by Nella Tyler
“Please! As if you need another man in your life. You’re juggling what—three guys right now?”
“Two,” Amie said, shaking her head. “Me getting injured freaked Dave out and he split on me.”
“Men are shameful creatures,” I told her, doing my best Southern Belle impression.
“You say that when you got one of the good ones?”
I shrugged it off.
“What’s going on with you and Patrick, by the way?”
“Let’s get this wrapping started,” I suggested. I took another sip of the hot, strong wine and stood carefully; it was already starting to hit me.
“Well if you don’t want to talk about it…” Amie followed me into the living room with her wine and we got down to work on wrapping our different presents. She had gotten a bunch of nice pens for everyone for her “stuff the stocking,” in different colors so that everyone would know which was whose; one of the most common rights in the office was the chronic shortage of pens—with everyone accusing everyone else of stealing “their” pen.
I put on some Christmas music and we got down to work, chatting about what we wanted to do over the holidays, comparing New Year’s Eve plans. I figured that I would be spending my night with my family, and told Amie as much. “Are you bringing Patrick to meet everyone? It seems a bit soon for that.”
“Probably not,” I said with a shrug, concentrating for a moment on a tricky corner on one of the presents for my Dad. “I’m sure he’s probably got plans already.”
“Probably?” I glanced at Amie’s face to see the look of surprise on her features. “Probably? Amie—if you’re dating him, you should know whether he’s got plans for New Year’s or not. Did you even invite him to your parents’ party?”
“No.” I finished taping down a tail of wrapping paper and turned the box around to make sure it didn’t look weird. “I don’t know if I want him to come with me to the party.”
“Why not? He’s cute, and it’d get your parents off your back for at least a few weeks.”
“Yeah, and they’ll spend half the night asking him about how many dates we’ve been on, about what he does for a living, whether he’s planning on having kids…” I felt my cheeks burning as the real reason for not inviting him nagged at me: I didn’t know whether or not I was, strictly speaking, even still in a relationship with Patrick.
“You’re hiding something from me about the guy,” Amie said, frowning and crossing her arms over her chest. “Come on, Mack. If he’s done something to hurt you…”
“It’s not really his fault,” I said. “At least—I don’t think it is. I mean, it’s just gotten weird between us. That isn’t anyone’s fault, right?”
“That depends,” Amie told me. “How has it gotten weird?”
“Just…” I sighed. “Let me get us both some more of the wine. I’m going to need it to explain.”
I stood up and gestured for Amie to stay where she was, seated on my living room floor. I went into the kitchen and refilled our glasses, taking as much time as I dared. When I came back into the living room, Amie had finished off another one of her pen packages and was waiting for me to start talking.
“Okay, so…”
“So the other day, he had to cancel one of our dates,” I explained. “I didn’t really think anything about it; he said he had a business dinner he had to go to, which I guess makes sense.”
“You had to cancel on him the night I got hurt,” Amie said. “So what’s the deal?”
“In the back of my head I was…” I frowned and took a sip of my wine. “I guess I was suspicious but I didn’t really say anything. He promised to make it up to me with a date that was twice as good, and that he’d bring me flowers, the whole deal—you know?”
“Sounds like he’s better than even I thought!” Amie worked away at another package. “Where does it get weird?”
“Well after he canceled, I figured he’d text me or call me that night to reschedule, you know? At least to set a date. But he didn’t. And when I texted him the next morning to ask how the dinner was, he said it was just about how he’d expected…but normally he kind of gets flirty when he replies.”
“That can’t be it.”
“It isn’t. You haven’t been working, so you haven’t seen Landon coming into the clinic alone.”
“Alone?”
“His dad’s out in the car. Supposedly working. You know—busy since it’s about to be a week away from the office, and he has to make sure everything is as it should be before everything shuts down.”
“He could work in the waiting room. Or at your desk.”
“Exactly,” I said. I shook my head. “So I started to feel like he was avoiding me, but I didn’t really know what to do about it. Finally, last night I called him to just basically ask if we were okay.”
“And what was his reaction?” Amie took a long drink of her wine.
“He said he’s just been really busy, and he asked if I had any plans last night. I didn’t, so he suggested that we do some Christmas shopping together.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It kind of was,” I agreed. “But then I got to the mall and everything was weird between us the whole time. He hugged me and kissed me but there was—it was like there was some weird thing between us. Like we weren’t talking at the same speed, even though we were.”
“Ah.” Amie nodded. “So how did the date end? Did you just throw yourselves at each other and go up in a blaze of awkward passion?”
“Nope.” I sighed. “We made out a little bit and then he had to go pick up his son. We couldn’t have gone home together even if it hadn’t been so weird.”
“You’re right; men are all shameful creatures,” Amie said. She raised her glass and I clinked mine against it, and for a while we went back to wrapping presents without even addressing the topic of Patrick.
We finally finished up both of our wrapping chores, and managed to finish off the wine, too. Instead of taking the bus, Amie decided that she was going to spend the money to catch a cab, and I offered to give her some leftovers out of my freezer so she wouldn’t have to cook.
