The Stocking Was Hung (17 page)

When I get to the reindeer in the front, the one with the same blinking red nose, I see a card attached to the nose with a green ribbon and I quickly untie it and rip it open.

“Oh, yeah! Now I remember! That was always the best part of Christmas Eve. Wow, I can’t believe he actually found the exact same sleigh and reindeer. I mean, I gave him the numbers to all of the places that sell decorations and would be open this morning, but it didn’t hit me until just now what he wanted it for,” Nicholas explains while I stare at the card in my hand and cry so hard that the tears don’t even have time to freeze on my cheeks.

Never let go of the magic, Noel. Merry Christmas.

Love, Sam

“Leon, are you okay, why are you crying?” my mom asks, rushing down the steps, most likely when she heard the sound of my pathetic wailing coming from the front yard as I read the note in my hands over and over until I want to now curl up in the snow and freeze to death.

I silently hand her the note when she gets next to me while I stare at the display in our front yard, kicking myself a hundred times for not telling him I love him.

“Well, you’re really in a pickle now, aren’t you?” my mom asks, handing the note back to me. “Why on earth did you bring that poor man here and make him pretend to be your boyfriend?”

“Um, have you MET you, Mom?” Nicholas asks with a laugh. “Could you imagine the shit-show we would’ve had to deal with if Leon came home and told everyone she lost her job, lost a place to live, and walked out on her boyfriend who proposed?”

“YOU LOST YOUR JOB?!” my mother screeches.

“See?! This is exactly why I brought a strange man home and made him pretend to be my boyfriend!” I yell back.

“Calm down, there’s no need to yell,” my mother huffs. “Do you want some pot, dear? It will mellow you out. We have very strong pot.”

I look at her in horror and she shakes her head at me. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Leon. Your father isn’t the only one with arthritis problems. Is it because you’ve never smoked the pot before? It’s okay, I’ll walk you through your first time. We have plenty of munchies on hand.”

“Mom, I live in Seattle. We can order pot from a menu and have it delivered like pizza,” I retort with a roll of my eyes.

“Wow, so
that’s
why you moved away and didn’t want to have anything to do with us,” she muses.

I immediately feel guilty. My heart is broken for real this time and now I’m swamped with guilt over what I did to Sam and for what I did to my family when I left.

“Mom, no. That’s not it at all,” I explain. “I just…I needed to have my own life. I needed to try and figure out who I am and what I wanted to do, and I just got lost along the way. I’m a screw-up. I can’t keep a job and no man will every want me because I’m such an idiot and was too much of a chicken to tell him how I feel.”

My mother wraps her arms around me and pulls me against her. “Oh, Leon, you aren’t a screw-up, and I’m sorry if we ever made you feel that way. I just worry about you. I worry about you not finding happiness. I just want you to be happy, sweetie.”

I sniffle into her shoulder. “Sam made me happy.”

She rubs my back and the tears start all over again. “I know he did. I could see it every time you two were together. I’m sorry he left without saying good-bye, but at least you know how he felt about you.”

I pull my head back and look at her in confusion.

She points to the sleigh and reindeer, highlighted with a spotlight behind me.

“He loves you, silly! I’ve never met a man who would go to such trouble just to make a woman happy. Maybe he didn’t come right out and say the words, but going by this action, I think he’s definitely head over heels in love with you.”

My mouth drops open and I pull back, lifting the crumpled card from Sam up between us to read it again.

“He
did
say the words,” I whisper.

Maybe not exactly, but he told me
Merry Christmas
. He said it for the first time and he did it in a note to me.

“He loves me,” I mutter, my lip quivering with more tears.

“Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Go get him!” my mom exclaims.

“I don’t know where he lives!” I screech frantically.

“I do!” Nicholas suddenly pipes up.

I’d forgotten all about him out here with us and when he shouts happily, I turn and glare at him.

