‘Twas the Love Before Christmas

18. Noah

Chapter eighteen

Noah

I caught up to Catherine, who had shown up at the town’s live nativity. She gave me a soft smile, but I could tell she was uncomfortable. Had I done something to make her uncomfortable? Whatever could it have been? All of my actions from the last couple of days played again in my head. If I could piece together what I’d done wrong, I could apologize to her for it all. However, I pushed that barrage to the back of my mind. It could wait for another hour of the day, and if something crossed my mind, I’d text her an apology as soon as possible.

“Are you enjoying the nativity?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Mom and Dad are Mary and Joseph this year,” she added. “It’s kind of… my responsibility to come in case they need help. Now that I’ve seen all the sets and had a chance to see their entire little performance, I’m not entirely sure what to do. I think this is one of the town's most family-oriented activities for the Christmas season.”

“Well, I hear they’re doing sleigh rides by the Market this year. That farm, just on the outskirts of town. We could browse the Market again, go for a sleigh ride,” I offered, yearning to just be close to her again.

“That sounds like a great time. I’ll go tell my parents where we’re headed.”

I nodded and headed out to my truck. She returned a few minutes later, getting up into the truck with me.

“Had to give a key to my parents,” she said. “Shall we go to the Market?”

I nodded. We headed out, and it didn’t take long for us to get to the Market. There was a bit of a parking jam in the parking lot. However, that was because the live nativity was one of the most anticipated activities for the Christmas season.

“Hey, there it is!” Catherine pulled my attention to an ad for sleigh rides during the evening.

I smiled.

“It really does sound like fun.”

“Well, shall we go see about a sleigh ride?” Catherine asked as she walked over to me.

“A sleigh ride sounds great,” I replied.

We started walking toward the stall offering sleigh rides. I gently took Catherine’s hand. Though she gave me an odd look when I took it, she didn’t pull away. I smiled at her. If she wasn’t going to pull away when I took her hand, perhaps there was something rekindling in her as well.

My heart raced as I hoped that Catherine had also been considering how close we’d gotten since she’d come home for the holidays. I couldn’t rekindle this relationship all by myself. No matter how good I was at setting myself on fire for competition, love was not a competition. And Catherine deserved a man who could put all competition aside to embrace the warmth of playful afternoons with his sweetheart.

We arrived at the sleigh ride stall in silence but with very good timing. The stall was at the very edge of town with a farmhouse about an eighth of a mile behind it, sitting up on a hill.

“Oh yes, the Hanson farm. I remember this place.”

They were pulling the sleigh up after a ride down the hill. I turned to talk to the man running the operation.

“Well, hello Sam,” I said. “Catherine, you remember Sam Hanson?”

“Yes! Hi Sam,” Catherine responded with a smile. “So you’re the one running the sleigh rides!”

“Yes I am,” Sam replied. “I bought the farm from my folks a few years back when they moved to Florida and decided this could be my contribution to Indigo Lake’s Christmas celebration.”

“Great idea, Sam,” I said. “We’d like to take a ride.”

“You’ll have to make a reservation. It’s been pretty popular this year, and kids have been fighting to get on the sleigh. This was the best way to avoid that,” Sam told me. “Take a look at the sheet over there. If there are no slots open today, try again tomorrow. That’s the best advice I have.”

“Let’s at least take a look, Noah. I’d love to go for a ride on the sleigh… especially down this hill. I remember all us kids—including you, Sam, and your brothers—sledding down it when all you needed to have fun was a small sled and some snow.” She laughed as she finished her sentence, and I couldn’t help but join in.

Sam nodded in agreement with a big smile.

With that, we walked over to the sign-up sheet. Just our luck; there was a slot at seven this evening. I looked at the clock on my phone. It was six-fifteen. We had a forty-five-minute wait as the other slots were taken. I couldn’t blame them for putting this system in place, so I simply signed us up for the seven o’clock slot as Catherine smiled and waved to the man running the rides.

Then, saying goodbye to Sam, we walked away to browse the Market. The nativity event had drawn even more people out, and all the stalls were bustling with activity. The Market had a German flair with the aromas of gluhwein, candied nuts, and bratwurst, and many other stalls with wooden toys, gingerbread houses, knitwear, homemade decorations, advent calendars … all the while Christmas music could be heard from several speakers around the Market. It was magical.

Catherine’s stomach growled.

“Hungry?” I asked.

She nodded, a flush coming across her cheeks. “I had a bowl of soup a while ago, but I guess it’s not sticking with me,” she said.

“Let’s grab a couple of brats,” I continued.

“That sounds great,” she said.

We moved toward the line for the bratwurst, which was long but moving quickly. Soon, we had our food along with a bottle of water each.

