Through the Solstice Door

The World That Hurts

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked if I was “okay being alone on Christmas,” I could probably buy a new personality and start over.

My phone buzzed again on the nightstand. I ignored it and flipped the page on my e-reader, which was currently displaying a very naked, very fictional fae prince holding a sword and absolutely no sense of personal space.

“Yeah, well,” I muttered, “at least you don’t leave passive aggressive voicemails, buddy.”

The fae prince, tragically, did not respond. He just smoldered on the tiny screen like his life depended on it.

The phone buzzed again, this time long enough to tell me it had to be a call, not a text. I pressed my lips together, finished the sentence I was on, then finally sighed and reached for it.

MOM flashed across the screen.

Of course.

I let it go to voicemail. It was December twentieth. Too close. The closer we got to Christmas, the closer my entire extended family hovered, like I was a ticking bomb that might go off if left unsupervised.

The box of decorations in the corner of my bedroom stared at me. It had been sitting there for ten years, half-open, like it was mid-sentence and never got to finish.

Just like him.

I shoved that thought aside so fast I gave myself emotional whiplash and rolled onto my back instead. The right side of the bed remained neatly made, comforter smoothed. The left side—the side I slept on—looked like raccoons had nested in it.

I was the raccoons.

The voicemail notification pinged. I opened it, because I am a masochist.

“Hi, honey,” Mom’s voice came through, too bright and too careful. “Just checking in. Your sister says you’re working too much again. We’re all getting together on Christmas Eve at her place, remember? You don’t have to, but we’d really love to see you. You know he… he wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone.”

I closed my eyes.

There it was. The line. They meant well; I knew that. It still felt like being stabbed in the same spot over and over with a very small, polite knife.

“Anyway,” she continued, “call me when you get this, okay? Love you.”

The message ended. My room went quiet except for the faint hum of the heater and the ticking of the cheap clock on the wall.

“I’m fine,” I told the empty room. “I’m perfectly capable of being alone and miserable. It’s my superpower.”

Silence, again. Not even the fae prince had anything to add.

I dragged myself upright, wincing as my lower back protested. Forty-five hit different when you carried your grief like a backpack full of rocks and bad coping mechanisms. I scuffled across the room in fuzzy socks, adjusted my long sleep shirt, and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

There she was. Me.

Five feet of stubbornness, thick thighs, and long curly black hair that never did what it was told. My bright green eyes looked tired tonight, the freckles across my pale skin standing out sharper than usual. My lips—full, according to every ex-boyfriend I’d had before I got married—were currently pressed into a flat line.

“Wow,” I told my reflection. “What a catch.”

I’d been cute once. I knew that. I still was, in a different way. Just… softened. Like life had put me through the wash one too many times. He used to say I was beautiful no matter what, which was exactly the kind of line you’re allowed to miss for ten years without apology.

My stomach growled.

“Fine, body, I hear you.”

I shuffled down the narrow hallway into the small kitchen. The house was modest—two bedrooms, one bath, every surface holding just a little too much of something. Mail, coffee mugs, books. Always books. There was a stack of fantasy romances on the counter right now, underneath a grocery bag I’d never fully unpacked.

I opened the fridge and stared into it like inspiration might live between the pickles and the wilting lettuce. It did not.

Cooking for one sucked. I’d done it for ten years and it still felt like I was doing it wrong. Meals were either too much or not enough. I used to cook real dinners. Roasts, casseroles, soups that made the whole house smell like comfort. It was hard to justify all that effort when the only person complimenting the chef afterwards was my cat. I did not have a cat.

Maybe I should get a cat.

I grabbed leftover Chinese takeout instead and popped the carton into the microwave. Orange chicken: the official cuisine of exhausted adult sadness. While it spun, my phone buzzed again. This time it was a text.

SIS:

Hey, checking in. You dodging Mom’s calls again?

Yes.

ME:

Define “dodging.”

The typing dots appeared immediately.

SIS:

She’s worried about you. WE’RE worried about you. Come over Christmas Eve. Please.

I leaned my hip against the counter, watching the microwave numbers tick down. 0:45. 0:44.

ME:

I’ll think about it.

That was as close to a lie as I got with my sister. We both knew “I’ll think about it” meant “I would rather swallow tinsel.”

The microwave beeped. I pulled the carton out, grabbed a fork, and carried everything to the small, scarred table by the window. Outside, the street was quiet, the sky that flat winter gray that never quite got around to being daytime. The houses across from mine had lights and wreaths and inflatable Santas. My front porch had… a dying potted plant and a doormat that said WELCOME-ish.

