Under the Mistletoe Collection

by Cindy Roland Anderson

  The tar reeled before her, smelling like rubber tires and gasoline and sulfur, and making her eyes sting. No. This dress— she could not get that sludge on it. Not a drop!

  “Tag!” She called for him, but it was too late. “Man down. Man down. I mean, woman down.” She thudded onto the bank, and her shoulder touched down onto the tar. “Ewww!” Luckily, she’d snapped her head skyward and kept her hair out. At least there was that.

  Before she could hoist herself off the muddy bank, a thud-thud hit her ears. Tag stood over her, a hand outstretched. She took it, and he lifted her to her feet.

  “I see flying comes quite naturally to you.”

  “It’s all the practice I get as a prop plane pilot.”

  “Someday you’ll have to take me up.” Tag’s eyes sparkled.

  Juliet’s heels were sinking in the soft, pungent bank of the tar lake, but she didn’t care. Tag just said he wanted to do something with her in the future. Tonight wasn’t a one-time date. Her mouth went dry. Did he really mean it? A little chunk from her continent of fear broke off and sank into the ocean of her soul.

  Tag boosted her again, up and over the fence. It was tougher, since the ground was lower, and it took three tries. Three. And then she went all rubbery from laughing, but she finally made it to terra firma on the safe, tar-free side of the fence.

  Juliet pressed her face against the bars across from him. He leaned in too, their lips almost meeting. “Looks like you’ve been behind bars more than once tonight.”

  He kissed her through the three-inch-square opening in the metal.

  “But how will you get out?” Maybe there was a rope lying around. She could lasso him, pull him over. Uh, right.

  “Oh, it’d have to be a fifty-foot fence to keep me from finishing this date with you.”

  He looked around. “This looks as good a place as any.” Then he poked his fingers and the tips of his shoes through the grid, and scampered up the metal. At the top he threw his leg over the bar and landed catlike beside her. “And I noticed you forgot something.” He held out the necklace.

  “After all that— I left it.” Great. She lifted her hair to have him put it on again.

  But when she glanced down, she saw the Red Dress. It was now a Black Dress. Well, mostly black, with some red still showing. Kind of.

  Her heart sank. Tar covered the fabric and her shoes and would be super fun to peel off her legs.

  “Oh, man. I’m a disaster.” She winced up at Tag. “There’s no way we can go to the Three Ghosts and Wishes thingy now.” They wouldn’t let her in wearing tar. Or, at the very least, shame would prevent her from attending it wearing tar. “Look at this thing, Tag. I’m not— I can’t...” Surely he’d understand.

  “I can fix this.” He looked a little panicked, like this might be the last straw. His mouth pressed to the side, like it always used to when he was thinking. It was so cute she momentarily forgot her distress.

  “I’m sure it happens all the time. We can still go.” She wanted to reassure him.

  “Geez, Juliet. I feel like a heel.”

  “A tar heel? Like from North Carolina?”

  “This is so not how I envisioned tonight.” He rolled his eyes.

  “Not even the kissing part?”

  “Well, the kissing part is better than I dared plan.” He gave her a sly grin, and she held out her hand for him to kiss. He may have gotten a drip of tar on his lip.

  “I guess I’d better figure out a way to fix this.” He pulled her toward the museum buildings.

  “I can’t exactly go in there— not covered in tar.” They took a sudden left, up a curving ramp of a sidewalk.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.” He was so determined, how could she refuse him?

  At the top of the ramp loomed LACMA’s museum, the Pavilion for Japanese Art. Apparently a late-night event was going on in here as well, because the doors were ajar and both light and happy, almost-Christmasy music poured from them. They dashed in, past all the happy sake drinking partiers decked out in Japanese garb.

  “I had a hard time deciding between this party and the one next door.” Tag was still hustling her along. She saw a clock and noted there were only a few minutes left until their midnight event. No wonder he was in a hurry. “Quick. Take off the dress.”

