The Tarnished Bauble

By Jamie F. Bell

Ed can’t stand Christmas, a season marred by painful memories, but Jeff, with his quiet strength, might just be the one to help him find a new kind of warmth amidst the winter chill.

“No, really. A tiny, almost imperceptible dent, just above the reindeer’s left antler,” Jeff insisted, holding the battered, glitter-flecked ornament closer to the weak glow of the strung-up fairy lights. His breath plumed white in the frigid air of my apartment. I still hadn’t gotten around to fixing the drafty window in the living room, and the tiny heater in the corner hummed a mournful, useless tune.

“It’s a reindeer, Jeff. Not a moose. And I’m pretty sure that’s just where the cheap plastic molding met,” I shot back, rubbing my hands together. My fingers felt like ice, despite the three layers I was wearing. The air smelled of old dust and something faintly metallic, maybe from the heater. Not at all like the pine and cinnamon Jeff was so clearly trying to conjure.

He hummed, unconvinced, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. He had this way of looking at things – not just seeing them, but *examining* them, as if every object held some profound secret. It was infuriating. And, okay, sometimes… endearing. “Nah, definitely a dent. Tells a story, doesn’t it? Maybe it fell off the tree, got stepped on by a particularly clumsy elf.”

“Or, more likely, got jammed into a box for eleven months of the year with no regard for its structural integrity,” I grumbled, already regretting letting him talk me into this. The box of ornaments sat between us on the threadbare rug, a collection of forgotten festive junk I usually hauled out for a single, performative week before Christmas, mostly for the benefit of my aunt who occasionally visited.

Jeff just grinned, a flash of white in the dim light. He picked up another ornament, a chipped ceramic snowman with one eye missing. “See? This guy’s seen some things.” He tossed it lightly into the air, catching it with an ease that made my stomach lurch. I hated when he did that – treated things with such casual recklessness, as if nothing could ever really break.

“Careful with that,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended. The snowman was ancient, probably pre-dating me. My grandmother’s. One of the few things left from… before. Jeff’s head tilted, his gaze suddenly still, fixed on me. The air grew thick, electric. He didn’t drop the snowman, didn't even flinch. He just held my stare, a question lingering in his eyes.

“Sorry,” he murmured, his voice softer, deeper. He placed the snowman gently back in the box, almost reverently. My throat tightened. He always knew, somehow, when he’d stumbled onto a tripwire. He didn’t push, didn’t pry, just… adjusted. That was Jeff. Grounded, always. Anchoring. And I hated it, because it meant I couldn’t just wallow in my usual prickly misery.

“It’s fine,” I muttered, trying to wave it off, but my hand felt heavy, clumsy. I picked up a strand of tarnished silver tinsel, twisting it around my finger until it snagged a tiny piece of skin. My usual tactic of deflecting with sarcasm felt like trying to use a wet napkin to put out a bonfire tonight. Everything felt too close, too raw.

He shifted, moving closer on the rug. The faint scent of his cologne – something clean, woody, subtly expensive – drifted to me, mixing with the dust and metallic tang. It was a stark contrast to the cloying sweetness of generic holiday candles I’d seen in stores. “You really hate Christmas, don’t you?” he asked, his tone flat, observational, not accusatory.

I shrugged, looking away. My gaze snagged on the window, where tiny snowflakes had just begun to fall, clinging to the frosty glass. They looked delicate, harmless, but I knew what they really were: a prelude. A cold, suffocating blanket. “It’s just… a lot,” I finally said, the words tasting like ash. “Too much forced cheer. Too many expectations. Too much… remembering.”

Silence stretched, thick and heavy. I could feel Jeff’s eyes on me, could almost physically sense the heat of his presence, even though we weren't touching. My pulse picked up, a frantic hummingbird beating against my ribs. I hated that. Hated how he could just *be* there, quiet and unwavering, and it would mess me up. Make me aware of every breath, every tiny movement of my own body.

“Remembering what?” he asked, eventually, his voice so low I almost didn’t hear it over the heater’s whine. It wasn't a demand, more like an offering. A gentle invitation into a space I usually kept locked, barred, and cemented shut.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, a flicker of a memory flashing behind them: my mother, her face pale, a forced smile as she wrapped a gift, her hands trembling. Her quiet, desperate efficiency. And my father, absent, as always. The echoing silence in a house that should have been full of noise. The year I stopped believing in anything good about Christmas. The year it became a hollow, cold thing.

“My mom,” I said, the name a rusty hinge, creaking open. “She… she loved Christmas. Or, she pretended to. For me. Even when things were really bad, she’d try. She’d put on the music, bake cookies, string up lights that always flickered out halfway through the season. And then she’d just… look tired. So tired. It always felt like a performance. Like I was watching her slowly… disappear, under all that tinsel.”

I opened my eyes, blinking away the faint burn behind them. Jeff hadn’t moved. He was still watching me, his expression unreadable, but there was a deep current of something in his eyes, something I couldn’t quite name. Understanding? Pity? It made my skin prickle, an uncomfortable mix of relief and resentment. I didn't want his pity.

“After she… after she left,” I continued, the words coming out in a rush, a dam finally cracking, “it was just… nothing. No one even bothered. It was like the air just went out of the whole thing. And I just started to hate it. All of it. The lights, the music, the forced smiles.” I picked up a small, wooden bird ornament, its paint chipped, one wing broken. “It all felt like a lie.”

