You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(128)

To last her. Because they were both leaving Dusk Falls.

And they were never coming back.

“Merry Christmas, Dean,” she whispered.

“Merry Christmas, Trina.”





Chapter Two





December 24, 2003

To: [email protected] From: [email protected] Hey Trina – I got your emails. Sorry I didn’t get back to you. It’s been a crazy year. College is good though. Hard. But fun. SO MANY PARTIES!! How about you? Stanford everything you wanted it to be? I hope so. Mom said you stopped by at Thanksgiving. Sorry, I wasn’t there. I’m staying at school for the holiday. Which is a little lonely, but better than being with Dad. Anyway. I’ll try to be better about writing you back. I miss you. And it’s Christmas Eve and I’m suddenly hungry for a yule log. Later – Dean.


December 24, 2005

7:13 PM

Trina squeezed into the party through a front door that could barely open.

“Sorry,” some guy said. He stepped out of the way of the door, but it still didn’t open too far.

The room was wall to wall with people. This was not the “little holiday thing” Dean had talked about in his email. She’d expected a dinner party. An open house kind of thing.

“Is this the right place?” Trevor asked. He squeezed in after her and they both stood against the closed door, sweltering in their winter coats and scarves. The cake box in her hand was suddenly ridiculous.

“Is this Dean’s apartment?” she asked a girl walking past with two blue plastic cups held up over her head so they wouldn’t get bumped and spilled.

“Yep,” the girl answered. She tossed back her blonde hair and jerked her chin toward the kitchen. “He’s at the keg.” And then she was gone. Swallowed up by the sea of people.

“Give me your coat,” Trevor said. “I’ll find a place to stash them.”

“I’ll… go say hi and get us some beers.”

They handed the box between them and shrugged off coats, all while elbowing people who didn’t seem to care.

“Lots of beers,” Trevor said, and kissed her on the cheek as she handed him her jacket. She loved Trevor, she did. He was capable and independent. He wasn’t intimidated by a room full of strangers. He even agreed to come to Laramie for a Christmas Eve party.

They were going to try and make it romantic. They had a hotel room in town. Dinner reservations for tomorrow. The deal was they could check their phones and emails three times a day. That was it. That was the deal.

He was perfect. Totally perfect.

Trina made her way through the throngs of people toward the kitchen. Convincing herself it was all the people, the wall of body heat that was making her hands sweat against the cake box.

But that didn’t really explain the butterflies in her stomach.

It had been years since she’d seen Dean, but they’d gotten better about emails. And when he’d emailed and told her about the party, he probably wasn’t expecting her to come. It was undoubtedly just one of those things people say: I’m throwing a Christmas Eve party for some people I work with and friends who aren’t going home. You should come.

She lived in Northern California, for crying out loud.

Stuck between the living room and the kitchen, behind some people who were moving the couch to make a better dance floor, she realized how stupid this was.

She’d travelled hundreds of miles, dragged her boyfriend and brought a freaking cake to some keg party thrown by a guy who probably didn’t even mean the invitation, all because Christmas Eve made her so crazy.

She turned and began to head back. She and Trevor could go back to the hotel by the highway— “Trina?”

The sound of her old friend’s voice made her smile. She turned back around and there he was, a head taller than everyone in the party.

“You came!” His smile did not indicate that she was not welcome, that she’d been stupid to drive. His smile told her this party just got better by her being there. No one—not ever—had looked so glad to see her. And it was shockingly intimate. She wasn’t used to seeing someone’s happiness brought on by her.

“I did!”

He didn’t have the same problem she did cutting through the crowd—people seemed to make way for him. And quite suddenly, he was there. Right in front of her.

“Awesome,” he said, and he leaned down a little and she got up on her tiptoes and they hugged. Hard. They never hugged, not even on graduation night when he got so drunk and wanted to egg his own house and she managed to stop him.

But they were hugging now. He had his arms around her back, lifting her up and into him. She was balancing the cake box behind his head. Totally unexpectedly, she was swept up by some kind of giddy nostalgia, a bright happiness to see him. She’d forgotten how big he was. Or maybe how small she was.

Because in his arms, she suddenly felt very tiny.

He smelled slightly of beer and sweat and deodorant and something that reminded her a little of elementary school. Or maybe that was just some kind of Pavlov’s response, since she’d gone to school with him every year from kindergarten to high school.

The music got cranked up, old Garth Brooks, and someone bumped into them and the hug was over, though Dean kept his hand on her elbow, pulling her and the cake box behind him into the kitchen.