I twirled a piece of chicken in the sticky orange sauce and shoved it into my mouth. It was lukewarm in the middle. Perfect.

This was my holiday routine. Work. Come home. Eat something vaguely food-shaped. Read until my eyes burned. Sleep on one half of the bed. Repeat. Let the days slide by until December was over and I could stop pretending I was okay with the fact that my favorite person in the world had died on black ice ten years ago and left me with a box of ornaments I couldn’t bring myself to hang.

I glanced toward the living room doorway. From here I could see the edge of the couch, the coffee table, the cardboard box perched beside it. The lid hadn’t closed right in a decade. A glittery snowflake ornament hung off the edge, dusty and stubborn.

“Not this year,” I told it, because apparently I now talked to boxed decorations and fictional men. “You can stop staring at me with your judgy little sequins.”

My therapist would probably have a field day with that, if I still had a therapist. I’d tried grief counseling after the accident. Group sessions, individual sessions, the whole package. It helped, some. Then the insurance got complicated, the bills piled up, and I learned that if I buried myself in fictional worlds full of vampires, fae kings, and destined mates, I could at least fall asleep without seeing headlights every time I closed my eyes.

Healthy? Probably not.

Effective? Mostly.

I finished my dinner, left the carton in the sink with the others, and made my way into the living room. The couch knew my shape by now. I sank into my spot—the same spot his feet used to end up in—pulled a blanket over my legs, and dug my e-reader out from between the cushions.

The fae prince was still mid-argument with his mortal mate. Something about sacrifice and destiny and blah blah blah. I loved this stuff. Truly. Give me a broody immortal and a grumpy human woman with trust issues, and I was set for the night.

The irony of that was not lost on me.

As I read, I let my hand drift absently to the chain around my neck. The gold ring hanging from it was warm from my skin. I rolled it between my fingers, feeling every scratch, every indent. Ten years and I still wore it. I’d taken it off my finger the day the funeral home handed me a small plastic bag and told me that’s all they could salvage.

My chest tightened. I focused harder on the words on the page.

The heroine in the book was currently being courted by dangerous magic and a very intense man with wings. My life, meanwhile, involved spreadsheets, seasonal depression, and a weird patch of peeling paint in the bathroom ceiling I kept meaning to fix.

“You know,” I told the empty room, “if a portal to another world wants to open up and whisk me away from the annual Griefmas tour, I’m not saying no.”

Nothing happened, of course.

No swirling lights. No mysterious doors. Just my heater kicking on again and a car driving past outside, tires crunching on slush.

I snorted at myself and went back to reading.

By the time the sky outside had darkened fully and the houses across the street had lit up like festive little explosions, my eyes started to ache. I tapped my way to the end of the chapter and closed the app, setting the e-reader face down on my chest.

My phone buzzed again.

MOM:

I made your favorite cookies today. I’ll send you some. Love you.

I stared at the message for a long time, blinking back the sudden sting in my eyes. He used to steal those cookies straight off the cooling rack when she wasn’t looking. He’d hand me one in the corner of the kitchen, conspiratorial, like we were teenagers instead of grown adults with joint checking accounts.

“I miss you,” I whispered, to no one.

The grief rose like it always did—fast, sharp, filling up my throat and my lungs. For a second I thought I might cry, really cry, the way I hadn’t let myself in months.

Then I took a slow breath, swallowed it back down, and pushed myself off the couch.

“Okay,” I told myself. “Enough self-pity for one night. Let’s go do something wild and reckless. Like… laundry.”

I walked down the hallway to the small laundry closet, started a load of clothes, and tried not to think too hard. If I kept moving, kept doing, the thoughts didn’t get too loud.

Tomorrow, I promised myself, I’d say yes or no to my sister. I’d make a decision about Christmas instead of just letting it steamroll me.

Tomorrow, I’d be brave.

Tonight, I’d just try to sleep without dreaming about headlights and ice and the sound of my own screaming.

I turned off the lights one by one, leaving the house in shadow. In my bedroom, the box of ornaments sat silently in the corner, lid askew. I climbed into bed on my side, leaving the other half untouched, like a sacred space I still couldn’t trespass on.

“Goodnight,” I whispered to the dark, habit more than belief.

No one answered.

I lay there for a long time, listening to the heater, to my own breathing, to the quiet weight of December pressing in on the walls.

Somewhere outside, wind slid through the bare trees.

I closed my eyes and, for the thousandth time, wished I could open them and find myself somewhere—anywhere—else.