew better; she had changed her own future, she had changed it for everyone.
Lazily, she finally made her way from the bed to the couch where she snuggled under a heavy blanket and turned on a channel of sweet romance movies, determined not to leave that spot through the afternoon and evening.
So thoroughly engrossed in a scene playing on the screen she almost missed the knock on the door, but when the door opened without her assistance, January knew she had to reason to worry. There was only one person that would barge into her house unannounced – Samantha.
“Get up,” her friend declared as she ripped the blanket off January’s sweat suit-clad body.
Trying in vain to capture the blanket from Samantha, January shouted, “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get you out of your funk.”
“I’m not in a funk,” January huffed as she sat up on the couch and crossed her arms against her chest in defiance.
Her friend balled up the blanket and took a seat next to her. “Look, I get that you’re freaked out with how fast things are moving between you and Deckard -”
“How did you. . ?”
“He texted and said you bailed on him today. It wasn’t hard to figure out that a relationship, in general, scare you. And then the fact that he might not stay here in Pineville is just throwing your emotions out of whack.
“And to top it all off, your world has been completely flipped upside down. For us nothing has changed, but for you, nothing is the same.”
“How can I fix it?” January asked.
With a heavy sigh, her friend said, “You can’t. All you can do is move forward. Let’s celebrate the Christmas you remember, and then when it’s all over, you move on with your life as if nothing was amiss.”
“Keep moving forward.”
“That’s right; because the past is the past and we can’t change it. But we can look toward the future.”
“The past is the past,” January murmured to herself, mimicking Samantha’s wise words. She had spent so many years living with her hands grasping at the hurt of her childhood that she let the past mask the wonderful things of the present and future.
“Now, while I’m all for some movie nights at home, this is not one of those times. Go get showered and get dressed in something warm.”
With a grunt and a push, Samantha not so gracefully shoved January off the couch.
When she almost dropped to the floor, January shouted, “Hey!”
Ignoring her, Samantha made herself comfortable in January’s spot on the couch. “Go, you have ten minutes.”
“Why? Where are we going?” January asked as she made her way down the hallway, shuffling her sock covered feet the entire way.