Grey

Grey didn’t like Christmas. I’d never really been fussed about the holiday, myself, but I didn’t outright hate it. I remember the December night when Grey first told me that she hated Christmas. It was the first time I felt like I was getting a glimpse of the real her. That girl was completely different to the illusion she created that I was so hopelessly falling in love with. For the first time with Grey, I wasn’t sure how to feel.

“So you’re a self-proclaimed Grinch then?” I smiled, taking in the way her forehead crinkled when she frowned. She shrugged. “I suppose I am,” she replied, “but I do like the snow.”

“Well there’s one thing you like about Christmas, then.”

“Snow has got nothing to do with Christmas,” she replied bitterly. I laughed and pulled her to her feet, leading her towards the door of her apartment.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to show you something,” I said, tugging her out the door and down the stairs. She grabbed her sweater from the small table near the door on the way out. I remember that particular sweater because it was her favourite and she always wore it. It was navy blue and had white stripes across it and it had been in the back seat of my car for the longest time after she left before I finally had the guts to get rid of it.

That sweater of hers was my favourite, too.

That night, I took her to Manhattan, to Rockefeller Centre to see the tree. I remember the way she just stopped and stared at it, her eyes wide. The lights of the tree were reflected in her eyes and made them seem even brighter.

“My favourite thing about Christmas,” I told her, “is the lights.”

“They’re beautiful,” she said, looking at me with that smile of hers, reserved for the times when she was truly happy. It was a different sort of smile – the type that you can’t really describe. It was the type that made you feel like it could fix everything.

I kissed her on the nose and she giggled like a school girl, taking hold of my scarf and dragging me after her, through the throngs of tourists to the base of the tree. She just looked at it and then she looked at me and she told me I wasn’t ordinary in the most sincere tone I have ever heard.

The words fell from her lips and rang in my ears and I couldn’t help but stare, because she was beautiful, not just in the way that she looked, but in the way that she was.