Take Me Home Tonight

James half-woke when the alcohol wore off, ditched his suit onto the floor and got properly into bed. When he woke again, it was to the alarm on his phone. Nine o’clock.

Headache? No. He blinked. Eyes fine. Harper is...

Harper.

James sat bolt upright in bed. He’d kissed Harper. Of course he had - she was Harper - but he’d actually done it: put his lips to hers, held her close, shown her what he was thinking and feeling but could not say. And after drinking. After what he knew was a hard day in her life. With a groan of frustration, he flopped back against the pillows. Kissing Harper had been an accident, but it wasn’t a mistake. He was... well, he was nowhere, but maybe he was going somewhere. Or he had been.

Once a fuck up, always a fuck up.

The shower was no better place to think about what he’d done. Hot water didn’t drown the knowledge that after he got lucky and she forgave him for Thanksgiving and Boston and generally being an asshole, he’d repaid the favor two ways: one awesome and one awful. The wedding had been fun. He had accomplished that. Then, because he couldn’t even get through one fucking night without screwing something up, James had taken more than he deserved. As he toweled off, he heard Harper come in downstairs. Gym pants and a hoodie seemed like the best armor he could find.

“Hey,” he mumbled, like a man going to a firing squad.

“Hey!” Harper held out a paper bag. He looked adorable, which was not very helpful but since when had anything about James ever been easy? In warm, oversized sweats, James looked like a really comfortable place to curl up. His hair stuck out all over his head. “I was gonna bring this up and make sure you were awake. Feel okay?”

“Er, yeah,” he took the bag slowly, like he’d never met his hands before. “You brought me breakfast?”

Harper presented him with a coffee as well. “One cream, one sugar.”

James stared at the cup. Harper had on a deep green sweater he’d seen before, with old jeans and sneakers. He was getting used to all her winter clothes. The clear glint of her eyes said she’d been well and sober the night before. Unlike himself.

“But I kissed you,” he blurted out.

Harper couldn’t help blushing a little. “Oh, you remember that? You were half asleep.”

“Yeah,” James said. He set down the food.

“And drunk.”

“I remember though,” he insisted.

“Mmhmm,” she turned away. Sure he remembered that he’d done it, but no way James remembered what it had been like. It had kept her up last night, remembering. Reminding herself it was not real, not an actual kiss, not something that James meant to do. Lest her imagination start running away with their situation.

James though, he knew. It was the last thing he remembered, so it was like a fresh coat of paint on his mind. Harper wasn’t mad either, that did that mean? If she remembered it the way he did - if it had in fact been that intense - shouldn’t she be furious?

“I remember your lip gloss tastes like lemon.” He stood up straight as if addressing the court, details from the night before flooding his mind. “I remember your hair ends right where I put my hands.”

Harper stopped moving, but her heart went zero to a hundred in one beat. Sense memories were activating: she felt his size and warmth, the way he held her like he didn’t have to, he just wanted to.

“You make a sound when you’re surprised, a little squeak like a kitten. I... I’ve never been close enough to hear it before.” James’ pulse was also racing. Why was he doing this? He was off the hook, she wasn’t mad. He’d finally gotten away with something. Now Harper was turning toward him.

“I remember you kissed me back,” he added. Gulp. “In case you forgot.”

Dear God, Harper thought. But she said, “I remember.”

They were silent a moment, searching each other’s faces for clues. Fight or flight? This was nothing or it was something: something good, something bad? Neither was willing to make that leap. Harper thought James’ mouth - the same mouth that had kissed her out of her mind - turned down a bit at the corners in disappointment. She hadn’t been disappointed.

“You were great yesterday. Really. Thank you,” she finally said.

James had done well, for once. He wanted to tell Harper that he could be great, could be that guy, anytime she wanted. All the time, even. But it would be a lie. James could not promise that, not after the last few months. Pretty much every day he’d known Harper with the exception of yesterday, he’d been some kind of shit. So one day was a fresh start. It was a new beginning.

“You too,” James said, hoping he could handle himself as well at the inevitable wedding of his almost-ex and the man she chose instead. “And for the record, Nate made a mistake.”

