by Anthology
I park carefully beside his Jeep and take one last deep, cleansing breath. I’m hot underneath the collar of my coat, and the bitter air is a balm against it. Once again, I’m wearing the damn red hat. I could have at least done something—
Well, I didn’t, so this is where we are now.
At Dawson’s front door, the chill finally registers, and even the nervous heat I’m radiating under my coat can’t fend it off. If this were the middle of the summer, I’d probably stand here for ten minutes working up the courage to knock, but it’s damn cold out and Christmas Eve, so I raise my hand to the hard surface and bring it down three times. It’s a way more chipper knock than I planned, but fine.
There’s silence from inside the house and I strain to hear any hint that he might be coming to answer the door.
It’s less than thirty seconds later when he does, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking at a collection of bills and credit cards in his pocket.
“Sorry, I just realized—”
“Hi, Dawson.”
His eyes fly to my face, his forehead wrinkling in confusion, and then the blue eyes widen. “India.”
“It’s me.”
“You’re not the pizza guy.”
We’re both trying so damn hard that it just about kills me.
I raise both palms up. “No, but if you want, I could go get some.”
“I ordered two.”
“Sounds good.”
He runs a hand through his hair. “I’d invite you in for some, but—”
“But I was an idiot earlier.” The words come out in a rush. I can’t wait anymore. I can’t drag this out. “I’m sorry, Dawson. It wasn’t pointless, what happened between us, and—”
He holds up one hand. “Come inside. It’s freezing out there.”
I step over the threshold, desperate to keep the conversation happening. “I never forgot about you. I never did, I swear. And when I saw you outside my car window, I was so—I was so relieved, and so damn ashamed, and—”
Then Dawson’s hands are on my face and he’s pulling me in for a kiss so soft, so unbelievably tender, that I melt right into him, throwing my hands around his neck, red hat be damned, puffy coat forgotten.
The kiss lengthens, deepens. He tastes like home. He tastes like being together at every holiday. He tastes like never having to worry again.
Tears slip out from underneath my lashes. “I’m sorry,” I mumble against the side of his cheek. “I should have come after you. I should have—”
Dawson pulls back to look into my eyes, his green eyes shining. “That is pointless. Don’t think about that fucking ten years anymore. We both should have gone after each other. But luckily—” He lets out a laugh. “Luckily you crashed your damn car into my ditch.”
I laugh then, too, a lightness suffusing my entire body, and then I kiss him again, pulling him in so close.
“But seriously,” I say when we break the kiss again, gasping for air. “You could have come found me at any time. All those other men—” I shake my head. “They were worthless.”
“I’m not worthless,” Dawson says with a wicked grin. “I own a bar. You could be the bartender’s wife.”
“Whoa,” I say, opening my eyes wide. “Don’t you think you’re going a little fast?”
He doesn’t hesitate, but he also doesn’t respond like it’s a joke. “Not. At. All.”
Another deep kiss, and when we come out of this one, he threads his fingers through mine, holding my hand tight.
“So, for Christmas,” he says, taking in a deep breath. “Your place or mine?”
“I don’t care.”
“You don’t care.” His tone is skeptical.
“As long as I’m with you.”
Epilogue
Dawson
One year later
“I look like an idiot.”
India looks up at me, absolute perfection as always. Her shining dark hair falls in a straight, shining sheet down her back, and she’s wearing a sneak peacoat over an outfit that can’t help but drive me wild. Everything she wears drives me wild, even after a year together. I can’t wait until the spring when we’ll finally be married, and I can tell everyone in the world that she’s my wife.
“You look great.”
I’m wearing a brand new pair of jeans and an honest-to-God sweater. India spent an hour picking it out, and I don’t hate it, it’s just weird as hell to be wearing something that screams out married man as a sweater.
I would have sneered at being married at age twenty. Now, standing next to India, I feel slightly uncomfortable in the damn sweater, but totally confident in the idea of marrying her.
She raises her hand and presses the doorbell, and the door swings open almost instantly, like they’ve been waiting inside.
“India!” cries her mother, pulling her in for a hug. “And Dawson!” She hugs me without hesitation. “We’re so glad you could make it up.”
“No snow yet,” I say with a dashing smile. “Sunny skies.”
“A damn green Christmas,” thunders India’s dad good-naturedly. Something relaxes in my shoulders and I didn’t even realize I was tense.
There are other people waiting inside—aunts and uncles, a few teenaged cousins, and they’re all happy to see India. The house smells like cookies and Christmas dinner—ham, probably, and mashed potatoes. There’s plenty of chatter, and I sit on the couch with India, my arm around her shoulder, fucking buzzing with a happy kind of deja vu, even though we’ve never spent a Christmas together before.
Not like this one.
Last year was hot, for fucking sure, but it was a hasty visit to her parents’, another hasty visit to my dad’s, stumbling over explanations and a story we hadn’t quite worked out yet.
This year feels…normal.
