Our First Christmas.
My eyes stung with emotion I hadn’t felt in years, and when I glanced back up at River, he was watching me.
“You… you kept our stuff,” I said quietly, stupidly.
River’s only acknowledgement was to close his book — softly, this time — and then he made his way over to where I sat by the tree. He reached inside, pulling out one of the Star Wars ornaments and turning it about in his hands.
I watched him for a long moment, wondering why he would have kept them. When I left, I assumed he hated me. He hadn’t fought for me to stay, that was for damn sure, and he didn’t show a single ounce of emotion when I brought up what I wanted, when I asked what he wanted, when I got so tired of waiting for an answer that I gave him an ultimatum.
Come with me…or let me leave without you.
And he chose the latter.
My next swallow was more difficult than the last, and I reached for the other box, cracking the top open with my stomach in knots over what I might find inside.
And when I saw what was on top, I gasped.
My eyes flicked to River, who watched me with his brows pinched together and frown firmly in place. I let our gazes stick for a moment before I turned my attention back to the box, pulling out the old, worn quilt on top.
“River…” I whispered, shaking my head as I pulled the fabric into my chest. I inhaled the scent, and a flurry of memories assaulted me like the snowflakes falling on the ground outside. I closed my eyes, soaking it in, and when I opened them again, they met River’s. “The Christmas Blanket,” I said softly, a smile spreading on my lips. “You kept the Christmas Blanket.”
He swallowed, and the corner of his lips tugged up just a smidge — almost so imperceptibly that I wondered if it happened at all. Then, he shrugged, his eyes on mine.
Watching.
Waiting.
And with just that look, those emerald green pools took me back in time.
Ten Years Earlier
It was our first Christmas Eve as a married couple.
In my head, I’d always imagined what this would be like. I pictured us in our own home, with our own tree, and our own Christmas decorations. I imagined how we would decorate outside — would we put lights around the door and across the roof? Would we have a Nativity scene in the yard? What would the wreath on our door look like?
Blame it on all the fairy tales I’d read, or the fact that my parents were a real-life fairy tale, but my imagination had run wild since I was a little girl, thinking of all the possibilities.
Instead, River and I were in a run down, one-bedroom apartment on the east side of Wellhaven, with a busted heater and a small, sad Christmas tree that we only had thanks to the local tree-seller taking pity on us and giving us one of the rejects still left over just a few days before Christmas.
I stared at that tree from my spot on our old couch, a hand-me-down from my parents, and felt my heart ache a little. There were only two ornaments on the tree — one from my parents, a silver bell, and one from his parents, two little reindeers that said Our First Christmas with our names and wedding date underneath it.
I was eighteen. River was nineteen.
It’d all seemed so romantic, getting married right out of high school. River was everything I ever wanted or needed, and I didn’t care that our wedding was modest, or that we didn’t get to go on a honeymoon, or that we couldn’t immediately buy a big house with a big yard and a big porch and a big white fence. This one-bedroom apartment was fine by me, as long as he was in it.
But now, staring at our barren tree, with my feet so cold I thought they’d fall off at any moment even wrapped up in two pairs of socks and tucked under Moose’s fur where he lay at my feet on the floor, I wondered if we’d rushed it all.
Would it have been smarter to wait? What if we would have gone to college first? What if we would have saved up for a big wedding, and a long, luxurious honeymoon in the Bahamas?
And what would it be like to be in a little house, with a real Christmas tree, and real Christmas decorations?
As it was, I worked down at the supermarket in town — usually only thirty hours a week. River did odds and ends jobs whenever and wherever he could. Sometimes he was a plumber, sometimes a car mechanic, other times an electrician or lawn mower or forest clearer. If there was a job in town, River found it, and he worked it with a smile — even though I knew he was tired, and the days were long, and it wasn’t what made him happy.
But he did it for us.
We saved up every penny we could after the bills were paid, but somehow, that savings would disappear no sooner than we had it saved up. The car transmission would go out, or Moose would have to go to the vet, or someone in town would go through a hard time, and we’d help in whatever way we could.
And now, it was Christmas Eve, barely above zero degrees outside with another round of snow fluttering in, and we didn’t have a working heater or a fireplace or even a single strand of lights on our Christmas tree.
River sat down next to me on the couch once he was out of the shower, one that was absolutely necessary after a long day of work. He couldn’t even afford to take the holiday off. I leaned into his fresh scent, his body still warm from the water. He wrapped me in his arms, and I sighed, laying my head on his chest with my eyes still on the tree.
“I wish I could jump inside that head of yours,” he said after a while, rubbing my arms to keep me warm.
“Trust me. It’s not fun in here.”
A soft chuckle left his chest. “Talk to me.”
I shook my head, leaning into him more, just wanting to be held. And River obliged me for a long while before he kissed my forehead and pulled back, still holding me, but with enough space that he could look at me, too.
“Come on. Out with it.”
“You’ll think I’m horrible,” I said, trying to bury my face in his chest, but he held my chin to stop me.
“Try me.”
I sighed, looking at the tree. “I just… I’ve dreamed about this for so long, what it would be like to have my first Christmas with my husband. I always pictured a beautiful tree, like the one my mom always has. All the lights and the ornaments and the candy canes. And I imagined decorating a wreath, and a yard, and baking pies all night long on Christmas Eve.” My eyes welled with tears. “But here it is, Christmas Eve, and we both worked all day. We’re exhausted. We don’t have the money for any Christmas gifts, let alone decorations, and we’re going to your parents’ for breakfast and my parents’ for dinner because we wouldn’t have any sort of holiday meal otherwise.” I sniffed. “And I’m so cold, and so sick and tired of being so cold. If we were in a house, we’d have a fireplace. But all we have is a broken heater and that small space heater in the corner that barely does a thing,” I said, gesturing to the little box doing its best to fill our apartment with warm air.
My bottom lip trembled as River ran his thumb along my jaw, and I leaned into his palm, my eyes finding his.
“I don’t mean it to sound ungrateful,” I said. “I just… is it awful to say that I’m a little sad that this is our first Christmas Eve?”
River shook his head, a gentle smile on his lips. “I’m a little sad, too.”
At that, my eyes found his. “Really?”