All He Wants for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  Argh. His considerate, well-meaning tone touched her. His valor in confronting her this way impressed her. All the same . . .

  “You know, I could just fire you and end this conversation right now,” she said. “It’s within my purview. There’s an insubordination clause in the Moosby’s handbook that would—”

  Henry actually laughed. “Wow. Chip Larsen really got to you, didn’t he?” An incisive look. “This isn’t you.”

  He was right. Danielle sagged. Wearing her jacket, reindeer antlers, tinsel boa, and striped gloves, she leaned against a nearby building as the Kismet Christmas Carol Crawl continued.

  She really didn’t like the idea of working for Chip. When it came right down to it, Danielle wondered, did she truly want to work for a company whose policies she disagreed with so strongly? For a company where she’d felt compelled to break the rules? That wasn’t like her. Not at heart, it wasn’t.

  Maybe, in addition to being brokenhearted, she was about to be unemployed, too. Because Chip probably wouldn’t allow her to turn down a promotion—one he’d personally come to Kismet to award—and then let her remain employed in her current position.

  No wonder Jason had gotten burned out working at Moosby’s HQ. It probably did suck as much as he’d told her it did.

  She wouldn’t have wanted to apologize to Chip, either.

  “Everything is all messed up, Henry,” she admitted.

  “Nah. That’s just what you’re telling yourself.”

  This time, it was her turn to laugh. It was better than crying. Marginally. “Right. So I’m just imagining it all?”

  “No. That’s not what I mean.” Companionably, Henry leaned on the building beside her. “I mean, everybody tells themselves stories about what’s happening to them. They do it all the time. Every day, without noticing.” He grinned. “For instance, right now, you’re probably telling yourself some variation of ‘Henry is an interfering asshole who won’t leave me alone to wallow in misery, the way I want him to, that jerk.’”

  Danielle grinned. “Well, that’s just the truth.”

  “Is it?” He gazed out at the town square, watching a few costumed carolers pass by. “What if I told you I had crucial information—information you don’t have—that changes everything?”

  Dubiously, Danielle raised her brows. “Such as?”

  “Such as, I’m a time-traveler whose return to his real timeline depends on making you and Jason reconcile. Today.”

  “Nice try. No go.”

  “Such as,” Henry tried again, “Gigi promised me sexual favors if I could cheer you up within fourteen minutes.”

  “Weirdly specific. Also, boundaries!”

  “As if Gigi doesn’t tell you about our sex life.” Henry’s eyes sparkled at her. He rubbed his hands together and tried again. “Such as . . . Chip Larsen is holding Mr. Moosby hostage, and the only way Jason can free him is to do . . . whatever made you mad.”

  Unwillingly, Danielle admitted, “That might change things.”

  Henry nodded. “See? Told you so. Your story might be wrong. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe you don’t have all the facts.”

  “But that’s not what’s going on,” she pointed out. “I can’t wish away what happened with kooky stories! Jason did—”

  “It doesn’t matter what the details are,” Henry cut in before she could specify all the ways Jason had taken advantage of her, let her down, and disappointed her. “What if,” he went on musingly, “the best possible explanation was correct?”

  Danielle scoffed. “The best possible explanation? That’s probably correct about one in a million times. If that.”

  “Maybe this is that one time,” Henry insisted. “For instance, I thought Gigi kept flirting with me as a joke. I kept her at arm’s length because I didn’t want to fall for it. Also, because her accent is pretty intense, and I can’t always understand what she’s saying. Right there, just by having a conversation, I’m potentially going to look super stupid.”

  “Gigi really likes you!” Danielle said. “She always has.”

  “I know that now. I know that Gigi really liking me is the best possible explanation for her flirting with me. But I didn’t know that a month ago, and I almost screwed myself out of a good thing. Because I was scared. Because I wanted to protect myself. Because I didn’t know the real story behind her flirting. I wanted to be safe, and it was keeping me from being happy.”

