Twelve Sealed Christmas Loves

A Merry Little Christmas

Jessica Joyce

“Are you sure your parents won’t mind that I’m crashing your Christmas?”

Naomi, my twenty-six-year-old friend in body and eighty-year-old chauffeur in spirit, spares me a glance before turning back to the snow-dusted highway we’re moseying along. “How many times are you planning to ask me that?”

I get another look for that, this one more pointed. “There are seventeen versions on this playlist, Eleanor.”

Of course.

“I guess I have to up my game, then.” I let her digest the full, ominous weight of that possibility.

We still have an hour left of our drive up from San Francisco to Dollar Point, which sits on the northwest side of Lake Tahoe.

“Out of curiosity, why do you have seventeen versions of the saddest Christmas song known to humankind on the same playlist as *NSYNC’s ‘Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays’? ”

“It’s not sad, it’s cozy,” she shoots back.

“Your argument would be much more compelling if you didn’t just sniffle your way through Phoebe Bridgers’s rendition.”

“Jeez, McIntyre, for a social media manager, you’re a hell of a litigator,” Naomi says, then waves a lazy hand between us.

“Fine, it’s a touch melancholy, especially because she’s singing the Judy Garland lyrics instead of the Sinatra ones.

” She glances over at me, the amusement in her brown eyes softening.

“I, of course, love the Sinatra version.”

“No surprise.”

“Regardless of the version, it reminds me of staying up late on Christmas Eve when everyone else is asleep, soaking in the quiet before all the excitement and chaos starts the next morning. Knowing everyone is under the same roof for a while and that you’re stuck together for a few days, minimum.”

“You’re a real poet, Naomi Molina,” I say, ignoring the ache starting to radiate in my chest at the picture she’s painted.

My Christmases never looked like that growing up; I got a front-row seat to the rotating menu of yelling matches and stony silent treatment between my parents instead, whose resentment of each other—and complete disregard of me—only intensified during major holidays.

But I certainly wished for my troubles to be miles away in the years ahead, like Judy sang about so wistfully. I always hoped someday I’d have the kind of Christmas I’d seen in movies and heard my friends talking about.

In college, at least, I got a taste of it.

I spent three years as a guest in a cozy Chicago home drenched with lights and laughter, which meant I got three years of just-after-midnight Christmas Days curled up in front of a tree decked in ornaments made out of Popsicle sticks and glitter that had chipped away with season after season of devoted handling.

Three years of my head on a warm, hard thigh; of long, patient fingers combing through my hair; of a body pressed against mine in a childhood bed that squeaked when we breathed, let alone attempted other things.

Three years of the Sinatra version of the song Naomi’s been subjecting me to playing on a scratchy record player.

I’m still convinced that having to let it go hurt worse than if I’d never had it in the first place, but I can’t find it in my heart to regret my time with Max Durham and his family. I only regret that it had to end.

“The answer is yes, by the way.”

I look over at Naomi. “What?”

“You asked if I was sure that my family won’t mind you crashing,” she replies, “and the answer is yes, I’m sure. You’re going to be greeted with open, probably terrifyingly enthusiastic arms.”

“My dream,” I say, hand over my heart. “I’ll be on my best behavior for you, promise.”

“El, I’ve been talking about you nonstop for the last seven months. They already know you’re an angel. The only thing I really had to warn them about is your dangerous moves on the dance floor.”

I snort out a laugh, which pulls a cackle out of her.

Our meet-cute was facilitated by my enthusiasm for a Shania Twain song at a mutual friend’s wedding back in May.

Instead of getting mad that I’d bumped into her, Naomi turned around with a huge smile and said, “Oh, yay, my new best friend is here.”

She was right; we’ve been inseparable ever since.

“Is a dance floor included in this weekend’s festivities?” I ask.

“Anything can be a dance floor if you try hard enough,” she muses. “Anyway, you’re not crashing. I invited you.”

I shoot her a look. She grins. Invited is a sanitized PR word for the campaign she launched to get me up to Tahoe when I mentioned that I never go back to Arizona for the holidays.

I shook her off at first; I learned the hard way that getting attached to a temporary space I wished were permanent made me sadder than spending Christmas on my own.

But Naomi refused to take no for an answer, threatening to strap me to the roof of her car like a piece of luggage every Christmas from here on out because “you are now an honorary Molina, and if you try to disagree, I’ll tell Mom and Dad on you.

