Christmas Day
Dani has never been able to figure out tea, or coffee, or breakfast. She never really had a reason to, Eddie always made it for her. But there’s no more Eddie, there’s just Dani and Dani is an utter mess in the morning without caffeine.
Which is exactly why she’s staring at a mug and a pot and a tupperware full of grounds and trying to figure out exactly how to get a decent cup of coffee out of it.
She’s thankful that Jamie has a gas stove as she lights a match and places it to the burner, igniting the low flame with a gentle click, click, click. There’s still no power and the snow is still coming down and she thinks that maybe there’s a foot or two piled up on the ground.
It’s cold, freezing really, and Dani is thankful that in addition to another flannel button down, Jamie left her with the oversized hoodie she was wearing last night.
“Here, take this. It gets drafty down here at night.” Jamie pulled the black sweatshirt over her head and handed it to Dani as they parted ways in the foyer. Dani licked her bottom lip and tried not to look at the way the shirt under rode up her toned stomach as she separated the clothing from her body.
Dani looked down at the garment in her hand for a moment and she couldn’t describe the pull she felt to put the cotton to her nose and see if it smelled the same as the shirt she had been wearing all day.
“If it gets too cold,” Jamie looked around as if trying to figure out a solution to their predicament - the candlelight that littered the halls flashed and Dani studied her eyes. “Well, if it gets too cold, I’m upstairs. I have plenty more where that came from.” She nods to the sweater.
And suddenly, Dani is feeling warmer already.
She lifts the hood over her head and burrows her chin into the comfort she finds there - the soft cotton acting as a blinder to the cold air that whips around her face.
She fills the pot up with water and continues to stare at the loose coffee grounds in front of her, trying to figure out how one gets into the other and how they create coffee from that. And just as she’s about to scoop a spoonful of the ground beans into the lukewarm water, she feels more than hears or sees the way Jamie enters the room.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The tone isn’t so much accusatory as it is confused and Dani smiles at the way it almost sounds light.
“I-- uh--I thought maybe I-- wanted to make some coffee this morning.” Dani looks down at her hands and the pot and frowns at the fact that she has nothing to show for her good intentions. “But I can’t seem to figure out your system here.”
She looks up at the face in front of her, delicate in the way the morning sun bounces off her cheeks. Her eyes are green and blue and Dani can’t decide which she would rather them be. She thinks she likes the way they mix together.
Jamie is in her own flannel button down today and Dani tries not to focus on the way the sleeves are rolled up on her arm and the way the black ink bleeds out from under the edge and why it makes her body curl into itself. Jamie gets as close as the countertop and leans her body against it casually, calmly, confidently.
She smiles, though it’s a bit mocking. “Well, of course. Don’t mind me then. Can’t have an American without her coffee in the morning.” She bows her head into her chest before looking back up through her eyelashes and Dani feels something pull deep in her chest as Jamie takes a small step towards her.
“Just, uh, one thing.” The corner of her mouth pulls up and its devious. She takes another, and then another.
Dani holds her breath as her mysterious housemate slows to a stop directly in front of her. She loses it entirely when Jamie leans in close, her fingers wrapping around Dani’s that are gripped to the handle of the kettle. She thinks she feels lips ghosting the shell of her ear as the hood falls off the back of her head, Jamie’s nose nudging it out of the way. And then,
“This,” her fingers squeeze Dani’s as they lift the pot of her hand, “is a fucking tea kettle.”
It’s a good thirty seconds before Dani breathes again and realizes Jamie is pulling out some other sort of contraption from the cupboard.
Turns out, it was a coffee press and Dani was forever indebted to the people of France for inventing it as the cozy brown liquid ran through her veins and energized her for the day.
Jamie is watching her sip it as she takes in the morning, watching the snow fall onto the window outside. She’s thinking about how the snowflakes stick and melt and how their unique pattern etches itself into the water stains left behind. She thinks about how sometimes she feels like the water, but how she hopes she’s the snowflake.
