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If you could only spend Christmas with one person, no one in her family would pick her. (No one in the world would pick her.)
No one called Reagan for comfort. No one called Reagan to offer any. No one ever said, “I’m lonely, could you come by?”—and no one ever came by. Even before this bullshit.
They were the sort of people who got laid off right before Christmas and got pregnant in the back seat of cars. Why were they willing to roll these dice?
So they talked about the things that had brought them together today: Their worry. Their caution. Their firm belief that most people were idiots.
“Your grandmother would want us to say grace,” he said, after they’d piled up their plates. “Hmm.” Reagan was noncommittal. She’d already taken a bite of turkey. “But if she wanted me to keep saying grace,” he went on, “she should have outlived me.”
She framed every school photo the grandkids ever gave her, always leaving the old ones inside so that the pictures stacked up and made the backs hard to close. Reagan’s senior picture was sitting on a coffee table in the living room, and if you opened it up, her whole childhood would spring out.
It was dark, and he was wearing a fabric mask that sat high on his face, under his glasses. She hadn’t taken a good look at him before he put it on. He had longish hair, with a little bit of wave to it, but she couldn’t tell what color. He was taller than her, probably. Nondescript in his baggy jeans and heavy canvas coat. She wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup, even if it happened right this moment. He could be anybody.
“Pfft. Levi’s fine. He’s got a wife and three kids and fifty bison.” She still talked to Levi once a week, even though they broke up in college. (Reagan didn’t let many people into her life—but once she’d gone to the effort, she didn’t like to let go of them.)
Reagan nodded, at another loss for words. What had this pandemic done to her? She’d never been much of a talker, but she’d always been able to find words when she wanted them. Now her head and mouth felt empty. She felt like she carried emptiness around with her, a six-foot radius of it.
His head dipped forward, more fiercely than she was expecting, to kiss her. She closed her eyes and just let it happen for a few seconds—he was kissing her. He was in her space. Past her perimeter.
(She didn’t need people the way other people needed people, but she still needed . . . something.)
As soon as it was out of the way, Mason was pushing up, over her lap, to kiss her. He’d turned so that he was kneeling on one stair, with his other leg stretched behind him.
