12 Dates Till Christmas

Chapter 1

one

The champagne hit me first. No, wait. It was probably the espresso martini Gina had made, the one she swore she’d perfected as she shook together leftover salted-caramel vodka and pumpkin spice liqueur.

I regretted it the second it touched my tongue.

Because the worst part?

It actually tasted good.

Maybe it was the cup she had put it in that threw me off.

It was a commemorative Metropolitan Museum of Art mug, chipped on one side—the kind they sold in the gift shop for twenty bucks, but Gina had claimed was a badge of honor.

She’d earned it on her last day as a summer intern, one of only six picked from hundreds.

Of course, she also left with a shiny new line for her résumé and a summer full of existential dread about her future. That part had been free.

Now, two master’s degrees later—hers in art history slash museum studies and mine in writing with a concentration in both creative nonfiction and technical communication for balance—we’d managed to delay the inevitable adulthood just long enough for the real world to feel like a complete ambush.

But we were doing it. Somehow. Oddly, together.

In a stroke of chaotic timing that felt weirdly cinematic, we were living out the very dream we had scribbled into notebook margins when we were thirteen.

We were two best friends, grown up and living in the city, chasing creative careers and sharing a too-small apartment with questionable plumbing.

We even had our own “quirky neighbor” subplot in the form of Gina’s older brother crashing with us semi-permanently.

It wasn’t glamorous. But it was ours.

Gina was thriving. At least, she was faking it really well.

Which, in her opinion, was the same thing.

She had a job at a gallery that had real-name artists and catered parties and clients who said things like “provocative space” and “new, emergent voices” with completely straight faces and she pretended to know what they meant.

Somehow, she made it work. She said she wouldn’t settle for anything beneath her. And she didn’t.

Meanwhile, I was ready to settle for anyone who could spell my name correctly on a job rejection email. Even if they didn’t, I could make it work.

I’d sent out dozens—hundreds?—of résumés. Most of the listings were for glorified office assistants. I was ready to be answering phones, managing calendars, and replenishing the stapler supplies as needed. Though most of them said they required at least a master’s degree, which seemed, well …

“Beneath you,” Gina had insisted.

I ignored her words, however well meaning.

It was temporary. I was just paying bills while I chased my real dream. Writing.

Unfortunately, writing turned out to be the most elusive dream of all. More improbable than Gina’s trust-fund baby fantasy. At least that’d had a road map.

Writing was sending emails into the void.

Pitching articles no one asked for to editors who never responded.

I’d tried celebrity gossip pieces I didn’t care about.

Listicles about table settings for holiday dinners with color-coordinated napkins no one used.

I’d missed the Thanksgiving content window entirely.

Those pitches went out the second Halloween candy went on clearance. Not to mention Christmas.

That left me with Easter.

Did people even read articles about Easter?

I tried to remember the last time I’d celebrated it.

What surfaced was a hazy scene from childhood.

There were pastel eggs hidden under patchy lawn grass, sunlight cutting through the slats of a bent chain-link fence.

My father, round in the middle, stood in a polo shirt, laughing.

My mother crouched barefoot on painted toes, tight curls haloing her face as she clapped and cheered.

“One more, Bri-Bri! Find one more, baby!”

I held that memory in one hand and the espresso martini in the other, sipping cautiously and trying not to grimace at the aftertaste. Sharp. Like burnt sugar.

Gina had called the night an “apartment-warming,” but really, it was an excuse to drink. We’d been in the place three months already.

When I’d told her that, she’d pivoted immediately looking for another, much better reason. “Fine, Friendsgiving.”

Her version of a friend-focused Thanksgiving featured a bowl of microwave popcorn, a plate of bodega cookies, and at least six bottles of wine, brought by guests who thought a housewarming gift meant cheap pinot.

We were well stocked until New Year’s. Unless our third roommate got to it first.

Josh, Gina’s older brother, had appeared shortly after we moved in, trailing a duffel bag, two plastic storage bins labeled J STUFF, and a history involving a car accident and a personality transplant.

He hadn’t left since.

His bins remained mostly untouched in the corner of the living room, stacked beneath a plastic jack-o’-lantern wrapped in multicolored Christmas lights. A seasonal mash-up he claimed was “a vibe.”

