THE DAY AFTER SCHOOL LETS OUT FOR winter break, I work an opening shift at True Brew with Kyle and then, when I get home, I get comfortable with my laptop so I can research scholarships that might help me attend the International Culinary Institute after all. While the ferocity of my initial anger has dulled, my craving for New York’s as strong as ever. Empty account or not, I’m not ready to give up.
The school itself offers a few options, and there are private scholarships, too, but the choices aren’t as plentiful as I’d hoped. Two thousand dollars here, five thousand there … discouraging. Tuition for the nine month Professional Pastry Arts program is close to thirty-five grand, and that doesn’t include housing and other living expenses. Still, I bookmark the money I might qualify for, to be more carefully considered this summer, after school’s out, after the leech baby’s born, after things at home have calmed down.
Hopefully.
While I’m poking around online, I hear Dad return from another morning at the office. Meredith requests his help with changing table assembly in the nursery, but apparently an unexpected errand comes up, because not ten minutes after they get started, he calls down the hall to my room, “Jillian, get your coat. We’re going out.”
We’re still not talking much, Dad and me, but there’s been no more yelling. It seems he’s let the whole drunk-at-Bunco thing go, aside from my ongoing grounding, and I’m done hurling accusations because, yeah, Meredith and the baby are important, and debt sucks, and who am I to dictate how my father spends money?
Hesitantly optimistic, I head down the hall to see where he needs to go, and find him standing by the front door in a pair of pressed jeans and a heavy jacket, holding his key ring.
“What’s up?” I ask, eyeing the beat-up boots he’s chosen, the ones he wears when he’s doing yard work.
“Marcy called. The Holdens don’t have a Christmas tree yet, and she’s worried about how they’ll get one.” He looks at the floor, giving his keys a restless jingle. “That was Bill’s job, of course, so…”
“So you offered to pick one up?”
He nods. “I thought you could help.”
“Sure,” I say, willing to do just about anything to improve the Holdens’ first Christmas since Bill’s stroke. “Let me grab some shoes.”
I meet him in the driveway a few minutes later, my feet in a pair of lined boots, my hands burrowed in the pockets of my fleece, feeling hopeful about this one-on-one time with my dad. It might be what we need to start correcting what’s gone awry.
As soon as I’m buckled up, he backs into the street. He’s shifting his Durango into drive when Marcy Holden comes flying out her front door, waving a hand in the air. Dad brakes as she hustles down the slope of her driveway and over to his window. He lowers it.
“Jake,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I can’t thank you enough for doing this. I’m sure the tree farm is the last place you feel like spending your afternoon.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Dad says, reaching through the window to squeeze her shoulder. “I’ve told you—don’t hesitate to ask anytime you need something.”
Marcy smiles. “In that case, I need something—in addition to the Christmas tree.”
“Anything.”
She hesitates. “Take Max with you?”
A deafening silence engulfs the Durango.
“Please?” Marcy says after a beat. “He’s been impossible. He’s always helped Bill with the tree, plus he’s been fighting with his girlfriend. He needs to get out of the house. Would you mind terribly if he tags along?”
Dad heaves a sigh, but I have a sinking feeling he’ll let Max join us. He’s known Marcy too long to deny such a desperate request, and besides, it’s not like she hasn’t helped him with me over the years. Still, I will my dad to decline.
He says, “Send him out.”
God. This is happening.… Dad, Max, and me, on a merry trip to the tree farm. I’ve half a mind to leap from the Durango, but preservation of my dad’s sanity and Max’s life sway me into staying put.
Marcy hurries into her house to retrieve Max, and then, sure enough, he’s ambling through the door in a sweatshirt, puffy vest, and knit cap.
“Max,” Dad says as he climbs into the backseat, a stiff greeting.
“Jake,” Max returns. Excruciating pause … “Hey, Jilly.”
An incredibly disturbing impulse to cry overtakes me, hearing him use my nickname smooth as melted chocolate. We haven’t spoken since that awful morning at True Brew, mostly because I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid him, even while Kyle rolls his eyes at what he calls my refusal to face reality. I blink, swallowing the sadness that’s ascending my throat.
What is wrong with me?
A dark cloud—literal and metaphorical—hovers over the Durango all the way to the tree farm. Dad leaves the radio off, probably so Max and I can stew in our failures as teenagers and human beings more effectively, and by the time we pull into the muddy parking lot, my nerves are overwrought. The cold air, scented like earth and sap, is a welcome alternative to the stifling tension of the Durango.
Before Meredith moved in and insisted we invest in an artificial tree (no fallen pine needles!), Dad and I bought a Christmas tree at this farm annually. It’s one with two options: pick the tree you like best and hack that sucker down, or pick the tree you like best and have a trained professional do the actual sawing. My dad favored option two—he’s not really a kneel-in-the-mud kind of guy—but it seems Max has other ideas. He’s secured a handsaw and a large cart for tree transporting before Dad’s tucked the ends of his scarf into his coat. He shakes his head in Max’s direction, as if initiative and a sense of adventure are synonymous with foolhardiness.
Max leads the way down packed-dirt lanes of firs and cedars and pines. His tree-shopping style is quiet and contemplative, and involves a lot of senseless branch poking and head tilting. Apparently, he has no need for outside opinions. After twenty minutes of perusing, Dad pulls his phone from his pocket, stepping around branches and wheel ruts while answering e-mails.
