This Christmas Read online

  Carrie’s heart was ready to burst by now. He was nervous! Of course he was nervous! All men were when they were about to get down on one knee. But now, she was certain. More certain than ever. And she’d been fairly certain all day.

  She took a seat and stared at him, wondering how she would suffer through an entire meal waiting for him to ask her to be his wife. Wife! Four long years had led up to this moment, four years of anxiety and worry that it would never happen. But it had. She was here. And he had a ring.

  He opened his menu, scanned it quickly, and closed it again.

  “You already know what you’re having?” She had hoped they would start with the bruschetta, although, if he planned to, say, pop the ring into a slice of tiramisu, maybe it would be better to skip an appetizer and get on with things.

  “The lasagna,” he said, reaching for his water. Was that…sweat dotting his brow?

  She hid her smile behind her menu. It was.

  “I believe the lasagna is what you ordered the last time we came here. Four years ago.” She smiled at him, but he just tipped his head in confusion. “This is where we came for our first date, don’t you remember?”

  He looked around the room, nodding as if suddenly remembering. “I thought it looked familiar.”

  Carrie took a sip of her wine. A long one. Yes, she had been the one to choose this place for tonight, but that was only because Lucas was always in meetings and it was easier for her to make the reservations, just as she always did.

  “That wine looks good. I’ll order a glass.” He flagged down the waitress.

  “Or a bottle?” It was, after all, a special occasion.

  “A glass is fine,” he said, placing the order.

  “Another for me as well,” she said, resisting the urge to frown. She perked herself up by reaching for the bread basket, and then, remembering that he could pop the question at any moment and she didn’t exactly want a cheek full of focaccia when she cried out her answer, she pulled her hand back.

  The wine came quickly and she held her glass up in toast. “To four years,” she said before he could take a sip from his glass.

  “Four years.” Lucas’s eyebrows shot up again at this and he took a long drink. When he came up for air, he seemed hesitant, as if he wanted to say something and didn’t know where to begin.

  She stiffened in panic. He wasn’t going to do it now, was he? Before they’d even placed their orders? She wasn’t ready! Well, she was ready. Technically she had been very ready for two years, maybe three, but all that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was that they were here. In their restaurant. And that they were about to commit to each other for the rest of their lives. Theirs was a relationship that could clearly endure the test of time.

  “I’m excited for the holiday party tomorrow,” she blurted. Her heart was racing, she wasn’t sure why she had just done that, and Lucas looked startled, his expression frozen.

  She smoothed the napkin in her lap and took another sip of her wine. Why rush such a blissful evening? They would want to look back on tonight and remember everything they had talked about, and ate. And the waitress would be interrupting them any moment to ask for their orders.

  No, best to wait. She’d waited a lifetime. What were a few more minutes?

  “About that.” Lucas sighed heavily as the waiter appeared at the table. He ordered the lasagna. She asked for the penne.

  No appetizer. No need to read into that.

  Lucas looked sheepish. “You don’t need to worry about coming this year. No one’s bringing any dates, really, and it’s just going to be a lot of shop talk. I’ll probably make an appearance and cut out early.”

  Carrie stared at him. “But I bought a dress! And we always go to the party together and have a nice time. And most of your coworkers are married.”

  “Not most,” Lucas said stiffly.

  Carrie did a mental tally. Most.

  “The thing is, Carrie, that I…I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

  She felt her chin dip and her eyes locked on him. “Do what?”

  “This.” He waved a hand across the middle of the table. “You and me. I think…I don’t think it’s been working out.”

  “What?” Carrie saw the waitress approach their table and then, with wide eyes, scamper off again. Carrie blinked, trying to process what she had just heard. “But…we’ve been together for four years.”

  “Four years is a long time,” Lucas said. He looked tired. “I’m ready for a change.”

  A change? Weren’t marriage, children, and a family a…change?

  “I don’t understand,” she said, as tears prickled the back of her eyes.

  “I can’t make you happy, Carrie,” Lucas said, shaking his head. “And I think you know that.”

  She stared at him as her chest thudded with the knowledge that a part of her had always feared this exact moment. Lucas didn’t want to move to the suburbs. Fine! She would stay in the city. Lucas didn’t care about things like Christmas or Valentine’s Day. She hadn’t even bothered with a tree this year! She loved dogs, but Lucas was allergic. She’d resigned herself for doing without one.

  But those were little things. Trivial, really. Being together. Having a life together. That was what mattered.

  “We have history. Four years.”

  He nodded. His mouth was set in a thin line. He didn’t say anything.

  Carrie knew she should exit this conversation now, and gracefully. She wasn’t going to convince him of all the things they’d argued about in the past, sticking points that had made people in her circle ask her if she was sure he was worth it. But he was. Because she knew he would come around. He just needed time.

  And he’d bought the ring.

  “But…the ring.”

  He squinted. “What ring?”

  “The ring in your bedroom.” She didn’t care if he accused her of snooping. She wanted answers.

  He sighed, shaking his head. “That was for Dave,” he said. “He asked me to hold onto it for him.”

  Of course. She had never even considered that it could be for his brother—his younger brother—or that Dave might actually be willing to propose to his girlfriend after only one year of dating!