  Juliet halted in her tracks and jerked her hand away. “Excuse me?”

  “Come on, Juliet. There’s no time.” They’d stopped at a large counter with racks of odd fabric on hangers behind it. No one was manning it.

  “Sorry, pal. If you think I’ll be stripping down in front of you, you’ve got another thing coming.”

  “Oh, please. I’ve seen you in your swimsuit a thousand times. We did water polo together in high school, remember?” Exasperation tinged his voice. “You’re not the type to go without underwear, so I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  His logic made sense, but Juliet clutched her dress nevertheless.

  Then Tag broke out laughing and pulled one of the wide strips of fabric from the hanger. “Oh, come on. You can’t blame a guy for trying. Here.” He tossed her the fabric, which turned out to be similar to the garb all the party-goers near the foyer were wearing. “It’s a kimono. I’ll turn around. Whisk off your dress and wrap it around you. I won’t look.”

  Juliet lifted the robe, eyed it, and then shook her head. She had a hundred names she wanted to call him— not all bad— but she obeyed. And he only peeked once.

  “Sorry! I was sure you were finished.”

  “It’s been three seconds.”

  He laughed, not quite wolfish, but bordering on it.

  Soon Juliet had it wrapped around her. Tag rummaged around in the closet and pulled out a long, wide piece of satin fabric. “This keeps it on. Sadly, you’ll want to keep it on.”

  “You know me well.”

  Tag paused a while. “Actually, I think it do.”

  Juliet paused, too. Inside her, something cracked. The little pip tooth of the baby chicken of trust had broken through its shell. Tag did know her. And she knew him. Whether it had been ten minutes or ten years, together they were on the same easy terms as always. But this time with a lot more kissing.

  “Why didn’t you tell me when you came home?”

  “I was going to, but I wasn’t sure how you’d react.” With both his hands, he wrapped the long sash around her a few times.

  He wasn’t? Juliet looked at the hanging racks of fabric, and her soul tore in two. Half wanted to push him away— to keep herself safe from possible disappointment. Half wanted to clutch him to herself and never let go.

  His arms at her waist felt right. So right. As he rested them there, he exhaled against her neck, and a shiver crawled up her skin.

  Tag tied the ends of the fabric in the back, but while still standing in front of her, his arms doing the work blindly as their bodies pressed of necessity together.

  “There. You’re perfect, Juliet. Now, let’s go make some wishes.”

  Chapter Five

  The heels, which had survived the tar pretty well, and the kimono didn’t exactly go together. And Juliet’s kimono was the only bathrobe at the whole LACMA event. Well, except for the ghosts’ bathrobe-type costumes.

  “Come on. Let’s pick a line. Which ghost do you want?” Tag handed her a plate of crab puffs. “Unless you want to skip the wishing and the two of us can wipe out all the artichoke dip and Li’l Smokies on the refreshment table over there.”

  “Tempting.” Juliet scarfed down three crab puffs. It was all she could do not to talk with her mouth full, but she did manage to swallow. Ah, food in the gullet at last. “But I have some wishing to do.”

  “You too?” Tag gave her the smoldering look again. His eyes roamed up and down her kimono. He pressed a kiss to her neck and took a swig of his drink.

  “You’re incorrigible. So what’s the deal here?” About three hundred people milled in the room, and another twenty stood in each line for the ghosts. “Is it like on A Ch
ristmas Story? You wait in an eternal line, then some maniacal elf says, ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,’ when you ask for the wrong thing?”

  Tag choked a little on the combination of his drink and his laugh. “Maybe. What I read is you come with your wish, tell it aloud to the ghost, who will grant it if the spirit wills.”

  “Which spirit? My spirit? Or the spirit-ghost’s spirit?”

  Tag shrugged. “It wasn’t clear.” He smiled. “It might not be real, this wish-granting.”