Harper smiled at the floor. “Yeah, but I didn’t.”

She could have said more. It wasn’t easy to be kissed like that and believe he hadn’t meant it, assume it was just a drunken moment of defenselessness in a guy who’d finally dropped the last of the walls around his heart. And right on time too. Harper rolled her shoulders back and stood up straight.

“Ready for the last day?” she asked.

James waved an arm toward the staircase. “After you.”
____

His bedroom, like the rest of his house, was better than James could have imagined. It looked big but not empty, fancy but not pretentious. Most of all it felt like a sanctuary, a place as perfectly him as Harper’s room was perfectly her. At least as James remembered it. It had been a long few months since he’d been invited in there.

The false white wall hung around a closet that was now full of his carefully folded clothes and neatly hung suits. James knew it wouldn’t always look so presentable. The walls were pale gray, the ceiling blue. Between every color was a white trim that gave the illusion of vacation on a beach somewhere, even in the dead of winter, even in Pittsburgh. The closet where Harper had first found his stuff piled in a heap was now dedicated to workout gear. His flatscreen TV was mounted at the perfect height for watching from bed, hanging over a wide dresser full of everyday jeans and t-shirts. James had packed it, intentionally leaving two drawers empty. Someday maybe someone else would want to keep stuff at his house.

He wondered what had become of Rachel’s Girl Scout costume beret in the move from old to new furniture. It had never reappeared after he hid it that first day. For all he knew, she’d taken it back some other night. Now instead he considered the matching bedside tables that Harper had painted herself: one one each side of the bed. As if she still believed his space would be shared with another person. Share this brand new king-sized bed.

James looked at Harper. She pretended not to look at him. Fine, he thought, and flopped down on what would be his side of a truly enormous mattress.

She almost followed. It was the true test, the one she’d taught him to use. In doing so, Harper wondered if she had created a monster. One day she’d laid on his bed. He’d laid on hers. Since then, nothing had been better and everything felt like it was leading back to that moment, only with different scenery. When James patted the wide expanse of bed next to him - a bed she had picked out, mind - Harper knew there was so much space she could both lay down and stay far away. But she only did the first thing.

James folded his arms and tucked his hands behind his head. It seemed the safest bet as Harper stretched her golden-haired, comfy-sweatered self out next to him atop a crisp new blue duvet. From their vantage point, late day light still poured in through the windows and illuminated most of James’ bedroom.

He felt how close she was. James knew he had earned that, though not easily, and felt proud to have managed such a feat. Yet he knew she deserved all the credit.

“Thank you,” he said, not turning toward her. There was only so far James could trust himself. For this house. For trusting me. For calling me out when I failed, but not running away. For staying when you should have left, he wanted to add. “For everything.”

Wanting to roll toward Harper but instead rolling away, James noticed something he hadn’t seen before. On one of the hand-painted bedside tables was an alarm clock, a picture frame and a book.

“What’s this?”

Harper smiled. “Present.” It was a soft-cover copy of The Three Musketeers, the source of the quote Harper had painted on the wall in her room. James remembered that for sure. “I thought you might need something to do, all the time you’ll want to spend in here now. I signed you up for Netflix too, and added a couple of shows to your list.”

“You did?” he asked.

“You gave me your credit card number, remember?”

He nodded, looking at the book and remote on the table. The drawers were full, the bed was made ; there was nothing left to do in his once empty house.

“Anyway, watch them and try the book. We can talk about it when I get back.”

There it was: an opening. Harper wanted to see each other when again. “Right, back from your mom’s. When do you leave?” James did some mental math: today was December 22nd, Christmas Eve was in two days. The Pens had a game on the 26th, plus James was more or less under house arrest. A trip home to Ontario was not in the cards this Christmas. Luckily his parents had long since gotten used to holidays without their various sons in pursuit of NHL careers.

“Tomorrow,” Harper answered. In truth, Christmas had come a lot more quickly that she’d expected. Her mind had been tied up in James’ house, and James’ life, for quite a while now. Nate’s wedding had been close to Christmas on purpose, taking advantage of that last weekend before people started to leave for the holidays. “Back on the twenty-seventh.”

