Exmas

by Winter Renshaw

  She blows a breath into the phone. “Yeah, just bored. It’s too cold to do anything fun.”

  “You knew I was here for work, Bij.”

  “Whatever. Are you coming back to the city tonight or not? One of my friends from USC is actually here this week and she invited us to a party at the Godfrey. You in?”

  I look to Joa again, who appears to be halfway between dead and sleeping.

  “Probably not.”

  My sister is silent on the other end. She’s always been more of a pouter than a yeller, and I can picture her sulking right now, sitting in the middle of a shit-brown microfiber sofa in a modest one-bedroom apartment.

  Can’t help but chuckle at the image I’ve conjured in my head.

  “Have fun tonight, Bij,” I say. “And be safe.”

  “You’re lame.” She hangs up and I return to my emails, though I appear to be all caught up. With the holidays, everyone’s either checked off the schedule or checked out completely.

  Now, we wait.

  I return to the sofa, lifting Joa’s feet, placing them in my lap and covering them with her blanket. Flipping through the channels, I settle on some History Channel documentary and rest my eyes, letting the soothing voice of the narrator lull me to sleep.

  When I wake, the TV is blasting with an air fryer informercial, bright and loud, and I scramble for the remote and mute it before it wakes Joa.

  The guide on the TV says it’s 11:58.

  Almost midnight.

  Almost a new year.

  I tune to one of the local channels where Ryan Seacrest is preparing to lead a countdown from Times Square and the camera pans to some pop band taking the stage.

  The crowd is filled with people from all walks of life, but mostly they’re the young, dumb, and broke type, the ones most likely to live in the moment and make decisions without thinking about the consequences.

  Enjoy that freedom while it lasts, kids.

  A timer fills the bottom of the screen; sixty seconds.

  Fifty-nine …

  Fifty-eight …

  If Joa hadn’t gotten sick, I wonder if we would’ve reconciled this week. I wonder if we’d be celebrating the new year together—between the sheets or otherwise.

  I watch her sleep a little longer, her hand tucked under her cheek.

  Ten.

  Nine.

  Eight.

  Seven.

  Six.

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  The ball drops.

  The screen fills with balloons and confetti, people cheering, people kissing.

  I should go.

  Today’s Thursday. I make the big announcement tomorrow morning, and I fly home tomorrow afternoon. Lots to do between now and then. Lots to think about too.

  Rising from the sofa, I adjust her blanket before depositing a kiss on her forehead.

  “Happy New Year,” I say, my voice low and soft. She doesn’t stir.

  I gather my things, trying not to make a sound, and before I go, I scribble a note and leave it on the counter, asking her to call me first thing Friday morning.

  I want her to hear it from me first.

  Past

  Reed

  I look up from my desk to find Joa standing in my doorway in a navy pantsuit, nude heels, and pearls, her hair pulled away from her face.

  Shit.

  First round interviews for the VP position was today.

  “Hey, how’d it go?” I ask, pretending I’m not silently fantasizing about ripping that entire stuffy outfit off that taut body.

  She takes a seat across from me. “I think it went pretty well, actually.”

  “You going back home this week? For Thanksgiving?” I ask.

  “I decided to stick around. I’m going home next month for Christmas, so I’ll see everyone then. Neve said she could FaceTime me in to dinner, but one of my neighbors is having a friendsgiving thing, so I’ll probably go to that for a little bit. What about you? Any plans?”

  I turn my attention to a new batch of emails that fill my inbox. “I really hope this isn’t you trying to invite me along to your weird friendsgiving thing.”

  “I’m offended that you would even suggest that.” She swats at me. "You should know me better than that by now.”

  I delete an email before moving to the next. “Just making sure.”

  I pretend not to notice the way her expression fades, and she pretends she’s got some work to catch up on.

  We’ve been hooking up almost a year now, and we’ve managed not to break a single rule.

  No hotels.

  No couple selfies.

  No visiting each other’s places.

  But holidays were never off-limits. Hell, Memorial Day Weekend was one for the books, but I draw the line at Thanksgiving and Christmas and the kinds of holidays that involve introducing the person you’ve been seeing to your family and kissing under mistletoe.

  I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings, but I just can’t.

  But New Year’s? That’s fair game.

  There’s no one else I’d rather kiss this year.

  25

  Joa

  The sun peeks through my bedroom curtains, baking a warm spot into my pillow.

  I don’t know what day it is, what time it is, or when I migrated from the sofa to the bed, but one thing’s for sure: my head doesn’t hurt anymore.

  Also, I can breathe through my nostrils again. Kind of.

  And my stomach isn’t churning.

  I wouldn’t say I’m one hundred percent, but I think I’m finally on the up and up.

  Rubbing my eyes, I peer around the room for my phone before discovering it’s lost somewhere between the sheets and the comforter.

  The lockscreen tells me it’s 11:01 am, Friday, January 2nd.

  I basically Rip Van Winkle’d myself through this entire week.

  Impressive.

