“Thank you, Mom. So much.” I modulated my voice carefully to keep it happy, and I hugged her again. “This will be amazing.”
And I hoped that by saying it, I would force myself to mean it. Because as I walked quickly to my recently redecorated room, I felt the itchy pain of tears pricking behind my eyes. I tried not to think too hard about the fact that I would miss New Year’s Eve with Jake. It would have been my first ever romantic New Year’s kiss.
In my room, with its robin’s-egg wall and poppy-covered bed, the Chagall and Cassatt hanging in wooden frames, the softly glowing paper lamps, and the books piled everywhere, I popped my iPod onto its dock and put on some happy packing music, even though I wanted to scroll through my specially-made teen-angst mix and let it all envelop me in something suitably dreary. I started to put piles of clothes here and there and took out my brand new pink leather traveling bag, the one I had unwrapped this morning and hugged Thorsten for. I didn’t feel any ill will towards Fa. He was a puppet in Mom’s very capable hands, no doubt about that.
I didn’t feel any ill will at all, not really. I picked up the picture of me and Mom in front of the big tree in Rockefeller Square. We were both really rosy-cheeked and pink-nosed with cute hats on, our arms around each other. I knew that what my mom was feeling stemmed from a lot of really deep emotions and events that all proved the one thing I’ve known my entire life; my mom loves me so fiercely, it’s scary.
Mom had me when she was barely out of high school. The guy, my father, left her high and dry. He was her boyfriend and as far as I can tell, she believed this guy was the love of her life. I knew that she assumed what Jake and I had was very similar to what she thought she had with my biological father. It took her a long time to get her life back on track after him. I knew it was the ghost of that experience that made her uber-protective.
Mom never told me much about the whole thing with my father, but I knew there was a lot of resentment on her part towards my grandparents. She felt like they should have been looking out for her more, making sure she was on the right track, that she had the right back-up.
It was what she was doing for me right now, or at least what she thought she was doing for me. So I couldn’t be upset.
But I was.
And I had to do the one thing that I really, really didn’t want to do. Especially on Christmas day, knowing the kinds of Christmases Jake had experienced every year before. But every second that I put off packing and moped, every second that I chickened out about calling him was one second that I took away from our time together, and I couldn’t do that.
I was always a good packer. Thorsten, Mom, and I traveled a lot, so I knew how to roll my clothes, how to pick things that will layer well and that will move from casual to fancy easily. I knew how to make a little bag of accessories that would dress everything up. I had a special tiny cross-over purse with a wide zippered strap to keep my passport and anything else important in. Once I’d laid out what I wanted to take on my bed, pared through the pile and taken out what I knew I didn’t really want to bring, I rolled the clothes up and put them in the suitcase. I picked up the phone and turned my music up a little bit. I packed so fast that I had time to call Jake and give him a little bit of a heads-up before he got here.
“Merry Christmas, Brenna.” His voice was silky and deep on the phone, and I felt my mouth go dry at the sound of it. I loved that voice.
“Merry Christmas, Jake.” I smiled despite the bad news I was about to deliver.
“Did Santa leave you some good stuff?” Jake asked. He sounded happy, inexplicably.
I had been to his house early on Christmas Eve, before the candlelight service and Christmas caroling at our church. He and his father bought a small, dry turkey and had two wilted vegetable sides and mashed potatoes, a veritable feast as far as the Kellys were concerned. We sat on the couch and ate off of plates that we balanced on our laps and watched It’s a Wonderful Life. Jake’s father barely spoke to me. He didn’t seem mean, just socially uncomfortable and nervous. When the movie was over, he got up and announced that he was going out bowling. Jake and I had a few hours before I had to go home, so we snuggled in his room and talked and laughed under the blankets. His dad kept the house at sixty-eight degrees in the winter, so snuggling was pretty much a necessity.
“I got a lot of great stuff.” I pawed through my bras and underwear, picking the nicest ones. This was a trip to Paris, after all. “Thorsten got me an awesome new design program for the computer. Um, did you get anything good?”
He laughed like I made a joke. “I got my socks, flashlight, and fifty. I told you, babe, it’s what I get every year.”
“Well, I got you some good stuff.” I tried very hard not to get aggravated at Jake’s dad on the most peaceful day of the year. How could he be so cheap with his own son? And I didn’t mean cheap monetarily, although that was true, too. Jake was this vibrant, amazing guy, but his dad put no effort whatsoever into making things good or nice for him. It was just basic necessities as far as Jake’s dad was concerned, and he didn’t even stretch his imagination much there.
“I can’t wait to see what you got me. I’m still trying to get over my birthday gift.”
I had custom-made him a motocross jersey. Jake was really into dirtbikes, and when he raced during his last big amateur competition, I had taken a bunch of action shots of him. I transferred them to the computer, played with the images, and made them into really high quality iron-ons. I had the shirt ordered and put his last name and the images on it; it was pretty professional looking.
“It wasn’t a big deal.” I sat on my bed and unknotted a tangle of necklaces from my jewelry box. “It was just a shirt.”
“And the rest of the outfit to match, and a helmet that you custom-designed. And the decals for my bike.” He sighed a happy, adorable sigh. “Don’t downplay it, Bren. It was awesome.”
“Well, it all had to match.” I moved on to my bracelets. “And it was cool that that big dirtbike magazine was at Dingmans when you won that race.”
“I can’t believe I got a spread.” Jake laughed. “It was your design. It was good luck.”
“I know I’m pretty great, but don’t you think it had something to do with the fact that you won the race?” I smiled at the memory, a little girly pride pricking me nicely. “Like by a mile.”
“By a couple yards,” he corrected humbly. Typical Jake. “Yeah, I guess. You just…” He stopped. “Alright, I didn’t want to get all mushy on you, but what the hell? I never had someone care about me the way you do. It makes me feel like I could do anything. Like you give me the confidence to do whatever I want. You don’t know how incredible it’s been for me to have you in my life.”
And now my heart felt like it was singing and tearing apart at the same time. How could I help but fall in love with a guy like this? Jake was the whole package, no question. We had plans for winter break. Since Jake turned seventeen this November, he’d been cutting some of his hours at Zinga’s, the farm where he worked. He’d been a full time employee when he needed to keep a farmer’s license, which was a special permit that let younger drivers have more driving freedom if they worked on a farm, but since he’d gotten his regular license, he was able to scale back and spend more time with me. This break was supposed to be a chance for us to hang out as much as humanly possible. How was I going to tell him that we were going to have no time together at all?
“Jake, you don’t need me around to do all of that,” I pointed out. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’ve always had the talent and the drive. You just need to believe in your potential.”
It was an old speech on my part, and one I didn’t love making. I’ve never been great at pep talks in general, and I hated when people didn’t just admit what they’re good at. But in Jake’s case, I always made an exception because I honestly got the feeling that he didn’t realize his full potential. So I tried to reassure him without rolling my eyes too much.