“I know you didn’t want advice from me, or you would have asked me for it,” she said as she was putting on her coat to go downstairs. “But here’s what I think, for what it’s worth. You and Patrick like each other—even before you were dating I could see it on both of your faces. Don’t worry about waiting for him to make the move again. Invite him over.”
“But what if he’s lost interest?”
“Then he won’t come over,” Amie said with a shrug. “But at least you’ll know where you stand.” She gave me another quick, awkward hug and settled her bag of presents on her shoulder again, heading for my door. “You’re going to the party tomorrow, right?”
“Obviously,” I said, smiling in spite of myself. I wasn’t sure how practical Amie’s advice was, but it definitely gave me something to think about as I went through the rest of my day, getting ready for the party and cleaning up my apartment. I felt a little bit better—but I couldn’t end the nagging voice in the back of my head wondering what I would do if it turned out that Patrick had lost interest.
Chapter Six - Patrick
“Hey buddy, make sure you pack your toothbrush this time,” I told Landon even as I tried to find my own travel toothbrush to shove it into my suitcase. “I’m not going to stop at the pharmacy in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to get you one to use.”
I had gotten off of work at noon, picked Landon up from the babysitter’s house, and spent the rest of the afternoon fighting against the clock. My parents expected me at the house by dinner time, and while it was flexible—with so many relatives coming into town, it had to be—I didn’t want to be more than thirty minutes late at most. Just like I’d told Mackenzie, I’d had to buy a few last-minute gifts for in-laws; I’d stuck to gift cards since they at least couldn’t be offended that I had no idea what they liked, but it had taken forever
to get through the lines, even at two in the afternoon. Then Landon and I had come back to the house and I’d set him to work right away packing his things.
The plan was the same as it had been every year of Landon’s life: we would go to my parents’ house for Christmas Eve, open presents early on Christmas morning, eat breakfast with the family, and then I would take Landon to Joanne’s parents’ house about an hour outside of the city to spend some time with them. I wanted to keep Landon in touch with my in-laws, his grandparents on his mother’s side, even more than anyone else in Joanne’s family. They had lost their daughter at the same time that I had lost my wife and Landon had lost his mom; I didn’t want them to ever think that I was ignoring them or trying to forget Joanne.
“I’m all finished, Dad!” Landon came into my bedroom with his suitcase in his hands, looking as proud as he had when the Principal at his school had announced that he’d won the award for Most Improved Reader for his grade level.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said, grinning at my son. Landon threw his suitcase onto my bed and I put aside the clothes I was trying to fold long enough to unzip it and look inside. Of course, being five, Landon had no real concern for making sure any of his packing was neat; so to make sure that he had everything that he was going to need for the long weekend, I had to pull almost all of it out piece by piece. I found his toothbrush, his pajamas, a few extra pairs of socks beyond what I’d told him to pack, plenty of warm clothes. He’d snuck in a toy as well—but that was fine with me. “Looks good, kiddo,” I said, turning to give him an approving grin. “But this is a mess. Fold your clothes and put them back in.”
“Why does it have to look nice?” Landon picked up one of his socks and pouted.
“Because then you’ll know where everything is, and you’ll be able to fit as much as possible,” I explained. I pointed to my own suitcase. “See?”
“Yeah, but you’ve got a lot more than I do,” Landon pointed out. “I don’t have to worry about fitting things.”
“It’s a good habit anyway.”
I looked at Landon sharply for a moment, wondering if he’d gotten overtired and was going to start throwing a tantrum out of sheer boredom and worry. “Come on, bud. You know Santa can still make changes to his big list.”
“Okay,” Landon said, shrugging. He began to fold his clothes, and I went back to trying to make sure I had everything I wanted to bring with me. I’d dropped Landon’s “Santa” presents at my parents’ house a few days before, and the ones that were coming from me were wrapped and in a big bag with all the rest.
“Are you excited to see your cousins?” I asked as I shoved a charging cable into one of the compartments on my suitcase as a backup to the one I kept in my car.
“Yeah,” Landon said. “More excited for desserts.” My parents always had a huge table of sweets set up starting Christmas Eve, through until Christmas night; it was the universal favorite of all of the kids—as it had been when I was Landon’s age. He continued folding and putting his clothes into the suitcase for a moment and then spoke again. “I wish Mack was coming.”
“Well, she’s got her own family she needs to see,” I said. He’s getting really attached to her. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him that she and I were dating. “She’s going to have a really good time with her parents and brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews.”
“Couldn’t they come over to Granny’s house too?” Landon looked at me. I tried to laugh it off, but I worried that I’d given Landon too much to hope for in the bet he’d made with me.
“Why would they do that? They’ve got a perfectly good house of their own.” I looked into my suitcase and checked the contents against the mental checklist I kept running through my head. “You’ll see Mack again soon.”
