Page 22
Lovie
“ H arrison?”
When I open the door and find him standing there, it takes me a second to blink away the little floaters in my eyes from staring at my laptop for too long.
When they’re finally gone, I take another look and confirm that, yes—he’s standing at my door, holding a coffee and looking at me with a determined expression.
At first, a thrill runs through me. I’m not ovulating, but maybe he’s here for a bonus round? My last pregnancy test came back negative. Maybe he’s up for a few more shots before I ovulate again.
“Lovie,” he says, handing the coffee to me and giving me a look, “grab your coat. Let’s go.”
“Grab my coat?” I laugh, taking a sip of the coffee—peppermint mocha, one of my favorites—and sighing into its warmth. “What are you talking about?”
“You said you weren’t in the Christmas spirit,” he clarifies. “So I’m going to take you on a little adventure.”
“A little adventure?” I laugh, looking down at myself and back up. “Are you talking about an adventure in public? Because I’m going to need a shower at the very least to show myself. Maybe we’ll have to do this another time.”
“I can wait,” he says, nodding at me and taking a step forward. Blinking, I step backward and let him into my apartment. He’s true to his word, sitting on the couch patiently while I shut down what I was doing and find clothes, disappearing into the bathroom.
While I shower, I shave and exfoliate, heart beating a little too hard at the knowledge that he’s sitting out there right now. As the glass around me fogs up, I slip into daydreams of him pushing open the door, shedding his layers, stepping into the shower with me.
I take a little longer to clean myself up, and when I finally emerge, I find him in the kitchen, just drying his hands on a towel.
“Harrison, you didn’t have to do my dishes.”
“Lot more useful than sitting on the couch.” He shrugs, and when he looks up at me, it takes him a moment to speak.
I pulled out a black sweater dress from the back of my closet and paired it with a set of thermal tights and flats.
I also took an extra ten minutes to work together a half-up, half-down crown braid.
I had swiped on mascara and lip gloss and dabbed on a little concealer.
I also used the nice perfume Chrys got me for my birthday last year.
It’s not a date. I just want to look nice for myself.
“Did you figure out where we’re going?” Harrison finally manages, clearing his throat and straightening up, and I realize it’s not often that I get to see him off-kilter like this.
This man has seen me fully naked, has pressed my knees to my chest to help me keep his sperm inside me, and here he is, choked up by the sight of me in a chunky, unsexy dress.
I’d laugh if it wasn’t doing something strange to my insides.
“No,” I say, raising my eyebrows. “But based on your get-up, and the cryptic allusion to the holidays, I thought we might be headed outside. Should I wear boots?”
“You are correct,” he says, seeming to get control of himself. “And yes, you should wear boots.”
It sit by the door, on the arm of the couch, and lace them up while Harrison moves through the apartment, turning off the lights I’ve left on in my wake. Of all my quirks, remembering to turn the lights off is not one of them.
“So, where are we going?” I ask, straightening up and reaching for my other boot.
“It’s a surprise,” Harrison says, and a moment later, he’s kneeling down, his hand on the boot, pulling it closer to me. At first, I think he’s just going to hand it to me, but then his hand on my ankle, maneuvering it into the shoe for me.
“Relax, Harrison,” I laugh, trying and failing to take back control of the boot exercise. “I’m not even pregnant, yet.”
He freezes with the boot on my foot, unlaced, and looks up at me. I realize the implication—that he will be here to help me with my shoes when I’m too big to do it myself.
My cheeks flush, and I stammer, “Not that—not that you?—”
“Hey.” He uses his coaching voice, and it cuts through the air definitively. “You need help with your shoes, you call me, okay?”
Gazes connected, I swallow and nod. He nods back, lacing my boot up the rest of the way, before standing and holding his hands out to me to help me get to my feet.
“My mom used to take me all the time,” he says, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s fallen back to the earlier subject. “I’ve been every year. You’re going to love it, I promise.”
And, of course, I believe him.
The Baltimore Christmas Market is eclectic and beautiful, swarming with people and smelling of rich cheese, chocolates, sausages, and spices.
“I can’t believe you dragged me here,” I laugh, tightening my fingers on Harrison’s elbow, knowing he probably can’t hear my voice, which is muffled through my scarf as we snake our way through the crowd.