  I go to the window next, shielding my eyes as I adjust the curtains and blinds so it no longer feels like a permanent state of nighttime in my room.

  It must have snowed again. My half of the driveway is covered in pure, undriven white fluff and giant snowflakes fall from the sky, seemingly in slow motion.

  Shuffling to the bathroom, I brush the fuzz from my teeth and gargle away the taste of sickness from my mouth before running a shower.

  Inhaling a lungful of hot, steamy air through my nose, I vow never to take breathing for granted again.

  Running out to the kitchen to grab a quick drink of water to soothe my parched throat before I wash up for the day, I stop when I find a handwritten note on the peninsula.

  Joa—

  It was kind of nice hanging out with the version of you who couldn’t talk back.

  Hope you’re feeling better.

  Call me Friday morning.

  —Reed

  I push his note aside as bits and pieces of the last few days begin to fill my memory, though it’s very much like a puzzle with missing pieces.

  Before I talk to him again, I need to answer some questions of my own.

  Was he only being nice because he wanted something … that something being me?

  Was it genuine?

  And does any of this change anything? Obviously, judging by the tone of his note he’s acting like we’re friends now.

  But is that even possible?

  Hitting the shower, I scrub myself until I smell like a fairy garden and shampoo my hair until it squeaks. Already I feel even better than I did ten minutes ago when I rolled out of bed.

  As soon as I’m finished and I’ve had a chance to dry my hair and change into some clean sweats, I search for my phone so I can text Harold and let him know I’m planning to stay home one last day despite the fact that it’s now almost noon and he probably already assumes that. But still, the communication studies part of me can’t resist.

  While I no longer feel like a catatonic zombie, I still think I sho
uld take a day to make sure it’s all out of my system.

  I locate my phone on my nightstand where I left it, and wake the screen only to discover that eleven text messages await me.

  I tap on the green icon and scroll through the senders, reading their messages one by one:

  LUCY: omg, joa. turn on the news.

  DAD: Just heard. You doing okay, kiddo?

  NEVE: I can’t believe it … I’m literally in shock right now.

  LOGAN: Well shit. There goes my get rich quick plan.

  MOM: Joa, sweetheart. We’re worried sick. Call us or we’ll be stopping by in an hour to check on you.

  REED: Joa, call me. Please.

  I toss my phone on the bed and flip on the TV, tuning into a cable news channel where the first words I see scrolling across the bottom of the screen are:

  GENCOIN IN TROUBLE. FUTURE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY IN QUESTION.

  I’m dreaming.

  This has to be a dream.

  There’s no way this is real.

  The woman on the screen is using words like fraud and market manipulation and SEC investigation.

  The screen cuts away to three side-by-side images: Elliot Grosvenor, Harold Coffey, and Ian Iaconelli. The next cutaway is a graph, where a red line illustrates the two-year price history of GenCoin and a caption reads: TODAY’S VALUE: $0. Down 100% from yesterday.

  “There you have it, folks,” the host says. “GenCoin is a bust. We’re going to bring in Professor Mitchell Greenley, finance department chair at Yale ...”

  I collapse onto my bed.

  How?

  How could this have happened?

  The last time I checked, which was less than a week ago, GenCoin was valued at over $21,000, up 500% from last year. We were bigger than Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum combined. The Wall Street Journal called us “unstoppable” and said we’d be manufacturing more millionaires over the next twenty years than the Industrial Revolution and Internet Boom combined.

  How can it all mean … nothing?

  I think about people like David Crosswhite, a self-made man from humble beginnings who trusted us with millions of his dollars.

  Now there’s nothing left of it.

  There are tens of thousands of others just like him, maybe more.

  My nest egg is a bust too—at least the half of it I’d socked away in GenCoin.

  The professor on the screen explains that there was a lot of “pumping and dumping” happening to artificially inflate the price and aside from that, an internal investigation found proof of embezzlement.

  The host mentions that everything came to light all because of an anonymous whistleblower.

  Reed.

  It had to have been Reed.

  And it makes perfect sense …

  The audit. The vagueness. Telling me not to take the job in New York. And finally, his explanation.

  He had no choice.

  He had no choice because he needed to do the right thing.

  And he couldn’t tell me because there was an active, federal-level investigation.

  Grabbing my phone, I call him, only it goes straight to voicemail. I dial Lucy next, and she answers on the first ring.

  “Oh, my God, Joa ...” she says.

  “I know, I know. Hey, is Reed around today?”

  “No. He left after our meeting this morning. Had a plane to catch.”

  Shit.

  “How are you holding up? You feeling better?” she asks. “To be sick all week and then to wake up to this is just … wow.”

  It hits me that I haven’t so much as thought about the fact that I no longer have a job. I mean, it’s a given, but I was too busy letting everything sink in to really give it much thought.

  I’m jobless, but it’s the least of my concerns because one of the best things to ever happen to me is sitting on an airplane with no idea how badly I want to throw my arms around him in this moment and tell him I forgive him.

  I forgive him.

