How Nick and Holly Wrecked...Saved Christmas (3 page)

We start down the two-lane highway from Granny’s little community to the great metropolis of Black Diamond. Grey, slushy snow piles appear at random along the side of the road and large yellow road signs with blinking lights warn of hazardous curves and falling rocks. The dense woods on either side envelope the truck in darkness and only the occasional beams from oncoming traffic and our own headlights interrupt the black night ahead of us as we travel down the mountain.

Nick clears his throat and messes with the radio. “I thought we’d stop at the store first, and then swing by my house. Then I have to make one other stop, and then we’ll drive out to Starbucks.”

“Sounds good,” I say and fidget with my phone. Why Amanda thinks I have something to report this early in our non-date is beyond me, though I can already say I’ve embarrassed myself at least once. I tuck my phone in my coat pocket. “Are you working for that activity director or something?”

“No. My aunt told her I was staying a few days and volunteered me to help out. I don’t care. It gives me something to do.”

“So you’re the head of the senior Christmas dance decorating committee? Have you been cutting out snowflakes and attaching fishing line to them to hang them from the ceiling?”

“No,” he says and pulls into the grocery store parking lot. “Collette volunteered you for that.”

“You lie!”

“It’s true. I’ll be moving chairs and wooden platforms and hooking up a lame sound system. You get to hang the snowflakes.”

He dips his head and grins, and I don’t know how serious he is about anything.

I chew my bottom lip. “As long as she didn’t sign me up to call BINGO. She did that one time. I’m not over it yet.”

Nick laughs and hops out of the truck. He rushes around to make sure I’ve gotten out OK. It’s sweet the way he checks on me.

I stomp the slush off my feet amidst the whoosh of the automatic doors. It’s nearly as cold inside the store as it is out. I pull my scarf closer to my face to hide my deformity, knowing full well only a ski mask would cover it.

I grab a red plastic basket and hook it on my arm. “Granny doesn’t need much.” I take an awkward step toward the produce section because I don’t know if this is supposed to be a couples’ activity or if he wants to shop alone.

He looks around and pushes his hat further down on the back of his head before he grabs a shopping cart. “Uh... OK. I’ll meet you back up front in about ten.”

“Sure,” I say and tackle each aisle as if I’m on a scavenger hunt at youth group.

But twenty minutes later, there’s no sign of Nick at the checkout. I consider texting him, but opt to do the next logical thing—creep on him from the end of every aisle until I casually run into him.

I eventually spot him in front of the meat case along the back wall. He is leaning on the handle of his cart and popping the front wheels as he studies his list.

I push my scarf away from my mouth. “I’m done,” I say. “About to head up front.”

He passes me his list. “What does this look like to you?”

“Whole chicken.”

“That’s what I thought. But which whole chicken? The Sunday roaster or the fryer.”

“No idea. Can you call her?”

“Bunco night. She won’t answer.”

We stare at the bags of poultry as it sloshes around in its own pink juice and looks more unappetizing by the second. I study the massive cases of meat running as far as the eye can see. “I guess there aren’t many vegetarians in this part of West Virginia.”

“I’m going to get one of each,” he says and dives for the chickens with both hands.

“Wait!” I grab his sleeve.

“What?”

“I remember this from my Food Science and Nutrition elective. Here,” I say and rip a couple plastic bags off the spool above our heads. “You’re supposed to put poultry in these bags. There’s nothing but bacteria on those things.”

“Then why do we eat it?”

“It dies when you cook it.”

“I think the chicken’s already dead, Holly.”

“Not the chicken, the bacteria. It can be on there if the packaging leaks. Take the bag, please.”

He does and loads the fryer and tosses it in the cart. I pass him another one.

I’m laughing into my scarf because I’m nervous, and this is the funniest thing I’ve seen since Amanda tried to wax her own bikini line.

Now he’s laughing because he can’t get the bag open. In the struggle, the roaster drops out of his hands and slides across the tile floor.

“Forget it,” he says and grabs another one like a football and tucks it under his arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

I swing around so fast I knock a box of diapers off the edge of a display.

“Winner, winner, chicken dinner,” Nick calls out like a goofy ten-year-old as he rushes ahead with his cart.