Jeff reached out, his fingers brushing against the back of my hand, a feather-light touch that still sent a jolt through me. My breath hitched. He didn't pull away, just let his fingers rest there, a quiet anchor. His skin was warm, a sharp contrast to my own cold hand. The simple contact was disarming, unsettling. It made me want to pull away, but also… lean in. It was a contradiction I wrestled with constantly when he was around.

“It sounds like she loved you a lot,” he said, his voice quiet, still holding that steady, grounding tone. “And it sounds like you’re allowed to be angry that it ended up that way. That you lost that.”

My gaze darted to his face. He wasn't looking at me with pity. It was something else. A shared weariness, maybe. A recognition. His own family wasn't exactly a picture of holiday perfection either; I knew he usually spent Christmas Eve helping out at a soup kitchen, avoiding his own parents’ carefully constructed, yet emotionally barren, family dinners.

“I just… I just want to skip it,” I confessed, the admission feeling oddly vulnerable, like stripping off a layer of skin. “Every year. Just fast-forward to January. Get it over with.”

“And what do you do instead?” he asked, his thumb gently stroking the back of my hand. The small movement was almost imperceptible, but it drew my attention entirely, a subtle current pulling me under. My heart hammered against my ribs, a wild drum in the sudden quiet of the room. It was getting harder to breathe around him, sometimes.

“I don’t know. Watch bad movies. Eat cereal for dinner. Try to forget what day it is.” I finally pulled my hand away, needing the space, needing to break the connection that was making my thoughts too fuzzy. I picked up the tarnished bauble, the dented reindeer, and turned it over and over in my fingers. It felt cold, metallic.

Jeff didn’t press. He just watched, his gaze intense, absorbing every micro-expression on my face, every twitch of my fingers. He saw too much. That was the other thing I hated about him. He saw past the sarcasm, past the grumbling, right into the messy, complicated core of me. And he didn't seem to mind it.

“My family… we do this thing,” he began, surprising me. I’d never heard him talk much about his own Christmases, beyond the soup kitchen shifts. “We pick one truly awful, garish ornament. The one that embodies everything wrong with the holidays. And then, Christmas Eve, we smash it. In the backyard. It’s… cathartic, I guess.” He gave a small, wry smile.

I stared at him, my mouth slightly open. “You… smash ornaments?” The idea was so utterly, wonderfully irreverent. So anti-Christmas. It resonated with a deep, rebellious part of me I usually kept under wraps. A tiny, almost imperceptible spark ignited somewhere in my chest.

“Only the truly ugly ones,” he clarified, a twinkle in his eye. “The ones that remind you that sometimes things aren’t perfect, and that’s okay. That you can acknowledge the ugly parts, and then… let them go.” He gestured to the box. “Any candidates in there?”

I looked at the collection of mismatched, often tacky, ornaments. The dented reindeer. The one-eyed snowman. A Santa with a peeling beard. They were all imbued with a history I couldn't shake, a weight that felt heavy and suffocating. But Jeff’s suggestion… it offered a different way to interact with that history. Not to forget it, but to confront it, and then symbolically cast it aside.

“Maybe,” I said, a hesitant smile touching my lips. It felt foreign, a muscle I hadn’t used in years. “Maybe the reindeer. It’s definitely seen better days. And it’s aggressively red.”

Jeff let out a low chuckle, a rich, warm sound that filled the small, cold room. He leaned back, stretching his long legs out on the rug. His presence was so casual, so easy, yet it filled the space around me, making it feel… smaller, more intimate. And I, reactive as ever, felt my cheeks warm, a flush spreading across my face that had nothing to do with the heater.

“Good choice,” he said, his eyes still on me, that familiar, almost-too-intense gaze making my heart do a weird little flip. “So, for this Christmas, you get to pick a new tradition. One that actually feels good. Or at least… less bad.”

I considered it. The thought of actively choosing something different, instead of just enduring, was revolutionary. It felt like taking a tiny, almost imperceptible bit of control back. Like Jeff was offering me not just comfort, but a way out of the suffocating loop of memory.

He watched me, patient, unwavering. His gaze was a physical weight, pressing against my skin. It was almost too much, that steady, calm presence, demanding nothing but offering everything. My chest tightened. I hated how he could do that, could just exist and change the very atmosphere around me. Make me feel seen, even when I desperately wanted to remain hidden.

“Okay,” I breathed, the word a soft exhalation, a tiny wisp of vapor in the cold air. “Okay. But if we’re going to do this… we need better lights. These are sad. And maybe actual hot chocolate. Not the powdered kind.”

Jeff’s smile widened, a full, genuine grin that transformed his face. “Deal. Tomorrow morning. We’ll get the good stuff. And a real tree this time. None of this pre-lit plastic monstrosity.” He gestured around the sparsely decorated room, a playful challenge in his eyes.

My breath hitched. A real tree. I hadn’t had one since I was a kid. The scent of fresh pine, the sticky sap on your fingers, the needles everywhere. It was a memory I hadn't allowed myself to touch in years. It was a lot. Too much. But looking at Jeff, at his hopeful, steady gaze, I found myself nodding, a tiny, almost involuntary movement.

“Fine,” I mumbled, trying to sound reluctant, but a strange lightness was blooming in my chest. A warmth that had nothing to do with the struggling heater. A warmth that felt new, and terrifying, and a little bit like… hope. It felt like a fragile thing, like spun sugar, ready to shatter. But in Jeff’s presence, it also felt… protected. Like maybe, just maybe, it wouldn't break this time.