by Jackie Lau
We turn into the driveway of his parents’ suburban house, and as soon as Wes hops out of the car, he strips off his winter jacket and toque and scarf, even though we’re not inside yet.
“I’m putting on the T-Rex costume now,” he says.
I help him into the costume, then put a poinsettia garland around T-Rex’s neck and a Santa hat, which has long strings to tie under the chin, on the dinosaur’s head. He picks up a small bag of presents, I pick up the box of persimmons, and we go to the door and knock.
A woman who must be Wes’s sister, Lia, opens the door, a little girl and boy beside her.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Wes says. “Merry Christmas!”
Dana shrieks. “Mommy, it’s a Christmas dinosaur!”
The little boy—Owen, who’s nearly three—starts crying, and Dana rolls her eyes and scolds her brother. “It’s not a real dinosaur, dummy. It’s not big enough!”
Owen is inconsolable. “The dinosaur ate Santa!”
Wes points to his face through the clear window on the dinosaur’s neck.
Dana shrieks again with glee. “Uncle Wes!”
“Dinosaur ate Uncle Wes!” Owen is still crying.
The next five minutes are rather surreal. Wes growls and chases Dana around the house, and Owen is repeatedly assured that it’s only a fake, vegetarian T-Rex. Wes’s parents emerge and shake their heads.
After Wes takes off the costume, everyone finally notices that he’s brought a guest.
“This is Caitlin,” he says. “Caitlin, these are my parents, Thomas and Audrey.”
“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a girl,” Audrey says. “How wonderful! So many years of you showing up alone. I had given up hope.”
“Caitlin isn’t my girlfriend. She’s my friend, and she has nobody to spend Christmas with this year.”
Audrey’s expression turns to one of crushing disappointment. “If only you had stayed an engineer, then you would find a nice woman! I told you not to quit that job. Most women would be happy with an engineer. Better than a freelance graphic designer.” She clucks her tongue.
“Mom, please,” Lia says. “Not this again, okay?” She turns to me. “What do you do?”
“I studied computer engineering with Wes,” I say, deciding to be vague.
Wes doesn’t say anything, letting me introduce myself however I like, but Lia taps her finger against her lips. “You look familiar. Really familiar. Wait, I know!” She whips out her phone and pulls up an article. “You’re Caitlin Ng! I’ve read about you.”
“You’re famous?” Audrey peers at my face.
“She started a really big dating app. Called Match Me. Some of my friends use it.”
Thomas also takes out his phone and looks me up. “She’s rich!”
“How much is she worth?” Audrey demands.
“Okay, okay,” Wes says. “Everybody calm down. Yes, Caitlin is a CEO, but she’s also my friend, alright?”
Audrey clucks her tongue again. “You started a dating app, but you have no man to spend Christmas with, only your friend? That seems like bad advertising.”
“Mom, please interrogate me instead of Caitlin, okay?”
“I know what it is! You’re not friends with Wes. You hired him. Like an escort! I read a book about this, about a rich woman who hired an escort to give her love lessons. It was very hot, actually”—she fans herself with her hand—“but that’s not what I want for my son! He has an engineering degree! No need to sell his body.”
I’m getting whiplash from this conversation.
“How do you sell your body?” Dana asks with wide-eyed curiosity. “How does that work?”
“Why don’t you go off and play with your brother?” Lia suggests, shooing her away.
“Look,” I say, composing myself. “It’s exactly as Wes says. We’re friends from university. Nothing more complicated than that.” I remember Wes licking between my legs last night, and I feel a rush of heat, but I press on. “I don’t understand why you want him to work as an engineer. He was miserable. Why do you want him to be miserable?”
“Don’t approve of these New Age ideas,” Thomas says. “Life isn’t all about being happy.”
