Christmas to Tu B’Shevat

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

Miriam

Miriam spent the next hour packing her clothes robotically. Everything she’d bought since coming here wouldn’t fit in the little roll-on suitcase she’d arrived with back in October, and her brain couldn’t process what to do about it.

She was staring blankly at a pair of jeans when Cole knocked on her door. As soon as he was inside, his huge frame wrapped around her, his warmth surrounding her. The smell of him, ocean salt mixed with bergamot and vetiver, was one of the safest smells in her world. It pierced the fog that had enveloped her when her panic had risen up. All of the fight or flight drained out of her body.

“What the fuck am I going to do, Cole? I’m in a nightmare.”

He pulled away and looked down at her. “Your dad wants you to run. He wants to keep you thinking he’s the bogeyman and he’s going to pop out any minute. So you should stay put and fight for this. Tell him you’re not scared of him and he can go fuck himself.”

“I am scared of him, Cole,” Miriam reminded him. “Very scared.”

“Fake it until you make it, baby.” Cole did sad little jazz hands.

Miriam hugged herself, feeling her ability to reason instead of just run slowly returning. “If he really will pull the offer if I leave, I have to go. I can’t put myself before Carrigan’s again.”

“But Carrigan’s All Year won’t work without you, Mimi. You’re the linchpin. If you go, there’s nothing to take to the bank. Staying and fighting is the only thing that might work.”

He pulled her back into a hug, leaning over to rest his head on her curls. Miriam anchored herself to him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about me and Tara and the golf course,” he said, finally. “I was worried that if I wasn’t the fun friend, you might do a runner on me, too.”

“Well, considering my behavior today, you were probably not wrong,” she said, squeezing him back. She’d told herself all her life that she wasn’t running, just strategically retreating, but she’d been lying to herself. “I freaked out. So badly. I saw white and heard buzzing and I couldn’t breathe. I don’t even know what I said.”

“We can probably fix it. If you stay.”

“I want to stay,” she whispered, “but I don’t know if they’ll still have me.”

Her mom knocked in the open doorway. Cole left them alone, squeezing her shoulder as he went.

“I called Richard,” her mom said, sitting on her bed, her hands clasped in front of her.