Of Christmas Past

Sensitive themes: grief, loss.

Kieran almost didn’t notice the new Christmas lights beneath the pallor of snow, but they twinkled all the same from where they adorned the bookshop sign. The previous shift manager must have strung them up. The thought slightly irritated him. Kieran was no Scrooge, but there certainly was something as too much holiday spirit, too much insistence that this be the most wonderful time of the year. Decorating the soggy, shivering streets as if it could distract from the cold. Searching for joy in a joyless season. Useless endeavors. There was contentment to be found in simply pushing through. Peace, safety. If he just accepted the bleak, black winter for what it was, Kieran thought, perhaps it would be easier this time around. Perhaps he might finally be able to forget. Against the early evening darkness, the bright lights burned his eyes. Stars of shining blue, green, red, blue again. Colors flashing, then fading quickly. At this sight, something resurfaced: a persistent, jarring blur of memories he preferred to ignore. He shoved the key into the front door lock, missing the keyhole, pushing it in again, blinking away phosphenes, fingers slightly trembling. From the cold, he told himself, from the cold.

Inside, Kieran shrugged off his coat and unraveled his scarf, laying them to rest by the cash register. His joints were stiff and aching. Massaging his shoulder with one hand, he flicked on a switch with the other, and thin, watery light flooded the room. Save for the creaking of the ancient floorboards beneath his feet, the bookshop was silent and empty. Alone at Christmas. What else was new? 

He got to work. Pulled the broom out of the cupboard, swept away stray dust from the windowsills, shelves, floor, tables, armchairs, stools, until the air grew dry and foggy. Brought out the wet mop, swirled citrusy detergent and water in the bucket, then wiped every surface he could reach. Kieran scrubbed and scrubbed away at the wood, itching for that moment when he would step back to see all the old grime stripped from every surface; even though, only hours later, the dust would build up once more, thick and seemingly impermeable, almost like it had never left in the first place, like the room could never be clean again. Time always brought the dust back.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead and dropped his towels, cleaning complete for now. An unfamiliar stack of worn-out books lay on the table next to him. He read the post-it note stuck to the top book. Used—to be sorted. He shuffled through the titles, handling each broken spine and threadbare binding with only the echo of a touch. They'd fall apart in a second if he was not careful. Historical fiction, fantasy. Mostly novels from the nineteenth, eighteenth century. Some from much earlier. Tales of adventure, romance, chivalry. The Importance of Being Earnest. The importance of being earnest. The magic of friendship. Stories he himself might have read when he was younger, much younger. He shook his head and moved along. Underneath all the layers: a crimson hardcover, fraying pages, the swirling illustration and author’s name etched tenderly into the cloth, shimmering in gold leaf, which Kieran could have recognized anywhere. Lilies in the Light.

His heart hammered. He carefully opened the cover almost afraid of what he’d find. No—he exhaled—it wasn’t his copy, the one he had impulsively donated right after, well. This particular copy had belonged to someone else, a woman, her name scribbled in tight-fisted lettering on the first page. Perhaps for many well-loved decades. He flipped faster now through the pages, lingering on familiar passages and snatches of dialogue and the names of characters he had adored so much in his youth. He uncovered the same witty jokes, bantering conversations, lush and rugged lands; same monsters lurking in dark corners, same courageous love that conquered all evil. Since he had last read this story, nothing had changed. The thought was both comforting and painful. The back of his throat stung. He looked outside, steadying his breathing. Beyond the frosted windows, the snow fell heavy as tears.

“Oh, admit it,” a voice behind him said. “You still miss it.”

It was Lucas speaking. Of course, it was him: Kieran’s best friend, at one point. He leaned against a bookcase, arms crossed, head tilted back, as comfortable as if he had just arrived home. The store had been empty just now, hadn’t it? How long had he been standing there? Kieran had not heard the front door open; he’d been distracted. 

But he was not distracted now. Lucas was dressed in that same scruffy brown jacket, thin-frame glasses that sunk low on his nose bridge, and leather shoes. Even now, his clothes looked ill-cut: much too large in width, much too short in height. His close-cropped dark hair, sharp and slender features. The little white lily still tucked into his lapel. Kieran also, before, owned an identical lily flower, but he now kept it somewhere, dried, in a box, away in the attic, hidden in the far right corner he hated to remember.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Kieran said, mouth dry. A million questions waited on his tongue. It’s been months, he wanted to say. What are you doing here now? And why the hell has it taken so long? “You startled me.”

Lucas’s crooked grin. “Mistake me for a ghost?”

“I don’t believe in ghost stories.”

“Really?” The way he said it, eyes glittering, knowing something Kieran didn’t. He had known Kieran, once, wholly and unequivocally. And wasn’t that something grand: to be understood, to want to be understood, and for someone to want to understand. Now this idea, that Lucas still possessed deep knowledge of Kieran’s private life, unsettled him. Or maybe it was that Kieran had not been known by anyone else since. Lucas pushed off the bookcase, coming closer to peer at the book in Kieran’s tight grasp. Kieran could just make out the faint freckles along his cheekbones, washed out sometime during the long winter. “Because I think you miss it. The books, the magic, the mystery. You shouldn’t have stopped.”