I’m not surprised by any of this—my parents aren’t all that different—but still. Wes has nothing to be ashamed of. Sure, he’s not a doctor like his sister, and his apartment and car aren’t anything fancy, but he has a career and he does okay for himself. He seems happy with the choice he’s made, which is a far cry from the Wes I met in university. I’m glad he figured everything out.
Audrey lets out an unexpected laugh. “You are dating. You’re definitely dating. That’s why you stick up for him like that. Good, good.”
Wes and I share a look.
Which, perhaps, isn’t making us seem like less of a couple.
“Mom,” he says. “Like I said, we’re not together.”
I feel a pang in my heart.
Maybe I do want to be a couple after all.
* * *
Wes carves the turkey, and I can’t help admiring his arm muscles when he pushes up his sleeves.
“Caitlin,” he murmurs. “You checking me out?”
His mother couldn’t have heard that, but she looks up sharply from the other side of the kitchen, and when she makes a comment a few minutes later about us being together, I don’t protest. I don’t want to. Wes doesn’t protest, either, and that thrills me, though maybe he’s just keeping quiet because he’s tired of correcting his mom.
Dinner is delicious. I’ve only had turkey with stuffing a couple times in my life before. In my family, we go to a Chinese restaurant for Christmas dinner, which is what we do for basically every holiday, including Thanksgiving. We don’t buy a turkey, and besides, a turkey would be too much for the three of us.
“When we were little, we used to do that, too,” Lia says, after asking me what my family does for Christmas. “Then Dad decided that since we were in Canada now, we should have a turkey.”
“Of course, I was the one who had to make it,” Audrey says. “I underestimated how much time it would take to cook. It went back into the oven so many times, and we didn’t eat until ten o’clock at night.”
“But it was really good.” Wes smiles. “So now we do it every year.”
“Well, I was the one who did it every year until today.” Audrey looks at Thomas. “Apparently the key to getting everyone else to do the work is to get sick and make people think you’re dying, then fool them all by being healthy! They get scared of losing you, and they don’t take you for granted anymore.”
“Mom.” Wes reaches across the table and pats her hand.
“My son made a whole gingerbread house! He’s not a good engineer, but he can make a tasty gingerbread house. I snuck a piece before dinner.”
“In all honesty,” Lia says, “it’s a little ugly.”
“Function is better than form.” Audrey nods decisively. “Turkey stuffing? It looks like dog food, but it’s delicious.” She holds up a forkful. “And it was so nice of you to bring a pretty girl with you, Wes. That is the best part. Maybe you will get married after all!”
I choke on my turkey and cranberry sauce, and Wes puts his hand on my leg. I want him, yes, but I’m not ready to think about marriage yet.
Once dinner is finished and half of the gingerbread house has been demolished and Devon, Lia’s husband, arrives after his shift at the hospital, the presents are opened. Dana loves her pachycephalosauruses. Wes got her two of them, and she keeps slamming their heads together, saying that it is a widely known fact that pachycephalosaurus butted heads.
Dana also gets a book about dinosaurs that looks rather scientific for a four-year-old, but she’s thrilled and immediately asks Wes to read it to her, then critiques his pronunciation of “coleophysis” and “compsognathus.”
“How does she know how to pronounce these words?” he asks his sister.
“She doesn’t. She just knows you’re pronouncing them different
ly than I do.”
“If she likes long scientific words,” Audrey says, “you should teach her anatomy. It will be useful when she goes to med school.”
“Mom!” Lia says. “She’s four.”
“I’m kidding!”
“I want to be a paleontologist,” Dana announces.
“My neighbor Cynthia was a paleontologist,” I tell her, and Dana thinks this is the coolest thing ever.
“Mommy.” Owen frowns. “Why did I get pillows?”
“Um, sweetie,” Lia says, “that present wasn’t for you. You shouldn’t have opened it. Bring it over here for Uncle Wes. They’re throw pillows for his ugly futon, to make it look sophisticated.”
