Page 64 of Down My Chimney

Tell me what? I wondered. And, of course, my brain immediately supplied an answer.Tell me you’re dating someone new.

It didn’t make any logical sense. Why would Blake’s parents—or mine, for that matter—care if I knew that Blake was dating someone? But fear didn’t have to be logical.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just watched Blake go back to spinning that gumdrop, my heart fluttering in my chest. The room was filled with laughter and conversation, Frank Sinatra singing Christmas carols in the background, but I felt painfully awkward.

Say it, I commanded myself.Just spit it out. But where should I even start? Everything I’d realized over the past semester felt too big to just mention casually. And who knew if Blake even wanted to hear it?

“You don’t have to sit here with me,” he said after a minute. “I’m sure you have other things you’d rather be doing.”

“No,” I said hurriedly. “I don’t. It’s fine.”

Now that he’d offered me an out, I didn’t want to take it. But that didn’t make talking any easier.

“So, uh, what are you making?” I asked finally.

Blake laughed mirthlessly. “A gingerbread FEMA site, from the looks of things. Claire wanted each of us to make a house, but, well…” He gestured to the disaster on the table in front of him. “I think I’m going to say an earthquake hit mine.”

“Maybe it’s a gingerbread campsite?” I offered. I pointed to the two walls of Blake’s house that were still standing, leaning against each other. “That’s the tent. You could carve the other two walls into a little canoe, then stick it together with some more icing.”

“I think you’re overestimating my artistic abilities,” he said wryly. “I know you’ve been gone for a while, but the last time we decorated cookies together, I believed you called minefinger-painted monstrosities.”

“Those were sugar cookies. This is gingerbread. It’s an entirely different artistic medium.” I grabbed some toothpicks from a box lying in the middle of the table and began sticking gumdrops onto them, happy to have something to focus on. “And I only called your cookies that because you were trying to force-feed them to me, if you’ll recall.”

“What Irecall,” he said with a grin, “is you being a little baby, refusing to take a bite until I basically—”

But then he cut himself off, flushing. Ididrecall that. And what had come after. And it looked like neither one of us was ready to talk about that yet.

We lapsed back into silence. I was trying to make a pine tree for Blake’s campsite, but the more gumdrops I stuck to my toothpicks, the more it looked like a Michelin Man someone had dropped in a bucket of paint. Eventually, I threw it down in disgust.

“I’m sorry,” I burst out.

Blake looked up in confusion.

“What?”

“I’m sorry.” I pressed my hands to the table, then looked around the room and lowered my voice. “Blake, I’ve been such an asshole. I said I wanted to be friends, but I never actually reached out, because I was so hurt and scared, but that wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t fair, and it just made things worse and more awkward, and I just—I’m sorry. I did a lot of thinking this fall, and that’s the biggest thing I wanted to say. I’m sorry. And I reallywouldlike to be your friend—that’s the other thing. I’d like to be the friend you actually deserve. A real one.”

I would have liked a lot more than that, but I had a feeling I’d missed my chance there. But I’d take friends with Blake over no Blake at all.

Hesitation, and something else I couldn’t name, passed through his eyes. I wondered if he was about to tell me to take my apologies and go. But then he smiled.

“I’d like that.”

My jaw dropped. “Really?”

“Really.” He held my gaze. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry too.”

“You don’t need to be.” I shook my head. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

He made a face, but he didn’t say anything else about it. Instead, he pointed to my tree. “Is Gumby visiting my gingerbread campsite?”

I laughed. “I was thinking more like the Jolly Green Giant, but sure, we can go with that.”

Blake pointed to his sweater. “I feel like the Jolly Green Giant in this, so we’ve still got that angle covered.”

“Oh, come on, the sweater’s not that bad.”

“Really? Because my mom’s got a whole drawer full of these if you want to put one on. She buys me a new one every time she gets something for the dogs.” He laughed lightly. “There’s definitely a snowman one somewhere.”

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