“You two know what I like,” she told me as they waved us away. The truth was that Helen was much more particular about these kinds of things than my mother was. If Helen, who was my mom’s closest friend, wouldn’t have given her a bad time about it, my mom most likely wouldn’t have bothered putting up a tree. But when my parents divorced only six months after moving to Bellingham, the Bryants basically adopted my mom and me into their family, and my mother’s gratitude for their kindness ran deep. So did mine.
I stopped and stared at the tree Amber pointed at, a lush noble fir that was about the same height as her. “I don’t think my mom has enough ornaments to decorate one that big,” I said.
“She can borrow from the ten million extra ones my mom has in the attic,” Amber said, laughing. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, highlighting the scattering of tiny brown freckles that peppered her nose, and her eyes were bright with amusement. I was happy we’d managed to resolve the tension between us on the drive to the farm, even if it had required me to lie to her about my hoping her relationship with Daniel would work out. I loved her so much, it made my stomach hurt, and that made me willing to do anything—say anything—to make sure I didn’t lose her.
“Remember the time we poured some of her boxed wine into coffee mugs and snuck it up there to drink?” I asked.
“Oh my god!” Amber exclaimed. “I totally forgot about that. How old were we?”
“You were a freshman and I was a junior. It was during spring break and we were bored out of our minds so we decided to see what it would be like to get drunk.”
“That’s right.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her puffy black ski jacket and jogged in place a minute, presumably to warm up, which made me have to fight the urge to offer her my body’s heat. “You chugged the whole mug in, like, thirty seconds,” she said. “You were so dizzy when you stood up, you knocked over a box of ornaments.”
I cringed and shook my head, remembering the thud of the box as it hit the floor, the sound of shattering glass. “I was seriously terrified your mom was going to kill me.”
“But then I insisted that you keep your trap shut and she’d just assume it fell over on its own. Which she did.” Amber gave me a triumphant look, and I laughed.
“You corrupted me. I never lied to anyone until I met you.”
“Pfft, whatever!” she said, and then shot out her right arm, grabbing the noble fir near its tip, wiggling it. “Come on, your mom will love this one. Chop the sucker down so we can go get some damn cocoa and stop freezing our asses off!”
“Okay, okay!” I said. “Bossy, much?” I lifted the hatchet I carried, and then took a few steps over to crouch down next to the tree. I whacked at the base of the trunk a few times, while Amber stood by with her arms crossed over her chest, watching.
“You need me to do that for you, big man?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
“You’re so not funny,” I said, smiling. This was what I loved most about Amber. She forced me not to take myself so seriously. She made me feel like the absolute best version of myself.
“Oh, I’m hilarious. Just ask me.” This was one of our private jokes, after she had used the “just ask me” phrase at the party where we first met, and I later confessed that was one of the funniest things anyone had ever said to me, the moment I knew we would be friends. Her use of it now confirmed the fact that she had fully forgiven me for what had happened in August.
“Smart-ass.” I shook my head and put my focus back on chopping down the tree.
“Better than a dumb-ass.” She jumped up and down a few times, her arms still crossed and her fingers shoved under her biceps. “How’s your dad?” she asked. “You going to see him for the holiday?”
“Probably.” I hit the trunk with the hatchet with as much force as I could muster, and it finally began to lean to one side. “And he’s fine, I guess. We don’t talk that much.”
“You don’t see him at work?”
“Not really,” I said, glancing up at her. “We’re assigned to different station houses, so the only time we see each other on the job is if there’s an emergency that requires more than one team of responders and we happen to be working the same shift.”
“Ah, got it,” Amber said. “Is he still living with that one chick . . . what’s her name? The one with the smelly gray cat?”
“Diana. And no, he broke up with her. As usual.” Like my mother, my dad had never remarried; instead, he plowed through relationships with mostly younger women—some of them the same age as me—leaving a trail of broken hearts in his wake.
“I need to sow my oats,” he once told me, not long before I graduated high school. “Your mom trapped me into getting married too young, and I’m never gonna fall for that again. I spent too many years giving her everything she wanted. It’s about getting my needs met now.” He winked at me, like we were in on some kind of secret together, and I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t deny my dad’s ability to charm women. I’d watched over the years, when we went out for dinner on the weekends I had to spend at his house, how he had a way of talking and touching women—plying them with compliments, making them laugh, and discreetly brushing his knuckles somewhere against their bare skin. It almost always got him what he wanted—them, at his house, in his bed.
“Sorry,” Amber said, and I knew her well enough to understand that she wasn’t just referring to the fact that my dad had broken up with yet another woman. She was sorry that he and I didn’t have the kind of relationship that she had with her parents. She was sorry that I used to come home from a weekend at his condo and lock myself in my bedroom, wishing I never had to go back there again, that I never had to wake up to find some half-naked, strange girl in his kitchen—to make stupid, awkward conversation with her until my dad told her she needed to leave.
“It’s fine,” I said, giving the tree trunk one last strike. It fell over, hit the ground, and I thought about the other lie I’d told Amber in the truck—the one where I said that I wasn’t dating anyone. It’s just a white lie, I told myself as I picked the trunk up and Amber held on to the tip, slowly making our way back to the barn where, I hoped, our parents would be, too. I wasn’t dating Whitney, my twenty-year-old, college-student neighbor, I was sleeping with her. I’d met her back in September—not long after my argument with Amber—in our building’s parking lot, where she was lifting a backpack out of her car.
“Here,” I said, striding over to her. “Let me get that for you.” I smiled, taking in her petite frame, her straight, long black hair, and equally dark, almond-shaped eyes. She wore a red, form-fitting dress that was short enough to make it clear what would show if she bent over.
“That’s okay,” she said. “I’ve got it.”
“I can see that,” I said, “but I’m trying to impress you with my gentlemanly skills, so please, let me.” I reached out, took the bag from her, and she finally smiled, too.
“I’m Tyler.”
“Whitney Cho.” Her gaze swept over me, and I was happy that I was in uniform. I still was getting used to how much attention women gave me when I wore it.
“Well, Whitney Cho, are you busy right now? I just got off work, and I’m thinking about watching a movie. Want to join me?”