I don’t have any presents to open, but I don’t mind. I like being with Wes’s family. They aren’t perfect—whose family is?—but I find myself wanting to do this again. Wanting to come here for Chinese New Year and Easter and whenever his family gets together.
And most of all, wanting to be with Wes. When I see him reading the dinosaur book to his rapt audience, I get a strange stirring in my chest.
The feeling of wanting to be a real couple? It has only intensified over the evening.
* * *
Lia’s family is staying overnight so the kids can have Christmas morning and presents from Santa with their grandparents. Devon suggests that Santa is probably sick of getting cookies and milk at every house, and why don’t they put out a whole-wheat muffin for Santa instead? Owen starts crying at the thought of poor Santa having to eat a healthy muffin, and eventually they agree that Santa can have a couple of White Rabbit candies and shortbread cookies. Even though we all ate a ton, there’s still a lot left.
Wes and I head home around nine—and by “home,” I mean we go to his apartment.
“I don’t want you to spend Christmas morning alone,” he murmurs.
No, I certainly don’t want that, either.
As soon as we enter his apartment, he hoists me into his arms—no small feat, given all the turkey and stuffing and gingerbread I consumed—and carries me to the bedroom. He undresses me and lays me on top of the comforter. Today, unlike the other night, it’s warm enough in here for me to be naked without any covers. His gaze travels over me as he pulls off his sweater and T-shirt, followed by his jeans.
I nearly start drooling when he crawls toward me on the bed, wearing only his boxers. I might be stuffed, but he looks good enough to eat.
“Caitlin,” he says, “this is the best Christmas present a guy could ask for.”
He holds himself above me. So close, but not a single inch of his skin is touching me, and I whimper. I want him. I want to feel him inside me. Tonight, and tomorrow.
Again, and again, and again.
I want to come home from a long day at work and find him waiting for me, maybe in this outfit, pulling a batch of cookies out of the oven.
I want to wake up next to him and start the day by making love to him.
Making love.
When we first had sex, I wasn’t thinking about that at all, but even though I kept telling myself it didn’t mean anything, it did. Sleeping with my friend, a dozen years after we met for the first time, was not just about scratching an itch, and sex changed things even more.
Wes has always been there for me, always understood me, and I’m so grateful to have him in my life. The guys I’ve dated before were, in some ways, more similar to me, but they were wrong. All wrong. I see that now.
Still holding himself above me, Wes runs the tip of his finger over my entrance, to my clit, and I whimper again.
He grins wickedly and lifts his hand from my body.
“Wes!” I squirm.
“You’re so pretty like that,” he says. “When you’re desperate to be filled with my cock.”
The first time I was naked in front of him, I was shy. Vulnerable.
But not now.
Well, I am vulnerable, but in a different way from before.
He sheds his boxers and crawls up my body until his erection bobs in front of my mouth. When I put my lips on him and suck, he groans.
He’s desperate for me, too.
No other man will do for me, and I wonder if no other woman will do for him. Perhaps it’s conceited of me to think that, but I can’t help it.
He lies down on his back and puts on a condom. “Come sit.”
I ease myself down onto his cock and groan as he fills me, one inch at a time. No, it has never been like this with anyone else, not for me. We move in perfect harmony as we kiss, and it feels so right.
All I want for Christmas is for this to never end.
That’s a pretty big Christmas gift, though.
He keeps thrusting inside me as he rolls us over so he’s on top. His strokes are deep and overwhelming and utterly perfect.
Yes, there is absolutely nothing I want more than him.
He kisses my mouth, my temple, my neck, my breasts. He lavishes attention on every part of me, and when he touches my clit, I shudder and cry out his name, and then he comes inside me.
We hold each other afterward, as we always do. Is this how he is with other women? I can’t bear to think of him being with anyone else.
I want him all to myself.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I will tell him how I feel, and God, I hope he feels the same way. I’m not in the habit of waiting for someone else to say something—I go after what I want.
