I jerked awake in my dad’s old recliner, jarred by the ticking of the kitchen clock. I groaned, coated in cold sweat. My gaze darted from the piano to the entertainment center, past the bookcase, to the Christmas tree standing half in front of the opening into the foyer, casting a soft glow of color. The black shadow of the couch caught my vision next, followed by mom’s recliner and the other bookcase. Everything was in its place, but that did nothing to dispel the shady charge in the air, left behind by a dream I couldn’t remember.

The fan-stirred air made me shudder and I turned my eyes to the gas log in the fireplace. I couldn’t help frowning when I saw that the pilot light had gone out. I leaned over the broad arm of the chair and braced myself with a hand on the rough, warm bricks of the hearth and switched the knob on the log to off, not bothering to fuss with the persnickety pilot light.

As my eyes focused, they were drawn back to the couch. I was out of the recliner and crossing the room before a thought could worm its way into my brain. The pillows were rumpled and I reached out to touch one. It was warm, dented, and I wondered which of my parents had fallen asleep there. The soft grain of the couch’s fabric was mussed in a few spots and the cushions were depressed from the recent weight of a body.

I remembered a nineteen-year-old me sitting on that couch next to my best friend, David.

“You’ll never believe what’s happened, Em.”

“Is something wrong?”

“No. Everything is wonderful! That’s why I’m here; you’re the first person I wanted to tell. Rebecca and I are getting married!”

“Oh?”

He nodded, oblivious. “Yeah. I proposed last night, after her performance. I’ve had the ring for months, but I couldn’t seem to find a good time to do it. Last night, something was different.”

“Different how?” I had to fight not to roll my eyes. Before he met her he would never have bothered suffering through a ballet adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“When I saw her as Hermia, something just happened. No one mattered but her. After it was over, I caught her while she was still in her costume. It was amazing.”

Jealous heat flared through me as he talked about Rebecca. The mere mention of her name gave me heartburn—her dating my best friend didn’t help my acid reflux. I lowered my eyelashes and studied him with an intensity that disturbed me. David’s fair hair and angular jaw made my fingers twitch at my sides. I almost wanted to slap him. “That sounds…unbelievable.”

I forced a smile and his gray-blue eyes radiated a kind of exultation I’ve never gotten close to knowing. I bit my lip to quell the urge to coax him out of his insanity with a kiss. I’d never noticed before how full and inviting his bottom lip was. He was my best friend, for God’s sake. My heart pounded and my temples throbbed. I wanted to tell him that it was nuts to get married at twenty, especially to a girl he’d known for less than six months. I gave him a hug, enjoying the familiar feel his bony shoulder blades through his leather jacket, and forced out the most nauseating lie I’ve ever told. “I’m so happy for you! Congratulations.”

I relived the hundreds of times we sat together on the couch, how my head always ended up on his shoulder, how he’d drape his arm around me. He always smelled like Old Spice and leather. He never complained when I made him watch black-and-white movies, though he snorted and rolled his eyes at pretty regular intervals. His whole face turned scarlet when we argued about who the best Bond was. Half the time he ended up having to push his wire-rim glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Yet everything was safe. Everything was perfect. I remembered how his steady breathing lulled me to sleep when we had movie marathons. I never had bad dreams when I slept on the couch, even when he wasn’t there. Just knowing that the couch was where David and I spent hours talking put me at ease. Nothing could hurt me as long as I stayed on the couch.

I swallowed hard as the good memories of the times we spent on the couch infused the memory of the night he told me he belonged to someone else. A familiar ache started behind my eyes and spread down to my stomach. I’d always considered him to be mine. It was an unspoken fact until Rebecca came. My happiness started and ended on the couch. I chuckled as the irony struck me but it was gone in less than an instant, pushed aside by an icy desire to see him again.

I pulled a picture frame off the end table and stared at our smiling faces. It was a high school homecoming picture, one of my favorite pictures of me. My smile in this one was real, as opposed to a forced upward turn of my lips. His bow-tie was a little crooked; he spent the whole night fiddling with it. David was always fiddling with something. It was like it was physically impossible for him to be still, except when we were on the couch.

I wanted to know if he was happy with Rebecca, if they spent whole evenings without speaking because nothing had to be said—the way it used to be with us. I wanted to see if he cradled her the way he used to cradle me as we sat on his couch. I ached to see if they were the way David and I used to be before the leggy ballerina sashayed into his life. Were they different? Did they indulge in the sort of passion I dreamed of and repressed after he told me he was getting married? Was she capable of the perfect, silent companionship I was capable of? I knew she was capable of doing something I never could. She’d made him hers with the kind of sugar-coated commitments I could never make. She gave up what she was before and became his wife, left behind all who came before him. I couldn’t let my past go so easily. I was too young, and too busy trying to fix a man who never really cared for me.

I clutched the picture of us to my chest, consumed by the urge to see what could have been mine. I slumped onto my parents’ couch and buried my face in the warm pillow, breathing in a scent that couldn’t have been there. My body warmed as the rumpled couch shaped around me. I stroked my fingers over the soft blue weave of the fabric. It cradled me and made me feel safer than I had felt in years.

I reached for my cell and warm, familiar fingers stilled my search. I gasped and hissed, “Jesus!”

“There’s no need, Em. I’m here. You’re the first person I wanted to tell. Rebecca and I are getting divorced.”

I punched him in the stomach. “You scared the hell out of me. Jerk.”

He shot me his signature sheepish grin. “Sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry.” I gave his hand a gentle squeeze and looked up at him. “What happened?”

He took the picture out of my left hand and set it on the coffee table. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It wasn’t your fault. We had nothing in common.” He gave my shoulder a nudge. “Scoot.”

I slid over to make room for him. “How did you know I’d be here?”

I felt David shrug. “It’s Christmas. The only way you wouldn’t be home for Christmas is if you were dead.”

I laughed and nodded, reminded of how well he knew me. “How’d you get in?”

“I still have the key your parents gave me. I tried to give it back, but your mom said I might need it sooner or later. I guess she was right.”

I squeezed his hand again and looked at the delicate gold clock on the mantle. “Merry Christmas.”