No Angels (Willow Creek Christmas)

1. Chapter One

Chapter One

Mike

Twenty years ago, Bianca Cassidy showed me the only angels I’ll find here in Willow Creek have shredded wings and crumpled halos.

I can’t believe she’s back and I want to know why. When the mayor, Zane Reid introduced us, she just reached out her hand and said, “We already know each other. Long time no see, Mike.”

I was too dumbstruck to reply with anything other than a curt nod.

But the first rehearsal is over, and the last angel in the choir just got picked up. I snag Bianca’s arm and haul her behind the curtains in case there are any parents left to eavesdrop on what I need to say.

It smells like sawdust and lemon oil back here, and the motes I just stirred up when I brushed past the heavy velvet are swimming in little clouds. It’s quiet and secluded and I can get the answers I need for my peace of mind.

“What are you doing here?” I ignore the crack at the end of my question that lets on how much I’m invested in her answer.

She left the morning after we graduated from Willow Creek High School and never looked back.

The morning after the kiss that turned my world upside down, she hopped on a bus to New York City. The kiss that made me feel like I’d just figured out how to start a fire, that rewired my brain, wasn’t enough to change her mind. It wasn’t enough to keep her in Willow Creek.

What I was offering her when I kissed her wasn’t enough to hold her here, and I gave up on making her mine years ago.

I’m lying to myself, because I’ve been thinking about the kiss off and on since the day she left. I wonder if there’s anything I could have done to change her mind. Like kissing her sooner. Like using my words to let her know how I felt the night before she was going to leave this place and never look back.

There were a couple of calls – but it was before cell phones were really a thing. One day I called because I wanted to hear her voice and ask if she’d be home for Christmas and it wasn’t her who answered. The guy who picked up the phone told me she was in the shower and if I was that loser from back home I should just do myself a favor and stop calling because she was never going back to that podunk place. He said she always laughed – and not in a nice way- when she talked about it and me.

So I never called again. I let her drift away.

I thought about her because there was an empty space where her smile used to be. For the first fifteen years, I couldn’t stand the smell of strawberries.

When her mom was diagnosed with cancer the first time and she didn’t come back, I stopped thinking about the Boone’s Farm strawberry kiss and the way the freckles across her nose looked like the Sagittarius constellation by the end of summer. Because she’d grown into someone I didn’t know. Nothing would have kept away the girl I knew. Not even a natural disaster.

I made myself forget the way she murmured my name when I cupped her nape in that hayfield and her voice was like cotton candy and hot fudge sundaes.

She’s staring at me like I’ve offended her. But I need to know what she’s doing here after all this time. Besides disrupting my life.

“Come on, Bianca. We both know you’re not really here to shepherd around a bunch of rowdy five-year-old angels and herd cats so you can direct a mediocre town Christmas play. Why are you really here?”

“What do you mean, why am I here? And it’s not going to be mediocre. It’ll be the best Christmas pageant ever.”

I crowd her against the half-built scaffolding. “I mean why are you here when you have a life in the city? You were a Broadway star and you left it all behind and came home to this mountain town in the middle of nowhere. I’m not buying your story. Adding this little escape to your resume won’t do you any favors and we both know it.”

She’s flustered. Her cheeks are bright pink and her breaths whistle over my shoulder in rapid little puffs of distress.

“I’m here because my mom needed me here while she fights for remission.”

“That’s not the only reason. It’s been over ten years since you even bothered to visit. I was the one who made sure she got the harvest in, fixed the roof on the barn and made sure she had kids to work at the feed store every summer. Now tell me what made you tuck your tail between your legs and come scurrying back here. According to your boyfriend you couldn’t leave us all behind fast enough.”

She narrows her eyes. Like I have no right to demand explanations.

“If I have other reasons for being here, you’re not entitled to hear them. They’re none of your business. And I don’t have a boyfriend.”

My heart irrationally kicks up at her admission. I wonder what happened to the douchebag that answered her phone all those years ago. Has he been out of the picture for a while? Has she had a string of boyfriends or is she serially monogamous like me?

I want to dip my head and smell the little crevice behind her ear. I need to know if she still smells like lilies of the valley.

I smother the urge and narrow my eyes right back.

She frowns and crosses her arms, rubbing her hands over her elbows.