He huffed out a small laugh. “What are you on about? I work in a bookstore, Lucas, I couldn’t stop reading books if I wanted to.”

“I meant writing books,” Lucas clarified. “You always said you wanted to become an author. I bought you that fountain pen—”

“—To sign autographs if I became famous, yes. I remember.” A sensation of a knife twisting into his chest.

“You’d be nearly bent in half over that desk of yours writing all sorts of stuff—really good stuff too, though you never believed me. You thought your writing was horrible, I know, but Kieran, you loved it all the same.” Lucas looked sad then, suddenly. “Whatever happened to that?”

He swallowed hard. “Why are you randomly bringing up old news?” Kieran didn’t mean to get defensive, but what was Lucas playing at? Showing up unexpectedly at work, ruining Kieran’s Christmas, harping on about childish flights of fancy. Just like him, too. Over-romanticized recollections of the past. At the same time, an intense sincerity unmatched in most. He really hadn’t changed.

“You remember when we first met,” Lucas said. A statement.

Yes. Kieran had been thirteen, and during the sluggish winter break joined the library’s literary club for middle graders with much coaxing from his mother. He’d never been a prolific reader; enjoyed the stray graphic novel here and there, occasionally browsed the newspaper comics section, but no further interest. He became the librarian’s new project; she spent days pulling out books from depths of the library Kieran hadn’t known existed, about vampire hunters and futuristic civilizations and quaint country families from long ago and more, but each bored him to death. He instead wandered aimlessly down the rows of bookshelves. As he turned a corner, someone smacked right into him. It was a boy of Kieran's age. A bit nerdy if Kieran was being honest, reedy, lost in thought, his head buried deep within a book which then tumbled onto the floor with a dusty thud.

“Watch it,” Kieran said, scowling.

“Sorry.” The boy bent to pick up the book, then straightened, pushing his glasses farther up his nose. “I got distracted. It’s this book I’m reading. It’s probably the best I’ve ever read—it’s my favorite, actually, this is my fourth time reading it. Are you part of the literary club here?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Me too. I need more people to talk about books with. Right now I have none, except for my sister, but she’s only interested in horror stories, but they freak me out too much. Seriously, I had nightmares after I read one of her books—blood-sucking clowns.” He shuddered. “Anyways. Have you read this book before?”

He was an interesting boy. Not the sort Kieran usually hung out with. Bookish, odd, talkative, rapid-fire speech, words tumbling over each other on the way out. At this point in the conversation, Kieran normally would’ve walked away. But he peered down instead at the book in the boy’s outstretched hand. Big, plain red cover, the title written in shiny gold. There was also this sort of loopy drawing, a flower. Lilies in the Light.

“No.” 

“You really should. It’s incredible. I think you’d like it.”

Kieran peered at him, bemused. “How would you know? You don’t even know me.”

Lucas frowned at that, thinking. He said after some time, “I’m Lucas.”

“I’m Kieran.”

“Now I do know you.” He pushed the book into Kieran’s hands, the soft cloth cover still warm from Lucas’s cherishing touch. “You can have this copy. I have another at home.”

“Thanks,” he said, unsure if he’d actually read the thing. But he had. In two days, he had practically devoured the story whole, hidden beneath bedsheets all night with a flashlight until he blinked sleepily outside at the rising dawn. At breakfast, on the school bus, in-between homework assignments, he refused to put the book down. A new type of hunger, a craving. He returned to next weekend’s literary club meetup and marched straight to Lucas, who grinned like he expected all along Kieran would grow utterly obsessed with the novel. Like Lucas knew something about him Kieran himself hadn’t realized. They became inseparable after that, bonding first over their love of fiction, then everything else, companions through childhood and adolescence and early adulthood. That very first book was the anchor for their friendship.

That book also spurred Kieran’s love for writing. When he was not reading or doing schoolwork, he scribbled novels into journals and submitted poetry to local competitions, many of which he won. As college crept closer and closer, Kieran imagined the distant fantasy of becoming a full-time author, published, his own book in his hands. Lucas firmly encouraged him to attend university for English literature rather than the more practical option of law school or engineering. When he first stepped foot on campus, with its ivy-hallowed halls, flourishing writers always with a witty word to spare, labyrinthine libraries, intellectual allure, no world too wide, on the path to greatness, it was a dream come true. A dream only made possible because of Lucas. How quickly circumstances change.

In the present, Lucas tapped the cover of Lilies in the Light. “You always reminded me of Lily Cessair.” The protagonist. Bold, unafraid, and, sometimes, Kieran thought, too emotional.

“Because you think I’m a whiny idiot?” Then he deadpanned: “Or because I’m blond.”

He laughed, a sweet, painful sound. “No, because you were always so sincere and open about how you felt. I thought it was very brave. I always wanted to be more like you.”

Kieran sniffed awkwardly. “That doesn’t sound like me.”

