She thought our dogs were in love.
And, in her defense, they were.
Sure, Lillybean put on a good show of indifference, actively ignoring Lock's incessant licking and nudging, tucking her tail and sitting down when he tried to sniff, but I knew my girl well enough to know she was feeling him too. It was in the way she cried when they walked away from us after we all hung out at the dog park, the way her butt nearly wagged off when I asked her if she wanted to go see Lock.
They were a mismatched pair for sure.
A tiny little princess and a hulking beast.
But they worked.
And, well, me and Dea, we worked too.
I wasn't raised to believe in archaic ideas like a 'friend-zone.' Friendships were friendships. It wasn't the girl's fault if you wanted more. She certainly didn't owe it to you.
That said, Dea, well, she had some issues when it came to the opposite sex.
She went to therapy.
She talked to her friends.
She really did manage to come out reasonably unscathed after a somewhat traumatizing childhood with a woman who never loved her like she needed to be loved, who always made it apparent that she loved men more than her own flesh and blood.
But she had this core-deep belief that men, as a whole, only cared about the superficial, never wanted something real, didn't believe in any kind of ever-after.
She dated casually—though very rarely—and even then, refused to let things go past a couple of weeks before she moved on.
I wasn't sure she'd ever actually had any sort of serious relationship.
In fact, I was the only man in her life she had known longer than a few months. Aside from, say, her boss who was like a grandfather to her.
But Dea seemed to have a mental block about the idea of a man who actually did know how to love, who actually could commit to more than a short fling, who genuinely wanted her for who she was as a person, not what she looked like outside.
To be fair, she was a knockout.
I would be lying if I didn't admit that.
It was what you first saw about her.
She had hair that somehow managed to be brunette and blonde all at once, kept long, always shining and smelling like coconut, framing her heart-shaped face with hazel eyes, a petite nose that tipped up ever so slightly at the end, and slightly oversized lips that seemed perpetually curved up in a smile.
She was five feet of love and light and a slightly ridiculous hot pretzel addiction. The woman literally could not walk past a pretzel cart without getting one. Even if she'd just finished one five blocks ago.
So, yeah, it was easy to love the outside.
What she didn't understand, though, was that it was equally easy to love all that was underneath.
Right down to those fears and insecurities she had regarding her mom and men as a whole.
I respected those issues. As well as the fact that she needed to be able to get over them in her own time.
So I just waited it out.
Kept my feelings in.
It was no real hardship, to be honest.
I still got to be around her, still got to take walks with her, get food with her, even spend a few holidays together. New Years, the Fourth of July, anti-Valentine's day. Oh, and we can't forget Lockjaw's birthday. That was a whole thing in and of itself. Cakes were made. Presents were wrapped and chewed open. Songs were sung. Good times were had. It was more of a to-do than my birthdays.
I could tell just from her face even a few blocks away that something was off.
She sent us a smile, but it didn't come close to meeting her eyes. Her jaw was tight. Her shoulders seemed tense.
Something was up.
"Hot pretzel?" I asked, watching as she took a deep breath, trying to wiggle the heaviness out of her shoulders.
"Always," she agreed, giving me that forced smile again.
"What's going on?" I asked a few minutes later, having taken on Lock's leash so she had her hands free to pick apart her food like she always did. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen the woman actually bite into food meant to be bit into. She cut up her pizza and ate it with a fork.
"My mom," she started, letting it drop there. Sometimes, she needed it to be pried out of her. Especially when it came to her mother.
"Is she getting another divorce?" We'd kind of been figuring it would be coming. It wasn't that Dea would be heartbroken over it. Or that Marni wouldn't bounce back, find another husband. But there would be that horrible period where Marni would spiral, and Dea would feel like she needed to mother her mother, talk her off the ledge, go out and visit with her, leaving her depleted when she got back home.
"No. She... she cancelled on Christmas."
"She cancelled on you?" I asked, brows lowering.
"I know at this point that I shouldn't be surprised or disappointed..."
"You can be disappointed, Dea. You had all kinds of plans."
Twelve days of them, to be exact.
Dea did nothing by half.
If she was going to host someone for Christmas, she was going to do it up. I'd been with her, hearing her shriek like an early 00s girl seeing the Backstreet Boys in concert when she won the tickets she had been trying to get via social media for hours.
I had met Marni twice. By all accounts, she was a rather self-centered woman, but I still found it hard to believe that she would leave Dea hanging after she had come to her rescue after her jerk of a husband bailed on her without a second thought.
"What made her change her mind?"
"Donald is staying home after all."
Oh, Donald.
The guy that Dea once told me—while tequila tipsy on New Year's Eve—had grabbed her ass the day after he married her mother.
"Couldn't they both have come to spend the holiday with you?"
"That was exactly what I suggested!" she agreed, shoveling some more pretzel into her mouth. "But she said Donald wouldn't want to have to spend his holiday in my shoebox of an apartment."
