Couldn’t agree when we were both free.
We tried, we said we’d keep in touch.”
“Keep in touch?” Nick had posed in the car park as you mentally prepared for your flight back home for Christmas.
You had nodded, giving him a final hug goodbye before getting out with your bag, the rest of your luggage having gone on ahead with your team. He had driven you to the airport a few days after you had wrapped up several months on tour with him as his headline support act. You had gotten to know each other over rehearsals, through hanging out at each other’s sound checks and dining together backstage before shows and had developed, what you both had thought, was at least a solid friendship. However, once back home and into the New Year, no matter how hard you tried you couldn’t ever agree on a time or place to meet that suited both of you. When Nick was in your , you were either isolated away in the studio or work and on the odd days that you were free, Nick was either touring in countries too far away or on a closed set. There never seemed to be a good time for either of you. It was rather upsetting to not have any time with your friend and you found yourself missing him. Even if you were only hours away from each other or, God forbid, in the same city there was never any over-lapping block of time. The only instance where you did have a chance to speak face-to-face was when you passed him on your way off stage at a festival in Paris. Those exchanges of disbelief at not knowing the other was even in the same country and “hellos” were only brief as you were ushered backstage and he, similarly, was given his cue to head onto the stage.
By December the following year after you had met you had lost all hope of ever seeing him for longer than a few seconds at a time and were beginning to question whether or not you should bother even keeping in touch when he hadn’t sent any form of communication in a long while. He hadn’t even sent a “thumbs-up” emoji when you had learned that your latest single had gone to number one.
You were finishing getting ready for your final gig of the year when there was a knock at the door and your manager poked his head around the door.
“There’s a delivery here for you.” He stepped aside, opening the door further and allowing someone obscured by a slightly over-the-top bouquet of flowers.
“I hope I’m not too late to congratulate you.”
It may have been months since you had last heard that voice but there was no mistaking who it belonged to. The flowers were removed from his hands by one of your handlers and his face became visible. There was Nick, in person and clear as day. This definitely beat broken phone lines and pixelated Skype calls.
You grinned into his shoulder as you embraced him, “Never.”
Had his number but never the time.”
A nice, quiet ski trip in the mountains of Colorado was all that you had intended for on your last holiday before the week leading up to Christmas, but someone else had other plans. You were only mere hours into your stay in a gloriously spacious lodge when you felt a tap on your shoulder as you waited in line to rent your skis.
You turned to be met with a pair of gorgeous, brown eyes and a killer smile as their owner held his hand out to you.
“Excuse me but you dropped one of your gloves a couple of feet back.”
You looked down at the thick material in his glove-clad hand and reached out to take it from him.
“Why, thank you… ?”
“Joe,” he flashed his pearly whites at you, extending his hand out again to shake yours, “You’re welcome…?”
“,” you shook his hand.
“That’s a pretty name. Do you need an escort on the chair lift by any chance?”
From there you spent pretty much all of your time together whether it was skiing or just hanging out in the lodge. By the end of your holiday you were pretty much smitten and had exchanged numbers.
Despite it being nearly a year later, not much had come from your holiday romance. Whilst you both had kept in touch, between both of you having such demanding work schedules there just never seemed to be time to talk for longer than ten minutes here and there and certainly none to meet up to see how you faired outside of such a romantic setting.
As you pulled down your ski goggles, you hoped that this year would be different. In the midst of snatched conversations you had both managed to procure some time off to meet again on the same ski slopes you have frequented together.
A tap on your shoulder sent flashbacks to your mind, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu hitting you.
“Excuse me but you dropped one of your gloves a couple of feet back…”
I said, “Me too but why are you… You mean you forgot cranberries too?’”
Trudging out in the snow, you pulled your thick winter jacket tighter around you, hugging yourself as you tried to shield your body from the elements. It was 11.37 on a particularly blizzardy Christmas Eve which, under any other circumstances you would have been thrilled at as it meant having a white Christmas, but you were in a bit of a bleak mood. Thanks to your having forgotten to do their one and only job of the season, you were currently heading out to the 24 hour convenience store (that inconveniently had decided to close at midnight that night) just around the corner from your house in order to hopefully find an untapped resource of cranberries. Bracing yourself to take a glance at your watch, you inwardly congratulated yourself when you realised that you still had just over twenty minutes to get find what you needed and return home to wish those who were still up a “Merry Christmas” before heading to bed to rest up for the day ahead No doubt you would be awoken at 4am by your nieces and nephews. Despite taking your car in what felt like sub-zero conditions it had still been quite the trek to the small store once you had parked up. There was only one other person in the shop when you finally entered through its bell-chiming door and you silently prayed that they weren’t looking for the only thing you needed. This store was the only one still open that might fulfil your mission after having come up empty-handed at several others. Normally you wouldn’t have been bothered at missing the gooey pie filling, having never had much of a taste for them, but apparently it was imperative that you have an endless supply of them for the elderly relatives that were visiting your parents’ house in the morning.
As you hunted around the almost-barren shelves for even just one tin of cranberries, a name called out to you.
“?”
You stopped raking around and stood up to your full height, a smile planted on our face. You hadn’t heard that voice in years.
“Kevin?”
He walked up to and you embraced.
“What are you up to at this hour?”
You gestured towards the shelves, “Thanks to, , I have to try and find cranberries but they’re all out of fresh ones and I’m hoping in vain that they have some in a tin somewhere seeing as everywhere else is either closed or out of them.”
Kevin laughed, sheepishly brandishing a can at you, “I think I may have just got the last one…”
“Damn you, Jonas!” you laughed. At least you could sleep easy knowing that you had tried everything in order to find what was apparently the most important part of Christmas, as though it were the sweet baby Jesus himself.
He handed it over to you with a grin, “Have it.”
“I couldn’t possibly, Kev.” You tried to hand them back over but he wouldn’t accept your gesture. “Thank you. Can I offer you…” you scoured the shelves, “a tin of clam chowder as form of repayment for owing you one?”
He scrunched his nose, pulling a sickly face to make you laugh.
He shook his head; “Just promise me that you’ll stop by mom and dad’s on the 26th.”
You nodded your head, “It’s a deal.”