Marigold sat back and crossed her arms.
North grinned. “Obviously, I don’t have anything else to do tonight. So I can sit here as long as it takes.”
“North,” she said through gritted teeth. “Would you please consider lending me your voice for my new video?”
“That depends.” He placed his hands behind his head. “How much does it pay?”
Marigold’s heart staggered. She couldn’t believe it, but she’d never even thought about paying him. Her friends and coworkers had always done it for free. But of course she should pay him. Of course.
“Marigold,” he said, after she’d been silent for twenty seconds. “I’m kidding.”
“What?”
“I’m kidding. Of course I’ll do it. It sounds awesome.”
“I could pay you in food,” she said quickly. “From Henrietta’s.”
North stared at her. “You know what’s the strangest thing about tonight? Tonight, being an astoundingly strange night?”
“What’s that?”
“That you still don’t realize I’m willing to do anything, anything”—he gestured in a full circle around them—“to stay in your company. You don’t need to pay me.”
Marigold’s heart was in her throat. It’d been over a year since she’d been in a situation like this with a boy. A handsome boy. Suddenly, she couldn’t think straight.
North nudged one of her boots with one of his.
Her boot—her foot—tingled.
A pounding on the door startled her out of her trance. “Keep it down in there! Some of us are trying to sleep!”
“Jesus,” North said. “She doesn’t stop.”
“Never.” Marigold got up and trudged to the door.
“I mean, this is the quietest we’ve been since I arrived.”
“She does this even when my mom and I are asleep. She’ll wake us up.” Marigold opened the door and plastered on a fake smile. “Ms. Agrippa. How can I help you?”
“It’s midnight. I can’t sleep with this racket—” Ms. Agrippa cut herself off. “Oh my lord! You’ve been robbed!”
“No!” Marigold took a step forward.
Ms. Agrippa bolted back—one shaking hand on her chest, the other pointing at North. “That man! There’s a strange man in your apartment!”
“That’s my friend.” Marigold steadied her voice. “He works at the tree lot next door. You saw him up here earlier? He’s been helping me clean. Doesn’t it look nice?”
“Do you need me to phone the police?” Ms. Agrippa hissed. “Are you in danger?”
“Really and truly, everything’s fine. That’s North. He’s my friend.”
North waved.
Ms. Agrippa’s expression changed. “Does your mother know he’s here?”
“Of course she does,” Marigold said firmly. Better to lie about that one. “Good night, Ms. Agrippa.”
“Will he be leaving soon? You’ve been so loud tonight—”
“Yes, Ms. Agrippa. We’re sorry to have disturbed you.”
Marigold wanted to slam the door shut, but she waited. Stared down her neighbor. It had gotten chillier outside, brisker. It felt … almost like snow weather. At last, Ms. Agrippa relented and headed down the stairwell. Marigold exhaled.
“Hello, friend,” North said, right behind her ear.
Marigold startled.
And then she chanced it—she bumped his chest with her shoulder, lightly. North looked delighted. “Is that…” He sniffed the air. “Snow. It smells like snow.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
It didn’t snow often here, but when it did, most of it happened after New Year’s. They’d only had one brief snowfall, back in November. The flakes didn’t even stick.
“I love snow.”
They said it at the same time. They glanced at each other and smiled.
“I hope it snows,” Marigold said.
“I’ve always felt lucky to live someplace where snow is rare, you know? It’s the rareness that makes it so special.”
“That could be said about a lot of things.”
“True.” North stared at her. His smile widened.
Marigold felt it, too. The rareness, the specialness, of North. Of this night. She wished it could last forever.
“Oh, no.” The wonderful thought had triggered a nerve-wracking one. She pushed North inside. “My mom! If it snows, she’ll close the restaurant early.”
They glanced at the lingering items in the hallway—and the tree—and hurried back to work. As fast as they could, faster than Marigold would have thought possible, everything was stacked flat against the living room’s longest wall.
Only the tree remained.
North hefted it inside—a groom carrying his bride across the threshold—and placed it proudly before the sliding-glass door. As he adjusted it in its stand, Marigold vacuumed away the fallen needles. She did another quick sweep of the bedrooms while he rearranged the last of the furniture—the couch, a coffee table, the Moroccan end table, a glass lamp—into an agreeable living space.
She was almost done when she spotted them in a newly cleared corner of her own bedroom. The Fisher-Price boxes.
Marigold carried them into the living room as if they were sacred.
“Look,” she said.
North turned on the lamp, and Marigold’s heart jolted. The area he’d created—everything on top of her favorite floral tufted rug—looked warm and snug and inviting. He’d even found the rainbow afghan that they used to wrap around themselves while watching television. He’d draped it over the back of the couch.
It looked perfect there. Everything looked perfect.
“It’s not much…” he said.
“No. It is.” This was, perhaps, the greatest gift she’d ever received. Her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you.”
North smiled. “Come on. Let’s decorate your tree.”
Marigold laughed, dabbing at her eyes with her sweater sleeve. “Oh, so it’s my tree now? I’ve earned it?”