The doorbell rings again, and India’s mom leaps up from her seat next to the fireplace, her dad hurrying out for the kitchen, and they open the door wide to let my father and a couple of his friends in. My dad looks nervous, cheeks pink, smile wide, and my heart pinches in my chest. I’m the next person to shake his hand, to welcome him into the living room.
“Fancy,” he mutters to me under his breath, and I hear the question in his voice.
“They’re not like that.”
It’s true. India’s parents might have been a little higher on the social ladder than my dad, but they spend the entire afternoon making everyone feel right at home. It’s a far cry from those minutes I spend standing outside on the porch, trying to convince India that she was making a mistake.
I’ll never have to do that again.
After dinner, overstuffed with food, India pulls on her coat and whispers in my ear that she wants to walk around the block.
The night is cold and clear, glittering stars blanketing the sky, and I walk with her gloved hand in mine.
“That was good,” I say, and there’s not a trace of sarcasm. I’m all sincerity this Christmas.
“Yeah,” she says with a grin. “It was good. But I’m glad to be leaving on Sunday.”
It’s Friday.
“Why?”
“To get back to our bed.”
My cock gets hard at just the slightest suggestion.
“I can’t either.”
“Leaving” means heading back downstate, to the house we share there. India’s a rising star at her job, and there are bars to be started just about everywhere, so I hired a management team for this one and still make a good amount off of it.
It feels fucking great to be out of this town, to finally feel like I’m not trapped here anymore with the ghosts of rejections past.
“My mom’s over the moon,” she says, after we’ve gone another few paces, looking at the decorations in people’s yards.
“Yeah? Do you guys have wedding stuff planned for tomorrow?”
India rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling while she does it. “A full day. But you don’t have to be stuck with my dad, if you don’t want to be.”<
br />
“I won’t be.”
She laughs.
“My dad wants to take a trip to Johnsfield in the morning. Your dad can come, too, if he wants.”
It almost feels unnatural, this easy invitation, but it’s getting there. It’s definitely getting there.
We’re almost all the way around the block, a few houses down from India’s, and she slips her hand around my waist, stopping us in the middle of the sidewalk and pulling me close.
“Hey,” I say into her hair. “What’s up?”
“I just love you. I’m—I’m so glad I went to the store last Christmas Eve. It was worth the risk.”
“I almost agree with you. Except I’d like it if you never drove to the store again.”
“Same to you, buddy.”
We both laugh, and I hold her tight, then put a finger under her chin and raise her face to mine, kissing her deeply. When we finally break apart, her eyes are shining.
“You ready to go back in?”
“As long as I’m with you.”
“You’re too kind.”
“You’re too perfect.”
She squeezes my hand, and tugs me along with her. “Let’s remember that forever, okay?”
“Forever sounds great to me.”
<<<<>>>>
Bad Boy Santa
Sophie Brooks
Chapter 1
Jackson
“Jackson! You made it!”
I mustered what might possibly count as a smile as I clapped my old friend on the back. We did that man half-hug thing guys do today. At least I thought they still did that. But the last six years, I’d been in another world so what the fuck did I know.
“Chris, the married man. Looking good,” I said, and nodded at the other guys I recognized from high school. Doug. Eddie. Stiffy—though surely that wasn’t his real name? Hell if I knew what it was, though.
“Let’s buy this man a drink,” Chris said, as I sat down on the barstool next to him. I’d done very little except drink since I’d returned to Clarkston, but a drink with old friends was slightly less pathetic than drinking alone in that crap apartment I’d rented. Not because it was all I could afford—but because it was pretty much the best that Clarkston had to offer.
“Hey man,” Eddie said. “Didn’t you win some kind of award? Best photograph from a war zone or some shit like that?”
“Yeah,” I said, downing half the beer the bartender—another acquaintance from high school if I wasn’t mistaken—had put in front of me.
“Fuck the photograph, didn’t you get shot?” Stiffy wanted to know.
“Took some shrapnel in the leg. I can show you if you promise not to get stiff.”
The others snorted and Stiffy looked offended. “People call me Stuart now.”
Doug slung his arm around Stiffy/Stuart. “Yeah, he’s married now, too, so he doesn’t know how to get stiff anymore.”
Chris punched him good-naturedly in the arm while Stiffy/Stuart continued to look pissed. Doug ignored them both. “Jackson, you gotta come out with us. The single studs. You’ve been in a fucking war zone, the ladies in this town are gonna be all over you.”
“What’s the point in meeting a lady? Aim me towards the sluts,” I said, falling into the kind of douchebag style of speech we used to use in high school. Of course, it would have been tame among the troops I’d hung out with overseas.
“Now you’re talking,” Eddie said. “Trouble is, we don’t have much of either. Even your old high school sweetheart, Big Tits Beatrice, is married now. Has two little rugrats and a husband who is always away on business. Bet she wishes she hadn’t turned me down after graduation now. She must be dying to get laid.”
I laughed with the others, but it was bullshit. Beatrice hadn’t been my high school sweetheart. Far from it. There had been someone I liked, but I’d fucked it up and closed that door forever.
