Copyright 2002 by Elizabeth Delayne
“Come on, Steven. Just one more.”
Steven groaned and resisted, even when Dorie reached for his hand and pulled him toward another store, down the mall, as another group of people sifted around them. “I can’t take it. Not anymore.”
He was only half joking. The music was like a drum in his ears; the Christmas decorations now only a blur of color. There was a football game on the television at home where he could sit on the sofa across from his dad and zone out of anything that rushed.
“Come on, Steven. There is a gift in there that will be perfect for my dad. It has to be,” Dorie said and stepped close, batting her long eyelashes at him. For a moment he paused and admired. She had really refined herself in the years away at college. She’d cut her hair within the first few months. He’d seen it colored in a half dozen shades. Now it was back to being long, but more attractive, more beautiful, and still the sleek brown he liked.
Even in worn jeans that were threadbare at the cuffs—her look was different. She wore a leather coat and boots; silver jewelry, simple, but classic. She was older—not just in looks, but in attitude. He found that the solemn wit appealed to him.
“There’s a sells person in there who needs to get a bonus so she can buy her husband a new TV for Christmas. She’s desperate. She’ll try to talk you into anything.”
“Not anything. I just need to look and see—“
Steven shook her hand so the bags hanging on her arm rattled, “That’s what you’ve been saying for over an hour. Just one more store, one more gift. The sounds are ringing in my hears.”
“Sounds? Like Christmas music?” she laughed, her lips opening up in a wonderful smile he had missed when she’d come home at the beginning of their winter break. The shadows in her eyes had faded now. She was humming another carol, taunting him. This was his Dorie.
His Dorie.
The thought hit him so hard that she had him inside another store before he could work his way back around the to conversation.
She was preoccupied with her shopping and he was grateful. He needed a moment to watch her, to figure out the sudden discovery.
Oh, he’d always liked her. He’d almost always had a thing for each other. When they were teens she had challenged him not to be stagnant In his school work, in his faith. They’d had a great friendship. Maybe they’d called it dating, maybe it had been special. They’d shared a handful of innocent kisses and a dozen or more special moments. There was jokes and laughter, trust and affection. He was grateful it had not been bruised when they broke up.
And he was grateful that while they had grown apart, gone their separate ways to college, to adulthood; while he was grateful for his new friendships and experiences … he was also glad that God had brought them back together.
It was a rush to find that he found Dorie delightful, beautiful … enchanting. She was laughing with the weary clerk, running a hand through her hair. He couldn’t look away.
When they left the store, still without buying anything new, he grabbed her hand and pulled her this time. “Lets get some hot chocolate.”
It was his first suggestion in hours, and he realized when she looked at him, his first attempt since of showing her he wanted to be with her.
“Like Snidermans hot chocolate?”
“Anything less would be … not enough.”
“What words you have my charming knight,” Dorie said as she simply shook her head, “You just want to get out of the mall.”
“If that’s one aim, then it will accomplish the rest.”
“What rest?” she asked and he pulled her arm, tugging her back toward the exit and his ancient SUV his father had bought from his uncle. At least it was his, and he didn’t have to drive her around in his mom’s car like he had when they were in high school.
They had spent so much time in Sniderman’s growing up—but neither had been back more than a half dozen times since high school—since they’d broken up. It was an old building, converted into so many different restaurants until the coffee house craze had sparked it’s doors open. There were games on the tables, quiet music over speakers, and it was decorated in wild reds and greens for Christmas.
There drinks were more sophisticated now, Dorie noted. She appreciated a good, flavored latte, and Steven chose a cappuccino—mixed with different flavors of chocolate.
They had cells phones. Different friends. There were new stories to share and old ones to remember. She’d asked him when she’d come home, distant and hurting, where they had gone. He’d simply replied, ‘we grew up.’
It was certainly true. He had muscled up, toned down. He eyes were a sharper blue.
It was frightening her to realize how much more she liked this Steven.
I have my own life.
“What?”
She glanced at Steven and suddenly she heard the Christmas music and the faint smell of her latte. How long had she been sitting in her own little world—forgetting how hard it had been to move on when he moved on before? “What—what?”
“I just thought you said something.”
“Oh—“ Dorie rolled her eyes and covered the embarrassment. “I was just off … thinking of school.”
Really off, she thought. She had just been spending to much time with him, that’s all. When a girl starts dreaming of her high school boyfriend, she needed to get back to the place where she had grown up and away from him.
