Spencer Nation's Christmas Miracle

by Tammy Blackwell

  Maddie considered it for a moment. “All of my friends are girls. Well, except for Jonathan, but he doesn’t really count. Does that mean I’m a whore too?”

  “No, you’re not. And you never will be, no matter what anyone says to you.” Spencer crouched down so she could look Maddie in the eye. She reached out and grabbed onto Allie’s hand, letting her know she was included in this mini-lecture. “Whore isn’t a very nice word. It’s a word people use when they think a person shouldn’t have a lot of friends. But you’re the only person who gets to decide how many friends you have. It’s no one else’s business. Remember that, okay? No matter how many friends you have when you grow up, you’re still a good person.”

  She believed what she was saying, with all of her heart. She did. It just felt a little hollow since she was silently calling Kit every bad name she could think of at the moment. Fucking douche-ass was one she kept rotating back to. It seemed especially appropriate.

  Of course, there was no reason for her to be so pissed. It wasn’t like he made her any promises. He’d made it clear lust was the driving force in what they were doing. If she thought there was something more there, that there was a connection of something other than their bodies, then it was on her, not him.

  Still, it felt like a punch in the gut that he was already out with Miss Tight Jeans mere hours after making Spencer experience a level of pleasure that made eating brownies and ice cream seem almost grueling.

  “Does Aunt Beth think Kitten is a bad person?” Allie asked, a slight tremble in her voice. Of all the children, she was the most sensitive. The idea of her aunt thinking poorly of Kit was breaking the kid’s heart.

  Damn. That was probably her fault. She should have explained it differently.

  Although an argument could be made that Beth shouldn’t use words like whore in front of her child or call her step-brother such names in the first place.

  “Aunt Beth was teasing,” Mack said, rescuing Spencer. “It’s like when you call your little brother stinky butt. You don’t really think he’s a stinky butt, do you?”

  Allie wrinkled up her adorable little nose. “Sometimes. Especially if Mommy gives him prunes. You do not want to smell those diapers.”

  “But you still love him, don’t you?” Spencer asked, having to agree with Allie on this one. She’d started avoiding the bathroom in the hall precisely for the diaper smell that lingered, no matter how often they took out the garbage. “Even when his butt stinks, you still think he’s the best baby brother in the world.”

  “He’s okay, I guess.”

  “Well, your Aunt Beth thinks your Uncle Kitten is pretty okay, too, even if she thinks he has too many friends.”

  God, what would Beth think if she knew Spencer was one of those friends? She would probably blame it all on Spencer. Call her a manipulative skank or something equally appealing.

  Maddie had been uncharacteristically quiet through the entire exchange, and it made Spencer nervous. She wasn’t too proud to admit she was completely terrified of a six year-old, especially when she could see the wheels in her head turning at double their normal speed.

  The kid was going to be a kick-ass adult someday. She was going to make everyone miserable until then, but there was no denying Maddie was smart and a natural-born leader.

  When she finally decided on a question to ask, it was, thankfully, directed at her grandfather. “Is Mommy going to get in trouble for calling Uncle Kitten a bad word?”

  “I will be having a talk with your mother.”

  Mack was normally a pretty chill guy, but Spencer did not envy Beth that talk. Although, she would have given everything she had, and then borrowed as much as a bank was willing to lend her, to trade places with Beth. Because no matter how much Spencer didn’t want to be the recipient of a Mack lecture, she was dreading the moment she would have to look Kit in the eye again.

  Chapter 14

  Kit didn’t make it back to the house for lunch, nor did he appear when everyone gathered in the living room to watch Elf. Spencer tried not to notice his absence. She tried not to think about how he was probably giving Tight Jeans Tinsley more orgasms in a single afternoon than Spencer had experienced in her entire twenty-nine years. And she tried really, really hard not to feel completely shitty about it.

  Unfortunately, she failed spectacularly on all accounts.

