21. It’s Not Christmas ’til Somebody Cries
It’s Not Christmas ’til Somebody Cries
HENRY
I could’ve done a bell kick—nay, several bell kicks—over how well the holiday was going.
Not even Sid’s arrival in the kitchen as I scraped plates and rinsed forks for the overworked dishwasher could touch my good mood. I even deigned to make conversation. “What did you and Alexa get each other for Christmas?” I asked.
“Oh, you know, just the usual stuff. Clothes, books, stuff for the wedding,” he said with an easy-breezy laugh that felt forced. There was sweat on his brow. The heating system seemed to be turned all the way up, and everyone was wearing sweaters.
“Oh, cool,” I said, bringing some of the clean mugs down from a stuffed cabinet in case people wanted tea and coffee during presents. The coffee maker gurgled nearby as the water in the basin heated up.
“What did Aidan get you?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet. He said it was supposed to be delivered today, so I guess I’ll find out when we go home tonight,” I said.
“Home. Right. Alexa told me that you two live together even after only knowing each other for such a short time,” he said.
“He’s easy to get to know,” I said, smiling to myself, thinking about the way, once we’d finished eating, we held hands under the table. We didn’t do it under the table because we wanted it to be a secret. We did it because it was just for us. I loved that. So did I love him?
“I can see that,” he said. “Still so weird that he looks exactly like the window mannequin. Alexa showed me the pictures. She’s been going on and on about it. What, did you put out a global casting call or something?”
“Or something,” I said. “An artist never reveals his secrets.”
“Isn’t that magicians?” he asked earnestly.
Little did he know how much magic I’d summoned not so long before, proof of which was sitting on his chairs, eating off his plates, talking with his soon-to-be family. Magical Aidan was the man of the hour, it seemed. “Potato, pot ah to.”
“I hear you. Regardless, what a way to go out!” Then Sid set the creamer down and sighed. He leveled a serious expression at me. “Listen, Henry, while we have this moment alone together, I have something I need to say to you.”
My own brow grew sweaty as I worried suddenly he knew the truth about Aidan. Maybe he’d use it as blackmail to get the storefront or something. “Um, okay?” I gulped loudly.
“We’re going to be family soon, so I wanted to clear the air,” he said, leaving a lot of dead space between us.
“About?”
“About the way me and my friends treated you back in high school.” He shook his head at himself.
“Seriously, man. I’m sorry. It was all bravado and immaturity.
Half my teammates were failing their art electives.
I think they were mad about how good you were at it and took it out in mean ways.
Doesn’t matter. They shouldn’t have bullied you like they did, and as their co-captain I should’ve said something to stop them.
I should’ve stuck up for you. I’m ashamed that I didn’t. ”
“Oh, uh, thanks,” I said, both shocked and relieved. “It was so long ago. I honestly assumed you didn’t remember any of that.”
“I do, and I would’ve said something sooner but there hasn’t been a good moment between the engagement and the window displays and the store changes,” he said.
It was true. I’d been unequivocally avoiding him since Alexa first brought him around the family.
They’d reconnected at a local bar post-college, and for months before he showed up to his first Aster function, I felt Alexa pulling away from me with ignored texts and canceled plans.
It was obvious she’d started seeing someone new, but I hadn’t been prepared for the blow of who it was.
“I appreciate you saying it now,” I told him.
“For sure. You’re Alexa’s best friend, and I’d like us to be friends, too.” My mind got hooked onto the first part of what he said. Alexa’s best friend? Still? She certainly had a funny way of showing it.
“Almost done in here?” Alexa asked, flouncing in with the last of the turkey to be put away.
“Just about,” Sid said before turning to me one last time. “Thanks for being cool about everything.”
Alexa swept behind me to prep some coffee for her guests. “Does Aidan drink coffee?” she asked me.
“He does. Lots of cream and sugar,” I said.
Sid asked, “A guy with a jacked body like that has a sweet tooth?”
Alexa scoffed. “Okay, it’s official. Everyone is obsessed with him.”
I let out a noise that married a squeak with a grunt. Maybe add a gasp, too. Sid laughed and left the room.
Alexa rolled her eyes at me before adding lots of cream and sugar to Aidan’s coffee cup. “Congratulations. You win. Aidan’s perfect.”
He was. Oh, he so was.
Perfect face, body, manners. He was kind to animals, and he always laughed at my jokes.
And he was mine, all mine .
Alexa’s undertone of jealousy was simply the icing on the Yule log.
She picked up as many full coffee mugs as she could carry. “Try not to lose this one, too, okay?” She gave a short, sharp laugh before moving into the other room.
