The "What If" Guy (14 page)

The toe of my skate collided with Henry’s, and we fell. I jerked forward, pushing him backward. Before either of us could right ourselves, we hit the ice with a thud, followed by a long skid to the edge of the pond.

“Oof.” He’d groaned when his butt hit the ice, sending his candy cane skittering several feet.

I’d landed on my knees between Henry’s legs, and had flopped forward like a ragdoll. A collective “ooh” resounded from the crowd, but I didn’t look up from whatever had softened my landing. I didn’t know much, but I knew enough to be grateful that I’d just sidestepped a concussion.

By landing face-first in Henry’s crotch. Hard.

There have been times in my life when I’ve wanted to disappear. When Cliff’s grandmother called me a hussy, spit at my feet, and kicked me out of her dingy basement? Yes. When my father wet his pants on Halloween? Yes, again. And now?

I begged for David Copperfield to work his magic.

I raised my head, scrambled out from between Henry’s legs, and rubbed the dent that Henry’s button-fly had left on my chin. “Are you okay?”

Henry didn’t respond. He curled into the fetal position on the ice. Several people in the crowd snickered, and my cheeks burned.

“Can I help you up?” I asked weakly.

Henry had closed his eyes tight. He shook his head.

“Did you injure Mr. Tobler again?” Elliott shouted, from the edge of the pond.

I opened my mouth to reply, but Henry spoke before I could. “No, I’m fine. We just—” He opened one of his eyes and looked at me pointedly. “Bumped toes.”

I touched his arm. “I am really sorry. My face hit your…”

Laughter rumbled in his chest. “I’m well aware of what your face hit.”

“I told you I couldn’t skate.” I rubbed my sore chin.

“You didn’t tell me you were lethal.”

“Now that we’ve established he’s okay,” Elliott said, “can you guys get up? They’re about to light the tree.”

I glanced up. The crowd was migrating toward the center of the park, where the mayor stood in a bright green blazer, holding the end of a long, orange extension cord.

“Oh, shoot. Go stand with the Judds. We’ll be there in a minute.”

Elliott jogged off with the crowd, leaving me to help Henry up. I stood carefully on my skates, then reached for his hands. “Let me help you. It’s the least I can do.”

He raised his hands to mine and gripped tightly. “You really pack a punch, you know that?”

“So I’ve been told.” I shuffled to the edge of the ice, and pulled him to his feet.

Henry grabbed me just as I started to lose balance again. We both dissolved into giggles. “You are seriously one of the clumsiest people I’ve ever met,” he whispered in my ear.

I righted myself. “That’s not very nice.”

“Let’s get these skates off of you before you impale someone.”

“Good idea.”

I looked over at the town’s Christmas tree as the mayor plugged in the lights. “Let the holiday season begin,” he exclaimed. The tree, a fifteen-foot evergreen covered in thousands of multicolored lights, illuminated beautifully. The townspeople cheered. I grinned when they began singing “Joy to the World.”

“You should do that more often,” Henry said in a low tone.

I shifted my gaze away from the tree. “What?”

“Smile.” We stood on the edge of the otherwise empty pond, and he put his arms around me. “You’re beautiful.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I melted in his embrace. “I, um, thanks.”

Kiss him. Kiss him,
my mind screamed. My stomach filled with thousands of manic butterflies. The nearby music faded into white noise, and an unfamiliar buzz of excitement filled my ears. I was in Henry’s arms.
Henry’s arms
. It was almost too much to bear.

Without a second thought, I tentatively brushed my lips against Henry’s. His lips and whiskers felt like silk surrounded by sandpaper, and the two sensations thrilled me. A shiver tickled my spine. I tilted my head to the side and sighed in complete bliss.

That was all the permission Henry needed. He flattened his palms against my back, pulling me tightly to him. His lips tasted like a candy cane.

The essence of Henry filled my senses and stirred my insides. His aroma was so richly familiar that it felt like a homecoming when he kissed me. I recognized the scent of books—old, hardback books with worn paper and broken spines. His apartment had been full of them when we’d been young. And something else, something I couldn’t quite place as he opened my mouth with his, making my skin tingle and my stomach clench with desire. Leather. Thick, worn leather that looks cracked to the eye, yet is soft and pliable to the touch. That’s what Henry smelled like—then, and now.