When she bites her lip, I want to soothe it with my tongue.

“I know I was selfish. But Mom never asked me to come back. Every time I called she told me how proud she was of me. She always deflected the conversation away from her own worries.”

“And you didn’t push her for answers because your career was more important to you than your family. Or anyone else in Willow Creek.”

I want to take back the bitter words. I don’t want her to know how much I’ve missed her. She doesn’t need to know that the strawberry-infused kiss I stole has haunted me for eighteen years. She doesn’t need to know how many times I wished I could pick up the phone and tell the girl who used to be my best friend what was going on in my life.

“Trust me, I’m well aware how much everyone disapproves of me. I agree with them, so you don’t need to keep rubbing dirt in my wounds.”

“I’m not doing that. I just want you to know that the rest of us have been picking up the pieces of debris you left in your wake.” Especially me.

She sighs and drops her arms. “Mom always told me she didn’t want me to get stuck here.”

“That’s how you think of this place?” That’s how you think of me? As a way to trap you somewhere you don’t really want to be?

She shakes her head. “No. Not until we graduated. Even then, I didn’t want to leave.”

“Why didn’t you want to leave?” Does she mean she didn’t want to leave me? She didn’t even tell me goodbye. “You were the star of every single play and your future was bright. You deserved the opportunity. Even if we were all sorry to see you leave and missed you.”

“You missed me?”

I step away, so she won’t see all those old feelings surfacing in my eyes. “Of course I did.”

I missed her the way sailors miss red sunsets and soldiers miss peace.

She wedges her hand between us and rests it in the middle of my chest.

“I thought about the kiss a lot. It was a memory that kept me warm.”

“Why didn’t you leave me your number when you moved out of your first apartment?”

“Because I missed you and there was no room for you in my life then. But I thought about the kiss. Especially when the city was covered in a blanket of snow and I was banging my iron skillet against the radiator.”

“Because the memory of our kiss kept you warm?”

She slowly shakes her head. “Nooo…,” she drawls.

“Tell me why you thought about that kiss.” My nails are digging into my palms. So I won’t give into temptation again and touch her. She’s not here to stay. Why would she be?

She lifts her chin and resolve floods her face. It’s the same look she got every time I dared her when we were kids. “I thought about it because it was my first kiss. And I’d been wanting it for a really long time before you finally made your move.”

I take a step closer, erasing my retreat. “How long?”

She bites her lip and I want to soothe it. “Since that weekend you tried to teach me to drive your old pickup truck.”

I smile at the memory. “You almost tore out my transmission.”

She wanted to learn to drive a stick so I offered to teach her. After we stalled out at a stoplight on the top of Harmar Hill, she panicked. We started rolling backward and I was shouting instructions and she was crying and red faced. When she finally managed to crank it again and floored it so we fishtailed when we took off, we both started laughing.

We were laughing so hard we couldn’t see straight, and I motioned for her to pull over at the Dairy Freeze. I bought us both waffle cones – vanilla for me and chocolate with sprinkles for her.

She asked for a taste of mine and I asked for a taste of hers. When I handed her my cone and her raspberry pink tongue snuck out and licked the melting vanilla, I couldn’t look away.

That’s when it started for me. It probably started way before that, but I didn’t acknowledge it. Some part of me knew she was it for me the time she beat me in the fifty-yard dash on field day in fifth grade. But that ice cream cone was the thing that brought it all home. It’s when I knew I’d never be the same.

“That’s when it started for you too?”

“Yeah,” she ruefully admits. “I thought you were going to ask me to the junior prom.”

“I didn’t.”

She grimaces. “No. You asked Cindy Houlihan. And even though she was the head cheerleader and you were a gearhead instead of a football player, she said yes.”

“And we were together until the day all of us graduated.”

“The day you finally kissed me – after I’d already been waiting for two years and after I’d already made plans to leave. You waited too long. I wasn’t going to stay – no matter how good the kiss was.”

I step back. If she could walk away from all those memories, away from me after I kissed her, maybe she was never the girl I thought she was. Or the girl I wanted her to be.

And maybe the woman isn’t for me either.

I give her a hard look and she glares right back. “Fine,” I tell her.

When I walk away this time, I don’t look back.