“Really?” I feel, rather than hear, his laugh. It vibrates through my hands, low and slow, and sends a chill up my back. Everything about him does that to me, lately. “I thought you’d love this kind of thing.”
I’m wearing a navy blue peacoat over the sweater dress, earmuffs situated over my braid.
Harrison’s coat hugs his chest and arms, a Blue Crabs hat pulled down over his hair.
I’ve already caught several heads turning in his direction, doing a doubletake.
Women with wide, interested eyes. Men who clearly recognize who he is, and rethink their decision to say something to him.
“You thought I’d love fighting through crowds of people?” I return, glancing up at him and getting yet another reminder of our height difference. When he looks down at me, I catch the squish of his chin, that dimple popping on his right cheek.
“Who’s fighting?” he asks, tugging me over and pulling me into a line. “I haven’t seen you fight a single person, Waters. And I’ve been waiting.”
I laugh again, roll my eyes, adjust my earmuffs.
It’s admittedly not that cold—not nearly as cold as I know it will be in January, but there’s something about acting cold that feels nice.
Specifically when Harrison notices and pulls me closer to him, throwing his arm around my shoulders and rubbing his hand up and down my bicep to warm me.
We reach the front of the line, and I’m doused in the smell of apples, cranberry, star anise and cloves. Harrison places an order for us, but I don’t catch what it is until he’s turning around, a mug in each hand, stretching one out in my direction.
“Is this…a boot?” I laugh, gaze flicking up.
Harrison’s eyes shine, their blue color darker today and glinting in a self-satisfied way.
He watches me with the careful expression of someone showing you their favorite thing, like a little kid extending a drawing to you and waiting with bated breath to see if you can identify the object they’ve sketched for you.
The steam feels warm against my cheeks, and the drink smells amazing—spicy and sweet like cinnamon and something tart at once.
“Well, it’s a mug shaped like a boot. Baltimore Christmas tradition,” Harrison says, lifting his own to his mouth and blowing gently. “Be careful, it’s piping hot.”
My chest squeezes even as I nod and look down at my drink.
Be careful, it’s hot.
Something my dad would have said to me, once upon a time. A sign of a careful and attentive man, always thinking about how to keep me safe and happy, his thoughts always on someone else.
I think, not for the first time, that Harrison would have made a great dad. Then, in an attempt to push those thoughts away, I take a quick, tiny sip of the liquid.
It’s like cider, but more. Very hot, like he said, but worth the sting.
“You like it?” he asks, and the smile that breaks out over his face when I nod is enough to make my heart feel like a helium-filled foil balloon.
We carry our drinks and walk through the market, and I realize as we go along, that Harrison shields me from other people, making sure nobody bumps up against me.
It’s another moment that reminds me we’re taking this thing too far, that the way I feel when I look at him is not how someone should feel about their sperm donor.
But we are just friends. He’s a Baltimore local, making sure I’ll have a good holiday season here.
He’s a man offering to come to my place to help me when I’m pregnant and can’t lace up my own shoes.
“Sorry,” he says, turning slightly away from me. He pulls out his phone and glances at it, shaking his head before silencing it and tucking it back into his pocket.
Normally, I wouldn’t pry into someone else’s business, but the words come out of me before I can stop them, “Who is that?”
Harrison glances at me in surprise, and I register the moment on his face when he decides to tell me, clearing his throat, “That was, uh, Brad.”
I know who Brad is straightaway, from reading Harrison’s Wikipedia and from stalking him on social media. I traced the entire saga of Harrison’s marriage, the affair, and the divorce, but I just blink at him, raising my eyebrows in his direction. “Brad?”
“Something of an ex-best-friend.”
“Did he play for the crabs?”
“He did.” Harrison nods, clears his throat, then turns and looks out over the Christmas market, avoiding my gaze. For a second, I think that he might not tell me about it.
Then, he does, recounting the whole ugly thing. His marriage suffering from his attention to hockey over his wife. Her fertility journey. How much she wanted to have a baby.
How, when Harrison wasn’t paying attention, she went and got pregnant with his best friend, giving birth to a baby girl nine months after the two of them announced their divorce.