I draped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer. I didn’t want this kiss to end. I’d fantasized about it since I was twenty years old, and I was going to suck the very marrow out of the moment, engrave it into my mind.

We pulled apart. My eyes were bleary, as if I’d just awakened from a deep sleep. My lips were practically humming. Henry looked as if he felt the same.

“Autumn?” He looked at me, frozen in place.

“Mom. You missed it.”

Henry released me, and I turned. Elliott charged toward us, a trail of Judd kids close behind him. Holly approached us, too, looking clueless that that we’d been kissing. In fact, not one person dispersing from the tree-lighting ceremony appeared to have seen our little ceremony on the ice.

My gaze returned to Henry, and my stomach dropped. The wrinkle between his brows had reappeared, and he gazed at me with an emotion I couldn’t identify.

Distaste? Irritation? I gulped. Regret?

“I’ve got to run.” His voice sounded hoarse. He stepped off the ice, bent down and untied his skates.

“What? Why?” I scrambled to remain upright.

It took me a good couple of minutes to shimmy my way to the edge of the pond. By the time I’d stumbled to a log and taken off my skates, Henry was halfway across the park. He moved with a quick and decisive stride, hands shoved into his coat pockets, head down.

That hadn’t gone the way I’d planned at all.

Chapter Nine

“Merry Christmas, Grandpa.”

The joy in Elliott’s voice made my heart swell. I looked on as he presented my father with a gift. The Christmas morning sun peeked through the threadbare curtains, casting lines of white light across the living room floor where Elliott knelt. Dad had begrudgingly joined us at the crack of dawn to open presents. He’d settled in the recliner while Elliott plugged in the lights and I started the coffee.

My dad’s eyes widened. “You got me somethin’?”

“Well, yeah,” Elliott replied. “Mom did, too.”

My father appeared legitimately shocked. I wondered what he had done on all of the Christmas mornings while I was gone. Probably nothing. I wanted to hug him and tell him how sorry I was, but I refrained. We weren’t that kind of family.

Dad tore open the paper. “What’s this?”

Excitement lit Elliott’s smile. “I made a CD for you.”

Dad examined it. “What’s on it?”

“I played some of your songs on my cello.” Elliott’s voice resonated with pride. “Then I recorded it on my computer and burned it onto a CD for you. It’s a couple of the country songs I heard you playing in your car.” He shot me a nervous glance, then continued. “And the other day, you said that you really liked “The First Noel,” so I did that one, too. And then I did a couple of Willie Nelson songs, since everyone around here is sorta obsessed with him.”

El and I exchanged a look and waited while my dad absorbed it all. The coffee percolator gurgled. Elliott had worked hard on the CD, and his eyes were as big as Christmas ornaments as he sat there, drumming his fingers on his knees, while he waited for his grandfather to react.

Say something, Dad.
I willed him not to disappoint Elliott.

My father lifted his eyes to us.

My breath halted when I realized that they were moist.

“This is, uh…” He ran a cracked hand across his chin. “A hell of a present, kid.”

I grinned and excused myself to get some coffee while the two of them discussed Elliott’s mixture of songs. Elliott often referred to country music as
cow pie tunes
, yet was proud that he’d taught himself how to play them for his grandfather. What a kid.

I returned to the living room and handed my dad a cup of coffee.

“Well, then,” Dad grumbled, “I guess I should give you two your presents—those two. Down by the tree stand.”

“I told you not to get me anything,” I said.

“Oh, shut up,” he said. “Since when do I listen to you?”

Elliott unwrapped his gift, then held up a tweed newsboy cap. “Wow.”

He had a thing for hats, and his collection was growing out of control. He’d even started wearing them to school again, despite the teasing he received from other boys—though Tabitha thought he was positively dreamy.

“It used to be my dad’s.” My father smiled wistfully. “Your great-grandpa. It got eaten by some moths, so I had someone in town spruce it back up for you.”

Joy filled my heart as my dad showed Elliott where his father’s name was stitched into the tag. Since we’d been in Fairfield, Dad had acted put-out and annoyed with our presence. I’d assumed he wasn’t paying any attention to us, but he’d been taking mental notes the whole time.