“I’m going to guess you’ve seen snow before?” Jamie’s gruff accent cuts through the air and Dani looks over at her and nods.
“Yeah, I’m from, well, I guess not too far away from here.” She thinks about it for a moment, trying to count how long she was driving before her car sputtered and shot out. “Maybe like 3 hours south of here? Just a small little town.”
Jamie stirs her tea and then puts the spoon in her mouth, licking off the excess. Dani watches her mouth carefully. “Let me guess.” She points the spoon out at Dani and closes one eye. “You were headed to the North Pole to find your Mrs. Claus?” Dani laughs and Jamie nods her head as if confirming it. “Well, sorry, Poppins. All you got was a cranky elf.”
And Dani thinks she sees something flash quickly across Jamie’s eyes but she doesn’t dwell on it. She doesn’t dwell on how right that statement feels, she was in search of something. She just isn’t sure how to tell if she’s found it.
“I actually have no idea where I was headed.” And then it occurs to her suddenly, “I don’t even really know where I am now, actually?”
Jamie smiles and its so absurdly smooth when she says “where do you want to be?” in the same way that she asked her, that first night, what she wanted her name to be that Dani thinks maybe she has, maybe she found something she hadn’t been looking for at all.
“I want to be…” Dani taps on her chin in thought, watching how Jamie plays along with the fantasy of it all - eyes wide, blinking and waiting. “I want to be lost in a winter wonderland.”
“Ah well-- you’re in luck.” Jamie sits up straight and puts her foot [that Dani had only just realized was perched on the chair beside her] back onto the ground. She takes another sip of her tea. “I know how to get there.”
It’s silly really, the way this woman has brightened in just a short day. It’s silly really, the way Dani thinks it might matter more than it does. It’s silly really, the way she wants it to.
“Oh, is that so?” Dani thinks this might be flirting but she’s unsure. She’s never really done it before.
Jamie nods and her smile says that yeah, maybe this is flirting. “You want to see the property, then?” Dani smiles and it almost hurts the way her lips crack in the cold but then Jamie rolls her eyes and it all just pops.
Dani doesn’t know how she was expecting to see the property in the middle of a snowstorm but with both her arms wrapped around Jamie’s thin but strong frame on the back of an ATV as the wind lashes against her face was absolutely not it.
The property is far larger than she had imagined it being, far larger than the portrait on the wall had indicated. There wasn’t really much in particular that Jamie was showing her, she was mostly just bounding through piles of windswept snow and weaving in and out of the large oak and pines that they came across. Dani gripped tighter, just in case.
It was several minutes later before Jamie stopped abruptly, seemingly in the middle of a field, and Dani was forced to pry herself away. Jamie slunk away from the seat and landed harshly with two feet in the snow before turning out and away and Dani couldn’t wrap her mind around what exactly was happening.
There were trees lined up in front of them, dark and foreboding. The house was so far behind them that Dani couldn’t see it over the hills. They truly felt alone out there and Dani relished in finally being gone. Being far away from wedding planning and bossy mothers and crying kids and angry parents. She felt far away from the problems and closer to something else.
She looks over at Jamie. Jamie, whose jawline could slice through ice. Jamie, whose accent was thick and rough and bruised. Jamie, who puts on a tough attitude and is impossible to read but Dani finds herself wanting to learn her language. Jamie who was suddenly looking back at her with a sincere look on her face when she tilts her head to the side and asks,
“Do you feel lost yet?”
The question sends Dani into her thoughts, trying to pinpoint in there was a conversation before this that she couldn’t recall. But all she could focus on was the way the wind picked up Jamie’s musky perfume and whipped it in a circle around Dani’s head.
“I--I, I’m sorry, what?”
Jamie’s eyebrows raise. “Lost, do you feel lost?”
It felt personal and Dani wrapped her arms around herself tight. It didn’t feel like Jamie’s business to know, but yes, Dani did. She often did. Lost was the only place she ever really felt these days.