He pretended to look shocked, as if it had been a slip of the tongue. Marigold laughed again. She felt happy—the kind of happy that reached every part of her body—as she opened the first box. It was filled with neatly bound strings of white and blue lights.
North peered over her shoulder. “Ha! Go figure.”
“What?”
It was as if she’d caught him doing something wrong. He looked uneasy, but he answered with the truth. “I was surprised by how carefully these strands were put away. Christmas lights are usually this big, tangled mess. But this—this—is the tidiest thing in your entire apartment.”
“When we put those away two years ago,” Marigold said, “our lives were a lot different.”
North removed a string of pale blue lights and began to unwind them. “You can tell a lot about a person by looking at the state of their surroundings.”
“If that’s true,” she mused, “then my life is looking significantly better.”
“But does it feel any better?”
Marigold met his gaze. She smiled. “Without a doubt.”
* * *
They strung the tree with lights. Tons of lights. Marigold wanted to use all the lights, and when they were done, it shone like a beacon—marvelous and sparkling and bright.
North opened the second box and removed a pinecone on a white ribbon. He raised an eyebrow.
“You won’t find any Santas or angels in there,” Marigold said. “This is a scientific household, remember?”
He laughed.
Each ornament was bundled in tissue paper. They gently unwrapped them one by one—red cardinals and spotted deer and black bears. Suns and moons and stars. Apples and pears and roses. And snowflakes. Lots and lots of silver snowflakes.
“Did you know,” North said, as he hung a feathery blue jay, “that real trees are better for the environment than fake ones? A lot of people think the fake ones are better, because you have to throw out the real ones
every year, but real trees produce oxygen and provide wildlife habitats while they grow, and then, when they’re done, they can be ground into mulch to fertilize the earth. While the plastic ones just … rot in landfills. They can take hundreds of years to decompose.”
Marigold waited until he was done with his rant. “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Oh.” North stilled. A tiny skunk swayed on his index finger.
But she understood why he’d felt the need to tell her. She nudged his arm. “I’m glad you work for the good guys, North.”
“I am the good guys,” he said, trying to regain some swagger.
As the final ornaments bedecked the tree, Marigold glanced out the sliding-glass door. Tiny snowflakes were swirling and pirouetting down from the sky.
Marigold paled. “Did you know it was snowing?”
“It must have just started.”
“You have to go. My mom will be shutting down the restaurant now. She’ll be home soon.”
She scrambled, shoving the tissue paper back into the boxes. She felt him staring at her, wanting to know something—something she wanted to know, too—but they were out of time. He tucked away the boxes as she rushed into the kitchen. She pulled out a foil-covered serving dish from on top of the refrigerator and ran back to the tree. She shoved the dish at North’s chest. “Take these home, please. As a thank-you.”
His face was illuminated in blue and white light. “What are they?”
“Cookies. Vegan gingerbread ladies. It’s all we have, but they’re really good, I promise. You’d never know they didn’t have butter in them.”
“Gingerbread ladies?”
Marigold shrugged. “My mom isn’t really into men right now.”
“That’s understandable,” North said. “The last one was pretty bad.”
“The worst.”
“And … how do you feel about them?” he asked carefully. “Are you okay?”
She was surprised at how much the truth—the simple, obvious truth—hurt to speak out loud. “I’ve been better,” she finally said.
North stared at her. The lights of the tree glimmered in his warm brown eyes. “I’m so sorry, Marigold.”
Her heart thumped harder.
North took the serving dish. “Would it … would it be okay if I called you sometime? I mean, if you’re still interested in the voice work, I’d be happy to help. I could stop by after a shift. I’ll need to bring this back, anyway.” He lifted the dish in an uncharacteristically awkward gesture.
North could have kissed her. He could have done it, he could have swooped in, but he was being respectful. It made her want to devour him whole. Or be devoured whole. She grabbed the serving dish, shoved it aside, and placed one hand on each side of his face. She pulled him down into her.
She kissed him.
He kissed her back.
Their mouths opened, and he tasted clean and healthy and new. He pulled her closer. Her fingers slid down the nape of his neck. Down to his chest. He lifted her up, and her legs locked around his waist, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world. As if they had rediscovered something essential that they didn’t realize they’d lost. They kissed deeper. They kissed like this, her body wrapped around his, for minutes.
When she finally slid back down to the ground, both of their knees were shaking.
“I’ve been wanting to do that all night,” North said.
His voice, so close to her ears, resonated inside of her. It filled her. “I’ve been wanting to do that all month.”
“I want to do that for the rest of the month.” North kissed above her lips, below her lips. “And after.”
“And after,” she agreed, as their mouths slipped over each other again.
“Okay, okay.” She laughed, a minute later. “You have to go. Now.”
They kissed some more.
“Ahhhhhhh,” he shouted as he pulled away. “Okay! Now!”
North’s hair was scruffled and wild. Marigold’s braid was halfway unpinned. They were laughing again. Dizzy with discovery—the wonder and thrill of connection. She tossed him his flannel shirt. “Don’t forget this.”
He threw it on over his T-shirt. “So what do you think your mom will say when she comes home and sees all of this?”
“Honestly?” Marigold shook her head as she repinned her hair. “She’ll be pissed. But then … I think she’ll be glad. Maybe even happy.”
