Only So Far by Tricia Morrison

Author:Tricia Morrison [Morrison, Tricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Publishing
Published: 2023-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

THEN

December 9, 2010

It’s their first Christmas without Jamie’s father, and Ainsley thinks she’s run out of tears. The cancer had come quickly, sneaking up on all of them in July and taking him by October. The low mourning chimes of the church bells when they had buried him went so fittingly with the rush of autumn that was just starting to hit the mountains.

Their senior year of high school is flying at record speed, and Jamie and Ainsely are holding onto each other with white-knuckled grips, trying to keep it together just a little longer before the future pulls them in different directions. Ainsley has already applied, early decision, to NYU and had gotten her acceptance letter the week before Thanksgiving. Jamie is going to Colgate on a full ride for hockey.

Adulthood is on the horizon.

For now, though, they’re just two teenagers clinging to each other on Jamie’s couch and trying to stop grief from eating them alive.

“Okay?” she whipsers, pressing her forehead to his and sliding her hands down his sweater-clad back. He shivers under her touch and pulls her closer.

“Okay,” he whispers, voice heavy. He laces their fingers together in his lap, runs a thumb over her knuckles.

“Okay,” she says again, easing him up off the couch. “If it’s too much…”

“I know,” he says with a nod. “He was just… more than my dad, for me. You know?”

She hugs around his waist and tucks her face into his shoulder. Of course, she knew. Everett Thompson had been a friend, a mentor, a parent, and a coach all wrapped up in one for Jamie. They were rarely apart when he was alive, spending long winter weekends on the frozen pond behind their house, passing a puck back and forth. In the summers they were hiking the mountains, running the lumberyard, or painting the cabins on the lake that they rented. There was never a moment where Jamie wasn’t looking at his dad like he’d hung the moon, and there was rarely a moment that Everett Thompson wasn’t looking back at Jamie in the same way.

To the town, Coach Thompson was more than a coach. He was the one who had led the Bombers to the playoffs every year, and left big tips at the restaurants where he made sure to know the staff by name. He was the one who sang the loudest at church, gave all of the youngest kids presents on their birthdays and gave every person speaking to him his full attention so that they felt seen. Felt known. Felt cared for. He was special.

He was Lake Placid. Not just from there.

“I can’t believe they brought all of this,” Jamie’s mom says from the kitchen, voice thick with emotion. Ainsley waits for Jamie to build up the courage to leave the living room before following him into the kitchen. The counter was overflowing with food, cards, and in some spots, gifts, for the Thompsons.

“They care about you, Liv,” Ainsley’s mom, in a rare display of comfort, says quietly.

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