In all fairness, it was a shoebox. But it was a warm, happy, comfortable shoebox. Even if it was a hovel, her daughter lived there. Which should have been enough reason to deal with the small bit of discomfort that came with sharing a small space with a couple of people. And one dog.
I knew I was spoiled, growing up with two happily married, loving parents who indulged me and my siblings with more affection and encouragement than we could process. It made it hard for me to understand the situation with Dea and Marni. It made me a lot less sympathetic to Marni's issues like Dea often was.
In the words of my mother, It stops being about you the second you decide to bring a child into your life. If you aren't ready for your life to no longer be about you, then you have no business having babies.
This was during a talk about safe sex that ended with a fishbowl of colorful condoms being placed in the bathroom my siblings and I shared, but the sentiment still applied.
Not only was Marni not ready to have a kid when she did, but she also never grew up enough to learn that lesson and give her daughter a proper upbringing.
My parents would have no use for Marni. Both working in obstetrics—my mother as an OBGYN and my father as a premier fertility doctor—they saw people every single day who were desperate to have babies, so they had a low tolerance for those who had them but didn't properly appreciate and care for them.
I often wondered—should anything actually happen between me and Dea—how we would ever be able to reconcile our very different families.
Fanciful thinking, but something I pondered from time to time regardless.
"That sucks, Dea," I told her, watching as her gaze got glassy for a moment before she blinked back the tears.
"I planned out every single day. You know how my mom needs to constantly have something on her schedule."
I did. Very unlike Dea who was someone who really enjoyed takeaway on the couch and a good Netflix binge.
She wasn't a complete couch pot
ato, though. She was always walking Lock around the city, going to the dog park. On top of that, she was always known for some charity function or another. A do-gooder through and through, she preferred to have a social life that didn't involve drinking to oblivion, but rather rubbing shoulders with those who had the same big heart as she did.
Since she wasn't exactly rolling in cash—choosing a profession that fulfilled her instead of one that simply brought in as much money as possible—she liked to donate her time and ideas.
We both helped with charity events at the shelter. And went in every week or two to walk the dogs, socialize the cats, help the overworked staff out as well as get our animal fix since neither of us were in a position to get more animals. Her, because her apartment was simply too small. Me, because I had a somewhat hectic work schedule, sharing Lillybean with my brother who was solely responsible for her absurd wardrobe.
Dea was simply one of the best people I had ever met.
The fact that her own damn mother couldn't see that was a criminal. The fact that she would dim some of Dea's light by cancelling on her? Yeah, that was not going to stand.
"I have a question," I offered, watching her gloved hand reach for mine, pulling Lock's leash away from me.
"Okay," she agreed, nodding as we turned down a side road that would help us circle back around toward her area of town.
"Do you still have any interest in all those plans you made? Or do you just want to hang out at home and watch cheesy Hallmark movies?"
"Well, nothing is going to get in the way of me and Hallmark movies. But Netflix has a selection this year too!" she told me, beaming once again. "I mean, I didn't have a lot of enthusiasm about all the plans at first. But then while I was arranging them, I kind of got excited about them all. It really does sound like an epic way to lead up to the holiday. I guess I could... just do them all by myself. It sounds a little depressing, though."
It did.
And she deserved better.
"I have an idea."
"Okay," she agreed, turning toward me as we waited for our light to turn green to cross the street.
"How about we do all those things together?"
"You have work," she reminded me.
And, technically, I did. That said, I worked for my family. My family who was getting sick of me talking about Dea when I adamantly refused to make a move to show her my feelings. My family who would likely give me as much time off as I needed just to shut me up already about it.
I could make it work.
"I can swing it," I told her with a nod.
"I don't want you to have issues at work just to pity tag along with me."
"First, there won't be any issues at work. Second, nothing about this has anything to do with pity. I mean, have we met, Dea?" I asked, waving a hand toward my llama Santa shirt. "I love everything Christmas. I count myself honored that you would let me tag along with you."
"You're sure?" she asked, and there was a hint of insecurity there that I didn't like hearing.
"No. I'm positive."
"Then it's a date. It's twelve dates actually," she said, having them all planned out in a non-traditional span from the 13th through the 25th to coincide with when her mother would be visiting, beaming as she moved up onto her front stoop.
"It's twelve dates," I agreed, smiling back, watching as she turned to walk into her building, as Lock gave Lillybean a lick before following his mom back up.
Twelve dates.
In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't that many.
But over the years, we'd had hundreds of platonic friend dates. More than enough to get to know each other, to realize there was compatibility and affection there.
Now I had twelve dates to show her that we could be infinitely more, that I was more than just her best friend, that I could be her man as well.
CHAPTER THREE
Dea
Day one didn't actually involve going out at all.
I knew that my mother was someone who constantly needed stimulation to be even a vague facsimile of happy, but I figured the day she came in from California would be a bit taxing on her—and, let's face it, me—so staying in was my plan.
Trimming the tree, as a matter of fact.
I was normally someone who did so on Black Friday, but made myself hold off for my mom.
