My Life as a Holiday Album (My Life as an Album #5) - L.J. Evans

BLUE CHRISTMAS

“I'll have a blue Christmas without you

I'll be so blue just thinking about you.”

Performed by Elvis Presley w/ Martina McBride

Written by Hayes / Johnson

My eyes flicked to my phone as it vibrated against the table again. I grabbed it quickly, hoping Mom hadn’t heard it. It was probably the hundredth time that day it had gone off. But I wasn’t answering it. Not for him. Not today. Maybe never again.

My world had shifted off its axis and would never be the same.

It made my heart hurt so badly I wanted to reach in, rip it out, and hand it to someone else. To not have a heart. Which only caused Miranda Lambert’s “Tin Man” to rattle through my brain, making me wish the lyrics could be true. It would be easier to not have a heart.

But I was going to need my heart, and the reason for keeping it pressed a foot into my rib cage so hard that I could almost feel the shape of it through my layers of fabric and skin. I pushed gently, easing the pressure away from my bones, and wondered what it would be like to rub our baby’s foot for real in a few weeks. January 5th was merely days away, but I wasn’t anywhere near ready for the birth. I wasn’t even home.

Home. That was the question that had caused Garrett to run and me to stay behind, wasn’t it? The argument, which I’d thought we resolved before we’d ever said, “I do,” had come back with a new ferocity, proving just how much we hadn’t resolved it.

Now, I was at the kitchen table in the home I’d grown up in instead of our townhouse in Knoxville. But this home, my childhood home, had always been full of love and acceptance—something Garrett didn’t always understand because his life had always been full of demands to do better, be better, crush the competition.

Mom looked up from a cake she was attempting to frost, her eagle eyes and ears noticing the incessant buzzing against the wood. I should have just turned it off.

“Who’s bugging you?” she asked.

I didn’t meet her eyes, because Mom always knew when I was lying, and I hadn’t told anyone about Garrett’s and my self-destruction. “Stephen. He’s going on about Khiley’s present.”

Which was partially true. Some of the vibrating had been from my brother. He was doubting if Christmas Day was really the right time to give Khiley her gift. I’d helped him pick it out weeks ago, getting off early from the library and meeting him in downtown Knoxville. Stephen had swept into the store with his UTK sweatshirt and his heart-melting smile, and the two females behind the counter had been putty in his hands. Stephen was oblivious to it, as he’d been his entire life. There’d only been one woman he’d ever had eyes for.

“I thought Stephen already had her present? Didn’t he ask me for wrapping paper the other day?” Mom asked, turning her eyes back to her lopsided cake.

“He did. He’s just nervous about it,” I said.

This caused Mom’s eagle eyes to bounce back to mine, directing her frown toward me instead of the cake. Mom didn’t know Stephen was proposing, because, as much as we all loved Mom, she wouldn’t have been able to keep a secret that big from Aunt Cam. Which meant Khiley would have known, and he wanted to be able to surprise her in a way he’d rarely been able to do growing up together.

“Why? What is it?” Mom asked.

To distract the hound from the scent, I did the one thing Dad and I had silently agreed we’d never do, which was to make fun of her baking. “Are you sure that isn’t going to fall over?”

Mom’s eyes narrowed more, but she turned back to the cake, and I sighed with relief.

I shot a text to Stephen.

ME: You better get this over and done with on Christmas because Mom is getting suspicious.

BRO: What did you do?

ME: Nothing.

BRO: If she’s suspicious, it’s because you said something, and you suck at lying.

ME: So do you.

BRO: I only suck at lying to Khiley. You suck at lying to everyone.

ME: I’m leaving in a few for Grandma Marina’s. You on your way?

BRO: Khi and I are just leaving her house now. Everyone else coming?

ME: Not everyone. Eliza won’t even be home ‘til after Christmas.

BRO: Really? Aunt Mia must have been pissed.

Aunt Mia had probably been more hurt than angry. She liked having everyone close