  Past

  Joa

  “But I don’t understand how you can take an invisible Internet coin and suddenly tell me it’s worth thousands of dollars.” The husband half of the retired couple beside us at a little cafe in San Luis Obispo has been chatting up Reed for the past twenty minutes, Reed patiently explaining the concept of cryptocurrency not once, not twice, but three times, three different ways.

  The man’s wife glances my way with an apologetic smile before signing their check.

  “It doesn’t make sense!” The man pounds his fist on the table, causing the silverware to jump on dirty plates.

  “Blockchains, Don,” Reed says. “Blockchains.”

  “But where do you keep them? These coins?”

  “In your wallet,” Reed answers. “Your digital wallet. On the Internet. Where the coins are.”

  Don is red-faced, reaching for a glass of water before turning to his wife. “Pretty soon they’re going to be telling us the dollar bill is obsolete. Everyone’s going to be using their invisible money. Let’s hope to God we don’t live long enough to see that day, Marian.”

  “Don,” she says, shooting him a look.

  Reed and I chuckle to ourselves and exchange final pleasantries with the couple before they head out for their starlight boat tour.

  “You were so patient with him,” I say, reaching for my wine glass and hiding my smitten smile with a drink. “It was really sweet.”

  Reed rolls his eyes.

  “You have a really good heart.” I toss back the remains of my wine before stealing the bottle and pouring myself another glass.

  It’s getting chilly out here on the patio of Santiago’s, but the gas lamp heaters that surround us take the bite out of the ocean wind.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” he teases.

  I think I’m falling for you ...

  26

  Reed

  She didn’t call.

  Maybe she’s still sick.

  Or maybe she’s being stubborn.

  Either way, she’ll find out soon enough, if she hasn’t already.

  I take a sip of the gin and tonic the flight attendant mixed for me a few minutes ago—and I almost spit it out when I turn to my sister and see the ridiculous white blob she has on her face.

  “What the hell is that?” I ask.

  “A face mask.” She pats it firmly against her skin, her eyes peeking out from two slits and her lips moving from behind another. “Planes can really dry out the skin, Reed. You want one? I think I have another ...”

  “You look like a serial killer.”

  She winks. “You mean a serial killer with really great skin.”

  A few minutes later she peels the white blob from her face and rubs in the sticky remnants it left behind.

  “See? I’m glowing,” she says.

  “No. You look like someone rubbed lube all over your face.”

  “You’ve been a real downer lately.” She digs into her bag and pulls out a small, cobalt blue bottle of serum with a little eye dropper. Unscrewing the lid, she turns to me, “Just because you’re pissed off at the world doesn’t give you the right to take it out on everyone else.”

  “Bij, relax. It was a joke.” I untangle the headphones in my lap. “Have I really been a downer lately?”

  “Oh, my God, Reed. Yes.” She slathers the blue oil on her face, rubbing it into her skin until it disappears. At twenty-six, my sister is far too obsessed with preserving her youth. I’m almost convinced she’s beginning to age backwards, Benjamin Button-style. Pretty soon people are going to stop mistaking her for my girlfriend and start mistaking her for my daughter. “It’s like … you’ve been a different person this last year. I don’t know. Something changed in you. You’re not as fun as you used to be.”

  “Really?”

  “Um, let’s see. I invited you to Aspen back in February. You said you had to work. I invited you to a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert in March. You said you had to work. I invited you to Shay Mitchell’s
birthday party at Nobu and you said you had to work,” she says. “And I’ve talked to your friends. They all say the same thing.”

  “When did you talk to my friends?”

  “They follow me on Instagram. We message sometimes.”

  “Give me their names so I can kill them.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Anyway, you never want to do anything anymore. You don't laugh like you used to. And anytime I’m with you, you’re just this … wet blanket.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You asked. I answered. Don’t get mad.”

  “You waited a year to tell me this?” I ask.

  “Champagne?” A flight attendant pushes a cart past our aisle.

  “Yass, please,” Bijou says, raising her hand like she’s being called on in class. The flight attendant laughs as she hands her a crystal flute filled almost to the top with sparkling gold.

  My sister is the queen of living in the moment.

  I have to admit, it’s one of the few things I actually envy about her.

  “I had to tell a lot of people today that they no longer have jobs,” I say, staring at the seatback before me.

  “Ah. So that’s what your deal is today,” she says, taking a sip. “That blows.”

  “Part of it,” I say.

  “What’s the other part?” She bats her faux lashes. “A woman got you down?”

  I smirk at the way she says it, her chin tucked against her chest as she points at me.

  “Oh, my God. I was just kidding,” she says. “But I guess it makes sense. I mean, you were gone for days this week. You had to have been sleeping somewhere. And that girl you used to hook up with—what was her name? Joy-something? Didn’t you tell me she transferred out here?”

  I drag in a deep breath before confirming. “Yes. And her name is Joa. But honestly, Bij, I don’t feel like talking about it right now.”

  She lifts a palm. “Fine. Your loss. But everyone says I give the best advice.”