We'd never actually decorated the tree together. Not in all my years. Back when I was a child, tree trimming was something sacred that Tilly and I did each year. After Tilly passed, we only had a tree if I was able to put one up. Alone.
I knew it was maybe a choice made simply to appease my sad, lonely inner child to want to force the tradition on her as an adult, but it was something I had been really looking forward to.
Somehow, though, I felt just as excited to be able to decorate with Crosby.
Maybe because I knew that Crosby—unlike my mother—would genuinely enjoy it, would help me squint-test the light placements, would discuss each unique ornament I had acquired over the years. He would even sing carols with me, watch I'll Be Home for Christmas with me, all the while teasing me about my childhood crush on Johnathan Taylor Thomas.
We could do all this without having to keep Lock trapped in my bedroom because my mother thought a dog could make you smell just by being in the same room with it.
In fact, I had texted him to remind him to bring along Lillybean so that Lock had someone to spend his time with as well.
I even bought them special giant treats for the occasion, knowing full-well that Lillybean would just nibble on hers, then let Lock eat hers as well as his. But, well, we all put on a little extra padding around the holidays, didn't we? Lock and I would have to add a couple longer weekend walks to our schedules come the new year. No biggie.
Feeling a warm sensation bloom across my chest at the knock at my door—and the fact that Lock clearly knew his girlfriend had arrived since he was face-down, butt-up by the door, his nose sniffing hard at the crack beneath while his tail wiggled wildly—I placed the second box of ornaments down on my counter, and made my way over toward the door.
Lillybean wasted no time. As soon as the door was open, she was charging inside in her candy cane printed sweater, hopping up on the couch, allowing herself to get sniffed all over by the eager and loving Lock.
"Happy First Day of Christmas!" I said, smile spreading as I looked back toward Crosby. "What's this?" I asked as he held out a silver and gold gift bag.
"Open it," he demanded, rocking back on the heels of his chocolate brown loafers.
Crosby always looked put together. He looked like those pictures I always used to see before I moved to the city. Of these guys in these well-fitted jeans, great shoes, neat medium-brown hair, wearing a perfectly tailored black peacoat.
I placed the bag back in his waiting hands, freeing mine to dig into the tissue paper, my fingers finding something soft, pulling it out to feel what was unmistakably a sweater.
Not just any sweater.
Oh, no.
It was a gaudy thing. Predominantly green with gold poinsettias, red bulbs, and a giant cactus draped in twinkle lights.
My gaze lifted, finding Crosby holding his jacket open, revealing an equally hideous lime green sweater with an image of Santa riding a bucking T-Rex.
"It's ugly sweater weather," he declared, green eyes bright, dancing.
And I was never so thankful to have someone like him in my life. Someone who was happy to make the absolute best of a bad situation, someone who never got his nose bent out of joint about being the backup plan, someone who always came to the rescue on a bad day, full of cheer and excitement.
He was one of the good ones, that was for sure.
I wasn't sure what I'd done to deserve him, but I was so glad to have him around, to be able to share this experience with him.
Who else brought you an ugly sweater to match his ugly sweater while you decorated your tree because your mom bailed on you?
"Go put it on," he demanded,
moving inside, peeling off his coat, folding it and sticking it on the arm of the couch, careless about dog hair—another mark in his favor—making himself at home.
It wasn't much. Certainly not like his place. But he never seemed uncomfortable in my four-hundred square foot shoebox. The living room consisted of the couch tucked in at the left, a bit oversized because I knew it was going to be where I spent most of my time, watching TV that was mounted to the wall to save space.
About a foot away from the couch was the half-circle dining table and two chairs. Directly beside that was my kitchen that was, well, barely a kitchen at all. A small fridge, a small stove, a microwave, cupboards. I had about one square foot of counter space. It was not ideal, but I made do. Especially because I wasn't the biggest cook in the world. Crosby, who was, thought it was criminal, and gifted me a handmade cutting board contraption that was customized to fit my exact sink dimensions, giving me another foot or so of prep room should I need it.
I guess I was going to need it for the baking extravaganza to come.
"I'll be right back," I said, walking past my bathroom just barely big enough to turn around in and into my bedroom that didn't even have a proper door. Or a proper bed. Instead, I had a Murphy bed that folded up into the wall at all times or else I wouldn't be able to make it into my closet.
In the interest of keeping the walls from closing in on me too much, I opted to keep everything I could white. White walls, white light-filtering curtains, white cabinets. I even covered the old faux brown and black marble countertops with white marble contact paper to make it feel a little more airy. Then I just added pops of color in the art, the pillows, the rugs.
It wasn't much, but it was home.
And I had put a lot of myself into it.
Stripping out of my shirt, I quickly pulled on the sweater, checking myself in the mirror I had attached to the underside of my Murphy bed, nodding at my reflection. It didn't get much more Christmasy than an ugly sweater, did it?
"Please tell me these boxes aren't full of those plastic bins of plain bulbs," Crosby asked as I made my way back in, hand resting on one of said boxes.
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