  “Are you okay, sweetie?” Rita asked when the two were alone in the kitchen. The kids had been put down for an afternoon nap and the rest of the adults had commandeered the basement to wrap Santa gifts.

  “Fantastic,” Spenser said, eating her fourth — or was it her fifth? — cookie in just as many minutes. She didn’t even like oatmeal raisin cookies. But they were sitting there and so was she. It only made sense to eat through the entire tray.

  Rita pushed the tray of cookies out of Spencer’s reach as if she knew the exact direction of her daughter’s thoughts.

  “That wasn’t every convincing,” Rita said, hands on her round hips. “You’re getting the holiday blues, aren’t you?”

  The holiday blues. If only. She knew how to handle Christmas funk. The most wonderful time of year had lost its shine and sparkle when her dad died. What she didn’t know how to handle was this feeling of betrayal and loss.

  You can’t betray someone you never made a promise to, and you can’t lose something you never really had.

  If only she could convince her heart.

  “I know this is hard on you,” her mother continued, not caring that Spencer wasn’t even pretending to participate in the conversation. “You’re not used to a big family. And no matter how nice it is to have so many people to celebrate with, the truth is we’ve had to sacrifice some of our own traditions to be here with them.” Rita sat down at the table across from Spencer and grabbed a cookie for herself. “I miss our tree.”

  Their house in Nashville had been small. The living room barely had enough room for a couch and recliner. There was literally nowhere to put a proper Christmas tree, so they’d made do with a little three-foot tree they placed in the middle of their kitchen table like a centerpiece. They’d overladen it with decorations to the point you couldn’t see the limbs without making an effort.

  Apparently their new family had a thing against artificial trees. Instead, Mack had insisted on going into the woods and chopping down a tree himself. It took up half the living room and smelled like floor cleaner. There wasn’t a single decoration on it. Rumor was that Christmas Eve decorating tradition existed which involved eggnog, gingerbread, and Mickey’s Christmas Carol.

  God bless us everyone indeed.

  “I miss our tree, too,” Spencer admitted. “It doesn’t feel like Christmas without it.” And then, to her horror, tears formed in her eyes. She wasn’t sure why they were there, but she had to blink furiously to keep them from falling.

  Of course, her mother noticed. Mothers always noticed the things you don’t want them to.

  “Oh sweetie,” she said, coming around the table and scooping her daughter up in a hug. She pressed Spencer’s head into the pillow of her more-than-ample bosom. Being held like a child should have felt ridiculous and embarrassing, but instead it felt like home. Rita was the only home Spencer truly had left. Her mom had sold their old house in Nashville, and the apartment she’d been living in for the past five years was now presumably housing the Fanny Hill of baristas. She had nothing left but this tiny, round woman, and now she had to share her with a loud, boisterous family who barely managed to tolerate Spencer’s existence.

  Kit more than tolerated you.

  That errant thought made her sobs come even harder. She burrowed into her mother’s embrace, wishing she was anywhere but here, in this house with these people. This wasn’t her life. She didn’t belong here. She never would.

  “You know, not everything has to change,” her mother said once the deluge of tears tapered off into a trickling stream.

  “You can’t stop change any more than you can stop the su
ns from setting,” Spencer automatically quoted.

  “Jane Austen?” Rita guessed.

  “Anakin Skywalker’s mom.”

  Rita giggled as she let Spencer go. Her hands, which were beginning to house spots that were a little too big to be called freckles, brushed the remaining tears from Spencer’s face and tucked her hair behind her ears. It made Spencer feel like a little kid, but not in a bad way.

  “All that fancy schooling, and you still quote Star Wars.”

  “Words are words, and wisdom is wisdom. It doesn’t matter where they came from if they speak of a universal truth.” It was what she loved most about books. Every single one, no matter the genre or author, contained the potential to redefine your world.

