Down My Chimney (California Christmas Book 2) by Spencer Spears

Author:Spencer Spears [Spears, Spencer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-11T18:30:00+00:00

9

Henry

How do you go back to being just friends with the boy you’re in love with?

You don’t.

I mean, you try. You drive home, crying. Sneak into your house, crying. Lie in your bed, crying.

You think about all the hopes you had, all the silly little dreams that look so foolish now. Spring break together in Mammoth. Holding hands at the beach. A graduation trip up the coast to Washington, stopping in towns no one’s even heard of, late mornings in A-frame motels that smell like mothballs and cedar, the sun slanting across his body as it curves against yours in bed.

Your first jobs. Your first shared apartment. Your first fight that ends with a dramatic kiss in the rain and make-up sex, instead of this rusty wound that refuses to stop bleeding.

Your first long vacation—a road trip where you argue over directions at a truck stop in Arizona, a paper map blowing in the wind as his dogs snooze in the back of the Jeep you bought together. You get lost on your way to the Grand Canyon and find each other again in bed that night, moonlight pooling on the sheets as your bodies merge into one.

A proposal, quiet and surprising, over coffee one morning. A backyard wedding, small and intimate and perfect. A fixer-upper house somewhere in the mountains with a backyard full of prickly pears and a stray cat who looks for treats and belly rubs. Parents and sisters who might become grandparents and aunts someday.

I’d pictured a whole future, just for the two of us, and now it was gone.

I wanted to be Blake’s friend. That was what he needed right now, more than a boyfriend. But the thought of actually being his friend tore a hole through my chest all over again, because it reminded me of what I’d lost.

He’d never even used the word boyfriend. Not once. I should have seen that as a sign, and realizing that now just made me hurt.

Lying in bed, I went back and forth about whether I blamed him or me or both of us—or maybe neither. I knew he wasn’t wrong to need more time. I knew it was his decision, whether he was ready to come out. I knew I wasn’t wrong to need more. I knew all of that, but I still hurt.

I felt so stupid, wondering if Blake had ever really cared about me at all. It didn’t matter that he’d been crying with me, just a few hours ago. Didn’t matter that he’d told me he didn’t want this to end.

The fact was, he wasn’t here right now, when I needed someone to hold me and love me and tell me it was going to be all right. He wasn’t here, and it hurt.

I hated myself for falling in love with him, and wondered when the falling even began. I thought it might have been the first time I ever saw him smile. I wanted to go back in time to my six-year-old self and tell him to run.

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