A Cozy Holiday

Chapter 1

Assless Chaps

Parker will be stunned. Flabbergasted. So shocked, he’ll faint. For the first time in our yearlong relationship, I’m home early.

As the elevator hums toward our Tribeca loft, I picture the moment.

My boyfriend will be on the couch, eyes droopy from a seven-hour Survivor binge.

He’ll hear the keypad beep and leap up, tossing my nan’s blanket aside, and then he’ll scoop me up into his six-foot-seven frame.

We’ll kiss. And then I’ll surprise him with first-class tickets to Cabo.

Not that I want to go to Cabo, but it was the only flight available today, and I desperately need to leave the city after the devastating news my boss dropped this afternoon.

“Honey, I’m home!” I sing.

But our apartment is dark, the red leather couch is empty, and Parker’s favorite hoodie, the one he always wears, is jumbled up on the floor.

“Parker?”

A loud thud and a groan echo from down the hallway.

My stomach flips. Parker has been complaining about his back for weeks, an old injury from his pro-basketball days. What if he collapsed? Or, God forbid, a burglar broke in and tied him up?

A second thud makes my heart sprint.

My brain flashes to Jubilee, my sweet, soft, anxiety-ridden Angora with ears like velvet, who faints every Monday from the sound of the garbage truck.

I scan the entryway for a weapon and spot a pink umbrella, swag from a veterinary pharmaceutical sales representative named Penny who always smells like honeydew. The furry handle squeaks as I fist it tight, raising it like a sword.

“Parker?” I whisper, tiptoeing down the hallway, my feet sticking to the hardwood floor. “Jubilee, Mommy is coming for you.”

I gather all the courage I’ve built from a decade of veterinary training and use it to trudge toward the repeated thud, thud, thud coming from my bedroom.

I nudge the bedroom door fully open.

The sight before me is unbelievable.

Truly.

It is un-fucking-believable.

My boyfriend is dressed like Santa Claus—well, if Mrs. Claus had tossed him out over a decade ago for gross negligence.

A ratty red polyester coat hangs off one of his shoulders, and a felt beard clings to his chin.

Around his waist hangs a black pleather belt.

And below it is my boyfriend’s bare ass, shown in all of its clenched-tight glory in a pair of Santa’s suit assless chaps.

A long, throaty “Ho, ho, ho” escapes Parker’s lips, and I can’t tell if it’s a sex noise or some horrifying commitment made toward the heap of green fur below him.

Huh?

I blink once. Twice. Until I really see the entire scene.

Santa—my Santa—is thrusting with enthusiastic vigor over a writhing Grinch.

My fingers tighten around the pink handle of my umbrella until it pops open, a ridiculous shield against the sweaty trauma before me.

The moaning halts.

Then the Grinch shrieks, flailing around on my silk sheets before ripping them off the bed and wrapping them around her nude lower half.

Parker tugs his Santa hat off his buzzed head, then plonks it in front of his flaccid dick. “Joy?” he shrieks as if I’m the one engaged in holiday cosplay. “What are you doing here? You weren’t meant to be back until this evening.”

“How inconvenient of me to show up to this low-grade production of The Nightmare Before Christmas,” I shoot back.

The Grinch slaps her giant green belly. “Parker? You said your name was Nicholas!”

Somewhere between Parker’s “Wait, I can explain” and “My middle name is Nicholas,” something soft nudges my ankles, and I look down to find Jubilee, wide-eyed and trembling. I scoop her up, bracing her behind the open umbrella.

“You—you sicko!” I yell. “In front of my sweet Jubilee? How could you?”

“That’s exactly how, Joy! That’s exactly how. All you care about is your animals and your patients and your work and your stupid vet books and your sad little bunny. What about me, huh? What about what I need?”

“Jubilee isn’t sad. She has anxiety!” I yell, like that will make the situation better.

I look at my boyfriend. Really look at him. He hasn’t shaved in weeks, and I spot a white glob of toothpaste in his real beard. He looks so pathetic that I almost feel sorry for him. But inevitably, like all men who manage to garner sympathy with their helplessness, he opens his mouth.

“I’ve been trying, Joy. I really have. But you never take any time off work, and you’re like an ice queen. You’re so fucking dreary and cold all the time.”

My mouth drops open.

A guy dressed as Santa—whose ass is still hanging out—is calling me an ice queen.

The Grinch, who has finally found her pants, sidesteps past me, and I let her. The last thing I need is another witness to the mortifying scene that’s unfolding.

“That’s a lie.”

“You didn’t even cry during Marley & Me last weekend!” Parker yells. “I put it on to see if you had any emotions, but you didn’t cry! What kind of psycho doesn’t cry during that movie?”