  “Well, in that case, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a house celebrating the holidays must be in want of a tiny, cluttered Christmas tree,” Rita said in what could only be described as the most atrocious British accent ever attempted. “I just happen to know that a certain fake, three-foot tall Christmas tree is residing in the attic along with a box of exquisitely-crafted popsicle-stick ornaments.” She nodded at the microwave sitting on a stand nestled in the corner of the kitchen. “What do you say we spread a little Nation-flavored joy to this kitchen?”

  “I’m not sure it’s safe to put a Christmas tree on top of a microwave, Mama. Couldn’t it catch on fire or something?”

  Rita shrugged as if a house fire was no big deal. “We tested the smoke alarms last month and there is an extinguisher under the sink.”

  What did it say about Spencer that she really, really wanted to junk up Mack’s kitchen with her trashy Christmas tree?

  “Want me to go ask Mack if he cares if we put it up?”

  Rita’s eyes narrowed and her lips pressed into a hard line. “Spencer Nation, are you suggesting I need to ask a man’s permission to put up a decoration in my own home?”

  Most people would take one look at Rita’s towering platinum blond hair, tanning bed bronzed skin, and honk-if-you-love-Jesus bumper sticker and assume she was as far from a feminist as you could get. Those people would be very, very wrong. This was, after all, the woman who had watched 9 to 5 at least once a year since 1980. When it came down to it, she was ready and willing to make a hen out of any rooster who dared cross her.

  “What I meant to say was, would you like me to go dig the tree and ornaments out of the attic, Mama?”

  Rita’s eyes lit up… well, like Spencer expected the kids’ eyes would in a few days when they awoke to find the living room stuffed to the brim with presents.

  Spencer hadn’t cared to think about how this was all new and different for her mother as well. Big families and giant fresh-cut trees were as foreign to Rita as they were her daughter. Putting up their old tree wouldn’t magically transport them back to the smaller, more intimate Christmases of their past, but it would carve out their own space in this new world.

  Fifteen minutes later, Spencer was questioning whether or not having their own space in this world was really all that important.

  “Sure, Mama. I’ll be happy to crawl around in your creepy-ass attic where spiders, mice, and God only knows what else wait in the shadows to claw off my face,” Spencer muttered under her breath as she crawled forward on the thin sheet of plywood that ran across bare beams of wood. Rita had failed to mention that the attic wasn’t finished or that there was no electricity. What her headband flashlight lacked in style it more than made up for in insufficient light.

  Dozens upon dozens of boxes lined the crawlway the plywood provided, and not a single one was labeled. She avoided the ones that had more than an inch of dust covering the top — her mom hadn’t lived with Spencer long enough for more than a thin layer to have accumulated — but still she found herself having to open box after box. After a tour of The Fashion of Rita, which went back several decades, she finally came to her mother’s house things.

  She hadn’t expected the sight of old coffee mugs and desk lamps to fill her with such profound sadness, but there it was all the same. It was as if her old life had been packed up and stored away out of sight. The dishtowels she’d used her whole life and the potholders she’d woven in summer camp didn’t have a place here.

  She didn’t have a place here.

  God, she was reverting into an angsty teen. It was probably due to some old hormones still clinging to the My Chemical Romance shirt her mother used as padding in a box of vases.

  I wonder if Kit liked emo music.

  Doubtful. His taste seemed to run more old school rock. He was probably downloading Pink Floyd and Def Leppard albums while she listened to Linkin Park on repeat.

  And he’s probably listening to Tinsley’s moans of pleasure while you’re crawling around in the dark.

  She needed to find that damn tree and get the hell out of there before she became the lunatic in the attic. Her mind wandered far too much when it was dark and silent.

  After opening another six boxes she finally found the tree and its ornaments cuddled up together in an old Amazon box sitting next to a giant silver pipe/tube-thing. She was trying to figure out how exactly she was going to carry everything back down when she couldn’t even stand up when she heard her mother.

  “More coffee?”

