Tom had to park in the last row of the parking lot the next morning, but he didn’t care. He could’ve done cartwheels into the mall after the night he had. He had dropped Randall off at his motel early this morning and sang Twelve Days of Christmas at the top of his lungs in the car all the way to work.

He laughed to himself at the women crowding into the mall, no doubt going to see Santa. Well, Santa’s taken, sweetheart. And Tom was taken, taken by guy who continued to surprise him.

Tom waltzed into The Décor Store, put his apron on in the break room, and got onto the floor to help customers. He was assigned to the living room area, which was never too bad unless someone wanted to buy furniture and have it delivered. That was a ghastly amount of paperwork.

Kirsten waited for him in his area, arms folded.

“Dish,” she said with restrained calm. Tom knew he owed her some kind of explanation.

“Hi, do you need help with anything?” Tom asked a customer checking out curtain holders.

“No, she doesn’t,” Kirsten said. “Dish.”

“We’re on the clock.”

“You can’t leave me hanging like this. Ma’am.” Kirsten turned to the customer, who couldn’t be more than twenty-seven. “My co-worker got some last night and is holding back details.”

“Let me know if you need help with anything. Vases are twenty percent off.” Tom pulled Kirsten to the pillow wall. It was sacred ground. No lying here. “Do you want to get us fired?”

“They won’t fire us. We’re the best employees here.”

She did have a point.

“What is going on with you and Hot Mall Santa? I thought you guys were just friends. Was that a date last night?”

Tom gulped down. Randall said he wasn’t in the closet, and Kirsten was one of Tom’s closest friends. He couldn’t not tell her this. She would do the same.

He nodded yes.

She clamped a pillow over her mouth.

“We have to sell those,” he said.

She put back the pillow. Tom turned it so that the part that hit her mouth was against the wall.

“It was a date,” he repeated.

“Hot Mall Santa is…of course he is. He’s devastatingly attractive.”

Tom shrugged a shoulder. She did have a point.

“No wonder he wasn’t into my lap dance.”

“I’m not sure that could all be pinned on his sexual orientation.”

“Have you guys hooked up?”

“We—yeah.” Tom tried to keep his voice down.

“So all those times he came into the store to see you, you guys were bumping uglies?”

“I mean, it’s not like that, but yeah technically, I guess.”

She bit into another pillow. “Holy fuckballs. Oh my Blitzen. You—Tom!”

He worried that her head was going to spin off. He was pretty sure she was excited for him, but there might’ve been a healthy dose of jealousy on her part.

“You banged Hot Mall Santa! You deserve a monument!”

Tom shushed her, but she waved it off.

“Don’t shush me. You got the guy we all wanted. You’ve had what every person in the South Wing is lusting over.”

“I don’t think every person…”

She cocked her head at him. She did not have time for this. She did a gimme motion with her hand. “Details, please.”

“What?”

“Since I can’t get with him, I need to live vicariously through you. You rode on Santa’s sleigh. You let him go down your chimney.”

“How do you know I didn’t go down his chimney?”

“Tom.”

Damn her for knowing me so well!

“Tell me everything. How much did you do with him? Did you have sex with Hot Mall Santa?”

“His name is Randall, by the way, and it wasn’t just that.” Tom didn’t want to cheapen what they had. He liked Randall. They had forged a personal connection, one that Tom felt in his heart, even if it was going to end in early January. They shared way more than bodily fluids, but Kirsten didn’t seem to have any patience for that stuff.

“Oh, come on. Did he read you French poetry? Or maybe you guys just kissed. He’s probably fucking one of the elves.”

A flash of indignant anger hit Tom. “Why would you say that?”

“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “You’re not really a guy into casual sex.”

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re more of a romantic.”

“We fucked,” Tom said, not letting Kirsten demean his sex appeal. “Oh did we fuck.”

He was giving his audience what they wanted.

“Tell me everything.”

“His body is like a freaking Greek god, and he had quite a thunderbolt. Like, it’s ridiculous. I’m surprised I’m still able to walk. With a body like that, and a sex drive like that, he should be doing porn.” Tom couldn’t stop. He realized for the first time that having attention showered on you could be addictive. “We fucked all night long. We were in more positions than a sectional sofa. Hot Mall Santa just kept going.”

“Holy shit!”

“Oh, yeah. I wore those antlers we had to wear in the store last year. He told me I was on the naughty list.”

“He actually said that? That is like a porno.”

“I know!” Tom wanted to tell her they were both joking, that it was this amazing kind of sex where they were comfortable enough with each other to laugh and have fun. Right from the start. Almost like it was meant to be or something. “His body just overwhelmed. He is like this animal piece of meat. And last night…it was wild. We did it in my car. In public. In a subdivision. He has to use magnum condoms, like for real.”

“Shut up!” Kirsten ripped a row of pillows out of the wall. She immediately put them back, but the thought still stood.

“Hot Mall Santa doesn’t fuck around. He is here to play. I didn’t know that I could handle him, but…” Tom stopped talking. Kirsten’s face changed into one of horror.

Oh crap, there’s a customer behind me.

“Is there anything I can help you find to…”

But it wasn’t a customer.

Randall.

His body caved in, like Tom had just shot a bunch of arrows at his chest.

“Hey,” Tom said, panicking inside.

“I wanted to say hi before I went to the Workshop.”

Kirsten waved hello at him, at as much a loss for words as Tom.

“That’s what you think of me?” he asked.

“No. No, I don’t.” Tom looked back at Kirsten, then at him. “We were just joking around.”

Kirsten wasn’t laughing anymore. Tom wanted to smash his own head into the twenty-percent-off vases.

“Can we talk in private?” Tom asked.

Kirsten left to help a customer, but Randall did not move.

“I have to get to work.” Randall’s jaw tightened and pain etched across his pretty face. “Last night was really special for me.”

“Me, too.”

“Then why were you telling Kirsten all those details? You sounded just like the people on line at Santa’s Workshop, waiting to give me some line or saying what they want me to do to them.”

Why did he have to talk to Kirsten like that? Tom didn’t feel that way. But it was safe. It made what he was feeling for Randall less real, especially when Randall was going to Wisconsin over wherever, probably never to return. “I’m sorry. I never expected someone as hot as you to actually want to be with me.”

“So I’m just some hot guy?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. But…” Tom knew he should stop, but the words kept coming. “I mean, you are hot.”

“I thought we’d gotten to know each other over these past few weeks, but I’m still just the Hot Mall Santa to you.” Randall took off his Santa hat, where his waves of hair remained voluminous. “Male baldness runs in my family. So if I start to lose my hair, you’ll ditch me?”

“No.”

“Or what if I get permanently disfigured in an accident?”

“Don’t say that.”

“I don’t want to be with someone who likes me just because of how I look. I’m tired of being just an object. I’ve tried dating guys before, and that’s all they seem to care about. They just wanted to ogle me and show me off. I guess…you’re one of them, too.”

Tom opened his mouth to say something, but this time, he had no words. He realized that Randall was right. He assumed hot people are shallow, but maybe it was the rest of us who chose to put them in this box. Tom didn’t want to be like those other guys, but before he could respond, Randall walked out of the store. People watched him go, wondering if that was the Santa they’d heard so much about.

Tom pulled himself together. Anything he was feeling would have to wait until his lunch break. A customer needed help retrieving a candy dish from the top shelf, and that was his priority. Not the Hot Mall Santa.