Christmas Eve and her thoughts are scattered to the wind – she hears the rustling of a thousand restless murmurings from a lifetime ago. Her heels click against the floor and she feels strangely alone in a sea of people. The ceiling tiles fade forward into a never-ending hallway, like that lesson in art class about perspective in the tenth grade that she never really paid attention to. Her head spins and she feels dizzy and kind of lightheaded. And it's not the cold, not the wintry air that she breathes in deep and makes her lungs tingle with the kind of slight pain she's used to. No one can take her breath away – she's hidden it herself.
She shops for holiday ornaments at a mega mart, sharp artificial light glinting off of colored glass, bright reds and greens that give her a headache. But she feels obligated. Because she loves Christmas – or loved Christmas – the past and the present blur into a swirling eddy of confusion, and the future is up ahead, and she doesn't want this headache, but it's coming, fast approaching and she can't do anything about it. Her hand shakes as she reaches for a carton of eggnog – pasteurized holiday spirit in cardboard. Who could ask for more? She brushes the hair out of her eyes. The shopping cart wheels squeak with the added pressure, and she wanders aimlessly down the aisles. She doesn't look for mistletoe.
She buys junk food and health food and frozen French fries and bran muffins – the check-out woman looks at her like she's nuts. When she gets home, she unpacks, toes off her heels, microwaves a bag of popcorn. Popcorn lung exists, Josh, she would have said with her ankles crossed on his desk, popping a kernel into her mouth. And he would have argued with her until she explained it, and maybe they would touch and maybe they wouldn't, but she'd still feel the spark all the same until it numbed her. And maybe it has. But there's no use thinking about conversations they would've had, could've had. She pops a kernel into her mouth and switches on the TV.
Cliff comes home a few hours later, loosens his tie, offers her a smile. He pours Johnnie Walker in his eggnog and she crinkles her nose, but he just shrugs and gulps it down. "What are you watching?"
"Olympics."
He gives her an exasperated look. "Turn on CNN."
"No," she says, leaning back against the cushions of the sofa. "I always watch skiing. Every year. It's tradition." She doesn't tell him the other – that she still has the book he gave her, watches alpine skiing as some kind of strange penance. She pops another kernel into her mouth and wonders if he's sitting somewhere, breaking windows with his bare hands, thinking about what happened. She tries not to think about what happened. Red and green and white and blood and grass and snow and it all comes tumbling down, seeping through the cracks in her fingers.
She watches the Romanian Olympian slalom down the slope. She doesn't tell Cliff about the book, tucked away behind and in-between things. She doesn't tell him that she cracks it once a year, in the same place she always cracks it. She reads the message he scrawled and watches the skiers on television and eats popcorn. Cliff doesn't say anything. But the silence is maddening – it presses up against her like cotton, thick and heavy, and she feels like saying something. But everything is muffled in a standstill, silenced by its own heaviness. She can only hear the sound of the book's groan as she opens it, hears the sound of past whispers floating on the wind outside. She turns up the volume.
She reads his message a second time, feels the familiar pricks of emotion behind her eyes. She sniffles. He puts his hand over hers, and she knows it's meant to be a comforting gesture, but she feels stifled. "Cliff," she says, "I can't do this." And the words tumble out of her mouth, strangely familiar, and she can see his eyes growing hard, bitterness collecting behind his retina.
"You're still in love with him." But he snorts and mumbles, "I should've known." And she remembers a few years ago, when she broke someone else's heart on Christmas Eve. She doesn't say anything in response to his frenzied murmurs. She knows the consequences of her actions, knows what she's done. She apologizes – but she doesn't owe anyone anything. Her heart costs the same as anyone else's. She grabs her jacket and the book, half-buried beneath the sofa cushions, and heads out the door. It starts to snow.
She tries to walk there, and her eyes fill in the gaps in her memory. The wind hurls the snow around her, and she kind of wishes she had a parka. But it's DC in the winter, and she loves the sight of snow. Her fingers curl tighter around the book. She buzzes his apartment.
"Hello?" his voice warbles through the intercom.
"Hi," she says, softly.
"Hang on. I'll come down."
He meets her outside and pauses when he first sees her. "Hey."
"Hey." She tries a smile.
His right hand twitches and she hears the clinking of ice cubes. "Sam and Ainsley are upstairs. You want to…?" He waves his hand indiscriminately.
"Yeah." He spies something in her hand, reaches for it. She hands it to him, watches as he skims his thumb over the title.
"We're okay?"
She nods, walks over to him as he takes his hand in hers. This dance is theirs, this strange collection of haphazard movements. They've got the steps down so well, he doesn't even ask anymore.
She feels dizzy again, but it's not from the weather.