Christmas Eve
It’s cold when Dani steps out of the shower.
It’s even colder when Dani realizes that aside from the set of pajamas that Jamie unceremoniously threw through the open door last night with a humph, she has absolutely nothing to wear. And she’s not about to put that godforsaken wedding dress back on.
She had found a towel in the bathroom that was across the hall from the guest room. It was fluffy and it smelled like detergent and nothing like home and Dani found herself enjoying the reprieve. She showered, scalding her body and scrubbing it raw with a lavender bar of soap - trying to wash away the last fifteen years of lies and misery.
Her phone buzzes again on the nightstand when she gets out, for what feels like the fiftieth time that morning, and she commits herself to check it later. Later, there will be a time for that all later.
For now she’s standing in the middle of the room, with nothing but this fluffy, albeit scant, towel and no other choice but to hunt down the cranky house owner and beg her to please help [again].
So that’s how she found herself walking around a house she was seeing for the first time in daylight, on the north side of 8am, in nothing but a towel. She checked the kitchen and found only a stack of washed pots and a full spice rack. She wandered back out to the grand foyer and through to the other side.
The house was still, the air thick with emptiness. It was large and it felt unlived in. The walls felt dark and menacing. Dani could feel where happiness once was, but no longer existed.
She noted the paintings on the wall; one a beautiful landscape of what she guessed was the property. It was massive, vast and open and Dani felt comforted to know that it’s beauty lived just outside. There was a red barn and a silo, there was the house and there was what looked like a large shed or garage.
She moved along to the next, this one a photo, a young girl sitting on the lap of a man with silver hair and smiling up at him with a twinkle in her eye. They were wearing matching red sweaters and there was a large wreath behind them. The little girl had a messy mop of curls falling into her eyes and a look of wonder on her eyelashes. The mark above her eyebrow told Dani that this was a photo of Jamie, little and innocent, with a smile so bright it would light the way of anybody trapped in the dark.
It made Dani smile, seeing that sort of joy on the face of the girl who had only exclusively frowned in her presence [with an occasional sarcastic smirk].
And speaking of that frown,
“Can I help you?” The voice is loud and low and it startles Dani who backs up and around quickly, bumping into the hall table behind her. She balances herself; forgetting the towel that she had gripped in her hand as it falls to her waist.
“Fuck.” Dani mutters under her breath, and moves quickly to cover herself again.
Jamie looks more annoyed than amused, Dani observes when she finally rights herself and takes in the full appearance of the woman before her. She’s got tight black jeans, a plain black hoodie, and a pair of work boots on and Dani can’t help but assume that this is probably what Jamie wears every day. Her eyebrow is quirked upwards and her lips are hard set and stiff. Dani imagines this isn’t the first time Jamie [last name Taylor] has had a naked woman in her hallway.
Dani also imagines that those women were greeted a little kinder than Dani is right now.
“Whoops, that was awkward, wasn’t it?” Dani tries to cut the tension with a joke, any sort, even the worst kind.
“What are you doing?” Her voice is harsh and unforgiving and Dani wishes she has just put the wedding dress back on.
“I was hoping you might have some clothes I can borrow?” Dani looks from her hand gripping the towel back up to Jamie and then back down again; as if the inquiry should be obvious. But when Jamie says nothing, doesn’t even appear to register the question, Dani does what she always reminded herself to quit doing in silent pauses - she keeps talking. “Unless you rather I stay in a towel.”
And it doesn’t come out the way Dani wants it to, not at all, and,
“That’s not to say that you want me naked, that’s--that’s now what-- I just--I don’t know what you want when you’re naked. I mean, you might not like naked women. I don’t -- how would I, um, I--”
But Jamie’s lips are pulling up, even if only slightly, and Dani thinks that maybe amusement is starting to replace annoyance, and she thinks that if it only takes her feeling pretty stupid to make Jamie’s presence tolerable, then maybe that’s worth it. She thinks, but then it’s only a flash and Jamie’s face is hard again and she’s turning on her heel with a grumpy huff.