  The napkin was a ball in her lap, and she released it slowly, feeling the cramp in her fingers. He was never going to propose. Not now. Not tomorrow. The ring hadn’t been for her. It was never, ever going to happen.

  “You’re going to find everything you ever wanted,” Lucas said, forcing a smile. “Just…not with me.”

  “But Christmas—” She shook her head. She couldn’t even think about it. They’d been planning to go skiing next weekend “to get away from the hassle” as Lucas had phrased it. Lights and trees and holiday music weren’t his thing.

  “You have family. And you know I’ve never been big on Christmas. Surely you’d want to spend the holiday with your sisters?” Lucas’s tone was gentle, but it wasn’t reassuring, and she resented how easy this was for him.

  “In Winter Lake?” Carrie hadn’t been back to her Vermont hometown in three and a half years, and she didn’t like thinking of that visit any more than she liked thinking of the visits she had missed.

  Spending Christmas with her sisters had never been part of the plan. The plan had been to get engaged and spend the holidays imagining the rest of their lives together.

  So much for this being the best Christmas ever.

  Chapter Two

  Jules

  Julie Campbell was on her third cup of coffee of the morning, mostly because it gave her an excuse to keep walking off her nervous energy, even if it was just from her desk to the office kitchen and back again, when her phone beeped. She looked down at the screen and smiled her first real smile of the day.

  You’ve got this!

  She glanced at her boss’s door and quickly typed: I hope you’re right.

  Ye of little faith, came the reply. We’ll celebrate tonight.

  Jules didn’t r
eply to that. No sense in getting ahead of herself here. Still, the promise of drinks with Aaron at their favorite corner bar lifted her spirits and gave her something to focus on until she got up for another refill. Technically, her five-o’clock deadline should be keeping her busy, but she couldn’t keep her mind from wandering to the eleven-o’clock meeting with her boss.

  Ten forty-nine. Eleven minutes to go. Her stomach fluttered and she regretted not eating that bagel she’d bought for herself this morning at the food truck parked outside her office building, but she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to keep it down. Now, she was more afraid that she might faint.

  She pulled open her top drawer, where she kept a bag of pretzels, and then remembered that she had polished them off yesterday, in another nervous fit, when Lynn had first suggested today’s meeting.

  She closed the drawer. Checked the clock in the bottom right corner of the computer screen, just as it ticked off another minute. Ten minutes. Lynn was nothing if not prompt.

  She was also rather terrifying.

  Still, this was not a meeting to be feared. She’d had plenty of those in the past, after all; she knew the warning signs: demanding executives with tempers to match their egos, micro-managers who would never be satisfied and went through freelancers like ballpoint pens. She’d learned to jump ship before she was thrown overboard. Move on to the next gig—that was the beauty of freelance work. There were downsides, though. Enough of them to have finally prompted her to consider a—her stomach heaved—permanent position.

  This was going to be a good meeting, she reminded herself. The meeting where her employment at Creative Design was confirmed. She’d been freelancing with the firm for six months and, after careful consideration, decided that this was a long-term fit. Sure, Lynn wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but Jules had managed. While others avoided her, Jules played the game. (You didn’t have two older sisters and not learn a thing or two, after all.) Lynn was too busy for lunch? Jules was happy to fly and buy. Lynn was a stickler for deadlines? Jules had never missed one. (Others didn’t either, but still, Jules prided herself on her effort these past few months.) Lynn liked to talk for hours about her baby? Jules was happy to listen, or pretend to, at least.

  And now, all that was about to be rewarded. She’d go into the New Year as a permanent employee, with a health care plan and a savings plan. She felt like an adult. She felt giddy.

  Lynn’s door opened. Jules’s eyes flicked to the corner of her screen and noted the time. This was it. She stood up, smoothed her skirt, and smiled at Lynn, who lifted her chin by way of invitation.

  Lynn’s office was a windowless, soulless box in the loft space where the marketing firm was housed, but it was, nevertheless an office, a rare gem, distributed to only six individuals of the forty employees. Jules sat in one of the two grey visitor chairs, focusing on the framed photo of Lynn’s baby dressed up as a caterpillar for Halloween while Lynn closed the door. It was a cute baby, and just by the mere fact that Lynn had a baby at all meant that she couldn’t be all that bad. There was a soft side to her. It just wasn’t always revealed at the office.

  Still, Jules liked working here. She liked her coworkers, and she liked the work. She’d made a good friend in Callie who had the cubicle beside her, unlike some gigs she’d had, where there wasn’t a soul her age or she was sectioned off to some random underused conference room assigned for temp work, excluded from social opportunities. Here, she was one of the pack. There were Friday happy hours at the dive bar in the lobby. There were bagels every Monday morning.

  It was an easy commute from her apartment, and the salaries were generous. It was the right fit for her, perfect really, and she was only mildly anxious at the prospect of giving up her freedom, signing away the comfort she had in working for the freelance agency, knowing that if something didn’t work out, they could always find her another gig…eventually.

  It was the eventually part that had made her decide to go for the permanent position—that and the makeshift family she’d found in her office mates.

