“Cream or sugar?” she asked with her back turned to him as the sound of one of her barstools screeched along the hardwood floor. She scooped unhealthy mounds of sugar into her coffee, and after grabbing the creamer from her fridge within arm’s reach, she poured a decent amount into her cup. She liked her coffee sweet and light.
“Black is fine,” he replied.
January brought the other mug of coffee to her center island and handed it over to Deckard, but he wasn’t going to let her free so easily.
“Tell me why you hate Christmas,” he demanded, relenting his hold of her fingers on the mug handle.
“Don’t you need to work?”
“I have time.”
Under her breath, January murmured, “Of course you do.” She didn’t like to talk about why she hated Christmas. It was her burden and hers alone. And to most it would seem silly, but to her it had been a problem that followed her around from day one, and she couldn’t shake it.
“Would you believe me if I said it was because Christmas doesn’t know how to stay in its own holiday realm? Like, why can’t Christmas stay after Thanksgiving? I saw decorations before Halloween had even happened. I mean, what is that about?”
“While I don’t disagree with you, I’m not sure that’s why you hate Christmas.”
For some reason, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell this gorgeous stranger that helped her find a last-minute gift for her parents and had done nothing but irritate her with his Christmas cheer. He did something to her that made her want to spill all of her secrets, the ones she kept buried deep inside, particularly the one that January hadn’t even shared with her best friend, Samantha.
“I can see you thinking really hard over there,” Deckard pointed out as he took a hearty sip of his coffee. “If you don’t want to tell me now, maybe you can tell me over dinner tonight?”
“You’re relentless, aren’t you?”
Shrugging his broad shoulders beneath an olive-colored Henley, January failed to keep from rolling her eyes as he said, “I usually get what I want.”
“And you want me?” she asked, not waiting to hear his answer as she dumped her drink into the sink and set the mug down. Boyfriends were bad news for January. She couldn’t give them the attention they wanted, and most wanted it more than even she did. And with her distaste for the holidays, they usually found an excuse to stop coming around. So she stopped trying to date. There was no point. No one could love a Christmas grump, that’s what her last boyfriend had said.
Just thinking about how he had dumped her the day after Thanksgiving and quickly found himself engaged just before Christmas irritated her more than Deckard being in her kitchen asking ridiculous questions. Anger began to roll off of January in waves.
“You really want to know why I hate Christmas?” At his silence, she continued as she stepped around to the other side of the island, putting space between them. “No one knows my birthday is December 24.”
His eyes widened in shock at her confession, and she bit back a smug smile at Deckard’s reaction.
Stuttering, he began to ask, “But your name is. . .”
“Yep.” Completely irritated with the fact that she confessed something so personal, January turned her back on Deckard and moved toward her bedroom until her kitchen and Deckard were out of her sight. “You can see yourself out,” she shouted just before she slammed her bedroom door shut behind her.
It took January a full hour to calm down, dawdling like a toddler as she stood under the warm spray of the shower. She tried her damnedest to stop thinking about the man sitting in her kitchen, the complete stranger she just blurted one of her darkest secrets too.
And it wasn’t that the secret was all that deep and sinister, but none-the-less it was a secret that she kept buried deep inside. It affected her life daily, not just hating Christmas but falsifying so much of herself to blend in with her family.
Finally, her skin turned
into something resembling a wrinkled raisin and January forced herself to step free from the shower. She paused and took a deep breath, waiting to hear if any noise was coming from the kitchen, but locked in the bathroom she couldn’t hear much of anything, even with the exhaust fan turned off.
Slowly, January peered her head out around the bathroom door leading into her bedroom, and finding the room clear, she shuffled her towel-clad body over to her dresser. It took only a short time for her to tug on a pair of dark denim jeans and a loose cowl-neck sweater in a shade of bright red. Regardless of her feelings about Christmas, red was always one of her favorite colors, and as the sweater settled against her neck and shoulders, she couldn’t help but bring the material up to her face and cuddle the soft cashmere.
She spent a few more minutes zipping her brown boots up her calves and swiping the wand of mascara across her lashes, then she knew she had to face the music.
Quietly, January stepped out of her bedroom and stepped down the hall into the kitchen. Knowing she had zero reasons to feel the pang in her chest as she took in the clean mugs resting on a drying rack beside the empty seat or the package Deckard had brought with him placed in the center of her kitchen island, her breath escaped her lungs anyway. He had done what she had asked – he left.
With a few minutes to spare before January needed to head toward the office, she took the small box off the counter and swiped her finger under the delicate gold sticker holding the top in place.
The soft white tissue paper protecting the ornament easily moves aside as she dipped her hand inside to retrieve the gift. Locating the string first, January unhurriedly tugged it out of the box, revealing the golden star in all its glory. The light coming from the kitchen window reflected off the corners of the metal while spun from her finger.
As it made its way in a full circle, January noticed the engraving on the backside of the ornament. It was a beautiful quote about a star of wonder that January remembered from one of the many Christmas carols her mother loved to sing.
“He had to pick a perfect quote, didn’t he?” she asked herself aloud.