“I’ll bring you something,” is what Dani hears as she’s left standing alone in the long hallway and she grips onto the towel just a little tighter when she thinks about that smirk.
So that’s how Dani finds herself standing in the middle of the guest room, looking down at an oversized gray flannel shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants, wishing that threads could talk.
The clothes are a clue, she thinks, into the world of the mysterious stranger who acts like she is a hassle, yet willingingly brought her here. They are faded, like they have been in and out of the wash and wear for years. Their ends are frayed and wise. They are worn, like they have been curled up in, cried in, slept in. There’s paint stains on the cuff of the shirt sleeve. There’s a bleach stain on the collar. Dani wonders briefly how many women have ripped at the buttons of this shirt in an effort to free the skin beneath it. A flash of heat travels through her at the thought until she shakes her hair out from underneath and sets back out into the hall, paying no mind to the way her phone buzzes again and again against the grain of the table; a cacophony of questions she doesn’t yet have answers to.
She finds Jamie again - a few hours later, after exploring the inches of the home [which she’s now decided is a mansion] on her own accord - bent over the engine of her broken down car in a shed not far from the front door.
Bent over and…
She’s abandoned the hoodie for just a plain white t-shirt and, oh, Dani hadn’t noticed the trails of ink that cover this woman. Her biceps, ticking with strain as they reach further into the mechanical mess, are painted in black and gray images. They move with the way each part of her arm flexes and Dani studies the way curly hair falls out of a tightly tied bandana and into her eyes as the sweat drips down her neck into her chest and her arms and,
She feels like an intruder, suddenly.
This isn’t the first time Dani has noticed the way the female body moves. It’s not the first time that she’s found herself lost in the way a woman breathes and blinks and it’s absolutely not the first time she’s watched a bead of sweat move across firm and smooth skin and wished she could just reach out and wipe it away with the tip of her finger. It’s not the first time Dani has ached to taste and slide and touch and,
Dani clears her dry throat.
“It’s the engine.” Jamie states in a way that makes Dani feel like she’s been aware of her there the whole time. “I’ll need a few hours on it but it should be running just fine soon enough to get you back on your way.”
She looks up through her messy hair at the woman in her doorway. She pulls her arms back to her sides and Dani notices that oil is mixed in with the sweat and dirt that is slowly mixing itself in with the more permanent stains on muscled arms. Her face is locked in, waiting for a response, and when none comes she turns and moves further back into the garage.
Dani takes in everything around her. It’s a small space, smaller than matches the property, and it’s dirty but organized. There’s a large space heater warming the inside, a small counter littered with tools along the side, there’s spare tires stacked up in the back, and several shelves stacked with odds and ends that Dani can only assume are car parts lined up on the back wall.
There’s another vehicle tucked into the corner, covered in a white linen tarp. It catches Dani’s eye for a second and she has this urge to pull back the sheet and see what lies beneath but instead she just asks,
“Are you-- do you fix cars?” Dani calls out as her eyes absorb her surroundings, losing Jamie back behind her car and out of sight.
“I tinker.” Her voice is clipped and low and Dani hears one of the drawers open and the sound of metal clinking together.
“With cars? This looks like a lot for somebody who only tinkers.” Dani decides as she moves further into the garage, sliding her hand on top of the counter as she reaches it, taking up the dust that had settled long ago.
“I tinker with a lot of things. Cars are one of them.” Jamie’s voice is closer now, and Dani knows that if she were to turn around she would be greeted by the image of a woman who is making her think about a lot of the reasons she ran away from her wedding just last night.
So she doesn’t. Instead she notes all the newspaper clippings ripped out and taped to the wall. Her eyes scan them quickly, not taking in the words, as they move on to the next. Until they get to another photo - this of the same man as the portrait inside. He’s in this garage, sitting on a folded out chair and laughing with a cigar in his hand.