“What do you mean you know where he lives? You’ve seen me crying all day long under the damn tree and you didn’t think to mention this before now?” I ask.

He shrugs, pulling a wadded up piece of paper out of his front pocket.

“He left this on the kitchen table for me. Send to tell you that you could send the ring back whenever you wanted and to make sure you knew it was no rush.”

I snatch the paper out of his hands and look at the address, written in a messy scrawl. I know the city he wrote down and it’s less than an hour away from here.

“I need to borrow your car! Oh, my God, I look like ass! I’ve been crying all day and I look like straight up asshole!” I yell like a maniac as I run toward the house.

Aunt Bobbie meets me in the doorway with two martinis in her hand, passing one to me when I get to the door. “Here, chug this. Nothing a few cucumbers under the eyes and some spackle won’t fix!”

Ten minutes and three
very
strong martini’s later, Aunt Bobbie turns my chair to face the mirror.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WHAT THE FUCK?!” I scream.

“Too much?” she asks innocently, staring over my shoulder at my reflection.

“I look like a hooker! And not even a high priced one at that,” I complain, turning my face from side to side to get a better look at myself.

Thick, bright blue eyeshadow covers my lids from eyelash to eyebrow, fake lashes hang off my lids like spider arms reaching out to attack someone and hot pink blush lines my cheeks, along with hot pink lipstick, lined with dark red liner.

“Oh, God, this is bad. This is really, really bad. I look like Tammy Fay Baker after a bender,” I complain.

“Okay, so the blue eyeshadow was a bit much,” Aunt Bobbie shrugs, grabbing her martini glass from the bathroom sink and taking a sip.

“Wow, you look like a cheap hooker,” Nicholas laughs from the doorway.

“Shut up!” I scream, jumping up from the chair I pulled into the bathroom and teetering to the side when the vodka I’ve consumed goes right to my head.

“I can’t drive like this,” I groan. “I can’t see him like this!”

“I don’t know, is Sam the type of guy who likes cheap hookers? He might appreciate your effort and it will make up for you being an asshole,” Nicholas informs me.

I hear the jangle of keys from the hallway and my mother pokes her head in the bathroom.

“Sweet mother of Swiss!” she exclaims when she sees my face. “Do you charge by the hour, sweetie?”

She laughs at her own joke and I shoot her a dirty look. At least I think it’s a dirty look. My face feels funny and tingly.

“Sorry, that’s the marijuana talking,” she apologizes, holding up the keys in her hand. “Who wants a ride to Sam’s house? We can stop and pick up Cheetos on the way!”

Nicholas snatches the keys from her hand. “You are definitely not driving, pot head.”

He moves into the bathroom and squeezes past Aunt Bobbie and I, grabbing a container of wipes from the back of the toilet and tossing them at me. My hands move in slow motion to catch it and it bounces around a few times before I finally get a hold of it.

“You can wash that shit off your face on the drive,” he informs me.

“These are Dad’s poop wipes,” I grumble. “He wipes his ass with these, I’m not using them on my face.”

Nicholas grabs my arm and drags me out of the bathroom and down the hall. “They don’t have shit on them, Leon. Quit your bitching and get in the car. Let’s go get your man.”

Sam

M
y house is
a shit hole.

Okay, fine. It’s not a shit hole, but it sucks. It’s too boring, too quiet, and too…blah. I’ve been sitting on my black leather couch, staring at the photo on my mantle since I got home, feeling like a dumbass and this empty house just makes it worse.

I should have bought a tree on the way home, maybe that would have helped. Something tells me the taxi I called to pick me up at Noel’s parent’s house wouldn’t have been too keen on stopping at a tree farm when he drove me home. He was pissed enough he had to work on Christmas and I don’t blame him.

Bringing my bottle of beer up to my mouth, I grimace when the warm liquid hits my tongue and set it back down on the coffee table in front of me. I’ve been nursing that same damn beer since I got here. I have no idea why I didn’t polish off the six pack as soon as I walked in the door. Maybe getting drunk would make me feel like less of an asshole.

