“Eat,” he said.
“What is this?” I asked. “How much did you spend?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just eat. You’re tired because you haven’t eaten.”
I brought the coffee to my lips and hummed in satisfaction. I felt tears rising to my eyes at just the taste of it. It tasted like home. Like the cups of coffee I used to share with my mother before I left for college, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and ready for the adult life. It tasted like the nights I spent with my father drinking bullshit decaf coffee and watching late night television since Mom couldn’t ever stay up that late.
It tasted like home, and suddenly, I wanted to be there more than ever.
I felt the bag moving in my lap before I opened my eyes. I choked my tears down while my hands stayed wrapped around the hot cup of coffee. I saw Colin’s hand hovering in my vision, holding a breakfast wrap he’d unraveled for me.
I looked over at him, and his eyes were studying me intently.
He was reading me again, and I wasn’t sure what he thought of me at this point.
“I’m not going to ask again,” he said.
I took the wrap from his hand and brought it to my lips. The moment my teeth bit down into it, my salivary glands kicked into overdrive. I took big chunks out of the wrap as he sat beside me and ate, our bodies replenishing their energy stores after all the things we’d been through over the past twenty-four hours.
I reached down into the bag and pulled out another wrap and ate it without a second thought. My stomach was full, and my hunger was satiated. The coffee danced along my lips as I took pull after pull. I was humming and moaning and sighing with relief.
I felt a little more human again, and I was suddenly embarrassed as to how I’d been treating Colin.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Not a problem. I also got us some things for the road. A couple of snacks and another drink for each of us. Do you like soda or juice?”
“Juice,” I said, grinning.
“Why does that not surprise me?”
The look on his face was cold, but the glimmer in his eye was playful. He took out the cold bottle of apple juice and handed it to me, and I quickly stuck it in my purse. He handed me a bag of trail mix and a granola bar before he handed me a bag of gummy bears, and I squealed at the sight of them before I shoved everything down into my purse.
“You didn’t have to get all of that for me,” I said.
He grinned and sit back in his chair.
It took the mechanics an hour and a half to do everything they needed with the car, and I could tell Colin was getting anxious. He was squirming around in his seat, and his hands were clamping down a little too hard on one another. He was checking his watch, mentally recalculating the time he’d be arriving wherever it was he needed to be.
We both breathed a sigh of relief when his name was called.
We got back onto the road, and it was well past one in the afternoon. With us having to still traverse with slush on the road, it would easily tack on another half an hour to the trip. I wouldn’t be getting into town until almost five, which meant Colin wouldn’t get anywhere until well past five thirty.
Hopefully, he’d still make it to his stuff on time.
I pulled out my phone and called up my mom. I knew she’d want to know that we were back on the road. We talked for a bit while Colin got us back on the highway, but once we started gaining speed, I cut the call short. I didn’t want to do or say anything that would distract Colin, especially since I didn’t know what he was currently thinking.
But he surprised me when I hung up the phone call by initiating conversation.
“What would your perfect Christmas be like?” he asked.
Panning my gaze over to him, I scrunched up my nose at his question.
“You want to know how I’d like to spend Christmas?” I asked.
“No, I want to know what your perfect Christmas would be like.”
I studied him, watching as he drove our rental car down the highway. I wasn’t sure why in the world he was interested. He was the most confusing man I’d ever met in my life. He was a self-professed hater of the holidays and basically anything that made anyone laugh or smile, and he wanted to know what my picture-perfect Christmas was like.
Well, if he wanted to know, then I would tell him.
“If I tell you, then you have to tell me yours,” I said.
I watched him stiffen for just a second before he nodded his head curtly.
“My perfect Christmas would incorporate my family. Mom. Dad. My husband. Our kids, if we had any. We’d start by going tree shopping as a family on November thirtieth.”
“Seems pretty specific,” Colin said.
“Hush and listen.”
I watched a grin spread across his face before I continued.
“We’d decorate the tree on December first and decorate the house on December second. We’d all watch a Christmas movie every night leading up to actual Christmas Day. I’d have a Christmas dress I’d wear for each day, too.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I’d buy Christmas dresses. Ones that looked like candy canes and ones that had all those gaudy designs on them. But I’d buy twenty-four of them to wear on all the days leading up to Christmas.”
“What would you wear Christmas Day?” he