He seems kind, Dani can tell, jolly even. His eyes were wide and soft and she could practically hear his laugh through the still image. She wonders what happened to him.
“Is this your grandfather?” Dani’s voice is loud and curious as she turns around to find Jamie leaned back on the hood of her car and watching the blonde stranger rummage through her things. Dani bounces on her feet, nervous that she had been being studied.
“No.” The word is firm, final, as Jamie walks forward and past, close and brushing, and grabs the towel that sits on the table. Dani has to move back a bit at the proximity and studies the way Jamie’s eyes travel down just briefly, a twisted smile playing on her face. “Nice shirt.”
And then she’s gone.
This woman, Dani thinks, is a sharp pain in the ass.
It feels like an intrusion, the way Dani sits and watches Jamie work on the car. She’s lost track of time, it’s probably been a few hours, but it’s been hard to track with the way the clouds have boxed in the sun’s journey across the sky.
Jamie hasn’t said much, other than the occasional curse at the engine that won’t turn over, and stopped answering Dani’s litany of questions long ago.
How did you learn so much about cars?
Or;
What do your tattoos mean? Did they hurt?
Or;
Do you not speak to anybody or is it just me?
Dani didn’t ask that last one but it’s been rolling around in her head on constant replay. Dani wraps herself tighter in the warm flannel and ignores each time it comes with a scent that is so uniquely Jamie. Instead, she just watches her. She watches the way her hands, strong, expertly fidget with wires and knobs. She watches the way Jamie wipes at her brow with a dirty towel and she wonders how long she’s been out here on her own. Jamie seems comfortable with the silence.
Jamie is under the car. She jacked it up a few feet off the ground and wheeled herself under, only her legs and the tiniest part of her bare midsection peeking out from below. Dani can’t help how her eyes take in the toned skin there and can picture in her head the way Jamie’s face is contorting in frustration with each fuck or bastard she mumbles to herself.
It’s quiet now, save for the occasional howl of wind on the outside. Not a word has been said in some time and Dani broods over the tickling questions at the back of her mind. Like why she’s by herself on this giant property, why she’s alone on Christmas, why she seems to hate Dani’s presence with each passing moment. The quiet has moved from stifling to comfortable; just the clinging of metal on metal echoing in the background.
Which is why is startles Dani when she hears, quite loudly, “S’going to start snowing any minute.”
Dani looks around herself, ready to ask how Jamie could possibly know that, when the woman rolls out from underneath and back into the stuffy garage air.
“Feel the way the air just changed? Got all warm and then cold and then dull again?” Dani nods even though, no, she didn’t feel that. “Means it's about to start.”
And it did. Within minutes, the outside was blanketed in white and the heater inside the garage was no longer doing enough to keep Dani’s bones warm. She shivered in place and folded into herself while Jamie made her way over and around and through the room with a comfort and a confident step.
“You can go inside, I don’t need you to babysit me out here.” Jamie nods towards the house when she catches Dani vibrate underneath a few layers. “Going to be a while to see if I can get this thing warmed up again.” Jamie kicks at the idle tires and Dani is just about to turn and go back to the house when the power flickers, once, twice, and then goes out with a pop. Leaving the quiet, cold machine to freeze over and wane in the darkness.
The house was entirely still. The white noise from the electricity had been extinguished and nothing but the soft breaths of Jamie and Dani remained.
Dani sat on the oversized and cozy couch and listened as Jamie struck match after match to light a fire.
“Fuck.” Jamie cursed as the fourth attempt was unsuccessful. “Can’t get this bloody wood to take.”
Dani watches as her face contorts in frustration. Her forehead creases and Dani can see the way the dirt and the oil from the garage settles in between the lines. There’s an urge to wipe away the marks, to smooth the skin, but it’s fleeting and it’s soon replaced by aggravation when Jamie turns to her with a look as if to say this is somehow your fault.
“Is the wood wet?” She offers in consolation, realizing only too late - when Jamie scoffs and turns back to the fireplace - that maybe it was a dumb question to ask.