James glanced again at the book. “Okay, six days.”

Harper imagined James on the couch in his new living room, reading in the watery winter light that poured in through those windows she’d always admired. His hair would be a mess, his feet in socks tucked under a throw blanket she’d bought because it matched everything. Only one thing was missing.

Well, two, she thought, knowing a big part of her wished she could see herself in that picture. But instead she just smirked.

“We’re not quite done yet.”
____

James’ boxy Mercedes SUV was finally right for something: picking out a Christmas tree. At this late date the pickings were slim at the local charity tree lot, but Harper refused to let James get his tree from some huge store. Instead they bought one that was a little too big, rather than go too small. Harper wanted to fill more space in James’ house so he wouldn’t feel alone. After the guys at the lot had cinched the tree into a net bag and lashed it to James’ roof, Harper directed him to the nearest Target.

It looked like Christmas threw up in the store. Every manner of decoration hung from the ceiling, burst from the shelves and was stuck to the floor. Commandeering a cart, Harper led James to the bulk holiday aisle at the back. It had been picked clean, but she managed to scrounge a few boxes of lights.

“Here are more,” James tossed in a few kits of colored bulbs. Before they could hit the bottom, Harper scooped them out.

“Not on my watch.” She replaced them with some thin ropes of silver and blue garland. James didn’t have any decorations: not a bulb or a star. Luckily some of the larger sets of glass ornaments were left at the back of a bottom shelf. She snagged a stocking off a hook on her way toward the register.

James didn’t protest. He was afraid to say much of anything, lest it come out, “I love you” or “Don’t leave.” The house was so, so close to done. His goal of three years had been reached in under three months. All thanks to this girl in the black ski coat and yellow knit hat.

Pens colors, he realized. He didn’t even know if she’d done that on purpose. What James did know is he owed her a Christmas gift that would double as a thank you for all the things he couldn’t say.

Back at his place, they unloaded the tree from the roof and team-carried it into the house. Boots crunched on snow and flakes drifted around them - it was a TV movie or a car commercial about a happy couple’s first Christmas together. James was just grateful to have even this much of Harper’s time, when he’d come so close to losing it all. And even now, when she didn’t need to defend him, she was still the only one here.

Ever the decorator, holidays were some of Harper’s favorite occasions. Especially Christmas. She set up the tree stand, James maneuvered the trunk. He passed down a pitcher of water and she filled the base. Just like that: Christmas tree.

The lights where next. They wrapped each strand till it ran out before plugging another into it. By the time they reached the bottom of the tree. Next came tinsel, leaving the branches shimmering in the white light and tiny flecks of glittery cellophane all over their skin. James popped open a big plastic container of ornaments.

He held a delicate sphere up to the light. “These are beautiful.”

They are the color of your eyes, Harper didn’t say. It was a color she had subconsciously put everywhere in this house, from the first bathroom they painted to the kitchen backsplash to the ceiling in James’ bedroom. Different shades of blue for all the ways James had looked at her over months of work and fun and even fighting. This was his house all over - his blue.

Every bulb went on the tree until it twinkled. In contrast to the red and gray of the living room, the tree looked alive. James flopped back on the couch and patted the spot next to him.

“One more thing,” Harper said, dropping into the place he indicated. She opened another shopping bag and unrolled a single red and white stocking with a tube of glitter glue.

“You do it,” he said. James’ handwriting was crap, his glitter glue lettering would only be worse. And Harper’s mark was already all over this house. She unstoppered the tube, arranged herself and carefully spelled out James on the white top of the stocking. He thought she might write Neal or 18, but she just went with his first name.

Harper felt bad getting just one stocking - it was a bit lonely. Maybe she should have gotten James a puppy, or a stocking for Paul or something. But over the last week, since their fight after the incident in Boston, she sensed that James knew he’d reached a place where he was finally okay being on his own.

Not that she wanted to really leave him that way.