“I-- I mean, I wouldn’t say I feel lost as much as I--”
“Poppins.” Jamie states and her eyes pull together and Dani shakes the words out of her mouth. “Lost in the winter wonderland.”
Dani wants to curl up in the snow and freeze like a block of ice. She shakes her head. “Oh, I--”
“Come on, then.” Jamie hops back onto the seat of the four-wheeler and pats the space behind her. “I got another place to show you.”
It was a few more places, it turns out. Jamie showed her the creek that she used to catch minnows as a child in the summer. She showed her the garden that blooms ‘the most beautiful flowers’ in the spring. She showed her the trees that turn and change and shed their life every fall.
Jamie showed her everything that should mean something, probably do mean something, but she left out exactly what that something was. It only served to leave Dani more hungry to know about this casual and cautious stranger. Know how she ticked, what she craved, what she saw and what she wanted.
The sun is high above and the heat of it is reflecting off the white snow as it burns at Dani's rosy cheeks when Jamie pulls the four-wheeler up to the garage and turns it off. By now Dani had learned that the cut to a silent motor was her cue to disengage from the petite frame in front of her and dismount but she found herself lingering just a second longer each time.
“I just have to grab something.” Jamie turns back to Dani as she unlocks the side door, watching how she tottles nervously behind. “You can come in, get out of the wind.”
This beautiful stranger is a mystery, Dani thinks to herself, as she watches Jamie enter into the dark garage. She’s enigmatic and she’s brooding and she’s so reserved it almost makes Dani want to scream but instead, Dani just watches her. She’s like this impenetrable stone that Dani so badly wants to crack, just to see the gem inside.
Dani follows her into the garage and watches as she rummages through some boxes, taking the opportunity to look around the piles of old metal - looking for anything resembling a clue as to the secrecy of this woman. It’s peaceful in the dark room. Dani can feel the spirit of what lies inside - can feel how this space has filled itself with warm memories and soft secrets.
She walks back further, past her own broken down vehicle, and to the untouched space beside it. It’s there that she finds another, larger vehicle, covered gently with a dirty, white linen sheet. Dani itches to lift it up, see what it covers. See what stories it could tell.
“Is this--” Dani begins to ask, turning to find Jamie quietly standing behind her with her arms crossed and a curious look on her face. Curious but gentle, open.
“Can I?” Dani takes a corner of the sheet into her hand and starts to lift up. Jamie nods to the truck; giving permission. And it feels like a step towards something.
It’s beautiful, that’s Dani’s first thought. It’s dull and it’s rusted and it’s old and cold but it’s beautiful. It’s -
“A 1950 Chevy 3100.” Jamie wipes her hands on the sweater in front of her. Dani marvels at how she’s already covered in dirt, despite being in here for not even 10 minutes. It’s charming, really.
“It looks like--”
“The Christmas truck?” Jamie arches her eyebrows and there’s a knowing grin on her face.
“Do you always need to finish my sentences?” But it’s not said with any malice and Jamie just smiles as she walks towards it and runs her hand along the top.
“It was my dad’s. He used to fill the bed up with trees and park it in town during Christmas.” Her eyes are twinkling and Dani thinks this may be the most at ease Jamie has looked since her arrival. “He always used to say it was his duty to bring the holiday spirit to the non-believers. It was a silly tradition, I always got so embarrassed by it but-- well, when you’re young what doesn’t embarrass you?” She laughs and it’s light but haunted, Dani thinks. Remorseful almost.
A few things occur to Dani in that moment, in that haunted laugh, but she doesn’t voice them. She just watches as Jamie loses herself in memories.
“Anyway, it stopped working a few years after he passed and I’ve been trying to get it running again ever since.” Dani sees that her eyes have changed from bright to hollow and she knows there’s more here, more to this car and this story but Dani thinks that this is enough for now. She won’t push her.