“You think I haven’t lit a fire before? Don’t know how to,” Jamie strains as she reaches back into the pit further and moves around the logs, “check the fucking wood to see if it’s wet?” It’s all under her breath but Dani hears it and she sighs. Jamie certainly isn’t warm and welcoming enough to this house liveable for the both of them tonight.
Christ.
Dani lets it go and curls into herself. She briefly considers retiring to the guest room until the power sparks back to life but it’s freezing in the manor walls and she can’t help but think if she’s going to freeze to death, she damn well won’t do it alone. And while this british biscuit may be a bit stale, she’s what Dani has for tonight.
The wood takes on the fifth strike of the match and soon she hears the way the wood begins to pop under the flame. She sits back and pulls the blanket tighter around her legs as Jamie lays down on the floor in front of the fireplace and takes a deep breath.
Dani studies her, the way her breath bounces in her chest and her lungs like a steady beat. She’s a mystery. Everything about her is a mystery. She’s cold and she’s short but she’s beautiful and Dani can see just a small bit in her that makes her want to press on.
She has the hoodie back on now and Dani is only slightly upset that she can’t watch the way the pictures on her skin move. Watch the way they contort and dance and tell a story; a story that Jamie definitely doesn’t want to tell on her own.
Dani thinks back to their day so far, the way Jamie’s words are always clipped and tired and she wonders what made them that way. She thinks about that photo in the garage or that portrait in the hall and she knows there’s light in this woman, somewhere buried down deep.
“Won’t be able to work on your car anymore until the power gets back on.”
The words startle her just a bit and it’s not because they are unexpected but because they aren’t and she can’t explain why that is.
“Oh, that’s-- that’s fine.”
“For you maybe.” But Jamie, Jamie is a different story. Her moods come in and out like the tide as it changes. For now Dani’s ready to give up, ready to give in and just let this one wash away in the water but then,
Jamie gives a look that’s, well, it’s not harsh or hard or cold but it’s sad. It’s lonely. It’s lonely and Dani feels like maybe she was here for a reason - some reason she didn’t quite know yet.
“Hey, it’s really okay. I’ve got nowhere to be.” She smiles softly to Jamie and Jamie seems to accept this for a moment before she waves off her hand into the air and turns her head on the ground to finally meet Dani’s eyes.
“It’s Christmas eve. Don’t you have a family or a fiance to get back to? A country club to toast with eggnog and--”
“I’ve got nowhere else to be.” And she didn’t. She really didn’t.
The sun was setting low into the trees when Dani finally went back to her room. The sound of her phone buzzing was absent from her ears, but the pull of it was harsh in her chest.
She was still in the oversized flannel and it had gone from ill-fitted to comfortable in just a few hours and the smell it carried, well, Dani wasn’t thinking about that.
She stepped in and glared at the entity on the end table that she knew she couldn’t avoid forever. She couldn’t ignore these people forever, these people who had always been her people and then suddenly were nobody. They suddenly were the people she left behind.
She can’t explain why she ran. Well, that’s not entirely true, she can explain it - she just wasn’t ready to yet. She wasn’t ready to face whatever it was that made her stand in that dressing room, turn on her heels, grab her keys and run.
That’s what she always felt like doing, every minute these last 15 years with Edmund; running. She was always just on the precipice of it, just always right about to flee and free herself and then something, some little voice, always told her wait, and it might get better. But then there she was, about to make something so… permanent, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t possibly stand to make herself wait for another night or another time to do this. She had to go, she had to run.
She should have left a note, she thinks she knows that now. But the thought of it never once crossed her mind. The thought of explaining herself never once occurred to her. She had been explaining herself far too long and now, now it was just time to be and act and run.
She picked it up, the buzzing object, and looked at it slowly. Read the names of the people who had called and called and texted and texted and she shuffled through them quickly, unable to stomach them all. She opened Eddie’s;
Danielle where are you?
Is this some sort of joke?