“I should go,” she eventually said, after admiring the tree and their handiwork and basically delaying it as long as possible.

“I can’t believe we’re finished. And I can’t thank you enough, Harper.” He stood, taking her hand and helping her to her feet. She wrapped her arms around him and James felt that same relief, the same peace, as he had upon hugging her before the first game of the season. Way back when.

“This is my favorite house I’ve ever done.”

“Mine too,” James said.

She risked leaning back a little and looking up into that face - his soft mouth just inches from her own. That accidental, drunken kiss looked like a mistake worth repeating right now. But they had made it this far. They had survived.

“I left you a surprise,” Harper admitted. “Somewhere in the house. You just have to find it.”

James started away like he wanted to look for it now. “What is it?”

“You’ll know it when you see it.”

With that, Harper lifted onto her toes and brushed her lips against James’ scruffy cheek. Hecouldn’t return it for fear of what had happened the last time he forgot Harper wasn’t his to kiss. Then her heels were back on the floor.

“Merry Christmas, James.”

He squeezed her once more before letting go. “Merry Christmas, Harper.”
____

Christmas Eve-Eve, December twenty-third. Staying in the house had been too quiet. Even when he was on the road for days and weeks at a time, James had never missed Harper like this. It always felt like she was just in the other room. Now each of those rooms was empty, except for everything she’d left. He worried that when she moved on, Harper wouldn’t remember how important she had been.

It was the worst possible day for shopping, but James found himself wandering the aisles of every store, distracted by carolling music and dancing snowmen. He wasn’t sure how to say everything - thanks, I love you, you fought for me - in any single gift that wasn’t an engagement ring. It didn’t stop him from looking at diamonds. He lapped the whole mall, left the madness of the parking lot and pulled into yet another jeweler in another lot. Eyes lit up as he walked in the door - an easy mark, he’d be, when it came to parting with cash for a girl. But Harper was no ordinary girl.

“May I help you sir?” asked a man whose British accent was likely fake.

“I’m looking for a...,” James didn’t know what exactly. “A gift.”

“For someone special?”

That one was easy. “Yes, she is.”

The salesclerk starting drifting toward the rings. “We have some exquisite....”

“Not a girlfriend,” James said quickly. “Not a ring.”

“Oh, of course.” The clerk deftly spun toward another case. “A family member, perhaps? Sister, or your mother?”

“No,” James said. “Just a friend.” But his eyes had already found what he’d been looking for. Two cases over from the rings, amid a display of silver chains and blinding pendants, was the one.

“That,” James said. “That’s it.”
____

Harper tumbled into the door of her mother’s house in a fit of stripping off scarves and coats. She’d bundled up leaving Pittsburgh then pared down on the plane, only to be assaulted by the air conditioning in the Raleigh airport. Half-asleep from the early morning flight and unwilling to carry anything she could wear instead, she’d kept her winter gear on for the half hour shuttle ride. Now it was a balmy forty-plus degrees and she was suffocating.

“You call this winter?! Oh my God.”

Her mother hugged her, coat and all, the picked up gloves and a hat off the floor. “You northerners are so dramatic.”

The house was one of Harper’s favorites, a Cape Cod-style three bedroom small enough that her mom and stepdad referred to it as a “cottage.” In truth is was just the kind of home Harper always wanted but couldn’t design, the kind whose style came simply from being lived in. There were instruction manuals stuffed between the magazines on shelves, trinkets and souvenirs from a lifetime of everyday occurrences. Atop that was a load of Christmas paraphernalia, which Harper’s stepdad always referred to as her first job in the business, helping her mom collect so much stuff. She gave everyone a proper hug, the heaved her bag upstairs.

Her room was the same as always: a time capsule of a place she hadn’t lived in years. Pictures from high school were overlaid with pictures from college. Keepsakes Harper had meant to file or save were tucked into every opening. Coming home always reminded her of why she’d gone into interior design - this was the home she was trying to make for other people. The impossible pursuit, like James’ place.

