Don’t Be in Love

34

Don’t Spend Christmas Alone — Adelaide

Christmas morning, I woke to Kurt pawing at my balcony door, snow refilling the sidewalks, and the jarring realization that everything that had happened last night was not a dream. It was indeed real. Terribly real.

Finding Dorian at my apartment door. Letting him in. Going on the London Eye. Running back in the rain. Taking cover in a telephone booth. Touching him. Kissing him. Whispering his name. Feeling his hand leave mine as he dropped me at home, no lingering words. No declarations of lo—

Stop . Stop, stop, stop.

“Kurt, stop!” I shouted, the bell on his collar ringing through my brain.

I looked up and he was sitting politely, snow collecting on his white coat on the balcony. His pink nose tilted innocently as I noticed a tiny note tied to his collar.

“Ugh. Fine, I’m coming.” I threw the duvet off and swung my legs over. Catching myself in the mirror, I remembered I had put Dorian’s UK flag shirt on in my drowsy state last night.

Oh. My. God. I scrambled for a sweatshirt—one that’d mask the smell of his cologne—before opening the balcony door. A cold breeze and a few snowflakes tumbled in, along with Kurt who squeezed through the crack. He meowed his thank you.

“Hello, Kurt,” I sighed as if I was greeting the coworker who refused to save any donuts for the rest of the office.

He ran straight for my closet far away from the balcony to the pile of blankets folded on the floor. He nuzzled in until his tail twisted like a whip and curled around him.

“Now that you’re sitting still …” I walked around my bed and crouched in front of the closet, untying the note from his collar.

It was short in sweeping cursive:

Happy Christmas from Maureen it sounds meant to be.

I’d of course answer any questions you have. Why don’t you give me a call when you get this?

P.S. I loved London. There’s nothing better than the view of Big Ben at night. (Just stay away from the telephone booths—they’re riddled with germs.)

Hopefully I can come visit you soon, if you’d like that.

— Auntie

I exhaled.

She had a fiancé now. She told him about me. She missed me.

Massachusetts misses you. And so do I.

The part of my brain dedicated to family memories and nostalgia locked up like a vault respired just a bit, dense air releasing.

She responded. She wanted to visit.

A wet saltiness hit my lip.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” I laughed, wiping a tear and standing up, returning to my chair. “I don’t even know why I’m crying, it’s just a card.”

“Nothing to apologize for.” She shook her head. “Are you close with your aunt?”

“No,” I responded with honesty for the first time in years without second guessing it. “We haven’t spoken since I started university four years ago. I—uh—I moved in with her when my mother left. My aunt wasn’t thrilled to be straddled with a kid.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“She may as well have. We barely spoke when I lived with her.”

“How old was she when you moved in?”

“Twenty-five.”

“Wow, young.” She tapped her nails against her mug. “Well, if I know anything in the seventy-nine years I’ve been around, it’s that being in your twenties is arguably the most difficult time of your life. Everything you do in that decade forms what’s to come. And it feels as if you’re never doing the right thing or making the right decision. That’s not to say how your aunt acted was right. I don’t know her. But I wonder if that at all had to do with her silence. I know that I made more than enough mistakes at twenty-five.”

I pressed at the corner of my eyes, trying to push down the puffiness. In three years, I’d be the same age my aunt was when she took me in. I couldn’t imagine that burden. I took a big gulp of the bitter tea to halt my tear ducts.

She continued, “The mistakes I regret the most are the ones I didn’t allow to happen. You have to make decisions with purpose, knowing that they may not be around forever. Whether that mistake could be not asking your aunt about the past or letting that handsome friend slip from your life.”

Another tear escaped, running down the angle in my cheek. I inhaled.

I wanted to ask her about her mistakes, her regrets, but that seemed too soon, even if she was witnessing me having an unexpected breakdown over family trauma.

So instead, I asked, “Maureen, do you like to read? Or at least drink wine and eat cheese?”