  Juliet’s insides churned with wishes. She ached for some kind of intervention from the Other Side. Because the clock of tonight with Taggart McClintock was about to strike midnight. And she didn’t want to be Cinderella at the end of the ball, all her magic expiring, leaving her with nothing but a shoe. Or in her case, a basically stolen kimono (which Tag promised he would return or pay for as soon as humanly possible.)

  Worse, she could be like Ebenezer Scrooge, who woke up and found it was all just a series of weird dreams. But Scrooge was changed forever by that night.

  And so might Juliet be— either for the better, with Tag still at her side after this whole thing, or for the devastated when he (again) never called her for another date after the disasters of this night. He would think she was bad luck.

  “Think of your wishes,” Tag whispered, his hot breath in her ear as the line inched forward. “I know I am.” He ran a hand up and down her back, letting it rest on her hip, just below the satin sash. It left her tingling.

  A blizzard of wishes flurried around.

  Tag was in her ear again. “You know, at the time that red dress was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. But you in nothing but a robe has me inventing all kinds of things to ask the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.”

  Juliet’s heart stutter-stepped. Another hint fell— he wasn’t thinking of this as a one-night fling, a duty to check off his list. She swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat lodged— like the question plaguing her mind.

  Why hadn’t he called after that first date? Why did he leave her dangling on a thread of hope, blown about by every gust of life’s wind, longing for him?

  Because, compared to Tag, every other man she’d ever known or dated or even talked to for more than a few minutes had left her feeling just as she’d been before: alone.

  And if he left her again after tonight...

  “So you have your wish ready?” The line had thinned, revealing the three ghosts sitting on garland-bedecked thrones in front of them.

  Juliet’s two minds went to battle: push and pull, open and close, trust and flee.

  There was no one left in line behind them. They’d come so late, due to the many, many mitigating (and soon to be litigating) circumstances. They could take their time.

  “You have to choose.” Tag nudged her.

  “Only one?” She thought she could request a wish from each. Disappointment flooded her. “Which ghost are you asking? Can we go together?”

  Tag cocked his head to the side. “Well, maybe my wish is kind of private.” The grin spread. “Maybe if you hear it, it won’t come true. Like birthday candles.” He walked toward Christmas Yet to Come, the scariest-looking spirit, the one with the scythe and the whole Grim Reaper thing going on. Juliet had originally planned to pose her wish to the future, but now, seeing him, she balked.

  Voices bounced off the tile floors to the high ceilings in the emptying room. Someone flicked off half the lights.

  Juliet’s eyes darted between her two remaining, non-Reaper choices. Should she ask for the Past to change things for her? To make that decade-gone Christmas different— their first date more of a dream than a nightmare, so she could have been with Tag all this time instead of without him? Or the Present— a wish that Tag would fall desperately in love with her? If she knew her magic lore right, it could never be used to alter someone’s feelings of love. It was useless, and she didn’t want to waste her one chance.

  And suddenly, she knew which ghost she needed to see. She stepped forward, armed with, she knew, exactly the right wish.

  Chapter Six

  “So what did you wish for?” Tag handed her another napkin loaded with food. The caterers were cleaning it up already, and they headed out the door. “It took you a bit. I saw you at the Ghost of Christmas Present. Hah. I always think that’s a bummer of a name. Like there was really no present for some poor kid under the tree, just a ghost of one.”

  Juliet popped another jumbo shrimp in her mouth. “Uh-uh. You first.”

  “Oh, uh. Right. Well.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Apparently it’s important that you not know too much about your future.” He took a shrimp from her pile and ate it. “At least that’s what the movies say. And we are in Hollywood.”

  She shot him a Seriously? look, and he relented.

  “Fine. Okay. I’m still not going to tell you what I asked. But the ghost did have some surprisingly wise counsel— for a ghost, that is.”

  “Oh, really?” Juliet’s own ghost had said some incisive things. “Go on.”