“Open yours, Mom.” Elliott put the cap on over his curls and smiled.

I opened my gift, a small, watercolor painting of a wheat field and a barn, and a worn set of watercolor paints and brushes. The set was past its prime and pretty beat-up, but I recognized the good-quality brand.

I looked at my dad. “What’s this?”

He glanced away. “Nothin’ much. Just some old junk.”

“This is hardly junk.” I fingered the wooden brush box.

He coughed into his fist, then cleared his throat a few times. “Just thought you’d get more use out of them than me.”

“Hey. That was in the attic,” Elliott said.

“What were you doing in the attic?” Dad grumbled.

El shrugged. “I gotta do something to pass the time around here. There’s a whole box of those paintings up there. Some of them are pretty good, too.”

I narrowed my eyes at my dad. “Whose are they?”

He lifted his bony shoulders. “Mine.”

I did a double take. My father painted? No, no, wait—
my
father painted? The man who’d made fun of me for spending my afternoons doodling and painting, instead of trying out for basketball or the cheerleading squad? The man whose last words before I left for college were, “Stop wasting your time, kid”?

“Yours?” I blurted.

“I dabbled in painting when I was a teenager. It was the seventies,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“My old man didn’t like it. Used to tick him off when I painted.”

“I had no idea.”

“He was gonna kick me out if I didn’t quit. So I packed up all my paintin’ stuff. Didn’t think about it again ’til you came back.”

I wanted to shake him. I’d spent so many years feeling like a disappointment to my father. “All these years, I…you…”

“I was embarrassed,” he said.

I held up the painting. “You were embarrassed? This picture is nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yeah,” Elliott added, ripping open another gift. “It’s pretty good.”

“Naw, I was just messin’ around.” Dad’s leathery cheeks blushed a little.

“You should take it up again. We could work on it together.”

“No.” He held up a shaky hand. “Not me. But you should keep going. You,” he pointed at me, “you got talent. Can’t waste it.”

I grazed my fingers along the painting, feeling the grain of the paper. “This is a wonderful gift.” My voice wavered, and tears sprung up in my eyes. “Probably the best gift ever.” Reaching over, I squeezed my father’s skinny arm.

He nodded silently.

Elliott poked his head between our chairs. “Are we going to keep having this bonding moment, or are we gonna open some presents?”

I smiled and turned his cap backwards on his head.

Elliott opened his gifts, then we communed in the kitchen for homemade waffles. We sat, ate, and talked, just as a family should. Elliott dominated the conversation, rattling on about school and his new friends. My dad and I listened, asking questions or chuckling at Elliott’s sarcasm—enjoying each other’s company.

My father didn’t eat much. His stomach rumbled as Elliott and I stuffed ourselves silly, but his shakes subsided after he added a nip to his coffee from a brown bottle in the cupboard.

After breakfast, I stood at the sink, washing dishes and watching snow drifts form on the windowsill. Elliott lay on his bed reading a new book, and my father snored softly in his recliner.
It’s a Wonderful Life
played in the background. I sighed contentedly. Everything was so quiet and serene. So beautiful, covered in a blanket of snow.

“El?” I called softly. “I’m going to take these leftover waffles to a friend. Do you mind?”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m already on chapter three.”

I grinned, pulled on my yellow beret, then scooped the wrapped plate off the countertop.

Trudging to my car was tricky. The snow across the Palouse had piled up to nine inches, dense as quicksand. I drove carefully along the unplowed streets, my tires slipping into the ruts created by other cars. My wheels spun as I tried to force my way through a four-foot snowdrift toward the fire station and the tiny cream-colored house with red shutters that sat behind it.

I didn’t know what I was doing at Henry’s house. In fact, I didn’t even know if he was home. Had he gone to California for the holidays? Maybe he was visiting a friend. Maybe he’d gone on a date.

A date
?
It’s Christmas, for Pete’s sake
.

I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since the Christmas Festival. We’d developed a pattern—experiencing intense moments, then avoiding each other for weeks. I was due for another game of cat-and-mouse.

Actually, I just wanted to see Henry. I missed him.

I got out of my car. Balancing the plate of waffles, I lunged over the giant snow pile at the end of the short driveway. I didn’t see his truck, and my stomach dropped.