Ten
Kristmas
I half expected him to come after me.
Eighteen-year-old Maddox would’ve let me go.
Did let me go.
But if the five minutes I spent with him is any indication, twenty-eight-year-old Maddox is an entirely different animal.
Save for the beard, he looks the same. Maybe a little harder. Somehow a little broader across the shoulders. Thicker in the chest. But he looks at me the same. Like I’m an irritant he can’t get rid of. Like he wants me and hates me for it. Blames me for just breathing.
Not sure. I can’t decide if I want to turn you over my knee and paddle your ass for being so goddamned stubborn or if I want to get you naked and fuck you so hard your Nan will feel it.
I can’t say for sure that the Maddox I knew would ever say something like that to me, let alone make good on the threat but I know for a fact that the Maddox who just whispered it to me meant every word he said.
I watch him exit the tree tent, my meddling grandmother hanging off his arm, taking small, shuffling steps like she’s afraid she’s going to fall and break a hip. This from a woman who takes Zoomba classes at the senior center four days a week.
I’d be laughing my ass off at this new level of Nan ridiculousness if watching Mad’s approach in the rearview mirror wasn’t sending me into a full-blown panic.
Thankfully, they stop at the back of the car, giving me a few seconds to breathe into my imaginary paper bag. Mad has his tree-trunk arms crossed over his chest. My grandma’s dropped her helpless old lady act and has her hands stacked on her hips like she’s giving him the business. I have no idea what they’re saying to each other but if the ridged clench of Mad’s jaw is any indication, they aren’t exchanging cookie recipes.
Finally he drops his arms and gestures toward the passenger side of the SUV before herding Nan around the side of it. Averting my gaze, I stare straight ahead and listen while the passenger-side door is opened and Nan climbs into her seat under Mad’s watchful eye.
“I need to check the tie-downs on the tree before you take off,” he says to me and I nod, risking a quick look in his direction.
He’s standing in the wedge of the open door, looking right at me. He doesn’t look happy but that’s nothing new. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at Mad and known he was glad to see me.
“Okay.” I nod again because he seems to be waiting for verbal confirmation. “I’ll wait.” I catch movement in the rear view and I look over my shoulder to see Maggie jumping and waving her arms near the tent’s entrance, her candy-striped scarf flying with every leap. Mad jogs his gaze over, his face instantly softening when he sees her.
Shutting Nan’s door, he walks to the back of the SUV and scans the parking lot before motioning her across it. He meets her halfway and she slips her gloved hand into his, giving their linked arms a swing as they walk.
Seeing them, I have to fight off the sudden tightening in my chest that squeezes my lungs.
She could’ve been yours. They both could’ve been yours. You could have a family of your own if you weren’t such a coward.
As soon as they’re across the parking lot, Maggie pulls free of her dad and shoots down the side of the SUV, heading straight for me while Mad walks up the other side to tug on the ropes the lot attendant used to secure the tree to the roof of the SUV.
“Hey, Kristmas.” I hear the muffled shout, accompanied by a series soft thumps and I look over and down to see Maggie’s face practically pressed against my window. As soon as I look she grins at me.
Rolling down my window, I can’t help but grin back at her. “Hey, Maggie,” I say, reaching out the window to hold onto her when she steps up onto the runner to hook her arms into the open window.
“Is it really your birthday?” she says, working her little arms inside the window frame. “Dad says it’s why your kooky mom named you Kristmas.”
Nan snorts in the seat next to me.
“It is,” I say, nodding in affirmation while ignoring the crack about my mom. My mom isn’t kooky. She’s what Nan calls precious. She likes things just so. Everything matches. Perfectly decorated. Not a thing out of place.
Before she married Maddox’s father, she loved Christmas. Like clockwork, as soon as December 1st rolled around, the entire house looked like the North Pole and Niemen Marcus had a baby and that baby threw up all over it. Of course a baby born on Christmas Eve should be named Kristmas Eve.
There are only two things in my mother’s life that didn’t come out the way she planned and I’m one of them.
For the corner of my eye, I watch Mad work his way closer, tugging on the ropes, giving each a critical eye like it’s not a tree secured to the top of my car but his own mother.
“Are you gonna have a party?”
I focus on Maggie, her little face pushed so close to mine I have to sit back in my seat a bit so I can see all of her without going cross-eyed. “No.” I shake my head, giving her lop-sided shrug. “I’m too old for birthday parties.”
“You should come to our party,” she says, before craning her neck to move her head and shoulders back so she can see him. “Dad, Kristmas isn’t having a birthday party. That’s sad, right?”
I watch the Great Wall of Flannel that is Mad’s chest come into view while his huge, gloved hands reach out to peel his daughter off the side of my car. That’s when I see it, the corner of an envelope poking out of his shirt pocket, its bright white tip against a field of dark blue plaid. Without thinking I look down, jamming my hands into my own pockets. They’re empty.
No letter.
When I look back up at him, he’s looking right at me, his dark brown gaze reading me perfectly. He knows what I’m doing. What I’m looking for and he gives me that asshole smirk that used to drive me insane. “Probably the saddest thing I ever heard,” he says while settling her on his hip. As soon as she’s anchored to his side, she hooks a hand around his neck while the other reaches up to smooth her bare fingers over his beard, like she did earlier in the tent. How ridiculous is it that I’m jealous of a six-year-old?
As soon as he sees her bare fingers, Mad’s face folds in on a frown. “Where are your gloves, Magpie?”
“I dunno.” She goes all wide-eyed and shrugs. “But can Kristmas come to our party because it’s her birthday and I don’t want her to be sad.”
He’s about to say no. I can see it in the clench of his jaw under his daughter’s hand. The way his shoulders stiffen under her arm. And even though it’s exactly what I want him to say, I can’t help but feel hurt. Rejected all over again.
“Who said I’m sad?” I push as much playfulness into my tone as I can muster. “My Nan is going to make my favorite food for dinner and then we’re going to drink hot chocolate and decorate the tree and watch Christmas movies,” I tell her, pretending like the next ten hours of my life are going to be a dream come true when the real dream come true is standing right in front of me. “I’m gonna have loads of fun.”
Maggie isn’t buying it for a second. “Dad?” She looks away from me, aiming that wide, blue-eyed gaze at his face.
Mad doesn’t answer her. He just stands there and looks at me, so long and so hard I start to feel a heat rash break out under my sweater. Finally he jogs his glare around me and pins it on Nan. “When’s dinner?”
“Five o’clock.”
Mad shifts his gaze back to mine. “See you at five.”
What. Wait?
Maggie lets out a whoop, landing a loud, smacking kiss on her father’s cheek. “And then we can bring Kristmas to the party right, Dad?”
“Sure.” He gives me a shit-eating grin I haven’t seen in years. One I recognize as a challenge. I start to shake my head to refuse but stop when his gaze and grin sharpen, like he’s daring me to disappoint his daughter. To tell them both no. When I don’t he readjusts Maggie on his hip and reaches up to give the rope above my head a final tug. “See you later, Kriskross.”
I nod like an idiot, watching him turn and walk away, Maggie waving and grinning at me over his shoulder as they cross the lot. I wave back because I don’t know what else to do.
“This is going to be fun,” Nan crows from her seat and I don’t look at her but I can hear it. She sounds like she’s shouting Bingo!