Epiphany
Aliaslaceygreen….not mine, not making any money, etc, blah…
Just a little song fic….
Steph sat on the couch in the dark, looking at her Christmas tree. Charlie Brown, eat your heart out. Her eyes skimmed the pale blue blanket she had pressed into service as a tree skirt and realized she would be pulling dried needles out of it for a long time to come. Squinting her eyes and tilting her head just so, she figured out exactly which string of lights had gone out. Right in the middle of the tree there was a black void.
Oh, who cares anyway? Her pathetic little attempt at Christmas decorating was missed by all. No one visited her. She was single. She was supposed to spend all of her free time lugging gifts hither and yon to the hearths and homes of her family, and married friends and neighbors. She was invited to all manner of awkward social gatherings by those so caught up in the happiness and joyousness of the season that they felt compelled to invite poor little old Steph, who must need to get out.
Ugh. The calls as they came in sounded even more pathetic and forced after the blow-up she and Joe had on the steps outside the church Christmas Eve after midnight mass. As she listened to her machine, she didn't hear a single honest emotion in the invitations, but rather the barely concealed desire to be the first to get the scoop.
Christmas Day had been a bust of course. Her eyes were red and puffy from the crying jag she had indulged in during her long post-breakup bubble bath. Her mother harped and complained throughout dinner that she needed to stop playing around with a relationship as good the one with Joe and grow up. And if that wasn't enough, the ugly sweaters that she had bought her were three sizes too large. Intentionally. Her mother thought she was a size 14.
She threw her head back onto the couch in frustration. New Years Eve had been even worse. She privately thanked Kenny Stankovic for passing a nasty cold her way. He had hugged her with surprising enthusiasm when he opened the bucket of Legos. Unfortunately for her, the kiss he smeared across her face was snotty and contagious. The look Marylou gave her as Kenny dumped 1500 plastic squares onto the rug could have killed her first, but by the time New Years Eve rolled around she was definitely ill. She was able to honestly say she stayed home sick. Thank goodness for small boys and snotty noses.
She picked up the remote, moved the pile of gift boxes from the end of the couch and grabbed the fuzzy pink blanket Marylou had given her for Christmas. Scooting down onto the couch she pulled her pillow out and arranged herself just so on the couch. The room was dark except for the lights on the tree, and she wanted to enjoy them one more night before having to pack up Christmas for another year.
Clicking the remote at the CD changer, the sounds of Christmas music filled the air. She looked at the tree, and tried to imagine what a good Christmas was like. She couldn't recall the last time Christmas fulfilled all the hopes she had placed on the day.
She missed Ranger. She knew deep down that was at the heart of the melancholy that had washed over her the past few days. She considered the break-up with Joe to be a done deal. All she had to do was stick to that deal. She wasn't feeling regret or recrimination. More a sense of relief. The fact it was about as public as one could make a break-up was on her side she had decided. She was unsure of why she felt that way, but there it was.
But Ranger being gone, that was eating her up. He'd been in the wind for almost three months, and missing him had worn her out. Her resolve to accept her life with Morelli, a life that had no Ranger, had been like scotch tape trying to hold drifting continents together. Not having Ranger in her life hurt more than she could have ever imagined. They had never talked about the pull, the power that they felt, but neither could deny its existence.
"To hell with it!" She sat up suddenly and clicked the remote to the radio. "No more Christmas!" she declared to the empty room. No Burg busybody would know that she had taken down her decorations before the Epiphany and if they found out, well to hell with them too. What more would they expect from Ellen Plum's ungrateful daughter?
Happy to have a plan, she turned up the music, marched into the hallway and grabbed the old wine boxes and set to work removing all indications of holiday spirit. She found herself sitting on the floor, surrounded by tissue paper and ornaments, the string of burned-out lights tangled in front of her as the words to a song caught her attention.
It's
amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word
you can light up the dark
Try as I may I can never explain
What
I hear when you don't say a thing
The smile on your face
let's me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes
saying you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll
catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at
all
All day long I can hear people talking out loud (oh…)
But when you hold me near (oh, hold me near)
You drown out
the crowd (drown out crowd)
Try as they may, they can never defy
What's been said between your heart and mine
You say it best, when you say nothing at all
She had been singing along mindlessly and off key, trying to do something to get Ranger out of her head. But the lyrics defined their relationship. She saw with clarity that Ranger truly loved her. Period. No qualifiers.
She never heard the locks tumble over the soft tears that continued to fall long after the song ended. Tears fell soundlessly as she realized too how much she loved him as well. The hollowness she felt, it was heart-ache, from missing Ranger.
The catlike footsteps into the room didn't draw her attention either. Indeed, she melted into Ranger's arms without consciously acknowledging he had ever entered the room. His arms surrounded her and he pulled her into his embrace. The cold chill of his leather jacket against her overheated face shocked her into the present.
"Ranger." She sighed.
"Babe. Looking a little scary."
She turned in his arms to look into his eyes. "I missed you."
"I love you too, babe. Merry Christmas."
When you say nothing at all, Ronan Keating