by Holly Rayner
“I just think mistletoe’s important,” Mia whispered, changing the subject. “It’s the perfect reminder of what Christmas really means. That you should hold the people you love the closest to your heart. That you should keep them. That you shouldn’t take anyone for granted.”
“Are you sure? Because I was always pretty sure that it just meant I was allowed to make out with whoever I wanted at the college party,” James joked.
Mia swatted at him playfully. “All right, already. No romance for you.”
“Never,” James said. “I wouldn’t be caught dead falling in love. Let alone under the mistletoe.”
Mia felt her heart jump in her chest, then. She felt her body moving toward James’. Impulsively, she pressed her lips onto his, eliminating any distance between them.
The kiss stretched out for many moments before Mia pulled away, unsure of herself.
James grinned at her. “What was that for?” he whispered.
“You said you’d noticed me,” she whispered back, blushing slightly. “This was my affirmation that I noticed you, too. Besides, it’s mistletoe. It wouldn’t be right if no one kissed beneath it this Christmas.”
James’ laughter was like music. “You remember it’s April 10, don’t you, Mia?”
“It’s December 25,” Mia corrected with a wink, returning that cocky look.
He smiled and leaned toward her, pressing his lips against hers and kissing her deeper, more passionately than before. She felt her stomach clench with need and desire for him. Around them, the Christmas lights twinkled. James wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. Her breasts pressed up against his chest. She wrapped her legs around his waist and breathed in the scent of him.
“I’ve wanted this for so long,” he whispered in her ear.
She dove into more kisses, swiping her fingers beneath his shirt and feeling his rippling muscles. He ripped her blazer from her shoulders, inhaling the perfume on her neck, before dipping his fingers to her buttons and unbuttoning them one by one. Mia let out a sigh as he unhooked her bra and pressed his naked chest against hers.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, Mia Daniels,” he said, and she allowed herself to believe him.
They kissed as the moon rose high in the sky outside the window, illuminating the room with beams of silver light. They drew their bodies together with certainty and lust and made passionate love right there on the floor, beneath the mistletoe, surrounded by their tossed-away clothing and twinkling tinsel.
When it was over, James wrapped drunken arms around Mia, exhaling in satisfaction. Sweat dripped from their necks, their backs. A fine line of moisture made its way down James’ sternum, and Mia gazed as it glittered in the Christmas lights. She watched as his tired, drunken eyes drifted into slumber, and then she allowed herself to fall, as well.
She nestled her head onto his shoulder and moved onto her side, joining them together, just two bodies. She willed her heart to stop beating so quickly; she willed her brain to stop its great chorus of exclamation and excitement. She joined him in the dream world. And she hoped, beyond anything else, that everything could go on just like this, into eternity.
FIVE
Mia awoke the next morning, still wrapped in James’ arms. She put her fingers to her temples, feeling waves of hangover wash over her. She felt sticky and hot. The Christmas decorations looked rather sad in the light of the morning. April 11, she reminded herself. Not the day after Christmas. She was just as loony as Christopher Parsons.
As she eased herself into reality, James woke up as well. He jerked up, his arm still caught behind Mia’s head. He tugged her hair slightly. “Oh…sorry.” He halted his rapid motion and removed his arm carefully. He brought his hands to his head and dabbed at his sweating brow. “Man. I am so hungover.”
“Join the club,” Mia offered. Her voice was tentative, carrying none of the confident tones of her news anchor voice. She lifted herself just high enough to see the window. “It’s not snowing anymore, at least,” she said.
“What a miracle. Maybe I can actually get to Chicago today,” James said. He raised himself up on his feet, standing naked before her.
Mia tried not to look, to give him privacy. She couldn’t get a sense for his feelings. Clearly, there was a wall between them now; had they built it by sleeping together?
“Maybe I can actually get home,” she said quietly.
James had begun to swing his legs into boxer shorts, and she followed suit, stringing her thong up her legs and lifting her bra from the ground.
James dressed in a moment, looking smart as usual, despite having slept on an office floor. He brushed his fingers across his tie, gazing down at it, unable to quite meet Mia’s eyes. “You really know how to do Christmas. Yesterday, when I approached you about that guy—”
“Christopher Parsons.”
“Right. The old loony. When I approached you about him, I just thought you’d brush it off. I didn’t know I was looking to start a fight with the number one Christmas advocate in the United States.”
“Just continental. There’s someone more obsessed in Hawaii. But we keep in touch.”
“Good to hear it,” James said, stifling a smile. “I did have a swell time. I’d say it was one of the better Christmas celebrations I’ve ever had.”
“The cookies weren’t exactly up to par,” Mia explained, pushing a stray curl of hair behind her ear. “I make a mean plate of Christmas cookies, generally. It’s a shame I couldn’t go all out.”
“Well. You couldn’t have known what the night would bring…” James shrugged his shoulders. “But anyway.” He gestured to his desk. “I was thinking I might need to make a few calls. It’s nearly eight, which means it’s already too late in the Chicago office.”