Harper had been thinking about him since she left. After three months of thinking about him, this was different: she missed him. It was over - “they” were over, in the only sense of the word that had ever applied. Harper told herself James needed to be alone right now, but felt guilty that she’d left him alone at Christmas - someone as vulnerable as James. Or as vulnerable as herself. Maybe that’s why the hugs had always been so great, and that one kiss... Harper closed her eyes. The farther away she got, the more she knew she wanted James in a real and physical way. That’s why she put so much of herself into his house. It wasn’t until she left that Harper realized it wasn’t the house she had become devoted to. Silently thanking God that at least Rachel wasn’t spending Christmas there, Harper went back down to join her parents. They had dinner, watched a movie, went to sleep. When she woke up it was Christmas Eve, just the day you want to spend at home.

Except to Harper; her parents’ house suddenly didn’t feel like it.
____

James loved everything about his place. He went from room to room, looking for the surprise Harper had left. He couldn’t remember what the house looked like before her, but James remembered how it felt. Harper had cured that like a sickness and he felt healthier. Except for that ache where he missed her.

Of course, it still felt like she was there. James should have known. Long ago he’d mentally declared them friends; even when he’d screwed that up, Harper had stuck like glue. It wasn’t every day he found someone willing to put up with him. He lived in her world now, his own house, and it was better than any place he’d ever called home. The idea made him so proud that he called Meghan. She was on Long Island, flying to Toronto the next day with John to visit the family that could have been his, if he’d only been smarter. Still James was happy for her in a way he hadn’t been before.

“You’d better get a ring under the tree,” he said.

“James! It’s only been six months! Just because Steven is insane don’t assume everyone is.”

“Not insane, Meg. In love. And for the record, you’d better say yes.”

All those miles away, Meghan laughed like she had at his bad jokes for fifteen years. “I’m pretty sure John knows he doesn’t need to ask.”

Later in the day, James went across the street to Paul’s house for Christmas Eve dinner with some of the boys. Any one of them could have met or made a date for the holiday, and there wasn’t a house in Pittsburgh that wouldn’t have taken them in. Still it was nice to be around the single guys, the Beaus and Borts of the world, so James felt he still had a place in the group. They hadn’t turned their backs on him either. James was pretty lucky, in fact, to have the people in his life. Keeping them would be a priority from now on.

Dinner lasted through every bite of food, a couple of drinks and then everyone headed home to kick back with some TV for much-needed rest.

It was barely an hour later, not even seven in the evening, when James’ doorbell rang. Figuring it was Paul, identically bored on Christmas Eve with nothing to watch and no one to watch with, James opened the door without checking.

“Merry Christmas,” said a very bundled-up Harper.
____

It wasn’t right. Harper couldn’t sit still in her parents’ living room or at their table. Even her old bedroom wasn’t doing the trick: she kept pacing, taking things off shelves at random. She tried the age-old trick of going out on December 23rd; it seemed everyone she’d ever known was home for the holiday, reunited in the local bar. They asked the usual questions: “What are you doing now?” and “How’s work?” Harper tried to smile: every single answer was James.

It’s work. It’s a job. It’s also over, so get a freaking grip!

She didn’t mention her client was an NHL player, or that her next client was the biggest NHL player of all. Few people would have recognized Crosby’s name. It was funny to Harper: she hadn’t tossed their famous names around in Pittsburgh, where it might have gained her something. Now in North Carolina, when she wanted so much to talk about it, no one cared. Harper left the pub early, her head spinning. Her mom was still up.

“No fun out there either?” she asked in that way moms do.

“It was fine, I guess. Same as always,” Harper lied.

Without so much as a question or demand, her mother simply placed a credit card on the counter. “Don’t leave before lunch.”

“What?” Harper had been lost in thought.

Her mom shrugged. “I was going to give you money for Christmas anyway. How much can a flight to Pittsburgh cost?”

“Mom.”

“I just hope it’s a guy and not a house you’re so into.”
____

“Harper.” James would have been amazed at the stupid sound of his own voice except he couldn’t hear it. It was Christmas Eve, well past dark. The light on his front step revealed chunky white flakes of snow fluttering to the ground, as if they might change their minds on the way down. Much like the girl standing in front of him. “What are you doing here?”