  Danielle toed her boot in the snow. Holiday carols drifted on the air all around them. Christmas lights flashed nearby.

  She’d never felt less merry than she did in that moment.

  “I’m glad you’re happy now, Henry. I really am.”

  “You could be happy, too,” he insisted. “Just try it.”

  “I did try! Don’t you see?” She shook her head. “That’s why I’m so upset right now. I tried, and I got stomped on.”

  “Did you?” Henry paused. “Or maybe you just told yourself that story. Is there really no other way to interpret what happened between you and Jason? Is your story the only story?”

  “It’s the best story. I know that much.”

  “I’m serious. This technique can help you.”

  Well . . . “I didn’t precisely let Jason explain,” Danielle confessed halfheartedly. “I was really mad. With good reason!”

  Henry nodded. “Well, you feel what you feel. But maybe—”

  Before he could tell her again to reconsider things, Danielle frowned at him. “You’re ruining my perfectly good sulk,” she grumbled. “Logic has no place in heartache.”

  But Henry only remained, silently and convivially, near her, obviously waiting for her to do what he’d suggested.

  “Fine!” Danielle exhaled, ready for a hasty return to the conversation she’d had with Jason. Reluctantly, she reconsidered the things he’d said to her. “He didn’t mean for it to come to this,” she remembered. “He told me . . .” It was real for me. I hope it was real for you, too. Overcome with regret, she shook her head. “He told me a lot of things—most of which I can’t believe.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it will make me look like a fool!”

  “So? Maybe you already look like a fool.”

  “Henry!”

  “Maybe Jason looks like a fool, too,” Henry pointed out. “He’d probably like to avoid that as much as you would.”

  “Jason never looks like a fool.” Damn him.

  Even while revealing his underhanded dealings, he’d looked handsome. Confident. In control and unreservedly charismatic.

  Although, it occurred to her, Jason had been preoccupied with what one person thought of him: her. She was the reason, if she could believe him, that he’d sent that footage to Chip.

  You told me again and again to make peace with the board, he’d said earlier. You told me to “feel free” to “use” you!

  Hmm. Maybe Jason had misunderstood her. Maybe he’d been motivated by a misunderstanding—caught up in something he’d never intended. After all, she’d mistakenly trusted Chip, too.

  She’d trusted him not to be a total creep. But he was.

  He had to be, to make her, über-responsible person that she was, consider unemployment as a viable alternative to working with him.

  Unaware of her contemplations, Henry burrowed his hands in his pockets. “All I’m saying is, if you do look stupid, it’s already happened. You can’t undo it now. What else?”

  Even more grudgingly, Danielle closed her eyes. She remembered Jason . . . his face, his hands, his miserable expression.

  “He was sorry,” she said. Then, “He should have been!”

  Henry held up his hand. “Finding the best possible explanation isn’t about assigning blame. It’s about being open to the possibilities.”

  “But it’s his own fault this happened!” Danielle blurted. “He’s the one who confessed. He’s the one who—”

  “If he confessed, he must have thought you would forgive him,” Henry sa
id. “Until that moment, he must have been getting away with it. So he didn’t have to confess at all, did he?”

  Well, no, Danielle realized unhappily. Jason had been getting away with it. She hadn’t suspected that she and her kids had been splashed all over the Internet. Not for one second.

  Not until Jason had volunteered that awful truth.

  “He thought I would forgive him,” she said. “I didn’t.”

  “Hey, it’s never too late.”

  Danielle burst out laughing. “Of course it’s too late!”

  “Why?”

  “Because—” She pinwheeled her arm, trying to come up with a sensible sounding reason. “Because we broke up, that’s why.”

  “That’s only the end if you let it be.”

  She shook her head. “He’s leaving town. I told him to.”

  “Maybe he won’t leave.”

  “Of course he’ll leave!” Danielle shook her head, unwilling to hope for a second chance. “That’s what makes sense.”

  “So, the best possible explanation here,” Henry summed up, “is that Jason did something he didn’t mean to do, he was sorry for it, and he tried to explain, believing you’d listen to him.”

