A Christmas Story
by caitlin macrae
After last Christmas I went back to the place where I met you. It was warmer than what I’d left. Things had changed but you were still going to bed after sunup, roving the quiet town in the fake 
mustache I’d lent you the last time I was home and sleeping while the rest of us moved.
We went to your mom’s house, with your new friends who were high as all get-out, and your mom made us the best dinner. When we got there, and even on the way there, I was so mad at you, on account of the highness, and the high driving through high-winding mountain roads, and my righteous grief-induced demi-sobriety. You, as always, told me not to worry, that everything was fine, or would be. I, as always, said okay. As always I didn’t mean it. It’s like that between us, where I try to will myself into okay-ness with things that are normally so much less than okay. I let it slide and I believe you because sometimes believing is everything.
And besides, once I saw you and your mom it was easy to worry less. Because if someone’s mom is hugging them in that mom way and making mom-type jokelets and jabs about you in front of your friends, everything really has to be pretty much golden. It was a good night, talking art with your mom in that cavernous house, doing the dishes even though she told us not to. Clearly, then, it’ll all be fine.
And we drove back from your mom’s house, down from the mountains to the ocean, and somewhere around Summerland this song came on, the most perfect late night long drive sleepy song, and I would’ve asked you who it was but then I would’ve had to stop looking in the rearview mirror into the back seat, where you were curled up with the first boy I’d ever seen you hold, and you looked so well, not tired or jittery or too cool to be my friend, just well. Had I asked, you might have moved, and honestly I just couldn’t risk it.
