You Had Me At Christmas: A Holiday Anthology(86)

The word independence registered in his mind but not before his heart fell out of his body and landed at his feet with as much force as he imagined went over the falls in front of them at peak season.

His mind climbed around and over that word, trying to figure out why she would choose to live in a rented room, ride the bus, and work two jobs when she could be driving around the west with him, skiing at some of the best resorts in the world. “I’ll pay for your ski lessons,” he offered. “It’ll be fun.”

She leaned forward to rest her arms on the railing, then looked over her shoulder at him. “It’s not the ski lessons or the hotels or the meals. Or the fun. I don’t think you’re having fun.”

“I’m having fun with you.” He folded his arms on the railing, too, their skin barely touching. He needed to touch her, to know she was still next to him, at least for this moment.

“I guess.” She shook her head, her blond hair bouncing around her face. The hair that had caught his attention only a couple of days ago. The hair he might never see again.

“No,” she corrected herself. “I see that you are. But you’ve never stopped checking your phones, and it’s not like you’re not scrolling Facebook. You’re waiting for an e-mail saying you can be let back in to the project that you sold. And if that e-mail comes through, well, I’m sure you’ll do as you promised and get me to whatever city I want to be in, but you’ll drop this man-of-leisure act in a heartbeat and every minute more you have to spend fulfilling your promise to me will be time you resent.”

“That’s not . . .” He was going to say it wasn’t true, but it was. And he wasn’t a liar. “I won’t get an e-mail inviting me to work on the project.” His heart was already on the ground and admitting the truth felt like his heart was now being kicked over the rocks. By feet shod in cleats. “I applied for a job at the company that bought Terry. Curtis sent my application back to me with an e-mail that said, You’re making a fool of yourself.” He clenched his fists in frustration. “I don’t know what else to do besides keep driving around and skiing. I’m done with the project of my life.”

He felt hollow and full of holes. Anything that got poured into him was going to drain right out. A sieve. A waste.

“Your choices aren’t just get back on the project or be a man of leisure.” Her brows were crossed in confusion, wrinkles covering her forehead. “You can do something else.”

“Something else like you’re doing? Finding a waitressing job and going back to community college?” His anger burned through the holes littering his body as he said the words, and it didn’t feel good. Nothing about this conversation felt good.

It all felt wrong. As if he was being dumped when they weren’t even dating. Only it wasn’t like the other times he’d been dumped. Once, in college, he’d felt like a child being denied a toy. And then when he was working on his project, a woman had dumped him because she never saw him. She must have been right, too, because he didn’t remember missing her.

But Marc wanted to have fun with Selina. He wanted to explore with her and get to know her better, see those moments when she was relaxed and when her face puckered into the strangely hot irritation that made her lips purse.

They weren’t a couple, and all she was asking for was their original agreement, but he still felt as though he was being rejected because he was at odds with himself. As though there were some defect in him that made him unworthy.

It’s not because you’re lost. It’s because you’re not trying to find yourself.

All the code running through his mind suddenly finished processing and his brain flashed with a result. She’d said something about him that was both true and something he didn’t like, and he’d responded by throwing accusations at her.

Not a way to plead his case.

He was silent for moment, letting the noise of the falls wash over him and the icy winter water cool the ashes his anger had left behind.

“Maybe my plans don’t look like much to you,” she said. “Maybe it looks like I’m just replacing my Idaho life with a Utah one. But my goal was to get away from my stepfather and my small town, and I did that. I might even have a chance to live my own dream and work in a gallery, something I never could have done in Athol. And I won’t be dependent on you for everything I eat and every bed I sleep on. That’s as important as my dreams.”

Without his anger at himself now roaring through his ears, reason managed to sneak in. She had a dream and she had the chance to pursue it. Even if he could get in the way of that, he wouldn’t want to. One dream of his own life was done; he needed to find a new one. And she was right. He wasn’t even trying to find something. He’d given himself the winter of every skier’s fantasy, and he was going to blow it because he’d decided he couldn’t be happy without Terry to work on.

He had to at least try for something more. He had to make use of his winter hiatus to step away from Terry and see what he wanted to do next, figure out who he was without Terry to work on or Curtis to work with. And he couldn’t hang around Selina, using her as a crutch to distract him from the fact that he was treading water just as much as she had been.

That realization hurt, though not nearly as much as the knowledge that he might not see Selina again. That realization burned.