Harper had thought so much about what to say. She’d even told her parents about James over their Christmas Eve meal, the only part of the tradition Harper was required to stay for. Then she got on the plane in Raleigh, hoping it to turn the end of one thing into the start of another.

He wore a gray sweater and jeans, messy hair, a five o’clock shadow. Answering the door on Christmas Eve, his first reaction was surprise. Then just as quickly, he was smiling. Smiling at her and her ridiculousness and her good work and the fact that, once again, when no one else was there, she still was. She always was.

“Remember that kiss?” she asked.

James didn’t want to get too excited, especially since he had a history of getting ahead of himself. But it was late and Christmas Eve and Harper been a day away just hours ago.... “Yes. Of course.”

Harper stepped through his front door. “Remind me.”

She kissed him this time, or so she would say later and to much dispute. Not that James really cared. There was scarf pulling and hat tossing and the issue of her puffy winter coat. His mouth was on hers and Harper returned the kiss eagerly. James wanted to crow: he knew it! She had kissed him back before! Now again her lips parted, the graze of her tongue made his toes curl. He wrenched her jacket open, slipped his arms around the slender waist inside and lifted Harper into a deep, reckless kiss.

She pushed her hands up the back of his neck, into his hair, and held James’ face to hers until the need to breathe overwhelmed the need to keep kissing him. His eyes were wide when she finally opened her own.

“Are you sure?” he asked. The words hurt, but James had to know - did Harper really want this? The way he did? He’d been wrong so many times. Even Meghan, as well as she knew him, had seen something in James that wasn’t enough. His second biggest fear was experiencing that again.

His first was losing Harper.

If Harper hadn’t sensed James’ sadness since they met, she might have understood it now. She’d just ditched her family, flown back and thrown herself at him. How much more proof did the guy need? But James was a special case and so she chose her words carefully.

“Do you remember what you said to me after Nate’s wedding? You held my hand for one the hardest things I’ve ever done and you said, ‘After this, do you think I’d let something bad happen to you?’”

James nodded. It was possibly the best and most articulate he’d ever been. Harper brought that out in him.

“I want to be with that guy,” she said.

“I love you,” James gushed. When the words were out, he focused on her eyes and the shock dawning there. But he didn’t stop. “I have been falling in love with you since the day we met.”

For all her last minute holiday surprise, Harper was stunned. “James,” she said in a small voice.

“It’s too much, I know, and I’m sorry. It’s always too much,” he said. “I go to fast and then I get upset when people don’t keep up but really, I am the one who can’t keep up. Every day I have to start over again because I did something I promised myself I wouldn’t do. I wanted us to be friends. I wanted to build something that would be waiting for me to come back next year, instead of just waiting for me to leave. But I couldn’t stop there. I can’t.”

James was still explaining when their lips touched. Harper cinched her arms around his neck, pulled herself up and wrapped her legs around his waist. James helped, scooping her off the ground. She slid her tongue past his, hot and heavy. It was as urgent and desperate as he felt - and that scared him. Only one of them could be so out of control.

“What are you....”

“Say that first part again,” Harper murmured.

“What, the... oh.” His eyes dropped and cheeks flushed. “I love you.”

“I think I love you too, James.”

Their kiss changed. Harper could practically feel him surrender, starting with his brain then racing through his veins, reaching his hands in no time. They responded by slipping beneath the hem of her sweater. Her fingers were busy with his hair and the soft beard along his jawline, then his neck and shoulders. Her sweater came off first, leaving the cami underneath, then his own t-shirt hit the floor. James pushed her against the closest wall.

“I was thinking about this,” she whispered, as he pulled her shirt overhead. “while I painted this wall.”

“Liar,” he said into her hair.

“Really, I was,” Harper insisted. She’d thought of James so many ways, so many times, it was impossible to be specific. But the ‘what if’ had always lurked in front of a very serious ‘want to.’

“I love this wall,” James said. “It’s my favorite wall in the whole house.”

She kissed him and promised, “You’ll say that again when we get upstairs.”
____

Notes