Page 15 of Christmas at the Ranch

Ten

“Wow, the grapevine in this town…” I mutter.

Her empathetic smile deepens. She’s mid-forties with long dark hair, straight as sudden rain, falling almost to her waist. Her nametag reads Gwen .

“It’s very robust. Anyway, you’re lucky to be alive, and probably pretty shaken up.

I’ll get you that rum. First one’s on me, after what you’ve been through. ”

“That does sound nice,” I say.

And it is. The red pottery mug she hands me is warm against my still-shivering hands.

The liquid inside is sweet with hints of vanilla and a little kick of festive spice.

Comforting. After a few more bracing sips, I open my phone to look for a car rental agency.

There’s one in Minden, about forty minutes away.

I could get Frank, the taxi driver who picked me up this morning, to drive me there.

Except after what happened with the moose, the idea of getting in a car and going back out on those roads turns my bones to jelly.

I take another sip of the rum drink instead.

And any fight I had left retreats. I accept it. I’m stuck in Evergreen, again.

I look around. The Watering Hole pub is quiet at this time on a weekday afternoon.

There are a few patrons finishing their lunches at the homey wooden tables, mostly centered around a large fireplace with cheerful red and green stockings hung across its mantel.

The pub’s walls are covered in vintage framed posters—ads for baking powder, bread yeast, shampoo—that look like they’ve been collected from thrift stores and yard sales over the years.

Christmas garlands are wound around the wooden beams and rafters above.

Over the speakers, Bruce Springsteen is wishing his baby a Merry Christmas.

Gwen has appeared again, holding a bowl of soup.

“This will help, too,” she says with her gentle smile.

I’m touched by the gesture. I stir it. Minestrone, topped with a cloud of freshly grated parmesan and flecks of parsley.

It’s delicious. For some reason, the taste of it, the way it warms my chest, the kindness of Gwen feeding me a steady stream of warm liquids to help me recover from the shock I just had, makes me want to cry.

Or maybe the feeling welling up inside me right now is something else.

Maybe it’s not sadness at all. I eat slowly, trying to process my emotions.

“So,” Gwen says later, wiping the bar top in front of me with a cloth embroidered with little snowmen. “Your car’s pretty wrecked, huh?”

“You tell me,” I say. “What did Meredith write in the group chat?”

Gwen laughs. “It’s a broken axle,” she says, shooting me a rueful look. “Possibly unfixable, but they’ll know more tomorrow.”

“That sounds expensive,” I say, morose.

“Since I know you’re not driving, how about another one?

” She doesn’t even wait for my response before taking my mug away for a refill.

I thank her before she goes off to serve more bar patrons.

When she’s gone, I open my phone again. I text Lani, deciding to leave out the worrying details and just tell her I’m having car trouble and will be delayed in my return to the city.

Then I scroll to my bank account, which does not have good news for me.

Next, I check my emails, which are even worse.

It’s clear I can’t just casually email a pitch to an editor without addressing the huge red flag: that I’m the daughter of a hot item in the current news cycle.

An Emory Oakes byline is likely not the most appealing thing in the world right now.

An interview might be, but there’s no way I’m giving one.

As the afternoon sun sinks low in the sky, I sip my drink and think about calling my mother, the way I had resolved to last night. But after the near-death experience of almost hitting the moose, I feel even more fragile than before. I know I need to talk to her—but not yet.

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask Gwen when she returns to clear my empty soup bowl away. “Even though you know who I am?”

“Because I’m not the kind of person who judges people by their family,” she says simply. “And because you were so shaken up when you came in here.” Then she looks away, addresses someone behind me. I think it’s another customer until she says, “Oh, hello, Tate.”

She’s so casual, I almost don’t process it—because Tate is not a name I use casually at all. But then, I smell him. Pine needles, bonfire smoke. A voice like maple syrup on snow, saying, “I’ve been looking for you.”

I turn, and there he is. Amber eyes, that full bottom lip, pulled tight in a slight grimace of concern.

Plaid flannel jacket, Stetson, too-long dark blond hair peeking out from beneath it.

His new beard. Or not new, but new to me.

I realize this moment of me staring at him, taking him in, has lasted too long when his frown deepens and he glances at Gwen. “Is she okay?”

“I think she’s still in shock,” Gwen says, and I feel embarrassed that I seem so feeble they have to talk about me as if I’m not even there.

“I’m fine, really,” I say, but my voice wobbles as I say it, revealing the truth.

I am not at all fine. From the looks now on Tate’s and Gwen’s faces, I realize I’ve said those last words aloud, too.

I push the mug of rum away and Gwen, my guardian angel, quickly replaces it with a glass of water, then leaves us to talk.

“I heard about the accident,” Tate says.

“It makes sense you’d be shaken up. Almost hitting a moose—that’s a big deal.

You could’ve been…” But he doesn’t finish his sentence.

“But I wasn’t,” I say—except, in an effort to keep my voice steady, the words come out belligerent. “I’m fine.”

“You aren’t fine,” Tate says quietly, and begins to list the reasons for this on one hand. “I found you in my kitchen last night, standing in a puddle of water and a pile of broken glass—”

“Please, don’t remind me.”

“Then you just took off.”

“Without even thanking your dad,” I say, now joining in on the list of the reasons I’m a mess. “I’m sorry for that.”

He ignores me, keeps going. “You almost hit a moose. Wrecked your car. You were already the number one topic on the group chat, but now—”

“I’m the town pariah and I don’t even live here. You shouldn’t be seen with me. Bad for business.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, pulling up a stool—and something about the tone of his voice causes my heart to do a boom, boom, boom, clap . Great. Now I’m thinking in Charli xcx lyrics. “Even if this isn’t what…” But then he trails off.

