‘Twas the Love Before Christmas

7. Catherine

Chapter seven

Catherine

I n a half hour, I had been able to scout out one of the stores with a good sale. As a kid, I always loved this mint hot chocolate mix sold during the Christmas festival. I had managed to find it in this store. No one in California sold a good hot chocolate mix. It was all espresso, martini, and smoothie mixes – none of which hit the December cravings for chocolate mint very well at all.

Once purchased, I stepped out the door of the store. I was looking down at my prize purchase when someone bumped into me. I almost dropped it. However, it remained safe in my arms.

“My apologies,” a voice said. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. I’m so sorry, Ma’am.”

“It’s all right.”

It was Noah. I had been so focused on my hot chocolate that I hadn’t paid much attention to the voice. Of course, it was Noah.

“If we keep running into each other like this, I’ll have to ask if you’ve decided to tail me everywhere, Noah,” I joked with him. “You’ve not been this… interested in where I’m going since our school days.”

“It was an accident, I swear,” Noah said as his face reddened. “But I suppose you have a point.” He managed a small laugh. “I did like to know where you were going, if only because I wanted to make sure you were safe. Have you found anything interesting at the festival?”

“I found that really good mint hot chocolate,” I said as I held up my can. “I got the largest can I could find. I plan to take this to the truck, buy another, and ship them both home because it’s so good. Can’t find anything like this in California, anyway. No one wants mint when it’s more than sixty degrees out all the time.”

That got a genuine smile out of Noah. He started to walk beside me.

“Think you’ll go through it all in a year?”

“I hope it’ll last me for at least a year or so, but I don’t want to worry about it if it starts to go faster than that,” I said. “Do you remember this was my favorite in high school? Mom and Dad used to get me a small can of it each year for Christmas. It never lasted to finals.” I laughed a little. “They’ve also sent me small cans every year, but I wanted something bigger.”

“Well, I see they have a ton of other things to do at this festival. If you want, it might be more economical to have me carry the other container around to see what’s going on and then take them both to the truck,” he offered. “We’re not that far from the shop, anyway.”

I stopped for a moment to think about what he had offered. The largest can fit in my backpack. If he was offering to carry another one, I supposed I could handle it for a while.

“All right. We’ll go back, get another container of hot chocolate, and then walk around and see what else they have. Thanks, Noah.”

“It’s no problem. Besides, my parents had a whole bunch of stuff they wanted to do while they were here, so I don’t think I’m leaving anytime soon,” he said with a soft smile.

It didn’t take us long to buy another container of hot chocolate. The cashier gave me a wink as if to say he agreed with my choice.

As Noah and I walked around the festival in town, I wasn’t entirely sure what to say. We hadn’t had a full, in-depth conversation in years. Our breakup had been about as civilized as possible, but “just friends” had been too awkward after that. I missed the friend almost as much as I missed the sweetheart. I’d only just learned about his arm injury from our conversation earlier.

I forced myself to focus on the positives of the situation: he was obviously in good physical health despite his injury, and he was at least satisfied with most of his life. That was, honestly, all I could ask for after not seeing him for a couple of years. Although even then, we didn’t really talk.

I wondered if moving back to Indigo Lake would give me more of a chance to keep my relationships with high school friends alive. Right now, they were barely hanging on. I texted and called my friends when I could, but the time difference didn’t help much. By the time I was free in the evenings, most of my friends who had married were putting their kids to bed and getting ready for bed themselves. Those who hadn’t married were settling down with a glass of wine and a good book or were going out for the evening. Weekends weren’t even a guaranteed hit anymore.

And it’d be far easier to get together with them, physically, if I lived in or near Indigo Lake year-round. In California, I had to hope that they would come to me or hope they were home when I came to visit for Christmas – and that was sporadic, at best.

On the other hand, in California, I had friends and a social life, too. Drinks every Saturday with my best friends, a great club for finding men to talk to, and the beach accessible year-round. I could go read on the beach any time of year, which I couldn’t do here in Indigo Lake. I’d also found an apartment I loved, which was far more than I could say for the apartments I’d visited in Indigo Lake in my price range a couple of years ago. If I came home, I more than likely was going to purchase a house or stay with my parents.

Some day I’d have to choose. Maybe I’d make a list of pros and cons. Maybe I’d consult some spiritual guru—California living had to be good for something, right? Maybe I’d just flip a coin.

I forced those thoughts away and turned to look at the booths we were passing. Noah had been tugging me along while my mind wandered. I didn’t like the thought of being dead weight for him.

“Oh! Look at that,” I said as I pointed toward one of the booths. “They’re hosting a gingerbread house decorating contest.”

“I’ve always loved a good gingerbread house,” he said. “Shall we?”

“I think that would be so much fun.”