When Max has at last picked a tree—a colossal, beautifully symmetrical Douglas fir—his inner lumberjack emerges. He drops to his knees and begins to saw at the trunk, breaking a sweat and tossing me his hat halfway through. My dad couldn’t be less interested, though it looks like Max could use a little help holding the tree steady—surely Marcy had a reason for sending us all out here together. I’m tempted to volunteer my services because I feel useless standing around with my hands literally in my pockets, but this outing has the ring of a solo mission. If cutting down the Holden family Christmas tree used to be Bill and Max’s thing, to intrude without request would be to steal from tradition.
When the tree at last hits the ground, Max straightens, wiping his brow with the dirt-streaked sleeve of his sweatshirt. My dad’s attention drops from his phone to the tree, then rests on Max. “Your mother will be happy with that one,” he says before returning to his messages.
Max rolls his eyes and hauls the tree onto the cart.
Our trip to the checkout stand is slow thanks to the heavy tree and the unwieldy cart. I carry the handsaw, the only contribution Max’ll let me make. My dad leads the charge, obviously eager to get home.
He acquires a long length of twine from a farm employee and pulls the tag from the tree Max selected. “I’ll pay. Try to get that thing on top of the Durango without scratching the paint,” he says, handing Max the twine and his keys.
“Yes, sir,” Max says, saluting his back as he walks away. He grabs the cart and shoves it toward the parking lot, muttering, “Bastard.”
I frown, but choose to follow him, preferring his solemn presence to my dad’s abruptly pissy mood. “How’re things?” I ask as we walk.
“Fantastic,” he says drily, trudging on.
The sky is full of churning clouds, like a storm’s gathering fury, waiting for the perfect moment to unleash its wrath. It must be throwing the ions in the air out of whack—that’s the only excuse I have for following up with the most impolite, most intrusive comment in the history of despairing teenagers: “Your mom said you and Becky have been fighting.”
He grunts, a disbelieving sound. “So?”
I can’t help myself.… “What about?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m trying to make conversation. Friends should talk.”
“Well, friend, you’ve never given a shit about Becky and me before.”
“I’ve given a shit about you for the last decade, Max.”
“Then let it go. This is not a conversation I’m cool with.”
“Fine.” I lower my voice, mumbling into the fog, “Though I don’t get it.”
He spins around, nearly tipping the cart. “You don’t get it? You don’t get why it’d be fucked up for me to talk to you about problems I’m having with my girlfriend?”
“I’m only trying to help,” I tell the mud, though that’s not true. I’m fishing. I have no idea what’s going on with him and Becky because when I see the two of them at school, I scamper away like a bunny from a pair of wolves. I remind Kyle constantly that he should keep his thoughts on McAlder’s most toxic pair to himself, and when Leah, who still doesn’t have a clue about what went on between Max and me a few weeks ago, brings up the damaged duo, I change the subject right up. But the truth is … I’m dying to know.
“I don’t need help,” he tells me, steering the cart around a pothole. “Not from you or my mother or my sisters.”
His unhappiness is like a boulder standing between us, heavy and impenetrable. God, he frustrates the hell out of me. “How long are you going to keep up this suffer-in-silence act?”
He expels an exasperated breath. “Okay. Fine. You wanna know about me and Becky? Things have been shitty for months, but our most recent fights—last night specifically—are about you.” My stomach winds into a knot as he continues, “I don’t feel good about screwing around behind her back, so I put it out there. She was upset. Can you blame her?”
I hunker down in my fleece so he won’t catch the horror splattered like paint across my face. “You shouldn’t have told her. We said it didn’t matter.”
“No, you said it didn’t matter.”
“We agreed to forget.”
“Have you, Jill?” he asks. “Have you forgotten?”
I haven’t. I relive those stolen kisses Max and I shared all the time. I can’t quit thinking about his hands in my hair, his breath on my skin, the adoring way he treated me under the mistletoe, like I was special. Like we were special. I can’t stop thinking about kissing him—I can’t stop thinking about him—and even though I’m too scared to confront what that might mean, I can’t bring myself to lie outright.
He laughs through my silence, dull and dismal. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
He turns, shoving the tree-laden cart toward the Durango. I trail him and, without a word, do my best to help lift the tree onto the roof. He knots and double-knots the twine, and when my dad still hasn’t returned, we take our respective seats to wait within the relative warmth of the car.
The quiet is agonizing.
“So,” I say, facing the windshield, twisting and untwisting my hands. “Are you and Becky, like, done?”
“No. I don’t … I don’t know what we are. She’s humiliated—she made that very clear, right after she burst into tears and slapped me. Ivy’s pissed, too. I betrayed her best friend; she knew I was cheating; how can I even live with myself? That’s a direct quote.”
“God, Max.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it.”
I want to tell him a lot of things: I’m sorry he’s having a tough time, it sucks that his sister’s upset with him, he can do better than Becky—he’s worthy of better than Becky—but my dad picks that moment to open the driver’s-side door. He collapses into his seat, like he’s the one who just toppled a seven-foot fir.
“Everything okay in here?” he says, eyeing Max, then me.
“Great,” the two of us say in unison.