“You mean the movie I practically live in every day? I put down dogs for a living, Parker. If I cried every time one died, I’d never be able to do my job.”

I haven’t cried since I lost my first patient in vet school, and Miriam told me that if I didn’t learn to compartmentalize, this career would eat me alive.

“Yeah? Well, what are you feeling now?”

White-hot fury, actually.

I love my job. My emotions are fine.

And how fucking dare he try to justify cheating on me in our bed?

“I was excited,” I say, my voice steady.

“I came home early to tell you that Miriam shut down the clinic for the month for renovations. She said I had to take a vacation because I haven’t taken one in eight years.

Eight! Apparently, the whole practice has known for weeks, and they kept it from me because everyone thinks I live at the office. ”

“Even your coworkers think you work too much!” Parker raises his eyebrows like that’s some big gotcha. “They had to wait until the last minute to tell you. That’s not normal.”

“Not normal?” I toss the umbrella aside. “You wanna see not normal?”

“See! You’re making this all dramatic.”

“You’re the one wearing a Santa suit with your bits hanging out,” I snarl before I storm into the hallway.

“Don’t kink shame me, Joy!” Parker yells at my back.

I place Jubilee in her cage across the hall, then snatch a black trash bag from under the sink.

“What are you doing?” Parker asks when I return.

I wrench open his walk-in closet. “You didn’t mind me working so much when I was the one buying you all these stupid shirts.”

“I don’t need your money. I need you, babykins.” He attempts to wrap his arms around me. “Your emotion. Your time.”

I break out of his hold. “Well, what I need is for you to get the hell out of here.”

“Joy, this is my apartment. I’m not leaving.”

“I’m not leaving either!” I stuff his stupid graphic tees into the bag until it rips, and the metal hangers pop out. Then I get to work on his old merch from his pro days. “It’s time for Santa to go back up the chimney.”

He tries to grab me again, but I run around him and swing open the bedroom terrace door. When the late-November cold hits my face, I feel free.

Parker scrambles to pick up his fallen clothes from the bedroom floor as I heave the full trash bag up and over the iron railing of the balcony.

I peer over, watching it land on top of his Mustang with a satisfying thud.

The car alarm blares. The people on the street don’t even look up, too lost in their own drama.

“You’re crazy!” he screams.

“Oh, I’m crazy now?” I flash my teeth. “Is this feeling enough for you, Parker? Am I freezing the joy out of your life right now?”

“Joy, we can figure things out. I can teach you how to cry.”

“Teach me! Just like you teach fucking finance bros how to get dates in New York on your stupid podcast?”

“You said you liked my podcast.”

“I lied!” I slam the balcony door shut, then head for the living room.

“But what about Cabo?” he whines like a dog behind me. “Let’s go and figure out where we went wrong.”

“The only thing I did wrong was book nonrefundable tickets!” I march to the front door, and I pick up his stupid prized basketball—a game-winning ball from his last season at the Nets. He kisses it every time he leaves.

“Joy!” he shrieks. “What are you doing?”

“Ho, ho, ho.” I chuck the ball into the hallway. It thuds against Mrs. Lewis’s door, and Parker scrambles after it, his bare ass jiggling.

I slam the door and lock it. Then latch the deadbolt.

“This is my place!” Parker bangs on the door. “Where the hell am I supposed to go?”

“Mount Crumpit, for all I fucking care.”

He curses under his breath before muttering something to Mrs. Lewis, our busybody seventy-year-old neighbor.

“I’m coming back tomorrow, Joy,” he hisses through the door.

Energy courses through my veins. I should feel triumphant, but instead I’m wondering why I sold my place six months ago to move in with Parker like a total dumbass.

“Miriam, he cheated on me,” I complain into my phone.

“And you’re still at his apartment?” Miriam asks for the third time.

More accurately, I’m slumped over on Parker’s couch with my nan’s blanket. “I have nowhere else to go.”

“You could go to my place in New Jersey.”

“New Jersey, Miriam, really?”

“I know you hate me now, but I promise you, give it a month and you’ll be begging not to come back to the clinic. Just go to Cabo alone.”

“I hate the sun.”

“Okay, then go to the snow.”

“Where am I supposed to find a place?”

“Joy, honey. I love you. But you need to put yourself first for once. Unless you want to end up like me with four failed marriages and an encyclopedic knowledge of anal glands.”

“But you’re the best vet in the city.”

“And the loneliest,” she replies. “And before you get any ideas, I told every clinic in Manhattan not to hire you. Don’t even bother calling around.”

“I can clean kennels somewhere. Scrub holding cages with a toothbrush. Restock needles. I’ll wear a disguise.”