Page 3 of Christmas in Watch Hill
We said goodbye. I turned on my boot heel and scurried the remaining length back to my shop, pushing away the delicious reaction I had to Scott Parker. Yes, he was handsome, but so what? Yes, he was single—totally, irrevocably, tragically single, but so what about that, too? I wasn’t interested in Scott Parker. I wasn’t interested inanybodyat the moment. I didn’t have time to date. I had a business to save and rent to pay.
Happy holidays to me.
TWO
SCOTT PARKER
My parka smelled likeItaly. Italy, chocolate, and expensive milk.
The spilled coffee had soaked the left arm of the coat, and by tomorrow it would probably be stiff and smelly. I’d have to wash it in the machine when I got home. One more thing I needed to do.
I pulled my car out of the parking lot and started on my way to the next appointment. Finally, I had true silence after a long day. Work at the graphic design firm had been easy enough, but this was Thursday, and Thursdays were always long.
Thursdays included grief counseling.
I wasn’t convinced I still needed it. Monica had been dead for eighteen months; this upcoming Christmas would be the second one without her. If there were five stages of grief, I would have told anyone that I was on the fourth or fifth stage, and that I’d stopped feeling angry or being in denial. She’d had breast cancer; she’d died.
Sometimes good people did.
I knew this wasn’t my fault, and I was far past the point of being angry. Accepting her death didn’t mean that I didn’t still love her, but it did mean that I could live my life again. Part of me would always be with her, but I knew I didn’t have to spend the rest of my days alone. And sometime in the future, I’d see Monica again.
I knew it.
Still, a few friends had told me to go to counseling just to be safe, and one pressed a business card into my hand while at a barbecue over Labor Day weekend. I considered it for a few days, and decided it would be healthy to talk to someone, nice to share my feelings with someone who didn’t automatically avert their eyes and awkwardly change the subject whenever Monica’s name came up in conversation. In early October, I started visiting Gary Green at his offices in a beige, converted Victorian near the edge of Watch Hill.
“I’m not a religious man,” Gary said that afternoon as our hour-long session neared a close. After this one, we wouldn’t see each other until January. “But it is Christmastime and that has me thinking about a few things.”
“Like what?” I sipped some of the bottled water Gary always offered me.This is interesting.Gary usually offered little in the way of comments during our meetings, meaning that whenever hedidspeak, it carried a decent amount of weight.
“Well, the holiday season is a good time to step out of your comfort zones, and a good time to challenge yourself. Since this is the second year that you won’t have Monica, I’m wondering if this is the right time to start some new traditions.” Gary shoved his reading glasses a little farther up the bridge of his wide nose. “Stretch yourself a little bit.”
“Stretch myself?”
Nodding, my therapist scanned the legal pad balancing on his knee. “You’re spending Christmas Day with your family, right?”
“We always get together for dinner at my parents’ home up near Dayton.”