The clack of her heels as she exited the kitchen rang like gunshots in my ears. I stood there, stunned, for several moments. The smoke and dust from an old-style Western duel cleared in the desert of my mind.
Try not to lose this one, too .
Xavier strung me along while still being in love with someone else. Cam couldn’t keep it in his pants to commit to me. How were either of those things my fault?
I had no second to sift through Alexa’s offhanded cruelty and my emotional baggage because Sid’s voice chimed out from the other room. “Who’s ready for white elephant?”
An hour later, the kids tore into their presents, red-faced and panting with excitement. They looked like bodybuilders during a particularly heated competition as they raced one another to see what was inside their respective, expensive gifts.
That’s how I felt on the inside sans the excitement.
I still wrestled with Alexa’s comment as I perched on the armrest of a love seat Mom was sharing with Dad in the crowded family room.
Since she didn’t have a fireplace, Alexa had a fake one playing on a loop on the TV.
The children sat beneath it amid the chaos of discarded bows and tape.
Mom held her phone up with one hand, mindlessly recording the kids as they ripped open the boxes and the pieces of a massive Lego set spilled everywhere.
“Be careful where you walk, everyone!” a drunken Uncle Jude shouted. “If you step on one of those in bare feet, they hurt like a mother—”
“Language!” said Misha, covering the delicate ears of the nearest child, whose name escaped me for a second. It was kind of hard to keep track of all the little ones when they lived so far away, grew so fast, and I only saw them once or twice a year.
“Is ‘mother’ a bad word?” asked Peter, the oldest of the kids and the one responsible for the barrage of Legos scattered across the floor.
“No,” Misha said. “It’s what he was about to say next that’s a bad word.”
“What was he about to say next?” Petra, Peter’s younger sister, asked. Ever the child with the seven million questions.
“Goose,” Misha lied. Petra and Peter seemed satisfied by this, going back to their toys.
“Anybody still have a gift to give?” Sid asked.
Shock grabbed hold of my heart when Aidan stepped in front of my family and said, “I do.”
I tilted my head in confusion, staring up at the tall man with the striking jaw and the effortless smile.
From the inside of his chestnut-colored blazer, he produced a stark, square velvet box I thought I’d buried.
A box I thought I’d only see again when I was ready to sell it or pawn it or share it with someone I loved.
Aidan’s blue, blue, blue eyes swept the room.
“I’ve had such a wonderful first Christmas—I mean, first Christmas with you all—and to make it even more wonderful…
” He rolled the box around in his hands.
Was he nervous? I didn’t know confident, appeared-from-a-cloud-of-dust Aidan could get nervous, which made my heartbeat quadruple in speed.
“I have a question to ask Henry that I’d like you all to pay witness to. ”
Mom’s right hand shot up from her lap and clutched my forearm as her left found purchase on her cheek. My own cheeks hit new inferno-levels of hot. Tears welled in my eyes. Was this really happening?
“Henry, we’ve spent a spectacular holiday season together. It’s been amazing working with you on the charity ball—I mean, revolving window display. I’m so happy to have met you, and I’m so lucky to love you,” he said.
Love me? I sputtered at this turn of events. Also, was he quoting that cheesy CMC movie to me right now?
Swiftly, he got down on one knee. He opened the box to display the vintage Art Deco engagement band I’d bought several months ago for Cam, and it hit me.
My memory vortexed me back to thirteen years old. I stood in the front window of Isla’s Attic as a mannequin—this very mannequin before I had any idea he had the potential for humanity—proposed marriage to me. The very same night I swore—I swore!—he winked at me through the glass as Mom drove away.
I’d wished for the perfect man and somehow manifested this perfect moment.
But… but…
After what Alexa said to me in the kitchen, under the unwavering gaze of all these family members who lived their own perfect love stories, I felt so imperfect, unworthy, and most importantly, unable to speak.
Mom pushed me up to standing. My heart threw itself against my rib cage, and my vision blurred at the edges.
Everyone sucked in a breath. It felt like they’d slurped up all the oxygen in the room.
“Henry Aster,” Aidan said, eyes full of stars. “Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”
How many times had I playacted this exact scenario? How many times had I dreamed of being proposed to under the twinkling lights of a Christmas tree surrounded by my entire family? That didn’t negate the fact that this was almost too perfect. So uncanny that I floated outside my body.
Aidan could be a mannequin again in six days’ time.
I still wasn’t sure if I loved him because if I did love him that meant he’d be human forever, and forever was a long, long time.
Forever was enough time for him to get bored of me, grow to resent me, leave me.
What was stopping him from, on January first, taking the phone, the clothes, and the money I’d given him and leaving just like Xavier, just like Cam?
“I…” I stammered, lightheaded. “I need some air.”
I rushed for the nearest exit without looking back.