Do you want to devastate your honorary parents by rejecting them? ”

I didn’t, nor did I want to reject the option of an ongoing Christmas invite, so I capitulated.

Now, as we wind our way up Highway 80 toward the house Naomi’s parents have rented for the holidays, the fizzy anticipation that hit me as soon as I said yes grows tenfold.

It helps that we’re driving through a literal winter wonderland as we climb farther into the mountains: giant trees with snow pillowed on every bough stretch as far as the eye can see, the rocky peaks in the distance are capped in white, and a caravan of cars ahead are decorated to look like reindeer, their little plastic antlers whipping jauntily around.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Santa himself pulled up alongside us in his sleigh.

“I will warn you that it’s going to be chaotic,” Naomi says, pulling my attention away from the festive scenery.

“Every few years my mom, her best friends, and their families celebrate the holiday together, so we’ve got people descending from all over—Chicago, San Diego, etcetera.

The kids—full-grown adults, by the way, but they still call us kids—are pretty chill, but the elders are always dialed up to a ten.

” She grimaces, glancing my way. “I probably should’ve told you that up front, but I didn’t want you to bail on me. ”

“I wouldn’t have bailed on you,” I say, even as my heart dances at the passing mention of Chicago.

I think about Max often, but there are three times a year when he’s particularly top of mind: before, during, and after the texts we exchange on each of our birthdays, and especially the one he sends me every Christmas, just after midnight.

Merry Christmas, El. You have good plans today?

I always tell him yes, even though I want to write back, Never as good as those Christmases with you. But it would just be a temporary hit of something I can’t have permanently. He’s in Chicago and I’m in San Francisco, and that distance is the reason we don’t spend Christmases together anymore.

I push the thought away as the opening strains of “Jingle Bell Rock” drift out of the sound system. I have a feeling this Christmas will give my favorite ones a run for their money, anyway.

“I love chaos,” I assure Naomi. “Besides, I’m sure it won’t be that chaotic.”

She shakes her head, her laugh mingling with Bobby Helms’s festive crooning. “You’ll see.”

It is unbelievably chaotic.

I’m not sure who I’ve hugged at this point. All I know is that everyone rushed outside when we pulled into the driveway of a gorgeous cabin-style home, that I’ve been pulled into more than a dozen people’s arms, and that I’m exactly where I want to be.

“I’m so glad you’re here with us,” Naomi’s mom says, squeezing me closer.

“Thank you so much for letting me—”

“Don’t say crash!” Naomi interjects.

“Spend the holiday with you,” I say, directing a cheeky smile at my best friend before turning my attention back to Annette, who beams. She’s adorable, a bite-sized white woman with silver-laced wavy brown hair and a hilariously hideous Christmas sweater that lights up.

“We were very excited when we heard you were going to be a guest of honor,” Naomi’s dad, Oscar, says. He has sparkling eyes the same shade as his daughter’s, and they’re just as warm as he tosses me a wink. “For a minute, we thought we’d be subjected to another one of Mimi’s terrible boyfriends.”

“Eleanor,” her brother, Cameron, calls as he runs after a tiny child making a break for the trees, “now that you’re in my sister’s life, please help her improve her taste in men.”

Naomi holds her hands up in a T formation with a buzzing sound.

“Did no one read the lengthy rules and regulations I sent the group chat two weeks ago?” She points at all the parents—I think there are three sets in total—before towing over a tall Black woman with shoulder-length curly hair and a wide, brilliant smile.

If I remember correctly, she’s the daughter of Annette’s best friend, Toni. “Thea, you remember, right?”

“No commentary on or questioning of the single kids’ love lives,” Thea replies with a meaningful look at each parent. “Signed off on by all of the single delegation, by the way, so keep those thoughts to yourself.”

A chorus of boos echo in the air.

I bite back a smile, sliding my arm through Naomi’s as we move inside en masse. “I take it the elders regularly interrogate you about your love lives?”

“When they’re together? Without mercy, hence the rule,” she replies, rolling her eyes.

“I snooped on some of the texts in their group chat”—she points to Annette, Toni, and their third best friend I met minutes ago, a Korean woman named Genevieve, who are cackling as they make their way inside—“and a solid thirty percent of it was them plotting date setups. I would’ve been hounded if I’d come up here alone. ”

I bat my lashes. “But then I swooped in and saved the day by having a shitty family.”