Page 25 of Love Letters to Christmas

Clutching my phone, I say, “I’d like to be all healed now, please.”

“I’m sorry that’s not how it works.”

I slump. “How did you get all healed up?”

She laughs. Actually laughs. That’s so rare for her. Archinga brow, she rustles her long red hair. “I didn’t get all healed up at all. I just embraced my penchant for the unhealthy early on, decided an isolated lifestyle was totally fine, and stopped going outside. Before Mars, I dreaded leaving my house. I still do, actually. I’m just getting a little better at managing the fear that stops me.”

I wince. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“I should have been inviting you to do things, or something.”

“You also weren’t doing things, though, Mellie.”

Because my parents demanded my work schedule, and they would keep tabs on when I was supposed to be home and get…some kind of way…if I were late even just because the person coming to relieve my shift was late. “Still,” I whisper. “Maybe we should have been doing things together.” Before now. Because now I’m a million miles away and it almost feels like it’s too late to have what we’ve lost.

Ceres picks up her phone and stands. “Six hours, huh…”

“Six hours?”

“I’ll be there around 2:00 AM.”

“What?”

“I bet the Taco Bell in a big city will still be open. We’ll get Taco Bell at 2:00 AM. It’ll be great.”

My mouth opens and closes, flapping for several moments while Ceres gets her keys. She can’t mean… She does. The camera angle isn’t the best, but I am now looking at a blue sky, because she’s heading to her car. “Ceres, you hate driving.”

She stops on her sidewalk and lifts me so I can see her face and the pragmatic stability in her eyes. Without exaggeration, she says, “Sure. But I like you.”

That breaks the dam holding back countless emotions, and tears fill my eyes.

She begins walking again, opening and closing her car door.

The engine starts, and I blubber, “Ceres, no. Don’t. I’d feel too bad making you come all this way.”

“You’re not making me.”

“Still. I feel responsible. And don’t you have deadlines?”

Her lips pinch as she looks outside her window, toward Mars’s house. “Ah.”

Her door opens, and Mars enters the phone’s view as he leans in her doorway, a forearm braced against the roof. “Hi, love. Where you heading?”

“You’re supposed to be in a meeting, not watching the cameras.”

The…cameras?

“I installed motion sensors at your doors that send texts to my phone when triggered. Can’t very well have you leaving without permission. You might realize you can brave the outdoors all by yourself, and that’s just not codependent enough for me, I’m afraid.”

Ceres and I both blink.

My blink, it should be noted, isin horror, though. Hers is more…a lash fluttering. The most beautiful, excited smile I have ever seen overcome her face appears to make me think, ahaha,oh. This is what she means when she says she’s not all healed up.

Because, I’m sorry.What?

Mars’s attention skates my way, and his flirty smile dies. “Oh. You’re on the phone.”

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