Merry Ex-Mas

by Courtney Walsh

Six years we’d been together. We were supposed to get married. Have kids. Our moms were supposed to be grandmas together. But life had other plans. It was cruel that way.

“Max, you know that you will always have a place to come home to. Especially during the holidays—you never have to be alone. This will always be your home.”

I study her face—a face I know so well it shows up in my dreams. She’s so beautiful and feisty, and. . . “I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me why you’re here and after that I’m calling 911 because there’s going to be a homicide at the McGrath house.”

As it was, I’d taken to celebrating less complicated holidays, like Arbor Day or Boxing Day, even though I’m not Canadian. Or October 25th, which is National Cartoonists against Crime Day—that one doesn’t have a single painful memory attached to it.

She grabs the towel from me and dries her hands. “You know that unkindness just makes you get old before your time.” “That’s true,” Dad calls from the living room. “Rots your bones and makes you constipated! Look at your Aunt June! She looks like she’s at least eighty because she’s such a terrible person. And she’s younger than me!”

And how can I be so angry with him and so drawn to him at the same time?

I’m struggling to hold back the tears, but a few betray my will and slip down my cheeks. I wonder if she would see past my mistakes and see the good in me. I’d certainly abandoned everything they taught me in my grief.

If there’s one thing that has remained consistent about Max, is that he knows when to care about the big things. And the little things. The things that are important to me.

He tosses me a quick glance, then goes back to waving. “That smile you’ve got on now is your Someone else is making me do this smile. Then there’s the one you use on the air. It’s your Practiced Fake smile, and you use it to look professional. You don’t show your teeth with that one. Then there’s your sarcastic smile.” He faces me and demonstrates this. “That one is meant to prove a point, and it usually means you’re not happy.” “So, according to you, I have no real smiles?” “You used to,” he says.

In spite of my valiant effort to keep this man out of my life, I can’t deny there is a part of me that very much wants him in it.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” He looks straight at me when he says this, and I believe him.

“Look, everyone’s got history. Everyone has baggage. If you’re lucky enough to find someone willing to lug it around for you, you should let them.

It’s hard when the one place on the planet with the most pain is the same place that feels the most like home.

Between the two of us—I was the one who was proving to be untrustworthy. And he was proving to be exactly what I told myself he wasn’t—the man I’d always loved.

“I’d just lost two of the most important people in the world to me, and the only other person I loved that much was you.”

“Now I realize living without you hurts a whole lot more.”

I’m realizing that home, for me, is wherever you are.”

I take a moment to admire him—this good, kind, wonderful man who was always, always, supposed to be my person.