I stomp my boots as I push open the door to my cabin. Sammy runs inside, curling up in front of the roaring fire. I let Maple pass and I follow her in, shutting the door behind us. Alone with her for the first time in a decade.
“Your place is really…” Her words trail off and we both look around the cabin. I don’t want to know what she thinks of this place.
A bachelor pad in every way. It’s just one room, but big enough for me and Sammy. We’ve got the fireplace, a table with one chair, a small kitchenette, a large-ass bed in the corner. Small couch. A stack of books. A basket of kindling. I know it’s not much. It’s modest, but mine. It makes me think about the house she lives in. The house she’s always lived in. Granny Charlene’s place up on the hill. Front and center on Jingle Bell Lane. Prettiest house in Snowy Valley and everyone knows it.
“Can I get you a drink?” I ask, needing something warm myself to distract me from the hot little thing in front of me.
“Sure,” she says. “That would be nice. I don’t drink coffee though,” she adds, just as I’m reaching for a box of Earl Grey tea bags.
“I know,” I say. “I remember.”
Her eyes open wider then, looking at me in surprise. She doesn’t know I’ve memorized every single detail about her that I’ve ever heard. She doesn’t know me. Not like I know her.
“I don’t know how you remembered something like that.”
There’s a pause, then the memories come flooding back. Afternoons in her granny’s kitchen, a warm house, cookies on a plate between Maple and me. I wish time could have stopped back then because those afternoons were the sweetest of my life.
“Your granny would always make you a cup of tea. It was the fanciest thing I ever heard. A first grader drinking tea out of a porcelain cup.”
“You wouldn’t drink the tea,” Maple says. “You always wanted a glass of milk.”
“Well, look at you,” I say, putting the kettle on. Not wanting to smile. Wanting to be stone-cold because being anything else means I might be in trouble. “Guess you still remember some things about me after all, don’t you?”
“Guess so.”
“Sorry, I don’t have fancy china,” I say, placing tea bags in two blue enamel mugs. The kettle whistles and I fill our cups, carrying them to the sofa, knowing there isn’t a second chair for her at the kitchen table.
She smiles graciously, the same way I’m sure she looks at each and every patron who stops at her soup kitchen for a warm meal every day. Everything about her is generous and poised like she could be a politician’s wife.
So, why exactly is she here right now with me?
With Sammy sleeping on her bed, and another human in my cabin, the place feels damn near cozy. I clear my throat, the thought scaring me. I live alone for a reason. I keep my world small for a purpose. No need to get all sentimental and start wishing to change that now.
“So, uh, what did you need?” I ask her, forcing myself to look at her, even though my heart pounds when I meet her eyes.
She bites her bottom lip, as if at a loss for words just like she did when she was a little girl.
It takes me a second, but I realize she’s blinking faster than a person generally blinks. A second to realize she’s blinking back tears.
“You okay?” I ask, frowning, hating the idea of her crying. I know she’s had a hell of a year, losing her granny. It’s been hard for everyone in town and this is her first Christmas without Grandma Charlene.
“I’m fine,” she says, swiping a finger under her eye. “Just, um, allergies.”
I nod, knowing she’s full of it. But the thing that gives me pause is the fact that I’ve never once heard Maple tell a lie. It makes me wonder what she has to be hiding now.
“Right. Those snow allergies. They can be a bitch this time of year.” I frown, cocking an eye at her, seeing if she’ll give.
She cringes, realizing I know she’s full of it. “The thing is, Filson, I know you don’t like me, but I have to ask.”
I pull back. She has it all wrong. She thinks I don’t like her when my feelings are so much more than that. Always have been. Always will be.
“Just ask, Maple,” I say, not knowing how to tell her I’d do anything in the world she needs. My heart buoys at the thought of Maple finally seeing me as more than a boy from the wrong side of town. That maybe she finally sees me as a man.
She looks at me with pleading eyes, a look I’ve been longing to see all my life. “Filson,” she says, “I need your help.”
Maple
I have thirty days.
Thirty days until I lose it all.
The house. The soup kitchen. The respect of everyone in Snowy Valley.
My whole life up in flames in one fell swoop.
Except this isn’t all at once.
It’s been coming longer than I want to admit. A letter a month, since Granny died. And who knows how many she received in the months before she passed. The bank’s looming words of foreclosure should have moved me to action… but it was all too little too late.
And now I have one last chance. But I can’t do it alone.
There’s only one person I felt brave enough to ask. Filson may not like me, but he loved my granny.
I’m hoping he will do this for her.
Filson, with his pine green eyes and thick brown hair, his big hands, and broad shoulders. Filson, the boy who was my first crush, my first heartbreak.
Of course, that was a one-way street. He never cried himself to sleep over me, I was the one he rejected.
“What do you need, Maple?” he asks, his voice gravelly with concern. He’s always been so withdrawn, so hard to read, but right now I think I see emotion in his eyes for the first time since we were little.
“Don’t feel like you have to say yes, I know we aren’t really friends… or haven’t been in a long time.”
He pulls back at that, takes a drink of his tea. “Right. I don’t exactly do friends.”
“I know,” I say, regretting my word choice. Filson has always been so finicky, so hard to please. And now it’s no different. I feel like I’m going to put my foot in my mouth no matter what I say. “The thing is, Filson, I was wondering… if you could help with fixing up the house. For Granny.”
He nods slowly. “I see. This isn’t for you, it’s for Granny Charlene?”
“Yeah, it’s just cosmetic things. Paint on the porch and fixing the closet doors. The fan in the kitchen isn’t working—”
“You want to hire me as a handyman?” His voice is flat and my stomach falls. Coming here was such a stupid idea. Annabelle was right. Filson is too moody to be helpful. Her words, not mine.
But if she hadn’t called this morning, I wouldn’t be here now.
My phone had buzzed while I was making toast, and for a moment I’d let my mind play make-believe. Maybe it was the bank. Maybe they were calling to say they got it all wrong. That I don’t have to face foreclosure at Christmas.
When I grabbed it, I saw it was the bank. I answered the call, my voice rattling. “Hello, this is Maple.”
“Oh, hey, sweetie. Hanging in there?” Annabelle asked.