“I hope so.”
“Here, give me your phone.” Marigold tugged hers out of a pocket and tossed it to him. He did the same. They added each other’s numbers. “Text me when you get home, okay? Let me know you got home safely.”
North smiled. “I will.”
They kissed again beside the front door.
“I’m working tomorrow night,” he said, between kisses.
“Thank God.”
“I know. I’ve never been so happy to work for my parents.”
They laughed.
“Until tomorrow, Marigold Moon.” And he kissed her one last time.
Marigold peeked through the sugary frost that was growing, shimmering, on her balcony door. She watched North cross into the lot next door. His entire figure looked perfect from here, like something she ached to scoop up and cradle in her hands. As he climbed into the seat of his truck, he glanced up at her window.
He smiled when he saw her figure. He waved.
Her heart leapt as she waved back. She watched his truck until it disappeared. The tree lot’s lights were off and its fires were out. Through the dull glow of the grocery store, she could see that the evergreens were coated in a fine white dusting. Everything outside was cold and empty and dark.
There was a rattling of keys at her door.
Marigold turned around. Everything inside was warm and cozy and bright. She had needed North’s help to create her mother’s present, but this was the gift—a beautiful apartment. And a beautiful tree.
The doorknob turned.
“Mom,” Marigold said. “Welcome home.”
It’s hard not to feel just a little bit fat when your boyfriend asks you to be Santa Claus.
“But I’m Jewish,” I protest. “It would be one thing if you were asking me to be Jesus—he, at least, was a member of my tribe, and looks good in a Speedo. Plus, Santa requires you to be jolly, whereas Jesus only requires you to be born.”
“I’m serious,” Connor says. It is rare enough for him to be serious with me that he has to point it out. “This might be the last Christmas where Riley believes in Santa. And if I try to be Santa, she’ll know. It has to be you. I don’t have anyone else.”
“What about Lana?” I ask, referring to the older of his younger sisters.
He shakes his head. “There’s no way. There’s just no way.”
This does not surprise me. Lana’s demeanor is more claws out than Claus on. She is only twelve, and I am scared of her.
“Pweeeeeeeeeeeeease,” Connor cajoles.
I tell him I can’t believe he’s resorting to his cute voice. As if I’m more likely to make a fool of myself if he’s making a fool of himself.
“The suit won’t even need to be altered!” he promises.
This is, of course, what I am afraid of.
* * *
Christmas Eve for me has always been about my family figuring out which movies we’re going to see the next day. (The way we deliberate, I think it’s easier to choose a Pope.) Once that’s done, we retreat to our separate corners to do our separate things.
Nobody in my family is particularly religious, but there’s still no way I’m letting them see me leave the house in a Santa costume. Instead I sneak out a little before midnight and attempt to change in the backseat of my car. Because it is a two-door Accord, this requires some maneuvering on my part. Any casual passerby looking into the window would think I was either strangling Santa or making out with him. The pants and my jeans don’t get along, so I have to strip down to my boxers, then become Santa below the belt.
I had thought it would feel like pajamas, but instead it’s like I’m wearing a discarded curtain.
And that’s not even taking into account the white fur. It occurs to me now to wonder where, exactly, this fur is supposed to have come from, if Santa spends so much time at the North Pole. Perhaps it’s him, not global warming, that’s dooming the polar bears. It’s a thought. Not much of one, but it’s all I can muster at this hour, in the backseat of this car.
As I’m strapping on my belly and putting on my coat, Connor is meant to be asleep, safe in his dreams. He offered to stay up, but I thought that would be too risky—if we got caught, not only would we be in trouble, but the gig would be up with Riley. Lana and his mother are supposed to be asleep, too—I don’t think they have any idea I’m coming, and only have a vague idea of who I am in the first place. It’s Riley who’s supposed to be awake—if not right at this moment, then when I appear in her living room. This is all for her six-year-old eyes to take in. I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
I also have a gift of my own to deliver—a wrapped box for Connor, which I am trying desperately not to smash as I grasp in the dark for my boots and my beard. It’s the first Christmas since we started dating, and I spent way too much time thinking about what to get him. He says presents aren’t important, but I think they are—not because of how much they cost, but for the opportunity they provide to say I understand you. Plus, there was the risk factor: When I ordered the present three weeks ago, there was always the slim chance we wouldn’t make it to Christmas. But that hasn’t happened. We’ve made it.
Once I’m dressed, I find it near impossible to slide into the front seat with any ease. I must manipulate both the seat and the steering wheel in order to lever my Santatude into the driver’s seat. Suddenly, I understand the appeal of an open sled.
I have only been to Connor’s house a few times, and most of those were before we started dating. His mother mostly knows me as one of a group of friends, a body on the couch or a face over a bowl of chips, because Connor and I were very much part of a six before we decided to become a two. Every now and then, Riley would visit our adolescent playground, steal some of our snacks, flirt with whoever would pay attention to her. Lana, meanwhile, would stay in her room and blast her music loud enough to haunt any sound we were trying to make.
My True Love Gave To Me: Twelve Holiday Stories Page 14