  Last time, after a three-month contract at a publicity firm was up, she’d been out of steady work for nearly two months, give or take two eight-hour temp shifts, which required answering phones, not writing copy. And she was terrible at answering phones; she always pressed the wrong button and disconnected the call instead of putting it through.

  “So, Julie,” Lynn said. She dragged out Jules’s given name in a lazy fashion, as if she were deliberating what she might say next. She took her seat, resting her hands on her desk. “I know we discussed the permanent position.”

  Jules pulled in a breath and nodded her head. “That’s right,” she said. She smiled. “I like working here. It’s been a really great six months.”

  “And we’ve enjoyed having you,” Lynn said. She hesitated.

  Jules had the uneasy feeling that there was a “but” coming on. She frowned, sensing a shift in the energy of the room.

  “But I’m afraid we’re not able to offer you a permanent position.”

  Jules felt her shoulders deflate. She was quiet for a long moment.

  “Oh.” She swallowed hard, hoping that the emotion wouldn’t creep into her voice, but her cheeks felt warm, damn it. “So we’ll just renew the contract then?”

  It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. After all, the freelance rate was better than an hourly breakdown as a permanent employee. Only, ever since she’d wrapped her head around being one of the team here, she couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

  “That’s just the thing,” Lynn said. “We only have room in the budget for one copywriter at this time. And we’ve decided to keep Ken on board.”

  Jules felt her eyes widen. Ken was another freelancer. He’d only been brought in a few weeks ago, when they got hit with a big campaign.

  “Have I done something wrong?” She felt childish asking this, desperate even, but she had to know; she couldn’t understand.

  Lynn shook her head. “There is only so much money in the budget, and Ken has more experience.”

  Jules swallowed hard. So even though she’d done her best, it hadn’t been enough. That was almost worse than knowing she had screwed up and was facing consequences. She’d tried. Given it her all. And now she was out.

  It felt like the story of her life. Only this time, she’d hoped for a better ending.

  Her eyes were burning but she couldn’t cry, not here. Not in front of Lynn. The woman had just fired her. She had known she would since last night. Planned it the entire time that Jules was preparing herself for the big news. She’d been so excited she’d almost jumped the gun and told her sister Carrie.

  She snorted to herself. Good thing her sister hasn’t bothered to pick up the phone or call her back. Normally it irked her that Carrie could be so distant. Now, she supposed she should be grateful.

  “I know you’re disappointed, and if we get busy and need to staff up, you’ll be the first person we call.”

  As a freelancer, Jules understood this to mean, like hell.

  “You can pack up now,” Lynn said. Despite her smile, her tone was firm. The last thing they needed was a temporary employee doing something crazy between now and five o’clock, right? “We’ll pay you through the day, of course.”

  Jules stood. For a moment, she didn’t quite know what to do, what was protocol. Lynn didn’t seem to know either, and finally, after a beat, she reached out her hand. Jules took it, fighting the urge to squeeze it really, really hard, just to show that she was in control here, that she wasn’t going to let this knock her down, that she had plenty of other opportunities, that she actually preferred to be a free agent.

  But that wasn’t true at all, was it?

  She hurried back to her desk and gathered up her belongings, wishing that she hadn’t chosen today to bring her small handbag to work. Her mind was spinning and she couldn’t think straight as she opened drawers and then closed them again.

  “You heading
to lunch?” asked one of the graphic designers, a guy they called Palmer, because it was his last name and his first name was William, the same as half the other guys in the office. Sometimes Jules and Palmer grabbed sushi across the street and chatted about his love life and her lack of one. He was a good guy. She looked forward to those sushi lunches. And now, there wouldn’t be another.

  “No.” Jules managed a tight smile. Her tone was breezy enough, even though her throat felt like it was closing up. She had to get out of there. Before she started crying. “My contract’s up.”

  “Ah, really?” Palmer looked so disappointed that Jules had to look away. They’d all go on, a big happy family. Soon, she’d be forgotten. Usually she didn’t mind that, coming and going, not leaving much mark. She was used to it. Preferred it up until now. Days like today were exactly the reason why it was better not to get too attached to a situation. Nothing was permanent. “The others are in a meeting. The tea campaign. They’ll be upset they didn’t get to say good-bye.”

  It was for the best, but Jules didn’t say that.

  “I’ll stop by sometime. We can all go for drinks.” It was a hollow promise, but it was the best she could do. She grabbed her cardigan, today’s lunch, which she now had no desire to eat, and stepped away from her cubicle. She’d never finished the assignment due today, but she assumed that would be Ken’s problem now.

  Her eyes narrowed as they shifted to his workspace, but he must have been in the meeting with the others. Part of the team.

  There was some hand lotion and a box of tissue that she didn’t have room for in her bag. She set them on her friend Callie’s desk, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before she received a text from her expressing her confusion and outrage. She’d see Callie again. But it wouldn’t be the same, and she was old enough to know that.

  She made it outside before the tears fell and looked down at her phone to see the blue light flashing in the corner. Of course. Aaron.

  How’d it go?

  She blinked at the screen, her heart twisting when she considered what she would tell him. He’d been so excited for her! And now she had to let him down.