  It sounded as if her mother was standing next to her talking through a wrapping paper tube. Spencer might have been able to come up with a reason for that — maybe something to do with sound waves and acoustics — but she liked how any science thing you didn’t understand was instantly turned into magic. Since she’d struggled to make passing grades in every science class she’d ever had, Spencer’s world was full of magic.

  “This isn’t working,” Rita said from her magical wrapping paper tube as Spencer tried to wiggle the box off of the wooden beams it was resting on and onto the plywood platform. “She was doing so well. It was like I had my little girl back, but then today…” Spencer froze, one knee digging into the edge of a two-by-four and the other letting her know it had picked up a souvenir in the form of a splinter at some point during her trek. “She looks worse than she did when I went down to Nashville a few weeks ago. I swear, it’s like Travis has left her all over again. And I don’t even know what I did to set her off.”

  “You haven’t done anything,” Mack assured her. “You’re a wonderful mother, and that girl knows it. She’s been through a bad breakup is all. The holidays are always hard after you end a relationship.”

  Spencer realized, a little belatedly, that she liked Mack. He was good for her mom. While Rita was prone to flights of fancy and hysterics, he was a voice of reason. He was dead wrong at the moment, but he was still calm and rational.

  A part of her — a small part, like maybe an elbow — felt guilty for not being morose over spending her first Christmas in half a decade without Travis. In truth, she was going to miss hanging out with his parents on Christmas Eve more than she was not waking up in his arms on Christmas morning.

  When she thought about Travis, all she felt was relief. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but he made her miserable. They’d been nothing more than security blankets for one another since…

  Well, maybe since forever. It wasn’t like they enjoyed talking about their favorite movies with each other or spent hours singing hokey holiday songs. He didn’t like playing video games, and God knows he’d never made her blood buzz with a single smile. Not like Kit did.

  Jesus Christ. She had a better three-day relationship with a guy who only saw her as a convenient fuck than she did with her boyfriend of five years.

  For the first time, she was grateful that she walked in on Travis and the barista. If she hadn’t, she might have actually married the idiot.

  Would it be weird for her to stop by the coffee shop with a thank-you note?

  “Don’t worry,” Mack said, rudely interrupting Spencer’s revelation. “Kit will be back in a few hours. He never stays with that Henson girl overnight. When he gets home, I’ll remind him of his promis
e to help with Spencer.”

  Chapter 15

  Spencer knew she wasn’t a supermodel, but she’d always been content with how she looked. There were days you might even have been able to categorize her as vain. Sure her lips were a little too big, her forehead a bit too high, and she could probably stand to lose about ten or fifteen pounds, but overall, she was decent enough. As for her personality, she was a bit nerdy and dull, but there were worse adjectives you could use to describe someone. That was why it was the double punch of Kit sleeping with her because Mack asked him to and Mack thinking she was so pathetic he needed to ask Kit to pay attention to her that left her reeling.

  She wasn’t an idiot. She knew Kit was out of her league, but was it so impossible to believe he might actually see something of worth in her on his own? It hadn’t been for her, which she was sure her therapist would find all sorts of interesting. Too bad the woman took off the entire month of December to be with her family.

  The box filled with the memories of Christmases past was large and awkward to wield. The small part of her brain that wasn’t actively chanting, “You’re a loser. You’re a loser. You’re a loser,” found it ironic that Mack thought she needed help attracting a guy’s notice but not in lugging a giant box down a narrow attic ladder. Once she was finally on terra firma again, she set the box on the bed and rubbed a hand over her chest. The ache residing there was a result of breathing in dust, mold, and insulation in the attic, not a broken heart. At least, that was the story she was going to choose to believe.

  “You can’t mourn the loss of something you never had,” she reminded herself, hefting the box once more into her arms. And it wasn’t as if she really, truly believed she had Kit at all.

  Okay, maybe there was a tiny part of her that had believed it. A small sliver of her heart that held onto the hope that he wasn’t out banging some tight-ass blonde hours after having sex with her. A bit of naïve hope that he’d felt the same connection she had. That he wanted her as much as she wanted him.