Page 90 of Santa Baby

Mom poured me a cup of coffee looking equally perplexed.

“After getting jumped on and shoved out of bed for roughly twenty years of my life every Christmas morning, it’s just kind of a reflex at this point. I sat down here and watched the news.”

“So Colin is here?”

“No, he said he’s coming over later and left.”

“Why did he come back?”

Dad gestured with his hands, frustrated with our questions. “Call him, I don’t know. He put something under the tree and told me he’d be back for breakfast, so I’m sure he’ll be here any minute now.”

Mom and I exchanged confused glances before getting up and rushing to the living room. Dad, hot on our heels with spatula in hand, threw complaints our way that we were letting our breakfast get cold, but I was already on my hands and knees, wading through a sea of presents from not only my parents but my countless aunts and uncles.

My fingers found an envelope. It could be nothing. But something in my soul told me it was significant, so I pulled it from beneath the tree and sat back, turning it over.

My name was written neatly in the bold scrawl I knew was Mason’s handwriting. My heart quaked, then stopped completely.

No one said a word as my fingers drifted over my name.

I tucked it back beneath the tree. “Later,” I whispered, more to myself than to my parents, who were standing behind me looking unsure and unsteady. I rose, dusting my hands on my thighs, and I walked back to the kitchen. I sat down and started shoveling pancakes in my mouth, my vision blurring with tears.

It wasn’t until two hours later, surrounded by wrapping paper and ribbons, that the envelope ended up back in my hands.

This was it. Mason was going to tell me this was over. I expected to find a check written in my name, which honestly would have been worse than a note saying he couldn’t do this, that the Colin issue complicated too much, that I wasn’t in his league and he’d finally come to his senses about that.

Mom and Dad excused themselves while I sat motionless on the floor. I briefly heard Mom answering her phone in a huff, yelling at Colin, who’d failed to show up on Christmas morning to open presents like we always did.

“Colin, you’re on speaker phone. What the hell is the matter with you? First last night, now this?” Mom’s voice echoed from the kitchen.

“Did she open it yet?” Colin asked, breathless.

“Open what?” Dad barked as I looked over at them.

“The letter. Did she open it yet?”

They looked at me. I looked down at the letter and tore it open. My heart stopped the moment my eyes roamed over the words, “Do you want to have a snowball fight?”

38

MASON

Earlier That Morning

This was truly the city that never slept. Even in the odd hours of the morning on Christmas, the street outside of Fia’s apartment was bright in the glow of Christmas lights, streetlights, and the occasional passing car. I sat on the curb like the idiot I was. Fia wasn’t home. I already knew that. I could see the glow of her Christmas tree in the single window she had, facing the street. That felt like enough, for now.

Part of me wanted nothing more than to go to her parents’ house right then and wake everyone up so I could spill my heart and try to fix it.

But it was two a.m. on Christmas morning. I reached into my jacket for bottle number one, the first bottle out of my first barrel of my family’s recipe, my most prized possession, and took a long pull, enjoying the burn.

Crunching footsteps headed my way but I was used to that. I was another sad stranger on a curb in the middle of the city. But someone sat down beside me with a soft sigh and folded their arms around their knees. I caught the glint of Colin’s watch before I realized it was him.

“I’ve been calling you.”

“My phone died,” I said, debating taking another drink. I handed the bottle to him instead. An olive branch. A peace offering. I didn’t know. But Colin took a drink, sighing around the taste.

“Shit, that’s good.”

Silence settled heavily between us. We watched a group of young twenty-somethings drunkenly cross the street, laughing and hollering as they sang a horrible rendition of Santa Baby and promptly got yelled at by a bodega worker taking a cigarette break.