“Wait, Nick!” I wrestle the diapers back onto the wobbly stack.

He spins with the cart, nearly knocking over more groceries. “What?”

“Aren’t you gonna pick up that chicken?”

“And do what with it? Put it back in the case with the other chickens that
haven’t
taken a slippery trip across the germy floor?”

He has a point.

“Oh, all right, Holly,” he says with a smirk. “If the chicken means that much to you, I’ll let someone up front know I dropped it and didn’t want to put it back with the others.”

“The chicken doesn’t—I mean I don’t care that much about the chicken…”

But Nick Zernigan is teasing me and races away with a snort of laughter while someone else’s Sunday dinner still sits on the floor of the meat department.

****

I stare into the inky blackness toward the lake as Nick speeds around Lakefront Drive toward his house. The moon shimmers between bare trees and dances on the water’s surface. I am dizzy from watching it move and change in the night.

He pulls into the driveway which is the size of my whole yard. I’ve arrived on the wealthy side of the lake with its shimmering outside lamps that illuminate huge houses with balconies that overlook the frozen waters of Black Diamond Lake.

I wait. I don’t know if I’m supposed to come inside or simply sit in the truck while he does what he needs to do.

“C’mon in,” he says. “I have to do a couple things and get my Aunt Ivy’s Christmas present I forgot.”

He lets us in through the garage and punches in codes on a large panel. I hear clicks and see lights flicker on elsewhere in the house and I wonder if his father is somewhere watching us from a phone app. Nick bends to remove his boots. I do the same and we pile the rest of our winter gear on a table by the door.

There are long wooden stairs and large vases of odd bushy stalks I’ve seen only in my mother’s magazines. Nick tosses his keys on the kitchen counter. He makes his way around the huge island and glances at a note.

And then pulls a six-pack of longnecks out of the fridge.

“Want one?”

I tuck a piece of hair behind my ear. “No,” I say, as if I don’t care. “No, thanks.”

The glow from inside illuminates his face as the door bumps against his leg. He studies the carton as it dangles from two fingers and I hold my breath. If he drinks that whole thing, I’ll have a situation.
I don’t want a situation, Lord. I just want my Starbucks...

“OK,” he says. The bottles clank as he puts them back. “There’s other stuff in here.”

“Something diet,” I say. “Or water.”

He kicks the door closed and hands me a can. “C’mon. I want to show you something.”

I follow him closely up unfamiliar stairs. We arrive on yet another level of this monstrous house. He leads me to a near-dark space.

Nick brushes my arm with his hand. “Hang on a minute.”

His shadow crosses in front of me. He touches a lamp in the corner and soft light wakes up the room.

My feet sink into the carpet as though I’ve stepped on warm summer sand. “This is a bedroom,” I say stupidly.

“Yes. It is.”

He opens the drapes across a wall of glass and nudges an oversized leather chair into position.

He motions for me. “C’mon.”

I don’t move. It’s a bedroom. Clearly not
his
bedroom. It’s much too perfect, too neat, too... too...
It’s a bedroom
. “This is your
dad’s
bedroom. Should we be here?”

“Geeze, Holly, don’t be such a spaz. You should see your face. And here I thought we’d reached a new level in our relationship after that whole chicken incident at the grocery store. Get over here.”

I go like a dutiful puppy.

“Have a seat,” he says.

I hesitate.

“
Sit
,” he commands and takes the drink from my hands. “C’mon, you’re gonna miss it.”

I sit. He rushes to turn off the lamp and then squeezes in beside me.

“Watch,” he says.

I blink as my eyes adjust to the dark. Suddenly the world opens up before me through the glass doors. I see the water, the sky, the moon. A million stars twinkle and kiss the shadowy tree tops across the lake as they take turns exploding and streak across the night sky. Piles of undisturbed snow on the deck outside frame my new view of the mountain. I suck in a breath and hold it, knowing I’ve lived on this ridge my entire life—and I’ve never appreciated it quite like this.

I cannot speak.

Nick Zernigan’s warm body is pressed against mine. I smell his masculine scent and feel him breathe beside me. My own heart flutters too loud and too hard and I am aware of the lack of space between us.

“Does this happen every night?”