Why aren’t you answering your phone? Are you okay?
Danielle, I’m sorry - if you want to stay at the school, you can stay at the school but can you just come back here so that we can talk?
Why are you doing this?
And then her mothers;
Do you realize how much you’ve humiliated me?
Danielle, I have spent so much money on this!
You are wasting everyone’s time.
You are just so selfish, Eddie is beside himself
Dani exited out of her messages and sat heavily on the bed. She didn’t know how she would ever begin to clean up this mess she had made. Her heart ached, it truly did. It ached for the boy who she had always loved, loved in ways she could never explain to him for fear of knowing it would never be enough. It ached for letting her family down.
It was never what she wanted, she thought. It was never her intention to get to this place where she had lost herself and lost everyone’s belief in her. And even now, feeling free, she isn’t sure if the decision she so hastily made was right. She could have stayed and waited it out and she could have grinned and beared it. She could have, right?
She could have, she thinks. But she didn’t.
“You decent?” The knock and a muffled voice and she jolted back into here and now.
“Uh-- uh, yeah I am. Come in.” Dani turns the phone off, the battery draining and not even beginning to consider returning any messages, and decides to leave it all to another day.
The door creaks slowly as Jamie peaks her head in, taking in the woman before her. She fails to mention the tears in Dani’s eyes and for that Dani is grateful.
“I put together a plate of food.” She starts and then straightens as her feet align with the top part of her body as it leans into the room. “It’s not much but it’s something and you need to eat something.”
Dani’s stomach growls and it occurs to her that she hasn’t eaten since yesterday.
“I have wine too.”
And that, that she could use. That she could use a whole lot of. So she smiles back and she swallows down the lump in her throat and she says,
“I’ll be right there.”
The food was surprisingly good, all things considered. Jamie had thrown together a mix of cold cuts and cheese that had stayed chilled in the dark fridge and Dani laughed at how different this was from the feast she would be eating at home.
Christmas Eve had always been a spectacle with the O’Mara family. This year would have been over the top in celebration and spirit and wine and Dani does find herself longing for the familiarity of what the holiday brings as she sits in a dark room, lit only by a raging fire, with zero sign of the season around.
She sips at her drink and lets the way the alcohol warms her trickle down her throat and into her fingers and toes. It’s quiet still, but it feels comfortable now - with full stomachs and hearty wine. Jamie sits beside her, a step closer from the floor earlier, with a thick blanket wrapped around her thin frame.
Dani finds it easy to watch her. Her presence is calming, steady, though dark. Her eyes are mysterious and her lips are firm, set in a line. Her jaw is sharp, so sharp, and Dani briefly wonders if it would cut her if she just reached out and touched it.
“Like what you’re looking at then?” Jamie’s low voice interrupts her musings and Dani finds herself blushing into her glass as she brings her hand to her cheek and leans deeper into the cushion.
“Just wondering how somebody so young can already be so jaded by Christmas, is all. Hard to see you in the dark without trees and lights.” Dani smiles into herself when Jamie laughs it off, her head swinging back and her, oh,
Her throat is something Dani hadn’t quite yet studied.
“Awfully obsessed with a stranger's lack of merriment, are you?” Jamie’s eyes tick towards her, just a flash, before taking a sip of her drink with a quirk on her lip.
“I guess I just am insanely curious how somebody can live in this gorgeous country house, all alone, and not want to spruce it up. You know you might have more visitors.”
Dani watches the way Jamie hardens again and she immediately regrets her words. This beast, this beauty, wanting to be alone in her castle hadn’t quiet occurred to her - not until now.
“Maybe I like being alone. Maybe I don’t like unwelcome house guests traipsing about, demanding tinsel. Ever think of that?” Dani bristles at her words. Those beautifully smooth, rough and stinging words.
But Jamie’s face plays with just a small hint of teasing on it and Dani thinks that maybe she can needle back. She scoots in closer, too close she thinks just a second too late, when Jamie turns to her, full faced and skeptical, and her smirk turns into a wry smile with a raised eyebrow.
