Sprinkle All The Way (Evergreen Lake: Under the Mistletoe)

Chapter 4

four

NOAH

Maybe-Violet follows me to one of the booths against the wall. Sitting on the worn down cushioned surface I stare at the girl across from me. She’s no longer next door, but here in front of me. I think. The tingling sensation on my hand from her skin is the only indication I’m not making her up this time.

When I first moved away after graduation I saw her everywhere I went. She was around every corner and in every brunette I interacted with and every laugh I heard. No one ever compared to her though. Her big blue eyes and heart stopping grin always sucked me in and cheered me up when I needed it most. Those lips are now covered in red lipstick, which is a new feature. That probably means she is real, but I still can’t be sure. Too many times I’ve been fooled by dreams that left me panting and hard, but most of all alone.

“Do you still think I’m imaginary?” Violet giggles and my stomach flips. I probably shouldn’t have another drink. Her laugh sinks deep into my veins and my body comes alive as the sound travels through me, like it’s awakening from a long hibernation .

I nod, unsure what else to say to her after so many years. What do I say to the girl whose image is never far from the forefront of my brain when she unexpectedly shows up in front of me? When she didn’t call or text, and now she’s all smiles like she didn’t drop me like I meant nothing to her?

Nothing.

She rolls her eyes at me as she removes her coat, and the corner of my mouth tips up, remembering all the times she’s rolled them before. Her green sweater is one I don’t recognize, and I reach across the table to feel it and make sure she’s there—the fabric is soft and warm from being inside of her coat. I think I hear her laugh, but when she places her hand over mine I can only focus on the shivers that shoot up my arm and down my spine. I’m no stranger to her touch, but encountering it again after so long is like finding water in the desert. I’ve imagined this touch on me again, and much less innocently than I care to admit. I want to jump out of this booth and slide in next to her. Crowd her against the wall and whisper things to her no one else in the bar could hear as she gasps my name. Removing my hand from stroking her sweater, she uses her other hand and pinches the back of my hand.

“Ouch!” I shout, pulling away from her and bringing my thoughts back to the fact that she never called.

“Real enough for you?” She lets go of my hand and crosses her arms, giving me a look that tells me I’m being dumb—a look I’m used to from her and one I’ve missed desperately. I nod before she continues, “My mom said you weren’t living at home. I didn’t think you were in town.”

They’re not questions, but statements. I’m too drunk to read between the lines and decipher the tone in her voice. Did her mom not tell her I was home? Is she mad I’m here? Should I not have said hi to her? Should I go home? I bet she’s embarrassed to be seen with me. I spent so many years making sure I never ruined her image and now I’ve destroyed that with one drunken night because I couldn’t stay away. There’s probably a reason she never called me after I left, and I should have left her alone.

“My mom didn’t mention you either,” I quip, taking a sip of my beer and falling against the booth. My mom is the queen of dropping Violet into casual conversations. Whether I like it or not, I’m all too aware of how she works at a steady job and comes home for the holidays sometimes. One thing my mom never brings up is whether or not she’s involved with anyone and I’ve always been too scared of the answer to ask.

“Briefly. Some things fell through, so I’m here until the end of the year,” she tells me.

“I’m on Main Street,” I say, but with my inhibitions lowered, I want to tell her more. Normally I avoid telling people too much about myself, but if there’s anyone I could confide in, it’s Violet—even if I haven’t seen her in years. If she wants me to stop, she’ll stop me, but being here with her is the best I’ve felt all month.

She was always a beacon of comfort for me, and she knows that. Growing up with my parents was never fun. They were the type of couple who shouldn’t have ever gotten together. They got pregnant and married at nineteen, a fact my dad never let me forget. When they weren’t screaming at each other, he was telling me I was a mistake and how I ruined his life. He was too much of a coward to leave and tried to get out of the marriage by constantly cheating on my mom with his secretaries, and Mom was too stubborn to leave him. Sometimes their fights would end with them throwing things at each other. I have countless memories from childhood of the times I had to pick up shards of glass off the floor when they were done. Sometimes they would make up and it was often louder than when they were fighting. I wanted nothing more than to escape my house.

Moving next door to Violet was a blessing in disguise. I hated having to move the summer before eighth grade and leave all my friends behind. My dad wasted no time pointing her out after her family said hello the day we moved in. The memory of his tight grip on my shoulder as he said, “Don’t think about fucking up your life with that girl by screwing her. She’ll ruin your life and never let you leave.” The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until he said it, but after that it was all I could think about.

One night that summer, Violet was in her window when I opened mine to get some air and get my head far away from one of their fights. She asked if I was okay, and there was something in her voice that pushed the truth past my lips. I wasn’t. She pointed to the ladder hanging on their shed and told me to come over so I didn’t have to listen to my parents.

At first, I went over with every intention to try to get in her pants, because it was the one thing he didn’t want me to do. But I also didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I was such a screw up by doing exactly what he expected.

Instead, we stayed up all night talking and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spoken to her more before. She listened to me go on and on about how I wanted to finish school and leave for New York City. It always seemed like the place people went in movies to live their life, and that’s what I wanted. I also wanted to be far away from my parents.

Both of us trying to fit on her trundle bed was uncomfortable, but it got me away from my house. Eventually she pulled out the second bed, with a mattress far thinner than hers, and I fell asleep listening to her tell me about how she broke her arm jumping off a pool slide when she was six.