“He sounds like a wonderful man.” Is all Dani says and it feels like it’s the right thing when Jamie turns back, leans on the side of the car and just looks. Just looks, hard eyed and lock-jawed and offering as much as she can with her gaze that she can’t offer with her voice.
“Was, yeah.” Her heel clicks on the dirt floor; once, twice. “Yeah he was. Was my best friend, really. Taught me everything he knew with cars and with life. Which wasn't a whole bunch.” She chuckles to herself like she had just remembered an old joke and then her face sets in a sad frown. “But the Christmas traditions, he took those with him when he died.”
Dani wants to step forward, just slightly, and place her hand on Jamie’s arm. Instead, she pinches her fingers together and smiles softly when she says “you could always try to make new ones.”
Jamie nods to herself, to Dani, but doesn’t say anything in return. Dani wonders if maybe she should take it back, if maybe it was too familiar and she was still too foreign but before she can, Jamie just pushes off the truck and says,
“Want to learn how to drive the clunker out there?”
Jamie is getting frustrated, that Dani can tell. “No, you have to hold back this little trigger while your leg kicks down on this.”
“I don’t understand why it has so many buttons.” Dani looks around and tries to remember all that Jamie had explained to her not five minutes earlier.
“There aren’t any buttons, Poppins. It’s a clutch and a kick start.” Jamie smiles and pulls the beanie on her head down below her brows and then fixes it back onto her forehead again.
“Why doesn’t it just have a key that turns over?” And it seems like a logical question to Dani and she’s waiting for a logical response when Jamie just stops and says,
“I-- because-- actually, I don’t know.” Dani is really starting to love that smile, that tiny hitch in her lip, that only comes when she’s been stumped. “Okay so, just, hold this down” Jamie puts her hand over Dani’s, the one resting on the clutch. ”And kick this leg-- down-- like that” Jamie pushes a firm hand down on the top of Dani’s thigh. It burns and it tingles and Dani holds in a sharp breath.
The bulky machine roars.
“See,” she reaches around with her right arm and pulls the throttle while the engine, and Dani’s entire body, hums to life. But Dani isn’t going to think about that, not now, not while she can help it so she just rolls her eyes and says,
“That just seems like a lot of unnecessary work to turn it on.”
But Dani can’t really find it all that deep in her to care when she sits down and Jamie holds onto her hips and leans forward into her ear and says in a husk that would rip the bark off the trees,
“Just fucking drive.”
It's dark again by the time they return to the house. They had eaten what they could find in the kitchen and Dani had opted for a shower - once again thankful for Jamie’s house and it’s gas propelled hot water heater.
Dani lights the few candles in the guest room and changes into the warm, dry pair of sweatpants that Jamie had handed her right outside the laundry room.
She thinks it might be time to face them, the people on the other end of the phone as she sets the candle down by the bed. But she thinks it’s too late when she picks it up and the blessed thing is dead. She tries not to focus on how it feels symbolic almost, that it died at some point while she was busy burying her head in the back of Jamie’s neck while she lost herself somewhere on the sprawling property.
The whole day she had lost herself, which is exactly what she had said she wanted to do. And while it was Christmas and there were no presents under a bright tree to unwrap, it felt like the greatest gift anybody had ever given her.
She thinks again, like she found herself doing most of the day, to Jamie and her crooked smile and her raspy drawl. She thinks to her bright eyes and her smooth demeanor and she finds herself aching to be looking at them now.
Because while Dani can’t quite put her finger on why, she feels like she knows this woman - despite not actually knowing anything about her at all. She finds familiarity and comfort in the way she speaks, in her smell, in her delicate touch. She finds a list of things in only two days that she had never once found in fifteen years with Eddie and she can’t linger on that for too long or else it would drive her mad.
Jamie hadn’t given her anything, not really, but she was starting to think she could. That she could give her a lot of things that she hadn’t let herself want. She thinks maybe it’s time to want. She thinks maybe it’s time to actually have.