Why the hell did I leave? Why didn’t I stay and at least tell Noel how I feel? I shouldn’t have scurried out of there and ran home like a kicked puppy with my tail between my legs.

Staring around the living room with the same tan-colored walls as when I bought the place five years ago, void of any pictures, and listening to the sound of complete silence used to be soothing. Now it just sucks dick. It’s too quiet in here. I want music, noise, laughter, arguing. I want Noel curled up on the couch next to me, smiling up at me.

I look up again at the framed photo on my mantle and shake my head. For a few days I was part of a family and now it’s gone because I’m a fool. A chicken-shit fool. I’m a God damn Marine. I’ve been to war, I’ve been shot at, I’ve lived in the worse conditions you could imagine for months at a time, and I couldn’t even tell a woman I loved her. Three simple words that just wouldn’t come out when they needed to.

There’s a small knock at my door and my heart starts to beat faster in my chest. I left my address in a note for Nicholas on the kitchen table before I left, stupidly thinking maybe Noel would see it and come here. As I walk across the living room to the front door, I realize it really was a stupid idea. She took the ring back from that schmuck. The ring that would have cost me three years’ worth of salary. Why the hell would she want me when she can have him, even if he is a dumb-shit?

The knock sounds again, louder this time and I pick up my pace, yelling at the closed door.

“I’m coming, I’m coming! Keep your pants on, Yoder. I’ll let you borrow my porn!”

I laugh at my own joke about my Amish neighbors and swing the door open without looking through the small window next to it, my mouth dropping open in shock.

“I’m not really in the market for any porn, but could I borrow a cup of sugar?”

Noel stands on my front porch, still wearing her Christmas pajamas from this morning, shivering as the snow falls gently around her. The glow from my porch light shines on her red-streaked face that looks like it was just recently scrubbed clean for some reason.

“Do you have a spider on your eyebrow?” I ask dumbly, still in shock that she’s standing here in front of me.

“Shit, God dammit,” she mutters, reaching up above her eye and feeling around blindly until she finds it, pulling the weird, black clump of whatever the fuck it is off of her face and tossing it to the ground. “It was a fake eyelash. Don’t ask.”

She shivers again and I curse at myself for making her stand out here in the cold.

“Do you want to come in?” I ask, holding the door open wider.

She quickly steps toward me, ducking down under my arm that holds the door open. I close it softly behind her and turn around, sticking my hands in my pockets before I do something dumb like grab her and pull her to me. I need to know why she’s here first. Maybe she just came to drop off the ring in person instead of mailing it to me. I won’t let myself have hope until I know for sure.

“Why are you here, Noel?” I question softly as I watch her look around my living room.

“Your place is nice,” she says, not answering my question. “You really
do
live in bumfuck nowhere. It took five passes to find your driveway.”

She laughs and I can see the nervousness written all over her as she bites her bottom lip and crosses her arms uncomfortably in front of her.

I keep my mouth closed and wait for her to continue.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry,” she whispers, taking a tentative step toward me.

“For what?” I ask, my hands clenching into fist in my pockets, dying to touch her, hold her, and kiss that bottom lip that she won’t stop biting.

“I should have told you the truth before now. I’m sorry you had to deal with that shit this morning. I’m sorry Logan showed up and ruined everything.”

I shrug, still refusing to let myself hope she’s going to say what I want more than anything for her to say.

“It’s fine. I mean, we knew it had to end eventually, right? So, are you guys back together now?”

It’s a dick move and I know it as soon as I see her face fall and her eyes well up with tears. My hands fly out of my pockets and I close the distance between us, pressing my palms against her cheeks and tilting her face up to mine.

“Why are you crying?” I ask.

She sniffles and takes a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. Her hands come up and rest on top of mine holding her face and she tilts her head to the side.