C.S. POE

22 Days Until Christmas

 

“Oh my God,” I stared, horrified at the cup’s worth of hot apple cider I’d spilled all over the man I’d just purchased it from.

He looked down at his jacket and absently wiped the front.

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice an octave higher than I’d have preferred. “There was—I mean, someone bumped me from behind….” I spun to point behind myself and instead splashed the last dribbles from the cup onto a lady standing there. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

She gave me a dirty look and shoved her way through the crowd.

“It’s all right,” the man said from behind me. His voice sounded like amber. It was glittery and gold and slightly melodic, dancing before my eyes.

 I turned back once more to the stranger. “No, no. I got apple cider all over your coat.”

“It’s just a coat,” he insisted with a gentle tone.

“But a very nice coat,” I finished.

Damn. He was a tall drink of water if ever I’d found a guy to use that term on. He had this rugged-meets-GQ look, which I totally dug, with a jawline to kill for, and beautiful sandy brown hair and eyes.

“Don’t—ah—don’t put it in the dryer. Wool shrinks.”

His mouth quirked as if he were trying to bite back a small smile.

“You probably knew that.”

Him and everyone else who can read a clothing tag.

“I’m Bowen,” I said. I thrust the cup forward, scrambled to move it to my left, then offered the stranger a hand.

He took it. “Felix Hansen.”

“Hansen or Handsome?” I asked, before I was quite certain I resembled something akin to a deer in the headlights. “I said that out loud.”

Felix sort of ducked his head to one side and smiled awkwardly. “Have a last name?”

“Hmm? Oh yes. I mean—Merlin.”

“Bowen Merlin?”

“That’s right.”

Felix nodded. “Quite the name.”

“Hard one to forget.”

Felix glanced at our still shaking hands.

I abruptly stopped.

The holiday food fair in my new home of Lancaster, New Hampshire, had been a lot of fun until I reached the Snowy Ridge Apple Orchard booth and thoroughly embarrassed myself. I mean, dousing a guy with hot liquid—by accident—was one thing, but then trying to flirt after the fact? My God, what was wrong with me? Sometimes I think I was dropped on my head as a baby.

Felix turned and stepped into the tent.

I closed my eyes and clasped my hands together, crushing the paper cup between them. I needed to walk away. Walk away before I made this whole fiasco any—

“Here you are.”

I opened my eyes. Felix was holding out a new cup, steam rising from the hot cider.

“Huh?”

He reached forward and gently pried my battle-worn cup free before replacing it. “Enjoy.”

“Oh, but wait. I need to pay—”

Felix put a gloved hand over the top of the cup and halted my sudden movement to grab my wallet. “Don’t worry about it.”

“But I—”

“Happy holidays,” Felix said, and his voice curled around me like a shimmery, warm blanket of color. He buried his mouth and nose into the thick scarf around his neck and returned to the booth of waiting customers.

I cocked my head and watched him go. Felix glanced back in my direction and our eyes met. He looked away, toward me again, then turned his back to fill a cup with cider.

Huh. Maybe Mr. Handsome liked my lame pickup attempt.

​

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“Sounds like you were a bit of a space cadet.”

“Think of the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you, Scarlet,” I said, talking on my cell with my old roommate back in New York as I opened the door to my recently purchased house. “It was that bad.”

“Okay, well, the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me was when I was on one of those log rides at an amusement park, I was wearing a really billowy top and my bra actually broke—you know, the ones that snap in front—so when we went whoosh down the ramp and our picture was taken, there were my tits for the whole gift shop to see.”

“This was kind of like that.” I shut the door.

“Yeah, not even close.”

“His voice was just so flippin’ gorgeous,” I said, sighing a little. “I’ve never heard an amber voice. It was smooth and flowed like blues music.”

Sound-to-color synesthesia. Throughout my entire life, my senses have been cross-wired so I didn’t merely hear music or voices—I saw them too. Like fireworks. Explosions of color. And usually they followed a set pattern, like pop music was lots of pinks and purples, classical was whites and blues, and deep voices were usually vibrant reds and oranges.

Felix’s tone was deep enough to hit those powerful reds, and yet it was gentler. Warmer. A break from the mold in which sound presented itself to me.

“I made an ass out of myself,” I stated.

“Uh-huh. God forbid you meet a total hottie in a new town and get a little stuttery over him,” Scarlet replied. She had a very pink voice. Deeper than average for a woman, but still sort of like pop music in the animated way she spoke.

“A little?” I snapped. “I actually said, to his face, Hansen or Handsome.”

“In your defense, he might have actually enjoyed it.” Scarlet made a sound of exhalation, and I could imagine her standing outside the front door of the tattoo parlor in the Village she worked at, cold as hell but determined to finish her smoke.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t move here to find myself a nice country man, so we’ll just say Mr. Handsome was the one who got away.”

“Oh please,” Scarlet muttered. “What’re you gonna do, live the life of a spinster?”

“Girl, there aren’t exactly any gay bars around here for me to cruise.”

“Cruise your amber-man.”

“I don’t need to complicate my life right now. I just moved here. I’m starting a new job….”

“You left me and New York, New York, for Bumfuck, New Hampshire,” Scarlet interjected. “Why’d you bother flirting if you’re not going to try to tap that?”

“You’re so vulgar.”

“Just because you moved for a job doesn’t mean you can’t date,” she said. “And yeah, you’re a bit of an artsy spaz, but maybe Mr. Handsome likes cute ginger boys who wear bow ties every day of the week.”

“You’re so sweet,” I said mockingly.