And just while she’s thinking of her, as if on cue, she appears. A soft knock on the door and her head peaks in and she says, “I have something for you.” And then she’s gone again and Dani is left to follow her blindly.
And it should scare her how promising that feels. It should, but it doesn’t.
Jamie fiddles nervously in the center of the foyer when Dani catches up to her. She’s rocking back and forth on her heels as she stuffs her hands into the pocket of the sweatpants that sit low on her hips. Her head is bowed low and in candlelight, she’s stunning.
Dani looks around, waiting for Jamie to move, but content to watch the way her face works through whatever is playing through her mind. Dani can’t help but watch as Jamie bites down on her lip, can’t help but note how plump and full and pink those lips are. Can’t help but feel like if she could just reach out and run her thumb across them, she would feel how soft they were.
But then Jamie is looking up through her eyelashes and tilting her head towards the study and Dani thinks she would go wherever Jamie asked her to.
She doesn’t know what she expects when she walks into the room lit by a raging fire, but it’s definitely not what she sees.
“You--is that, did--” Dani whips back to look at Jamie and she’s confused, more than a little, but she also can’t think of any way to finish her sentence so she just looks.
Jamie for her part is unsure. Her normal confidence is gone and she’s leaning against the archway. She’s shy when she says, “everyone deserves a Christmas, right?”
Dani walks to it, holding out her hand to see that it’s real. “Where exactly did you get this from?”
Jamie pushes off the wall and makes her way towards Dani in the center of the room, her pace slow and confident to any outsider, but it feels new and timid to Dani. “I’dunno if you were just that enraptured by me earlier but if you recall, I have an entire property full of trees, Dani.”
It’s the way her name rasps out of this woman’s mouth… Dani reminds herself to breathe.
“You cut me down a tree?” She lets the bristles poke at her fingers and she thinks this might be the sweetest thing that anybody has done for her. She thinks Jamie’s stone may finally be cracking. But Jamie just waves her hand like it’s nothing and smiles when she says,
“It’s, like, three feet tall. It’s barely a sapling.”
Jamie is close now, closer than Dani realized, and she can feel the way the air around her has warmed as Jamie’s arm brushes against hers. It takes everything in her not to focus on the way her skin burns at the touch of Jamie’s fingers just so lightly on the back of her hand.
“Still. Nobody has ever cut me down a tree before.”
Dani forgets the tree, forgets it entirely almost, as she looks back from it to Jamie and finds herself being studied. She feels the air change, feels it charge, and she thinks about how Jamie’s cheek would feel under her palm if she were to reach up and cup it. She thinks it would be smooth; thinks it would be cool and soft and smooth. She thinks she could do it, thinks maybe Jamie would let her, too.
“Yeah, well, don’t get all that excited about it. There’s still no lights and if it gets much colder I’ll have to haul it up to my bedroom and burn it for warmth.” Jamie laughs and her eyes are teasing and light up but they don’t leave Dani’s even for a second. And Dani isn’t sure who does it first but one of them is leaning in.
“Jamie, I-- I don’t know what to say.”
There can’t be more than a few inches between them and Jamie’s stare is holding her in place like an anchor and everything around them is buzzing in a way that Dani always thought was just hyperbole.
“Don’t have to say anything. I just, I heard what you said today and you were right - it’s never too late to start new traditions.”
Dani closes her eyes and just lets herself feel Jamie in her space, feel the woman’s energy and how it’s wrapping around her like a hot coil and Dani thinks maybe she could. Maybe she could just lean in a little further and take her in completely and then, and then…
And then it’s cold again and, “I better get to bed.”
And Dani wants to stop her, wants to bring her back into her orbit but Jamie is already halfway out of the room when Dani even opens her eyes to realize she’s alone.
“Oh. Oh, yeah, okay.” She sputters out, trying to bring her heart back into her chest.
“Goodnight, Dani. Merry Christmas.”
But she’s gone and Dani can still feel the ghost of her lips and she decides, right then, that she won’t run this time. Not this time.