  “Humph. Your ‘technique’ makes me out to be the bad guy.”

  “No, you have a best possible explanation, too. You were surprised, you were hurt, and you were too upset to give Jason what he needed at the moment he needed it most. Maybe,” Henry added, “Jason was upset in exactly the same way.”

  And couldn’t give you what you needed, either, Danielle thought . . . like an hour to calm down so they could really talk.

  Instead, Jason had deliberately stalked away from her.

  Maybe he’d been just as stuck in the moment as she’d been—just as unable to see his own weak spots and get past them.

  “I’m not feeling better about things,” Danielle groused.

  “You’re only human. So is he.” Henry looked straight at her. Gently, he said, “I don’t know much, but I know one thing. You can’t ever be safe, but you can definitely be happy.”

  “I want to be both,” Danielle insisted obdurately. Wasn’t that what love promised? “If I try hard enough, if I wait long enough, if the right man comes along, then I’ll be—”

  “Safe?” Henry shook his head. “Never ever. The scariest thing in the whole world is falling in love. Because in order for it to work, you have to be totally real with each other.”

  Uncomfortably, Danielle laughed. “You had it wrong before. You’re not from the future—you’re from my worst nightmares.”

  She didn’t want to bare herself to anyone. That felt too risky. Too untethered. Too vulnerable. No way, no how.

  Unbothered by her complaining, Henry shrugged. “If you’re not going to take a chance now,” he said, “then . . . when?”

  That stopped her cold. When would things be right?

  “I can’t do it,” Danielle said. “I’m not strong enough.”

  And that’s when she realized the worst part of all.

  It wasn’t just that she was afraid someone would hurt her (although she was, and would have been crazy not to be). It was that she was afraid she couldn’t survive it if they did.

  “You’ll never know what you can do if you don’t try,” Henry said. “And you’ll definitely miss out in the meantime. When you think about it,” he added, “it’s a lot like ice-skating.”

  “This is nothing like ice-skating.”

  “Some people are cautious.” Henry stuck out his arms and mimed someone tiptoeing along on skates. “They inch onto the ice bit by bit. Some people cling to the wall the whole way.” He squeezed shut his eyes and clutched the building behind them. “Some people are too excited to care that there’s any risk, and they blunder right onto the ice first thing.” He simulated jolly marching, arms swinging like a kooky marionette. “However they do it, though, sooner or later, everyone is skating.”

  Skeptically, Danielle frowned at him. “I know you want to help, Henry, but honestly, I don’t see what this has to do with—”

  “Everyone,” he continued, “except the people who stay on the sidelines. They never get to skate. And that’s sad.”

  That did it. “I don’t want to be a sideline person.”

  Henry nodded. “Then you’d better start skating.”

  Chapter Twenty

  In the end, Jason cracked. Full of beer and sorrow, he poured out the whole sad story of Danielle, #sleighride, and all the rest to his kindly mentor. It felt . . . horrible to get it out.

  Inwardly, Jason swore. Wasn’t this kind of mushy stuff supposed to be cathartic? What the hell was the matter with him?

  “The way I see it,” Mr. Moosby said as he thumbed the label on his beer bottle, “you have to try again to explain.”

  “No.” Vehemently, Jason shook his head. “No way. I tried that already, remember? I tried multiple times to tell Danielle why I did what I did.”

  “Did those ‘multiple times’ happen during the same conversation? Say, within fifteen minutes of each other?”

  Grumpily, Jason looked away. “Yeah. So?”

  “So they only count as once. That’s just the way it is, especially with women.” Mr. Moosby gave him a sympathetic smile. “Also, if you tried to fix the problem at the same time—”

  “Of course I tried to fix the problem.” Remembering his desperate promises to yank the #sleighride footage, to shut down Moosby’s social media channels, to fix it all, Jason gave him an exasperated look. “What else was I supposed to do?”

  “Listen to her. That’s it, at first. Just listen.”