We walked over to the booth and found they were about to begin. The organizers pulled another fully put-together gingerbread house out for us. That meant that we were all starting on equal footing. This would be purely a decorating competition and not a competition to see how fast we could build and decorate the house, which was nice.

I always struggled to keep the houses together if I was building them. Decorating was far more my speed.

“All right. I know I always struggle with decorating parts of the house,” he said. “But we’ve got some space for a lawn on the board here.” He pointed to the space in front of the gingerbread house. “If I laid out the frosting for you on the roof, could you take care of putting decorations up there?”

“I can do that,” I said. “You sound like this is one of your favorite things to do this time of year. Do you make one every year?”

“… not every year, but every year that I come home, I make one with Mary,” Noah said. “Mary always prefers to make the smaller houses so that we can decorate our own but do them together. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with someone to decorate one.”

“Well, we’ll have to make sure to include the elements in each other’s designs,” I said. “That’ll help tie it all together. I want to put red candies on the ground, like cobblestone.”

“I think they’d be better up on the roof,” Noah said. “But I can add some red ones, like flowers if you want.”

I nodded. That would help.

“Do some small ones. Make it look like holly berries,” I said.

He stared at me for a moment before nodding. Either he didn’t know it looked like holly berries, or he’d never considered this design before. Whatever the case, with our design plan in mind, we were ready to go when the organizers started our clock.

He laid out all the frosting for me on the roof line by line, and I added red candies to each line to create a beautiful lattice. Once I was done with the sides of the roof, I added some green gumdrops to the top of the roof, where the two sides connected. That would tie in the green candy he was putting down on the front of the board. He added some logs made of chocolate candies, and I added some chocolate for door knobs. I outlined the windows in small blue candies to add a touch of extra color. He glanced over, grinned, and topped my contribution by adding the same blue candies on the ground as smaller cobblestones.

“Do you want to add anything else to the house, Noah?” I asked once I had stopped.

He glanced up and took a good look at it.

“I think it would do with some blue on the edges of the roof too,” he said. “Need some icing for it?”

“I can handle that,” I said as I picked up our second piping bag. “And if you finish the ground before I’m done, you can help me.”

Noah nodded.

With a slightly unsteady hand, because I hadn’t decorated anything like this in a while, I added frosting and blue candies to the roof's edges. Soon, Noah had finished the ground area and helped me finish the roof.

“All right! Time!”

I put the piping bag down. Noah did the same. We glanced at each other as the judges started to come around. I swore for a second that I saw some worry in his eyes as if he was afraid we hadn’t done well.

It didn’t matter to me whether we received a prize. I had done it for the fun of it. Noah was more of a competitor, but I was impressed by his creativity. There was a cobblestone path of blue peppermint candies, and he had filled the gaps with the same blue candies that I had used on the edges of the roof. There was a small log pile, a peanut butter tree standing up to be the Christmas tree, and some white gumballs serving as snowballs. I hadn’t thought about snowballs, but they looked absolutely beautiful in the end.

Third place went to a couple with three kids helping them. They had a house that didn’t look at all coordinated, but I could tell the three kids had had a ton of fun. The adults had been there more to make sure that they had all the supplies they needed to just let loose and decorate as they pleased.

To my surprise, Noah and I won second place, only losing out to a house that had been decorated by the lone single contestant in this round. She had been able to decorate the entirety of the house, the board, and then some in the time it took both Noah and I to do it. She must have known exactly what she wanted to do.

I turned to Noah after we were given our prize —coupons for the nearby pizza place. Not bad, winning a free pizza for having fun decorating a gingerbread house.

“I think your color-coordination ideas helped us get second place. That was wonderful. So much fun,” I said as we started to walk away. “I’ve never had that much fun decorating a gingerbread house before.”

“Thanks,” he said. “Now, why don’t I take you home? We’ve been in the cold for a while, and we’re not that far. I know our parents drove, but I think we can manage the walk. Even with these large containers of hot chocolate.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” he said. “It’d be an honor to escort you home.”

“All right.”

I smiled a little.

As we started walking, I couldn’t help but think that this was part of what had led me to fall in love with him in high school: he had this natural rambunctious energy and a large love for the creativity needed for things like gingerbread houses and writing. He may not have been very good at writing (and he had always owned up to that in high school), but he loved challenges for improvement.

“You really think my color coordination got us second place?” Noah asked as we walked.

“I do. I’ve never been very good at colors and decorating, but I suppose we all have some sort of a creative outlet that suits us better than others,” I said. “Maybe, once you retire from baseball, you could pursue something in the creative field.”

“Oh, I don’t think I could,” he said. “I love sports too much to give it up entirely, even when my baseball career is over.”

I smiled. That was the Noah I remembered from high school.