Dani bites her lip, “so maybe this is crazy,” she lingers on the word and watches as Jamie looks down, briefly, at the way her lips form the words and Dani tries not to let it settle inside her, “but I get the feeling that you don’t really want me here.”
Jamie laughs and nods her head and raises her glass as if to say cheers and Dani feels proud of herself for getting a genuine smile out of her.
Dani settles back again, further away, safer, against the back of the sofa and finishes her glass. “You know you didn’t have to pick me up and bring me back to your lair.”
“My lair, huh?” Jamie picks up the bottle and motions to Dani’s glass to refill it. “Just wanted me to leave you there screaming in the middle of the road with a dirty wedding dress on? Poppins, I may be a bit of a twat but that would just be evil.” Her brows furrow and Dani doesn’t want to focus on how the nickname settles low in her belly and twirls around.
Dani hides her face behind her now full glass and shakes her head, embarrassed at just how out of sorts she was the night before.
“You wanna tell me what that was all about then?” And something about Jamie’s question feels honest, like she wants to know the answer and not just out of morbid curiosity but out of something akin to care.
Dani weighs it for a moment before setting her glass down on the table, buying herself time.
“I was engaged.”
“You don’t fucking say.”
Dani raises a brow and motions with her hands up in a defensive stance in a way of saying I know, I know. Jamie sits back, gets herself comfortable and Dani continues,
“I was engaged. Well, I’m supposed to be married by now, I guess. The wedding was last night and I-- have you ever been somewhere and just realized, out of nowhere, that you needed to be somewhere else? I mean, literally anywhere else?”
Jamie nods and Dani nods and something about the light from the fire and the wine in her stomach just makes the words come easy.
“I just, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry him.” The fray on her sleeve is inviting and so Dani picks. She picks and picks at the thread and hopes it won’t unravel. “Ever since I was little, I knew Eddie. He was always just right there and he loved me so much. He really did. And I loved that he loved me. My mom barely loved me and my dad-- Eddie loved me. And I loved him in so many ways but it was never just… the right way, you know?”
Jamie’s eyes soften and Dani thinks that she may have unlocked a door inside this cold, closed off house.
“I thought something inside of me was broken. Every time he kissed me or showed me off, I thought I was broken and that maybe I just wasn’t meant to feel what all those books and movies tell you to feel. I thought, maybe I was lucky that this wonderful man could love this broken person. And who was I to walk away from that.”
“You’re not broken.” Jamie’s voice is so sure and Dani wants to believe her, believe this stranger who knows nothing about her but seems like she could.
“I think-- I think that maybe I just wasn’t with the right person.” Dani leans back forward for her glass and takes a big sip. “I think maybe I wasn’t with the right type of person.”
Her voice is heavy and she thinks she feels the way her eyes are getting wet and so instead she focuses on Jamie and her eyes and the way they are looking right at her when she so seriously says,
“Like you picked an elf when you really wanted Santa.”
And the moment feels so heavy, so loaded, but Dani laughs at the simplicity of it all when she just says “I think I want a Mrs. Claus instead.”
She expects a flinch, a bristle, or any sort of recognition really when she says it but Jamie just stays still. Rooted to her spot and her drink. Dani thinks briefly that maybe Jamie doesn’t totally get what she’s saying, doesn’t grasp the weight of those words and how when Dani says them they lift off and float into the air and get sucked away into the fire and she can finally breathe.
“I’ve never told anybody that.”
Jamie looks at her, strong and steady and her eyes are bright with the way the fire cracks and Dani feels the sparks. Feels them on her skin and in her air and on her lips. It feels electric, even with no power.
“I always thought Mrs. Claus was kind of hot.” Jamie holds up her glass and tilts her head and Dani feels, for the first time in maybe forever, that being heard and being understood were two different things.
And suddenly, it’s starting to feel like Christmas even in this dark, empty space.