“Okay,” Landon said. “Can I have as much of the desserts as I want?”
“After you’ve had dinner, absolutely,” I said. Landon pouted again, but he kept packing his things away, struggling with a sweater with a weird shape. I started to suggest that I could help him and then remembered what his teacher had told me about letting Landon do things himself and only intervening if he actually asked for help.
“It’s going to be so much fun, buddy,” I said, checking my suitcase once more. “We’ll have dinner, and there will be all those sweets—the candy, and the cookies, Granny’s pies.”
“What are we going to do after that?” Landon finished the last of his clothes and closed the lid on his suitcase, turning to look up at me.
“Well, we’ll play games—you can play anything you want. I think your Granny’s going to have Apples to Apples, and Monopoly, and Uno. And I’m sure that your cousins are bringing their own games too. Maybe before we leave you can go into the closet and find something you want to bring with you.”
“But I might forget it.”
“I’ll let you put your name on the box so that everyone knows it’s yours,” I promised.
“What are we going to do after the games?”
“Movies,” I said. “We’re going to watch movies and have fun together until everyone goes to sleep.”
“And we’re going to make sure that Santa has cookies and milk?”
I nodded. “Of course. We can’t let him go without—he might give us all coal.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow you’re going to open all your presents, and then we’re going to have a nice big breakfast with the family.” I thought I had everything—I hoped, at least, that I did. “Then we’re going to visit your Gramma and Granddaddy, and they’ll give you their presents to you.”
“I’m getting a lot of presents this year,” Landon observed.
“You are! In fact, Mack got a present for you, even. You’re going to be the most spoiled little boy on the planet.”
“No I won’t!” Landon frowned up at me. “I am going to be nice even if I get all the presents in the world.”
I laughed. “I believe it shrimp.” I took a deep breath and looked over the contents of my suitcase once more. “I think we’re ready to go, don’t you?”
“Remember the presents,” Landon said. “You told me remind you.”
“I did tell you to do that,” I agreed, reaching out and tousling my son’s hair. “Okay. Let’s go look at the present bag and make sure everything is in there, and then we can go.”
I made one last pass through the house to check on everything; the last thing I needed was to leave something plugged in where it could light on fire while I was gone. I checked again to make sure I wasn’t forgetting anything in my luggage or in the present bag. I’d stashed some stocking stuffers at my parents’ house as well; once the kids had all gone to sleep, sometime after midnight, we’d all be going through and putting the presents from Santa out, making Christmas happen for all of the young ones.
As I loaded everything into the car, I thought about Landon’s insistence that he wished Mackenzie could be with us. I’d brushed it off, trying to make sure he didn’t feel too let down about her absence, but the questions had hit me harder than I’d let myself realize at first. I wished that she was spending the holiday with us too; in spite of the comments I’d made to Landon about how she’d be happier with her own family, doing what she did every year—just like us—I wished I could show her to my parents, and kiss her under the mistletoe, cheesy as that was. I wished that I could have her with me while I put the Santa Claus presents under the tree and stuffed stockings with goodies and worked with the other adults in my family late into the night to make a magical Christmas happen. I wished that I could have given her a present and watched her open it, and had her at my side for Christmas breakfast—all the stupid little details that came along with a family holiday.
But I still hadn’t lost the impression I’d gotten of her during our last date, two days before; I still didn’t know what she was thinking, how she felt for me. I played the things she’d said through my mind as I pulled out onto the road, heading for my par
ents’ home. Everything had been so awkward between us. I thought resignedly that I’d probably just have to give up on Mackenzie altogether; and I dreaded the expense I was almost surely going to face when Landon won his bet and I had to duplicate his Christmas presents in honor of his win.
Chapter Seven - Mackenzie
I was still sleepy—I hadn’t gone to bed until almost four in the morning—but as everyone piled around the Christmas tree to start opening presents, I was at least happy. “Coffee for the grownups,” my brother-in-law announced, wheeling a big cart my mom had gotten a few years before just for that purpose into the room. “Juice for the kiddos,” he added.
“What? Adults can’t have juice?” my brother smirked at my sister’s husband.
“Which do you need more: caffeine or vitamins?”
I laughed and settled into my usual seat off to the side of the tree, where I could watch the kids opening all of their presents but still be part of everything.
“Mack should get the first cup,” my sister said. “She stayed up like a champ.”
“Did you see Santa Claus, Aunt Mack?”
I shook my head in response to my niece’s question. “Just missed him, I think,” I said, twisting my face into a grimace. “Which is actually good, since he would have skipped the house if we’d been awake.” My sister, Evie—who was struggling to keep her kids all believing in Santa Claus until the youngest was at least four—grinned at me.
Dad came into the living room, wearing a big, fluffy Santa hat with his pajamas, and I accepted a cup of coffee with milk and sugar from Evie as Dad started towards the tree. “It looks to me like we’ve got some good kids here this year,” he said, surveying the enormous pile of presents. “Who wants to start with Santa presents, and who wants to start with family presents?”