It’s a mistake to stop at the little mom-and-pop gas station on the way back to my house and I know it, but I go anyway. I want a damn coffee, pitch black and strong, and that’s where they make it best. That’s where they make it easiest to get to, anyway, if you don’t want to go into one of those damn shops with the chatty baristas. I don’t want to talk about my day.

But Mrs. Owens is in a chatty mood today, and she bustles right around from behind the counter to give me the once over.

“Merry Christmas, Dawson.” Her voice is tremulous, and are those tears in her eyes?

“Uh, thanks, Mrs. Owens. Merry Christmas.” I stick my hands in my pockets. Stepping around her to go to the coffee station would be a dick move, but I’m on the verge.

“Dawson, is something on your mind?”

The store is deserted, which is probably why she’s asking me this right now. And fuck, too much is on my mind to even begin to deal with, but it all boils down to one thing: India, and what a wreck I’ve made of my life if I never see her again.

Now that I’ll never see her again.

At least, I hope I never see her again because I think my heart would tear out of my chest and die a tortured death on the ground if I had to look into her eyes one more time.

“Not a thing. Just getting ready for the holidays.”

“How’s your father doing?”

“Just fine.”

Just fine—he misses my mother like an open wound, but he’ll never admit it as long as he lives. Tomorrow he’ll have some of his old single buddies over to his house to spend Christmas. He’s a damn good cook, and it keeps both of us from being alone.

An image of sitting at my dad’s house, my arm wrapped around India, hits me like a missile to the chest, and my hand floats up to pat at my ribcage.

“Are you sure you’re all right?”

I give Mrs. Owens as much of a grin as I can manage. “Do you ever desperately need coffee?”

She smiles back, but she’s not convinced. “I know the feeling.” Then she steps out of my way.

I go through the ritual of filling the cup, adding a couple packets of sugar, snugging on the plastic cap, but at the counter she waves me away. “It’s on the house.”

“Thanks.”

“You know—” I’m halfway back to the door, but I stop and turn back. “Dawson, a young man like you—” Mrs. Owens’ face goes red, but she soldiers on. “You shouldn’t spend the holidays alone. I hope—I hope you find a nice girl who you can count on.”

“I hope so, too,” I say, and then I give her a jaunty little salute and head back out into the bitter cold.

A nice girl I can count on.

I probably could have counted on India—the India of now, not the eighteen-year-old who wanted her father’s approval. But that ship has sailed.

The house is deadly silent when I walk in the front door, but I can’t bear to listen to any music. I settle for the TV.

I sink into the couch with my coffee, ignoring the gnawing emptiness in the pit of my stomach. This is going to be a long fucking day since I decided not to open the bar—it’s enough to deal with drunks on all the other holidays during the year—but somehow this is worse, now that India’s gone.

The coffee cup is empty before I realize I’ve been drinking it, and I’m three episodes in to some shitty cooking show on Netflix without having taken in a single detail. My stomach growls. I could get up and cook, but then I’d have to face the plates in the sink from last night. India’s plate.

Instead, I choose the laziest fucking option.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and dial B. C. Pizza. I don’t know what the hell those initials stand for, but they make damn good pizza and they’re open on Christmas Eve. I order two of them because who the hell knows when I’ll feel like getting up from this couch again?

Phone tossed into the cushions somewhere, I go back to trying to focus on the fucking cooking show, then abandon it after another half episode, choosing something at random from the suggestions list. It should only be another twenty minutes or so until the pizza shows up, and then I’ll stuff myself while I watch…

It doesn’t matter what I watch. All I can see is India. All I can think about is India.

My hand goes to my sweatshirt pocket where my car keys weigh down the fabric, but what am I going to do? Drive back to her house and knock on her door? Not a fucking chance. She’ll only tell me it’s not going to work, that it was never going to work, and to leave her alone on Christmas Eve. And the last people I want to see are her parents. No fucking way.

But the way she wrapped herself around me last night, the way her lips felt against my skin, the way we fit together so fucking perfectly…

I get lost in it.

I absolutely get lost in it.

When the knock on the door comes, it startles the hell out of me.