“She’s probably…well, she’s probably turning fourteen this year,” Harrison says, in a very careful voice.
It’s not often that I’m reminded of our age gap, but this is one of those moments. That Harrison could, theoretically, have a teenage daughter makes it crystal clear the difference in years between us.
“Wait—” I stop, turning to him, eyes widening. “So, you’re telling me that for fifteen years, this ex-best friend has been trying to apologize to you?”
His eyes darken, “Harrassing me, yes.”
“Harrison. That is a very long time to keep at it. Are you sure he’s not just…really sorry?”
Harrison stops, drops his gaze to the mug in his hands, then brings it back to mine. “He should be. Maybe my marriage was going downhill, and maybe Eliza would have ended up with someone else, but it should never have been him. And never the way it happened.”
I nod, knowing there’s some truth to that, and still wondering if Harrison might feel better—if he might get some closure—finally having a decade-overdue confrontation with Brad.
“Anyway,” Harrison says at a fast clip, clearing his throat and pivoting me. “There’s a whole indoor section we haven’t tackled yet. Let’s focus on the Christmas spirit instead of all this sad shit.”
I know I’m not going to convince him of anything right now, and besides—he’s right. It is a good idea to focus on the Christmas spirit while we’re here
The market is impossibly cute. Couples and families pass by us, bundled up in their own coats, some pushing strollers. I can’t help it, my eyes linger on them, tracing their path through the crowd.
They are making me wonder what it would be like to be here with a baby—my baby. To start a tradition and follow through on it every year after that.
“Alright,” Harrison says, when our drinks are gone, we’ve looked at every toy and homemade good, and we’re back outside, on the outskirts of the market. “Final stop.”
I blink and turn, laughing when I see an ice skating rink, surrounded by light-wrapped trees and with its fair share of skaters circling it.
Some of them skate forward confidently, while a group of young girls laugh and wobble, clutching desperately to one another to stay on their feet.
“Come on,” Harrison says, holding his hand out to me. “It’s tradition.”
At first, I reach my hand toward him on instinct, then I pull it back when I realize what he’s saying. “Harrison—I can’t.”
His brow wrinkles. “Why not?”
“I…I’ve never been ice skating before. I don’t know how.”
For a long moment, it looks like he’s processing, like he can’t quite understand how something like that could be true. I wait until he blinks, bending his head down toward me and repeating what I said in a whisper.
“Lovie Waters, you’ve never been ice skating before?”
“No,” I whisper back, laughing a little at the ridiculous look on his face. Like this is a matter of national security. Every time I’m with him, I find myself laughing more than I usually do, giggling like a little girl over every little thing. “I have not.”
“Well, we have to fix that right now.”
Despite my objections, and my terror that I’m going to fall on my ass, Harrison gets me in a pair of rental skates and on the ice in the next twenty minutes.
“Hold on to me,” he says, speaking fast as we stand at the precipice. I grip tightly to the wall, flushing as a little girl races past me and practically jumps onto the ice, skating away from us with the grace of an Olympian. “Don’t pay attention to that,” he laughs.
I only barely keep myself from saying, “That’s what your kid would be like, Harrison.”
We make slow progress onto the ice as Harrison coaches me. “Shave the ice to stop, turn like that—the side of your foot. Wide stance, keep your knees bent. One leg striding and one leg gliding, switch—yes! Just like that.”
I laugh euphorically when I realize we’ve made a full lap and I haven’t fallen on my ass. Logically, I know it’s because Harrison has his hand on me, and he’s keeping me steady, but it’s been a long time since I asked my body for something and it delivered on the first try.
Like always, my mind flashes back to that negative pregnancy test, and I shove down the sad emotions. It takes a while to get pregnant—I know that. I can be patient. Focusing on anger is only going to make it harder for me.
“So, what do you think?” Harrison asks, while we’re making our second lap.
I shouldn’t, but I lean back and nuzzle into him, liking the feeling of someone else holding my weight, just for a little while. “I think I get why you guys choose to spend your whole lives on these things.”
He laughs, and his arms tighten around me. Even as I know we really, really shouldn’t be doing this, it doesn’t stop me from closing my eyes and breathing in his scent anyway.