The Kiss: An Anthology About Love and Other Close Encounters(7)

“Okay,” she said to herself. “Let’s just get home safely." A car passed with its brights on. “Thanks! No problem. I didn’t need to see, anyway.” She tightened her grip on the wheel. “Sheesh, Mac, if you’re going to be one of those single ladies who talk to themselves, you should at least get a cat so it’ll look like you’re talking to someone.”

Pulling off the highway, she headed down the winding road to her home. Snow weighed down the branches of evergreen trees. Mac had to remind herself that such beauty could also be deadly. She had stood on her deck on such nights and looked into the woods when the cracking of ice-covered limbs cut through the stillness.

“Mind the road,” she told herself as a tire caught a slick spot. Plows had not been through yet, and the snow was well over four inches and still falling.

Mac wondered how long ago it had started. The weather was always worse at her house than at her sister’s. She regretted leaving Cam’s before she remembered why she had made the decision. Cam had cornered her in the kitchen.

“Is that fictional man you’re waiting for worth spending your life all alone?”

“I won’t be alone. I’ll have you.” Mac grinned.

Cam did not. “But you need your own life.”

Those were the words that had cut her. They had always been a team, named Cameron and Mackenzie after their mother’s Scottish ancestors. Love for their ancestral home had been passed down through the generations. Their great-grandfather told his children, and they in turn told theirs, that in each generation, one child would long for the homeland. Mac had always known she was the one, and Cam had always made fun of her for being born in the wrong place and time.





*


Mac had once made the mistake of leaving her book on a table when her sister came over. The cover showed a muscular hunk wearing nothing but a kilt and clutching a small-waisted woman while the wind blew his hair and left hers untouched.

With a derisive wave toward the book, Cam said, “Is that what you want for a husband?”

“Of course not!” Mac dismissed her with a smirk. “He can be wearing a shirt.”

Cam rolled her eyes and exhaled, but she also gave up. Score one for Mac.

Mac smiled at the memory but grew somber when she recalled what else Cam had said in the kitchen.

“You can’t live life alone.”

“And why not?” Mac asked.

“You’ll be lonely.”

“Not as lonely as I’d be if I married without love.”

Cam’s face showed no inkling of understanding.

Mac said, “I don’t know where to find it—or if I ever will. If I can’t, then I’ll live alone; if I can, then I’ll know it was meant to be.”

Cam shook her head. “It’s not like in the novels.”

For you. Mac bit back those words. “Maybe not. But I know what I want.”

“And what’s that?”

“I want someone whose arms feel like home.”

“And how will you ever know, when you won’t let a man within arm’s length?”





*


Mac’s eyes misted with tears. She feared her sister was right. Even so, she would rather live alone than with Martin—Barton. He was nice, but if she wanted to live with someone nice, she’d go back to college and get a roommate. She didn’t want a roommate; she wanted a soul mate. That was the part that made Cam smirk. Well, Cam could do what she wanted. She’d made the life that she wanted, and she was happy.

“And I’m doing what I want,” Mac said to herself. Going home to my empty house.

She drove past the old stone chamber, one of dozens scattered about Putnam County, NY. A person might drive by one without noticing. They blended into the landscape. Some were deep in the woods; others sat like lonely relics beside country roads. Some thought they were built by ancient Celts, but no one knew for sure.

Up ahead, moonlight gave the chamber a magical glow. Beside it, something moved. Deer?

“No, they’re too smart to be out in weather like this, unlike me.”

Her headlights lit up a man clad in a kilt and black doublet. He stepped onto the road and held his arms up to signal her to stop.

“What the hell?” Mac said.

She slammed her foot on the brake pedal and went into a skid that spun her. The car moved too fast and bounced too much for her to see which way to steer—not that steering would change anything. With a slam, she stopped, and the airbag deployed. She had run into the side of the mountain. That would have alarmed her if the acrid smell from the airbag had not overpowered her senses. She waved her hands, trying to clear the cloud of dust while “Sleigh Ride” played on the stereo and her horn blared from the impact. She turned the stereo off and leaned her head back against the headrest to steady her breathing and her pounding heart.

Through the steam rising out of her car, she spied a large tree that had fallen across the road. If the kilted man had not stepped into the road to stop her, she would have plowed head-on into the tree. Kilted man? Mac looked about. He was gone.

“Great. I’m hallucinating. That car horn is real, though.” She needed to get out of the car. She struggled to get the keys out of the ignition, but they wouldn’t budge. The car was still in drive but crunched into a boulder that jutted out into the road. After a struggle with the gearshift, she got it into park and pulled out her keys. Her horn didn’t stop. Dizzying frustration roiled within her. “I can’t think with that noise.”