The apartment was loud, cluttered, slightly unstable. Much like Gina honestly always was. Like us.

And still, somehow, exactly what we’d always imagined.

Just a little messier.

“He says he’s looking for his own place.

” Gina told me when she warned that he was coming to stay with us just for a few days.

But also, he had boxes, which made me think a few days wasn’t just a few days at all.

“I doubt he’ll last until the new year before he’s jetting off to someplace or another. ”

“Didn’t he say he got a job?” I asked.

Gina shrugged, knowing better than to count on her brother. “Where did you hear that?”

Josh had missed her past few birthdays and graduations, off finding himself somewhere. She joked she was surprised he’d ever returned.

“We’ll see. Just tell me now. One word, and I won’t bring it up again. If you don’t want him here, he has other friends he can mooch off of. I’ll kick him out.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

Though the last time I had seen Gina’s brother was Christmas during our first year of college, and, well, I couldn’t say that we’d left on optimal terms exactly.

“He did mention helping with the rent,” added Gina.

That caught my attention the most. “He said he’d pay rent?”

If anything, it made my decision to be unbothered even clearer. There really was no decision.

“No. It’s completely fine,” I said as if the entire thing had always been my ideal living scenario. “I’ll be out writing all the time.”

“Right. And you’ll definitely have interviews anyway before getting an amazing job,” Gina continued, ever positive.

“I doubt I’ll even notice he’s here.”

“You’re the best, Bri.”

That, of course, had been over a month ago.

And tonight was the first night that our pull-out couch was actually in couch form.

In fact, I felt like I rarely saw him since he’d started living here.

He was up early for work or to go to the gym and often back late.

Maybe, some days, he never returned at all.

Neither of us seemed to want to relive the last grand embarrassment we’d had when we last spoke to each other years ago and continued to happily mooch off the other for minimized rent.

And let Gina throw parties with people we didn’t know.

“Come on, Gina,” Brent pressed from across the low table with an expression of gleeful interrogation.

He had the easy charm of someone who definitely didn’t look like he belonged in HR—button-down shirt wrinkled from the commute, sleeves shoved up to his elbows, his laugh always just a little too loud for workplace decorum.

“You’ve been in the city for months now.

There’s no way you haven’t met someone.”

“I didn’t say I haven’t tried,” Gina said with a teasing edge, lifting her glass, but not drinking from it. “You’re being nosy.”

“So, that’s a yes?” Brent clarified, grinning.

Gina shrugged, lazy and casual. “Just someone from my last internship. He moved. It wasn’t serious.”

“ ‘Not serious,’ ” echoed a girl from the other end of the table, making air quotes with dramatic flair of her wrists. She had been in the same internship as Gina. I recognized her face, but not her name, and at this point in the night, I wasn’t about to ask. “He was way older than you.”

Gina’s smile tilted into something both mischievous and unapologetic. “He was fun.”

“So was Jocelyn,” someone else chimed in, and the table erupted into new laughter.

I watched the conversation bounce back and forth like a ping-pong match, everyone leaning in for the latest volley.

Gina’s eyes lit up. “So was Jocelyn,” she repeated.

“I still think she was perfect for you,” said someone—probably Melanie.

“No, no,” Gina said quickly, waving a hand tipped in glossy cream-colored nails, her stack of bracelets sliding with the movement.“We’re not talking about me and my ridiculous romantic misadventures.”

I couldn’t help it; I snorted into my cup.

Like clockwork, Gina’s gaze snapped to mine. Her dark eyes had that piercing intensity she used on strangers and stubborn bartenders, but now it was focused squarely on me. I met her look with a warning arch of my brow.

Don’t do it.

Too late.

She threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me into an exaggerated sway that made the room dip more than the wine had already managed. “We should really be talking about my poor, sad, romantic little artist.”

“Wait a—Gina, stop.” I squirmed out from under her, pushing her away with a half-hearted shove. “I’m not lonely.”

“Are you with anyone right now, Brielle?” Melanie asked, practically purring across the table.

“She hasn’t been on a date in years!”

“That’s such an exaggeration,” I said. “I went on a date last semester. During my writing residency, remember?”

The looks around the table said no one remembered. Or they didn’t believe me.