  “A lot of it was psychobabble, ‘loving yourself’ gobbledygook that he probably told everyone, but then he said something that struck me.” They exited the building and walked out onto the piazza. Dead center was an art piece Juliet fell in love with instantly— an orderly grouping of dozens, maybe a hundred, iron lampposts, all of varying heights, all lit and glowing in the winter night. Urban Light, the placard read. Juliet relaxed as they wandered.

  Tag guided her among the posts. “But when he was done with the script, he slid his hood off and looked right in my eyes. He used his normal tone of voice and said, ‘Kid, because of Christmas, and what it means, every day is a future yet to come. You can start fresh every single day. That’s the real gift of Christmas— hope for a future.’”

  He paused a bit, looking up at the night sky, while Juliet watched his chest rise and fall.

  “Then he took his robe off and said good night.”

  “Do you believe that’s true?” she whispered.

  He looked down at her. “I do.”

  Tag looked at her a long time, his eyes narrowing and widening alternately, like he was thinking something through or remembering and about to say something more. Juliet watched him, waiting. “But I forgot all the rest of what he said.”

  She gave his shoulder a little push. “You did not.”

  He gave hers one back. “Okay, fine. But I’m not going to tell you it tonight. Maybe someday.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “You’ll be safe if I leave you right here for a minute and go retrieve your red dress where I stashed it?”

  She nodded, and he loped off, leaving Juliet alone with her thoughts for the first time in hours. Her conversation with the Ghost of Christmas Present echoed in her mind.

  I’m afraid my wish will sound strange.

  That is all right, my daughter. Express it anyway. The ghost believed in his character, played the part fully.

  It’s— I, uh. She hadn’t known how to ask it, so she finally just spit it out in imperfect bluntness. I don’t wish for you to give me anything. I wish you could take something away.

  What is it, my child?

  He hasn’t hurt me, which makes my holding onto mistrust even more wrong.

  Speak.

  Can you... take away— she hiccupped— fear?

  The spirit contemplated, humming an old carol, rocking back and forth. At last he said, Yes. Your request is far different from the other requests I received on this night. You ask not for possessions or miracles to change circumstances. You ask me to give you a new heart. He drummed his fingers on his rosy cheek. I cannot do this for you.

  Juliet moaned a little. But it’s my deepest wish, Spirit.

  My daughter, the thing you seek is the gift of Christmas— of the first Christmas. Consider the Child in His mother’s arms. He became a child to show you that you must too. Remember the heart you had as a child. That action will allow you to grant your own wish.

&n
bsp; Now, as she stood shivering in this thin robe, her back cold against the stone post, waiting for Tag— always, always waiting for Tag McClintock— she looked up and saw him running toward her, across the brick piazza. All night she’d been drawn to him, drawn in by him. Just like she had as a girl.

  The spirit was right. It was time to stop being an adult. To stop withholding portions of herself out of fear.

  She would do it.

  As soon as she asked her most important question.

  “Tag— after that first date, why didn’t you ever call me again?”

  He’d arrived, bearing the dress, and wrapped his arms around her again. Now he pressed his body against hers to warm it.

  But after her question, he lost his jaunty smile. He now stared down at her, his face a mask of perplexity. It took too long for him to answer, and finally the anguish of silence overpowered her. She launched into nervous chatter— her default setting.

  “I mean, to be honest, I had the best time of my life that night.” She was talking too fast. “And I was pretty sure you did too— despite that thing with the snow plow and the storefront window. But then you went right back to Nadia, even though you’d told me she was, how did you put it? More vacuous than outer space?”

  She shouldn’t ever bring up another woman when she was trying to convince a man to think of only herself. Rookie mistake. Quick, steer it back! “But you and I, we’d been friends. Close, I thought. And you promised me to take me on my first date after my sweet sixteen. And you did! And it was incredible— just like tonight. It was Christmastime, with peppermint cocoa— in spite of the Heimlich maneuver and everything else, when it was over, I was ready for you to be my boyfriend, not just the boy next door.”