“It doesn’t sound like you now.” He fiddled with the lily at his lapel, Kieran’s eyes drawn to the movement. “You know, I was never like that. For all my talk about doing the brave and bold thing, I could never do it myself.” He paused. “Some days before Christmas last year, I talked to your sister. I’m sure she told you.”

She had. He dropped the book on the cash register counter and shakily began closing the blinds. “I’m closing up the shop for the evening, so you might want to head out now.”

“I told her to tell you that I meant what I said. About you being a fantastic writer, and hand on my heart I believed you could make it as a published author. Hand on my heart.”

“I don’t want to talk about this again.”

“You were right. I’m sorry. I kept telling you to be brave and chase your dreams, but I wasn’t one to talk. I wasn’t even brave enough to confront you at the Christmas party.”

“Seriously, you should go.”

“But I hate that you dropped out of university. It actually kills me, Kieran. You’re brilliant and hard-working, and I know it was ultimately your choice and I hate that we fought about it but I needed to say it. You shouldn’t have—”

“Shut up, Lucas, I swear to God.” Kieran breathed heavily now, eyes stinging, flushed, knife in his chest. Off-center, off-balance, everything was so wrong. Nothing was the same, all wrong. “Is that what you wanted? Come here, ruin my Christmas, remind me I’m a college dropout working minimum wage? That you were right, the whole time, that I should’ve listened to you but I didn’t and now I’m—here?” Washed-up, lonely, unknown life.

“No—”

Not even angry, just exhausted: “What do you want from me? Because I have nothing left to give, okay?”

Said simply: “I missed you. I wanted to spend Christmas with you.”

He barked out a loud, grating laugh, choked feeling in his throat. “You’re mad.” 

“Because I’m being honest about what we’re both thinking?”

“Because you had your chance last year, and you missed it.”

“I needed space. I was upset, and I needed to think, but I didn’t want to burden you with all that during the holidays. I’m sorry. Neither of us could have known what would happen.”

“You should’ve been at the party. No matter what kind of fight we were in, you should’ve been brave and you should’ve driven up anyways.” Tears, now, running and aching and unfamiliar. He hadn’t cried in months, not even after, well. “How could I have known? How could I—that those would be my last words to you? That the truck would come out of nowhere, the ice—”

Heard as a story through the paramedics. Black ice on the streets, reckless driver. Truck skidding, swerving too late. Headlights carving out the scene in the darkness: Lucas, crossing the road, on the walk back to his flat from the corner café, his life once bright as a beacon, gone out in an instant. Bloodied snow. The lily flower, a gift from Kieran to wear at the Christmas party, found stuck to the deceased’s jacket. Had Lucas gone to the party, walked down a different road, his life might have been spared. Fairy lights still twinkling from their view along the corner café, where Kieran and Lucas had argued just an hour before, their final words together spoken with cruel, angry mouths. Green-blue-red, flashing, fading away. Changing too fast.

“I,” Kieran said, on his knees suddenly, pain radiating, hands tearing into his hair, his skin, burying his face, tears pouring, “am so sorry, Lucas, I am so—so sorry. Please forgive me. Please. I’ll be sorry for the rest of my life.” 

His friend since childhood, his beautiful friend, next to him, then. Sitting beside him, gentle hand at his shoulder. Only Kieran’s memory of such a hand, conjured by pent-up guilt and grief, he knows now.

“I just wanted one last Christmas with you,” he sobbed. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted, oh God, just one more Christmas with you to say I’m sorry, and I miss you, and I hate you for leaving me like this.”

Lucas smiled. “I’m here.”

“Not in the way I need you to be.”

“No,” Lucas said, “but I am here in the way that matters.”

The grief had its way with Kieran for some long, terrible minutes. Hard black ice in his heart softened now after an unendurable winter. Every tear out of his eyes one drop of melting snow, not quite warming him up yet but thawing slowly, slowly. Kieran cried and cried, for all his abandoned dreams, stories discarded as trash, his beloved copy of Lilies in the Light, the final memento of their friendship, sold to some stranger; for the guilt of yelling at Lucas just before he died, the agonizing loneliness tearing through him, all the unfelt grief lodged in his throat. Such sadness hadn’t seemed possible; he hadn’t seemed capable of such relief. 

So he cried, then let it pass.

He rose unsteadily from the ground, wiped away snot from his nose. Closing time already. Night falling on Christmas Day. Inside, radiator warmth, the once comforting shadows of the bookstore. Outside, veil of snow, blooming lights. On the cash register was the same stack of used books. Amongst them, the copy of Lilies in the Light. He stared long and hard, recalling Lucas’s love for this story, the way they lounged in the treehouse reenacting their favorite scenes, how Lucas tucked his copy into Kieran’s suitcase at the train station to university, the villain in his misery proclaiming, “even in the best lives, sorrow outweighs the joy,” and Lily Cessair’s response, “still, what a rich life that is,” spilling tea on the pages during their weekly café meetups, through rains of rusted leaves or glowing summer days, the life and times they endured, the three of them, oh, what a life.

He placed seven dollars and thirty-eight cents in the cash register, then tucked the book carefully into his bag, braving the snow again.