“Let’s eat on our way back to the farm,” Catherine suggested. “I can’t believe the farm was offering sleigh rides. What a great idea!”

“Well, it’s all about the magic of giving,” I said.

The corny line made Catherine laugh a little as she was about to take a bite of her brat. I smiled. At least I could still make her laugh, even if it wasn’t my job any longer. We ate our food in silence as we walked to the farm. Once we hit the edge of town, the air seemed crisper, and the stars twinkled. Occasionally, we could glimpse the lake through the trees. All reminders of an earlier time when love was young.

We arrived back at the farm.

“Welcome back,” Sam said. “You’re just in time.”

We got up on the sleigh, and to my surprise, it was a ride around the entire farm. No wonder the slots were an hour apart. It took us a good twenty minutes to get out to the furthest reaches of the farm, and Sam and his family, or whoever helped him, had done a fantastic job. There were snowmen, snow angels, Christmas lights, and plenty of decorated trees along the way. Catherine leaned into me as we watched in awe.

The moment her head hit my shoulder, my heart stopped. Fully skipped a beat. My palms sweated like I was choking up the bat to hit the final home run of the game. Perhaps those feelings from all those years ago weren’t as buried as I believed.

“It’s so beautiful. I wish they could do something like this in California,” Catherine said as we started up the other side of the trail – which held more lights, snowmen, and lit Christmas trees for us.

“It’s kind of hard to have a sleigh ride without snow,” I joked.

She laughed a little and stayed closely snuggled up to me. I put an arm around her, hoping to help keep her warm if her coat wasn’t doing the job. And I wanted to do it anyway, longing to be close to her again.

We came to a small bridge to go through some woods, which had also been decorated to light the way for the sleigh. However, it was mostly a clear night sky above us, with the stars twinkling and the moon shining. It was a stark contrast to the first half of the trail. It was silent except for the gentle clip-clopping of the horses’ hooves and a neigh here and there.

Tonight, I didn’t mind the silence. If nothing else, I got a night that I could cherish forever with Catherine beside me one more time. I’d lose her if I didn’t say something soon… but what could I say? How would it be best to introduce the feelings without sounding like I was stuck in the past?

“Wow.” Catherine looked up. “You can see all of the stars here.”

“It’s just as beautiful as you,” I said without thinking.

“Thank you, Noah.”

In the light, I could see a faint blush on her cheeks. I remembered that blush. It often appeared in high school. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach seeing it again, and it took everything in me not to caress her cheek. We weren’t dating, after all. Despite how much I wanted to pull her close and tell her how much of a mistake it had been to let her go all those years ago – even if we had agreed it was the right thing to do.

“You know, nobody has really complimented me like that in years,” she said. “It’s all ‘rational adults’ and ‘compatibility’, nothing that’s just… simple, I guess. You know, our relationship, through those years, was one of the best I’ve ever been in. We could always talk through any troubles that came our way – that is, until time and distance and our wishes put an end to it.”

“I know. And I always hated to do anything without you understanding why,” I said.

“I was always upset that we couldn’t find a way to make our relationship work around the time zones, our dreams, our studies. We simply had too much going on in our lives.”

“We made the time each Saturday night, at least,” I reminded her. “Though no one else could understand why I liked spending time with you on Saturday nights. They always wanted to go with their friends or see their family. And I understood, but I craved that togetherness that sometimes just being quiet on the phone together brings. Some of my best nights were when we both fell asleep on the phone… and then woke up to see that the call had disconnected because the storm had blown out the internet here.”

“I was lucky that my roommates understood that Saturday night, I was going to stay in the apartment and just exist with you,” Catherine laughed a little. “They didn’t understand, but they were willing to give me the space to do that.”

“Have you had a relationship that’s left you as happy as ours?” I asked.

She had talked a lot about Alex but no other relationships. She’d had a few in between, but I couldn’t remember if any of them made her happy.

“No. Not even Alex made me that happy, though I suspect that was partially because we wanted different things out of our relationship in the end,” she said. “The guy I rebounded with after you was a surfer dude. Didn’t take anything seriously. Couldn’t even show up for my award ceremony that semester when the tides turned, and the waves were calling his name.” She shook her head. “Being a writer made a lot of men in college think I had my head in the clouds.”

“I had a lot of women who wanted to see me go pro,” I said as we continued through the woods, remembering one particularly persistent woman I’d dated. “I didn’t stay with them long. As soon as they started getting interested in the financial side of baseball, I showed them the door. I didn’t want to marry anyone who was in it for the money. Unfortunately, that meant a lot of short relationships.”

“That’s a shame.” She shook her head as she leaned more into my chest. “No one should be marrying just for the money. You’re a great man. Why couldn’t they see that?”