“Right,” Mia said, nodding abruptly. Her heart felt strained. “I’ll take down the decorations—”
But James just shook his head. “I’ll have one of the cleaners put this stuff away. You go home and take a nap. I’m sure sleeping on the floor all night did nothing good for your back; it sure didn’t for mine,” he sighed.
Mia bit her lip, sensing that he wanted her to be gone. She was a stranger in his office now, when the previous day, she’d been a welcomed guest. It was strange how swiftly things changed.
She swallowed dryly, avoiding his gaze. “Well. Thanks for keeping me company in the snowstorm,” she said as she backed up to the door and wrapped her fingers around the handle. “I’ll see you around, I suppose.”
James was looking down at the papers on his desk, sifting through them, unaware that Mia was still at the door.
Mia’s eyes were lost in the beginnings of tears. With a small, sharp intake of breath, she spoke again. “Hey, James?”
“What is it?” he asked her. He hardly looked up from his work. He reminded her, in that moment, of Ebenezer Scrooge.
“I was wondering if you feel any differently about Christmas. Now that we had this little party.”
James exhaled out his nose in a kind of laugh. He gave her a playful smile; his beard had grown rough around his mouth, making him appear even more handsome and gruff. Mia felt her insides squeeze together.
Sensing she wouldn’t hear the answer she wanted, Mia watched as James snuck his head back to his notes. She took three tentative steps toward the center of the room, her eyes on him the entire time, before lifting her arm upwards, toward the ceiling. She nabbed the mistletoe, which hung naked in the morning light. She felt she couldn’t part with such an essential memento of her evening. She tucked it into her blazer’s pocket before darting from the room and into the hallway. She pushed the door closed behind her and exhaled, leaning heavily against it.
Thankfully, no one appeared in the hallway on either side of her. If someone had seen, she knew the rumor mill would begin, and that would negate her entire plan. She hadn’t wanted to sleep her way up the ranks; she hadn’t wanted to use anything but her smarts and know-how to elevate
her career.
She felt sweat gleaming at her brow and frustration growing in her heart. Suppressing tears, she pinched herself to ensure she was focused enough to drive.
Mia shuffled toward the stairway. She glanced out the window as she walked, noting that the snow had melted a great deal since the night before. The ground had been too warm to allow much sticking, and so they would bounce back to spring, as if nothing had happened.
She leafed through her purse and grabbed her keys, jangling them slightly. As she tapped down the steps, she yearned to hear James’ voice at the top of the steps—calling out to her, forcing her to stop. She yearned for him to say he wanted to talk. That he really did appreciate Christmas now, especially because it was linked to her. That the night had been as meaningful to him as it had been for her. But she knew these were crazy things to ask for. She needed to buck up, to concentrate on her position at the company, and forget this had ever happened.
Plus, it wasn’t like she hadn’t had to pretend before. As she sat behind the wheel of her jeep, easing it from the parking lot, she remembered her first fourteen years of life. Throughout every year at the children’s home, she’d had to push bad memories far back in her mind. She’d grown accustomed to pretending that everything was all right. She could do it again if she had to.
But as she drove back to her Portland apartment, she felt an aching in her heart. In the previous few years, she hadn’t dated much. She’d told her adoptive mother that she just wanted to focus on herself, and that boys her age were too immature, too unfocused. Especially in Portland, where hipsters walked down the streets, taking lazy, long strides in their skinny jeans, focusing only on which pint of craft beer they would drink next. It wasn’t exactly overflowing with personable, yet successful and professionally minded men.
Mia parked her car in front of her apartment block, yanking her briefcase from the backseat and thrusting herself toward the door. Her back ached from the night’s sleep on the floor, and her thoughts felt out-of-tune, slippery with the hangover. She was reminded of college, when hangovers had caused her to spend days in bed, ordering pizzas with her roommates and keeping the lights dimmed low.
She opened the door to her apartment with a shaky, tired hand and entered, tossing her bag to the floor and throwing her shoes, one after another, into the corner. She tapped the power button on the TV remote, allowing SNO News to blare on the screen. She liked to see the upper crust perform the news when possible. She liked to practice her articulation while she collapsed on her couch at home.
Mia found herself dialing the local pizza place, following the same, sad route she so often had as a university student. The boy on the other end, surely only seventeen years old, asked her what her order was, his tone bored. Surely, he had better things to do. Surely, she did, too.
“Just a large pepperoni pizza,” she whispered into the phone, surprised at how friendly her voice sounded. It was like the escapades of the previous 24 hours had literally knocked the wind out of her. She no longer recognized herself. “For delivery.”
“We have your address in the system, ma’am,” the kid told her. “Your total is eighteen dollars. It’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
“So fast,” she said into the phone.
“That’s because it’s only 10:30 in the morning, ma’am. People don’t normally order pizza so early.”
“Oh.”