He doesn’t have to finish the sentence, though. I can see myself through his eyes. I know what he’s thinking.

Even if this isn’t what I want to be doing.

We are nothing to each other. My mind knows this, but my heart doesn’t seem to have caught up to this fact.

I saw it in his eyes last night, and it’s all too clear today.

He doesn’t want to see me. Sitting in a bar with a distant ex who has blown into town like hell on wheels is not his idea of a good time.

But he’s a good guy, and he heard I had an accident, so he needed to check if I was okay.

I excuse myself and run off to the bathroom to splash water on my face and try to compose myself. When I return, a steaming mug of coffee sits beside my water glass. I pick up the mug and blow on it, grateful for something to do with my hands.

“Could you please tell Charlie I’m sorry?” I ask him. “He was so kind, and I didn’t even thank him.”

“Don’t worry about Charlie, he gets it. We’re just worried about you.”

I can’t look at him. It’s too embarrassing.

I’m a subject of concern, a tragic figure.

All the times I imagined seeing Tate again—and I did imagine it, I can’t deny that—it was always in a perfect scenario where I was having a great hair day and wearing my favorite outfit and had just won a National Newspaper Award.

I turn my head away from him slightly so the intoxicating blend of pine needles and woodsmoke and saddle soap and leather doesn’t light up quite so many core memory points in my brain and make me feel even worse.

“What really brought you here?” he says, his voice low in my ear. And now my heart sinks. Does he think I came back here chasing after a memory of him?

I clutch the coffee cup, stare into it, looking for a way to answer. Maybe I just need to do it. Tell him everything. What do I have to lose? I drove here because I needed to. Because it’s the first place I thought of. The only place that has ever felt like home.

“I think I know,” he says before I can speak. “Charlie told me that you wanted to apologize to Gill.”

“ Oh . Right.” I close my eyes briefly.

“That’s not a good idea. I heard Gill is pretty upset.”

“He must be devastated.”

“Actually, I think he’s more embarrassed. He wants everyone to drop it. Which we won’t, of course. No one is going to let him lose the restaurant.”

“I couldn’t stand it if that happened,” I say, genuinely anguished.

“I know that,” he says. He’s staring at me, the moment stretching into something that feels far too intense for mid-afternoon in a local dive bar. It’s almost as if he’s saying, I remember you . There was a time you told me everything. Then he looks away, and I can breathe again.

“Almost done with your coffee?” he says, still not looking at me.

“Close.”

“Good. Because I’m under strict instructions from Charlie to bring you back to the ranch and not let you leave again until you have a legitimately safe way to return to the city.”

“Tell Charlie thank you, but I’ll be fine. I can get myself back to the city.” This isn’t true, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“He figured you’d say that, so he wants to know exactly what the plan is. Is someone coming to get you?”

I think of Lani, with her twin babies. I could never ask her to come get me. I don’t want to ask my mother, either, because I’m still not ready to talk to her. Facing the rest of my friends or colleagues feels overwhelming. And I don’t have enough money to call a driver.

“The bus,” I venture. “And I’ll come back and get my car when it’s ready.”

“The bus route that used to run between here and the city got cut last year. And you know how Charlie is when he gets something in his head. Just come back, Emory.”

A feeling of lightness fills my chest—fleeting, almost slipping away as soon as I grasp at its edges, but there. I chase it. It’s a memory.

I turn to him. “Remember on Christmas Eve, when Charlie insisted that if he kept stirring his lumpy fondue with a whisk and adding flour, it was going to work?”

Tate laughs at this recollection, too. A reward. The happiness stays.

“And then he had to start over, and he pretended that had been his plan all along.”

“Do you still do that?” I ask.

“Do what, the Christmas Eve fondue? Yeah.”

“And listen to Bing Crosby’s reading of ‘The Small One’ while you eat?”

Another nod. Then he leans closer. “But now he just buys those premade packs of fondue at the grocery store and pretends to have made it himself. And I pretend not to see the packages in the garbage when I take it out later.”

I smile down into my coffee mug, suddenly lost in nostalgia—and wondering if it’s possible Tate feels the same. Or if he just feels sorry for me. If he’s just following his father’s instructions to be kind to a person in distress at Christmas.

I look back up at him. “Tate?” But any words dry up in my throat. I have so much to say, and nothing to say at all. It’s as if Tate and I exist on two planes: what’s real, and what’s all just memory.

His gaze is like a searchlight across my face. I don’t know what he’s looking for, or if he finds it.

He just says, “Come back to the ranch. It’s not a big deal.”

Which is possibly the understatement of the century.

Then, he’s signaling to Gwen for the bill and she’s shaking her head and mouthing, “It’s on the house.

” When I stand, Tate puts his hand on the small of my back, guiding me toward the door.

There are two layers of clothing between his hand and my skin, yet the heat of his touch feels like it could burn a hole in my coat.

My knees go weak and I almost stumble, which makes him loop his arm around my waist to hold me steady.

I want to lean into him, but I don’t. I shore myself up and keep walking, gently pulling away from him because in his arms is not, I remind myself, the safe place it used to be.

I glance at him sidelong to see if any of this experience is having the same effect on him, but his expression betrays nothing except perfect calm.

Tate is fine. He has no weakness when it comes to me.

Come back to the ranch, he said earlier.

It’s not a big deal . And I need to stop making it one, because this is all circumstantial.

I get to the door of the bar before Tate does, pushing it open myself and welcoming the feel of the cold winter air on my hot cheeks, surprised to find it’s almost dark out, this strange day nearly over already.

“Not a big deal,” I whisper to myself. Maybe if I keep saying it, it will finally become true.