“Dorie?”
She looked up at Steven, into those familiar eyes and the new face, and she sighed inside.
When he took her hand, she almost let him.
“Steven,” she said, pulling her hand back, her palm pressed against the table. “I think I’m ready to go home now.”
“Now?” he asked, his eyes intent on hers. “You sure?”
“It’s been a long day. I have lots of wrapping to do before I go to sleep.”
“Fine,” he said as he pushed back from the table, “lets go.”
It all seemed so abrupt and queer. They’d started off celebrating the season, celebrating each other. Now it was tense, hollow. And it should be—Dorie reminded herself. The closeness, the friendship had been given up so many years ago. To return to it, to give into it, would be to take back something that wasn’t theirs anymore.
Steven stopped when they moved into the parking lot, away from the glaring lights. “Dorie, wait a minute.”
She kept her back to him and focused on the old SUV that was part of the new Steven, part of his new life.
“I’ve had a good time today.”
She swallowed and took a deep breath for courage before turning around, facing him and the look in his eyes, “So have I. I didn’t think you would make it the whole day with me.”
“Neither did I—“ he reached up and touched her nose with his finger, before pulling away, pulling in. “I didn’t think I would fall for this face again.”
“Steven—“
“I don’t know, really, that it was you face before; your laughter, your smile, defiantly.”
“Steven, wait a minute,” she said. Her voice was panicked, her mind racing. She held up two gloved hands as if to hold him off. His comments warred with two sides of her pride—the one that wanted to accept him, his words and a future and the side that was afraid of the past closing in. “We’ve had some good times over the last few days. I didn’t think I would ever have that with you again.”
“It’s different, Dorie. You have to see that.”
“What I have to see, what we both have to see is that we’re different people. It’s too easy to get caught up in the past, into what we felt for each other then.”
“I didn’t love you then—“
“What?”
She spun around, the words spinning through her mind. She did not hear him catch up with her. She didn’t feel him until he spun her around, his eyes possibly as wide and panicked as hers. Maybe that was what stopped her from running, from fleeing.
“Dorie, I’m not saying I’m in love with you now.”
“Then what are you saying?” she pulled her arm away even as he reached for her. It was too easy to fall in love with the sights and sounds of the Christmas season in the background. It would be too easy for her to give in to what would be a fairytale in her heart.
“I’m saying … that there’s something here, something different, something more powerful then what we had in high school,” his eyes were earnest, dark, almost angry. “I don’t want what we had in high school, it wasn’t enough. I want to know what it is we have now. If there is anything.”
“We have a friendship,” she said and her voice trembled. She could not keep her eyes level with his. It was too hard to remember his patience, his diligence and his humor as he placated her with a shopping trip.
“And you feel nothing else? Nothing?”
“Not enough that I want to rearrange my whole life for it,” she spit the words out. “Steven, I graduate in May, from what I am right now—then I’ll have a job and I’ll want to be part of the next life. You’re graduating next December and then you—we both have grad school if we want it.”
“We have plans, I know. I’m not asking for the future—not for more then for you to tell me if what you feel—what you felt today—is enough feeling, enough joy that you want to rearranged the rest of your Winter Break figuring it out? To find out if it’s anything or enough.”
“I didn’t come home for this.”
“No, you came home lost and hurting and seeking. And you’ve experienced a lot of emotions over the last two weeks. I won’t blame you if you don’t think you’re ready,” he eyes, she realized, were deeper then she’d ever seen them. “I will—Dorie—blame you if you’re walking away from this just because it’s in your way.”
Dorie took a deep breath and realized that she was not ready for what he was asking. Who could be ready to jump into the unknown, into an open, dark sky?
Yet, she wanted what he was asking. Suddenly, she wanted those arms around her, those eyes on her own, those lips . . . .
It would be a completely different relationship then anything they’d had before. There had never been a future then. Now . . . they were taking the future together.
If it was enough.
“Steven, you were the one who broke up with me.”
He shrugged, but there was no guilt, no remorse, no insecurity in his eyes. And somehow that settled her. “We were going in different directions.”
Steven wasn’t looking for a love he’d lost, she realized. He was reaching for something he’d found.
And looking into his eyes, she thought she could feel something as well … so much feeling, so much joy that she wanted to reach out for it.
She took his hand and stepped with him into the future.
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