She ended the call, feeling her heart drop into her stomach. She found herself canceling out the news anchor’s voice, closing her eyes. Her skin still smelt of James Chance, assuring her that it had all really happened. That he had kissed her so passionately. That he had moved over her, breathed soft words into her ear. The night hadn’t been imagined. For a mere moment, she had been worthy of him.
Finally, the doorbell rang. Mia lifted her limp body from the couch and meandered toward the door, opening it to reveal a scrawny kid with a Cubs beanie on.
“We’re not even close to Chicago,” she said groggily, eyeing the hat.
“My dad’s from there. Your total’s eighteen dollars.”
Mia leafed out a twenty and thrust it toward him. She took the box and stumbled back indoors, sighing softly as the latch clicked behind her. She made a mental note not to call that pizza place for a while—they already knew too much about her.
She collapsed on the couch, the pizza box splayed before her. She slipped a piece between her fingers and caught the edge in her mouth, closing her eyes. She remembered the “weight management” instructor that the news anchors had to see every few months, who instructed them never to overindulge on carbohydrates.
“Not today,” she whispered to herself. She leaned heavily into the cushions, flipping the channels to a romantic comedy. Meg Ryan’s gleaming curls bounced on screen; her eyes dancing as she searched the man’s face, moments before the kiss.
God. Mia snapped the television off and shoved the pizza box onto her coffee table. She wiped her mouth, feeling disgusting, like the least loveable character in a romantic comedy. The best friend. The one who didn’t win. The one who would never find love.
Her hangover pounded in her skull. She slunk lower in the couch and allowed herself to drift into a nap, hopeful that all would be well and good by the time she woke up. She would shower. She wouldn’t have to remember what James’ cologne smelled like. And she wouldn’t have to remember that, in the end, he hadn’t picked her. They’d crossed paths for one night only. And that was that.
SIX
Throughout the weekend, Mia worked in vain to forget about her night with James. She appeared at the gym bright and early both days. She bolted through sprints on the treadmill; she lifted ten-pound weights with two shivering hands. She met up with her previous trainer to discuss her “fitness goals”, and she cleaned her entire apartment top to bottom, opting for an old toothbrush to really dig into some of the hard-to-reach kitchen areas. She thought about calling her adoptive mom to catch up, but then she remembered that her mother would call her out immediately. “You only clean when you’re upset,” her mother would say. And she’d be right. With every movement, with every sprint and every scrub, Mia couldn’t get James off her mind.
Outside, April had come back, almost full-force, causing the snow to melt away almost as fast as it had come. The sun filtered in through her drapes as she dressed for her Monday morning call time.
In spite of herself, Mia had James on her mind as she selected her outfit: a deep purple blazer with a low-cut blouse beneath it. Silver drop earrings, which made her eyes look bright, youthful. She made her bed and sat for a moment on the fluffed comforter, her head in her hands, wondering if he’d even attend the shoot that day. She knew he needed to get to Chicago. For all she knew, he might be there already.
Mia scrambled to her jeep a few minutes behind schedule, knowing that Theresa would have her tail if she were late for makeup. Theresa kept a tight ship, and even the top news anchors knew to stay in line. She wished she was able to be as mentally strong as her best friend right now.
She parked her car in her usual parking spot, darting straight to the kitchen to snag a cup of coffee before jogging back up the steps to the newsroom. She forced her eyes away from James’ office door, which was closed, and continued toward Theresa’s. She wasn’t yet sure she wanted to tell her friend about what had happened with James—at least, not yet. She might want to bury it deep within her, like those secrets you knew your grandmother kept about her youth; she didn’t want to discuss them, and maybe you didn’t really want to know, either.
When Mia entered the makeup room, Theresa directed her toward a side chair as she completed the makeup of Mia’s consistent co-anchor, Charles, who had been on vacation for the last two weeks.
“Charles! How was Jamaica?” Mia asked, sipping her coffee, careful to open her mouth a bit wider so as not to stain her teeth.
“Oh, Mia. Hey! I didn’t see you come in. Theresa’s being harsh on my face today.”
“I told you to wear
sunscreen, Charles. That was the only thing I told you to do!” Theresa sighed, slapping herself on the thigh. “And you come back looking like a lobster.”
“I’m sorry, Theresa. I couldn’t help it. Melanie kept me in the ocean far too long.”
“You tell that wife of yours that I want to have a word with her,” Theresa said, exasperated. “There’s only so much I can do.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much; I always look like a slob sitting next to Mia.”
“And with James in town, no less,” Theresa said, shaking her head.
Mia felt her throat close. Her eyes danced between them, but it was clear that her colleagues weren’t discussing James because of her. Word hadn’t gotten out.
“Oh, James is around? I heard he’d already left for Chicago,” Charles said. He got up from his chair, sufficiently done up, and gave Mia a broad smile. His face was perfectly symmetrical, like a brunette Ken doll. He and his wife, Melanie, had only recently got married; Jamaica had been their honeymoon.