Now, I want nothing more than to lie on her bed and catch her up on the last eight years and hear about everything she’s been up to if she is willing to do that.

“Why are you on Main Street?” Violet’s voice pulls me back to the present, and the whiplash of my thoughts jumping around has my head spinning.

“You’d never believe me.” I shake my head. I still don’t believe the situation I’m in.

“This sounds like it’s going to take awhile. Let me go grab us some drinks.” She goes to stand, but I reach out and stop her. The sudden movement increases the dizziness as I wrap my hand around her arm. My desire to pull her to me and keep her close forever is about to override all rational thoughts.

“I have a tab open, put them on that,” I tell her instead. I’d offer to go and get them myself, but I’m unconvinced I’d make it back here. She nods and I watch her push through the crowd to the bar. I can’t pull my eyes off her as she says hello to Joe and he runs around the bar to give her a hug. Why didn’t I hug her yet? I should hug her soon. Suddenly I’m aware I haven’t held her in years and the lack of her leaves a hole in my heart and my arms.

Luckily, she returns a moment later with two beers.

“Okay, tell me everything.” She wraps her red lips around the bottle and I have to tell myself not to move to her side.

“You’re looking at the proud owner of Gingerbreads,” I spit out as fast as I can, lifting my beer and taking a long swig.

Violet chokes on her beer, with some of it slipping out of her mouth and down her chin. It’s torture watching her slowly wipe the liquid from her mouth. Her lipstick doesn’t budge and it makes me wonder what it would take to mess it up.

“You what?” she splutters once she’s cleaned up.

“Ginger left everything to me. Apartment. Shop. Bills,” I tell her, lifting one finger for each item and squinting my eyes to focus on her.

“Noah, that’s awesome,” she shouts, throwing her arms in the air and knocking her beer over. “Shit, my bad.”

I reach for the napkins on the table and help her clean up. “It’s actually not very awesome,” I mumble to myself.

“Wait.” She stops wiping and grabs my hand. “Why not?”

This woman needs to stop touching me, or I’m going to tell her about all the feelings I had for her in high school and never acted on. She never showed signs she was interested in me in high school, and that message became crystal clear after she didn’t reach out after I left for college. Part of her not reaching out made it easy to stay away for so long. Now that we’re both back I’m sure there’s no way she would be interested in me now that I’m running Ginger’s shop into the ground. My skin burns with each second she keeps her hand on mine. But I also don’t want her to ever let go.

“Can’t open. Screwed,” I confess, shrugging and hiccuping at the same time.

“You need to explain more, I can’t keep asking you why.” Violet glares at me.

“Too drunk, Vi.” She rolls her eyes at me, but waits for me to continue. “No one will work with me, and I can’t do it alone. So it’s useless,” I tell her, and drop my head to the table.

Her delicate fingers are in my hair a second later, scraping along my scalp with nails that are the perfect length. I have to bite my lip so I don’t groan like I want to. She always used to give me head massages when I would get too worked up. They’d calm me down, and they even put me to sleep a few times.

“Two steps forward,” she says, continuing to rub my head, moving to the spot right above my ear.

“One step back,” I echo the second half of the phrase we always said to each other when things got rough. The first time I said it to her was in ninth grade when she failed a test and was nervous about telling her parents. She wasted no time laughing and telling me the phrase was actually “one step forward, two steps back.” To which I replied I liked mine better—at least mine was hopeful and got you moving forward. She agreed, and it became one of our many inside jokes.

Tilting my head into her hand as the memory relaxes me, a small groan escapes from my lips without my consent. She instantly pulls her hand away like she’s been bitten, and my head pops up.

“What?” I ask.

“Sorry I shouldn’t have done that. You don’t have a partner or a spouse who would get pissed at me for touching you, right?” Her hands cover her flushed cheeks as she looks around the bar.

“Nope,” I reassure her. “What about you?”

“Okay, cool, and no partner for me either. Sorry, I kind of fell into our old habits there,” she apologizes, clenching her fists several times before sticking them in her lap.

“Stop apologizing. You know I could stop you if I wanted to,” I tell her, and it comes out dirtier than I intended. I can tell she thinks the same thing by the way her mouth forms the smallest ‘O’.

“Right, sorry—shit, sorry—shit fuck me,” she stumbles through her words before taking a deep breath. “The shop. I’m impressed you’re trying to open it, but it sucks you can’t.”

“Thanks,” I take a sip of my beer, entirely uninterested in rehashing my failure and too focused on not mentioning how she said ‘fuck me,’ which I would gladly do.

“Of course,” she says, sitting up straighter. “Now tell me what else is new.”

The next few hours go by in a blur as we catch up on inconsequential things about our lives, catching up on eight years of lost time. At one point we try to play darts, but I’m too drunk to aim well, and Violet isn’t coordinated enough to aim, period. We talk and laugh until Joe kicks us out.

She tells me she’s going to walk me home because I’m still a bit wobbly, and I let her. I’m still skeptical she’s really here with me, but I don’t care. Either way, I got to feel like myself again for a night.

We’re walking along Main Street, her arm wrapped around me to keep me standing, and a small sense of belonging finally sprouts roots in my heart. I close my eyes and let imaginary Violet lead me home, sure she’ll be just another memory when I wake up tomorrow.