  “Listening doesn’t fix a damn thing. Besides, she didn’t listen to me,” Jason complained, “so I don’t see any reason—”

  “Ah. You wanted to be heard, did you? Huh. Imagine that.”

  At Mr. Moosby’s smug expression, Jason broke off.

  He frowned. Grumbled. “I see what you did there.”

  They both had to listen. That was the whole point. Leave it to his longtime friend and sometime co-creator to make him see the obvious, when he’d been too stubborn to see it himself.

  Fortunately, Mr. Moosby wasn’t the type to gloat. “Look, son. The missus and I have been married a long time. We’ve worked out a few things. One of them is, don’t screw around with leaving up the toilet seat, because a wife will end you.”

  “I shouldn’t even have brought this up. I don’t know—”

  “And another one,” his mentor continued doggedly, “is that the more you’re meant for each other, the likelier it is your sore spots are going to rub up against each other. It’s like a law of nature or something. You’ve gotta learn to work with that—to stick with it when things get hard.”

  “Sounds kinky.” Jason swilled his beer. Signaled for more.

  “Show some damn respect,” Mr. Moosby barked. “It’s not kinky, it’s the truth, and I’m not just shooting the shit over here. So sit up straight, clean out your ears, and take notes!”

  Grudgingly but respectfully, Jason straightened on his barstool. He couldn’t resist striking a blasé expression, poking a finger in his ear, and waggling it, smart-ass style, though.

  “I’m about to impart some wisdom on you,” Mr. Moosby went on, “starting with this: whenever you think you’re absolutely right, that’s when you’re probably the most wrong. Whenever you refuse flat-out to give an inch, that’s when you ought to dole out a mile. And whenever you want to bail out more than anything else in the whole world,” he finished, “that’s when you stay.”

  That sounded like a bunch of old-man platitudes to him, Jason told himself. Things that were far easier said than done.

  “Is that what you do with Mrs. Moosby? You give in?”

  “Giving in doesn’t mean giving up, wiseass. Smarten up.”

  “Do you?” Jason persisted, ignoring that cheery jab.

  “You mean if I’m having one of those screw-you, set-fire-to-the-world, just-leave-me-the-hell-alon
e kinds of days?”

  Jason nodded. That summed up his mood today, for sure.

  “Yep. I do,” his mentor confirmed with a nod. “It’s not easy. It’s definitely not easy. But it’s worth it.”

  Jason gave a doubtful snort. “Like hell you do.”

  “Like hell I do!” Mr. Moosby eyed him like the wise old Santa clone he was. “What else am I gonna do? Start over?”

  His tsk-tsk made that answer plain. Jason drank more.

  “After all these years with Bessie, I’ll be damned if I’ll break in a new model,” Mr. Moosby informed him with a grin. “She understands me. She accepts me. And I accept her.”

  “Yeah. It’s tough to get to that point when someone won’t even listen to you.” Jason pulled out his wallet, intending to put an end to this sentimental, much too personal conversation. He and Mr. Moosby had already put together a plan for dealing with Chip and the board of directors. They didn’t need to keep talking anymore. Not today. “Danielle won’t even let me explain what happened and why. You know how much I hate that.”

  “Oh, waaah. Stop acting like such a crybaby.”

  Shocked, Jason stared at him. Evidently, touchy-feely time was over with. Even more grumpily, he tossed down a big tip.

  “What makes you so special,” Mr. Moosby persevered, “that the world is supposed to stop everything and listen to you?”

  “I have a right to explain myself! To be heard.”

  Mr. Moosby shrugged. “She had a right not to listen.”

  “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Your side.” Mr. Moosby gave him a fond look. “That doesn’t mean I don’t think you’re being a shortsighted horse’s ass right now. I do.” Ignoring the money Jason had put down, Mr. Moosby signaled Genevieve for more beers. His clear-eyed gaze swerved back to Jason. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe what happened to you wasn’t personal? Would that make a difference?”

  “Of course it was personal. We were the only ones there.”