“No.” He stretches and moves in the chair. “It depends. I have an app that tells me when the conditions are right for meteor showers or visible planets.”

“It’s a great view.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty decent. In the spring you can watch nesting pairs of hawks or bald eagles. My dad and I actually posted a YouTube video of that. OK... That sounded lame.”

“No it didn’t. Where is your dad, anyway?”

“He’s with his girlfriend in The Bahamas. I was supposed to be with my mom for the holidays, but her husband’s mother got sick in Germany so they had to go there. My dad already made his plans so here I am. Me and Aunt Ivy for Christmas.”

“Where does your mom live?”

“California.”

“And you choose to live here?”

“Yeah. Why not? I like it here.”

“Wow. I thought everyone who had a chance to get off this mountain would take it.”

Nick wiggles in the chair again and twists his body as though he’s trying to look at me in the faint light. “Not everyone hates it here, Holly.” He scoots up and rests his arm across the back of the chair. “Why do you?”

“I guess I don’t hate it, but it’s all I know, and I want to know more. My dad’s not a surgeon like yours, and I don’t live in a house with a view like this. I don’t have a car, I don’t have a passport, and I’ve never been as far as California. So let’s just say I’m anxious to get to college and see what else is out there.”

Nick is quiet and I want to disappear into the leather. I would say I’m sorry for dumping on him again, but it seems I say I’m sorry to Nick Zernigan a lot lately and I’m not sure why. I hug the armrest on my side of the chair and pray a shooting star bursts through the glass to change the subject.

“I don’t think I’m going to college.”

Or something like that will do it, too.

“What?” I practically choke myself.

“No need to waste my parents’ money. I’m not a good student. I should have graduated at the end of this semester, and now I can’t until May. I was ahead of schedule until I spent two semesters in California and got delayed.”

“Why, Nick? I know you’re smart. I saw your name on the honor society roster.”

“Some credits didn’t transfer, I was missing a required class, but mostly I hate school. It’s suffocating. I want to do things. Not read things. I don’t want to take a test about
why
the birds nest the way they do or
why
the stars explode when they do, I want to see it. Be a part of it. Observe and preserve it.”

“So get your butt to college and study science or birds or stars.”

“Never mind. I don’t want to study birds and stars.”

“All right. I know what you mean. I do. I want that, too. I want to sing and act and audition and perform, but I guess I can see myself doing that through college.”

Nick gets up and stands at the glass doors. “And I can see myself doing what I want to do through the military.”

“No. Way. Does your dad know this? He’s gonna freak!”

Nick shakes his head. “He doesn’t know. I’m thinking about the Army. I’ve been talking with the recruiter.”

“You mean that creepy Army guy who comes to the school during lunch? Don’t let that guy make you a bunch of fancy promises, Nick. They tell you you’ll see the world and fly helicopters but you can also end up serving roast chicken to your fellow soldiers in Kentucky. Or you can end up full of bullet holes overseas.”

“There are a lot of jobs in the Army, Holly. I have some say in what I do. They make you take tests, see what you want and what you’re suited for.”

Nick’s phone is blowing up on the nightstand. He hands me my diet cola. “We need to go and make that other stop. The Starbucks closes at midnight so we need to move.”

“Sure,” I say and help him scoot the oversized chair back to its spot.

My mind is reeling from our conversation. Nick Zernigan: Classic car lover, bird-watcher, star-gazer...
soldier
. Who knew?

“Hey, don’t say anything to anyone about the military, OK? No one knows and I need to talk to my dad. I used to talk to my uncle about it because he’s a veteran, but he’s gone now.”

“Sure, Nick. And it’s good you’re here for your Aunt Ivy. Granny says she misses him very much and is having a hard time.”

“Yeah. So how did you end up with Collette for the holidays? And watch your step,” he adds as we work our way back down the stairs.

“My mother’s boyfriend surprised her with a trip. He won it at work or something and they had to go at a certain time. I kinda think Jake wouldn’t have minded if I went along, but they couldn’t swing it financially. Either that or my mom didn’t want me to go. Then I broke my nose and I don’t know... Me and Granny for Christmas. Or at least until Christmas day. They’re supposed to be back.”