And more than anything, I want Wes.
I want to spend Christmas with him every year.
Chapter 10
Wes
For the third day in a row, I wake up with Caitlin in my bed.
For the second day in a row, I wake up with a naked Caitlin in my bed.
I don’t understand how a guy like me could get so fucking lucky, but somehow, it’s happened. She’s here. It’s the stuff of my dreams.
“Merry Christmas, Caitlin,” I say when her eyes flutter open. I brush my lips over her cheek, and she smiles at me, all dopey-eyed and beautiful.
I kiss my way down her neck, and I’m about to reach between her legs when she stills my hand. “I want to ask you something first.”
I bring my hands back to her shoulders. “What’s up?”
She worries her bottom lip between her teeth. It’s not like her to be nervous like this.
“I want you,” she says. “I want a relationship with you.”
I go utterly still. “You want a relationship. With me?” I repeat stupidly, my voice going high-pitched.
“I do.”
Yes, we’ve been great in bed together. Yes, the past few days have been amazing, and that single question is everything I’ve wanted since the first week of university all those years ago.
I’d planned to ask her yesterday, and now she’s asked me instead.
Caitlin Ng wants me, or at least she thinks she does. For now.
“I’m not your type,” I point out. “I’m nothing like the other guys you’ve dated.”
“Maybe my type has changed.”
Caitlin’s a success story, and I’m not. My sister is a doctor who married a doctor and has two adorable kids—I’m the screw-up in the family. Always have been, as last night reminded me. Caitlin was lovely and stuck up for me and said I shouldn’t do anything that made me miserable, but...
No, I can’t let her do this.
“You’re too good for me,” I say, because in the end, that’s what it comes down to. I may talk about “types” and all that, but I’ve known from the beginning that she deserves better than me, and there’s no way she’ll stay interested in the long-term.
“Wes.” She laughs uncomfortably. “That’s ridiculous. You’re a good man, a caring man. You didn’t make a great computer engineer, but you’re smart and creative and hot as fuck.”
I can’t help laughing at that, even though I feel hollow on the inside.
Caitlin and I have laughed a lot together this weekend.
“I was the perfect fling for you,” I say, “bu
t we’re better off as friends.”
“Stop being an idiot.”
I can’t. It’s just who I am.
I take a few deep breaths. God, I want to pull her back into my arms and tell her yes, I want her, I can be what she needs. I love her more than anything; I’ve always loved her.
But I say nothing.
“Oh,” she says quietly. “I see. Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“So you can’t watch when I get out of bed naked to get dressed.”
We’ve spent so much time without our clothes on in the past few days, but all good things must come to an end.
I do as she requests.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I’m sipping a cup of coffee and looking morosely at my festive Christmas tree, which she helped me decorate. The last few days have shown me that being with Caitlin is indeed as amazing as I always imagined it would be.
And so, because she is wonderful and amazing and fantastic and sexy, I must let her go, so she can find some CEO to make little CEO babies with. Some cocky white dude who thinks he’s all that and doesn’t dance around in an inflatable T-Rex costume on Christmas Day.
Because that’s how I’m going to spend the afternoon.
I look at the holly—not mistletoe—hanging in my bedroom door, and the container of shortbread and gingerbread cookies on the counter. All things that remind me of her.
I haven’t eaten breakfast. I’m not hungry. I assume that has something to do with heartbreak and consuming a week’s worth of food last night.
Still, I’m craving sugar right now, and I might as well console myself by stuffing cookies into my face. I’m just being festive, right?
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
I drain my cup of coffee, then make myself a mocha—gotta get my sugar in liquid form, too—with a generous amount of Bailey’s. I take a bite of a shortbread Santa, which has an excessive amount of sprinkles, thanks to Caitlin, and try not to start weeping.
I’ve had years of practice at burying my feelings for her. I should be able to do this. Though no matter how deep I try to bury them, they always manage to pop up again.