Hours later, the empty beer glasses filled the counter in front of us. It was just me and Chris left although Stiffy had wandered over to a booth a half hour ago and fallen asleep. Crap, what as his name again? Not that I gave a fuck, but in the battlefield, forgetting a detail could be deadly. Even for a photographer.
“I’ve got to stop drinking so much,” I said to Chris. He’d stopped a while back, probably not wanting to go home to Mrs. Chris smelling like a brewery.
“You probably needed a night out.”
“Yeah, but I’ve been drinking on the nights in, too.” I’d moved back here a week ago and was already on a first name basis with the guy who owned the nearest liquor store.
“Well, sounds like you’ve seen some heavy shit.”
That was an understatement, so I just nodded. I’d seen enough heavy shit to last a lifetime, but this was supposed to be my fresh start. My return to the place where I’d last been a good guy. Less cynical. Less world weary. Less drunk. I tried to explain it to Chris. He was my oldest friend though I’d only seen him once in the last six years. But then again, he’d always been a good guy. Son of a prominent family here in town. Now he was an assistant manager at his dad’s store. He had a nice, normal life with a nice, normal wife. I was about as far from normal as you could get.
“I need to get my shit together,” I told him. “I need to forget all that crap in Afghanistan and Iraq and do the small town America thing. Be normal. Wholesome. Decent.” Chris nodded but was eyeing me strangely. Even when in high school, my strongest desire was to get the fuck out of Clarkston as soon as I could. “But instead, all I do is sit in that shitty apartment and drink.”
“Why don’t you come over for dinner next week? You could meet Susan.”
“Thanks, man. Guess that’s one evening of not drinking alone.”
“Sounds like maybe you could use a few evenings of not drinking at all.”
“Fucking right. But every time I go home, I start thinking. Remembering. And drinking’s easier. I should join a convent where they don’t allow alcohol.”
Chris laughed. “I think you’re the wrong gender for a convent. Plus if the nuns look at you the same way those ladies in the corner booth are, you’ll be responsible for a whole host of sins.”
I snorted. Wouldn’t be the first time. “Okay, not a convent. Too much religion. But where else can I go where I won’t be tempted to drink all night?”
It was a rhetorical question, but Chris was looking at me steadily, appearing to think something over. “If you really want to fill your evenings, we can use some help at the store.”
“At Reynolds’ Department store? The number one—and only—department store in all of Clarkston? Should I start in Housewares or Junior Miss?”
“Neither,” Chris said. “There’s something else we need help with.”
Chapter 2
Olivia
“Olivia, is that you?”
“Mom?” I set the pile of bills down on the table by the door and went to find her. Her voice was weak as it usually was nowadays.
I searched in the kitchen but there was no forty-six-year-old woman amidst the formica counters. Nor in the living room with the sagging, threadbare sofa. Finally I found her on the landing halfway up the stairs. “Mom!”
Taking the steps two at a time, I bounded up to where she sat leaning against the wall. Gently, I tugged her to her feet. “Come on, let’s get you downstairs.” I put her arm over my shoulder and turned her around, but she resisted.
“But I was trying to go upstairs.”
With effort, I managed not to release a sigh of frustration. She knew that she was only supposed to try the stairs twice a day, once in the morning after she got up and again in the evening before bed. And even that was becoming a struggle for her. She had an autoimmune disease that tired her out plus terrible arthritis. She’d had to stop working two years ago because to it.
“You’re not supposed to go up during the day. You know that.”
“I know. But I needed to look up something on the computer.”
“You could have used
your pho—” I paused, mid-sentence. Most days, her fingers were too stiff to push the tiny buttons on the screen. “You could have called me. I could have looked it up on my lunch break.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you at school,” she said as we reached the bottom of the stairs and then made our way over to the sofa. “I know how busy you are with such a big class this year.”
Twenty-three second graders did keep me hopping, but I’d always call her back as soon as I could if she needed me. I wish she’d remember that. But I tried to keep things light-hearted. “They were all so excited about having the rest of the week off. Though when I polled them on what they were most thankful for, most said the Black Friday sales, not Thanksgiving Dinner.”
“About that,” Mom said, sinking painfully onto the couch. “You don’t have to make a big dinner this year. It’s just us, and I know we can’t really afford it.” We really couldn’t, but hearing her say that made me sad. When I was little, we’d have huge family dinners with my father, his sister, and my cousins. But now dad had passed away, and we hadn’t heard much from Aunt Jane and her kids much since they moved to Texas.
“Don’t be silly. We have to eat something, so why not do it right? Besides, starting Sunday, I’ll have an extra paycheck.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right.” She chuckled. “You were always so good at that—telling all those silly stories to keep the children entertained while they wait in line.”
“That pretty much describes my teaching job, too. Keeping children calm and quiet.”
Mom laughed. “When you’re with the little ones, you have the patience of a saint.”
“I’d rather have the magic of an elf.”
“At least you’ve got the costume,” Mom said, and then her face darkened. “I’m sorry I can’t iron it for you this year.”
