Chapter 25
There’s a line of about forty people outside Forest Park’s Meet Santa booth.
And most of them are women.
Turns out someone took a video of Eben last week in his Santa Claus suit and posted it. The internet did what it does best—and dubbed him Daddy Christmas.
Now, women of all ages are lining up to “sit on Santa’s lap.”
I watch one woman squeeze his bicep, and the hair on the back of my neck prickles.
“Who knew we’d need security for this?” Ally says, shaking her head as she collects bill after bill.
The second we arrived and saw the line, she hiked the price of admission ten bucks—and added a new rule: no more actual lap sitting. You get to whisper one thing you want in his ear, give him a quick hug, and be on your merry way.
I watch another woman lean in and murmur something to him. Eben’s eyes widen. His cheeks flush.
I roll up my sleeve like a cartoon character.
“Why I oughta—”
Ally grips my shoulder and yanks me back. “Chill, Popeye.”
Four hours and two hundred people later, Forest Park is two thousand dollars richer for Christmas.
“Jesus,” Ally says, finishing her count. “You’re a cash cow, Daddy Christmas!”
Eben licks a snow cone as a group of middle-aged women pass by, giggling like schoolgirls.
I try not to pout.
I fail spectacularly.
He bumps my shoulder. “Cherry or blue raspberry?”
“I don’t know,” I grumble. “Cherry, I guess.”
A second later, something cold brushes my lips.
I glance down—he’s holding a spoonful of cherry ice to my mouth, grin lazy and infuriating. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but I can’t help it—I still kind of want to kill him.
“It’s like thirty degrees out,” I grumble.
“We’re inside,” he shoots back. “And they’re blasting the heat like it’s minus thirty.”
I’m not usually the jealous type, but watching all those women fawn over him, touching him like they’re auditioning for Santa’s Naughty List?
Yeah. It did something to me.
I roll my eyes and part my lips, and he slides the spoon in. His eyes track my tongue as I lick the syrup from my lips.
He leans in and murmurs, “Nobody sits on Santa’s lap like you, baby.”
My cheeks blaze.
“Christ, I’m right fucking here!”
Ally’s head swivels like she’s in The Exorcist, glare sharp enough to cut down a Christmas tree.
He backs away slowly, snow cone and spoon raised in surrender.
Once Eben finishes his snow cone—and I’m (mostly) finished pouting—we tear down the Meet Santa setup and load everything into his truck. When we’re finally settled, Ally pops her head between the front seats and pinches both our cheeks. “Okay, kids… what are we doing?”
I shoot a sheepish glance at Eben in the driver’s seat. His mouth is stained from a red-blue sugar combo, and I’ve spent the last half hour imagining kissing the purple off his lips, preferably in front of his fan club.
I’m sure he’s ready to go home. Maybe watch some football and mentally prep for Monday. We’ve been together almost two days straight. He has to be sick of me, right?
But when I look over, he’s watching me—waiting for my cue.
I bite my lip, still staring at his. He notices and grins.
“Because I’m third-wheeling so hard right now,” Ally says, exasperated, “and I’d like to know if this is going to turn into a live sex show or a lunch run.”
Eben’s eyes sparkle. “What do you say, Melody? Lunch… or an early Christmas present for Ally?”
I’m going to die.
Ally claps her hands and squeals. “I like this guy. Can we keep him?”
I glance over at him, a little shy, warmth blooming in my chest. I’m happy—thrilled—that my favorite person in the world likes my… well, whatever Eben is becoming to me.
“So, golden boy, how do you feel about the golden arches?”
Three large fries (extra salt), and six cheeseburgers later—three for Ally—we’re parked in the McDonald’s lot, inhaling lunch in Eben’s truck, heat blasting, the center console doing tray-table duty.
“Mmm. Tastes like bad morals,” I say, shoving a delightfully wrinkly french fry into my mouth.
Ally sticks her tongue out at me. With her Cleveland Guardians cap pulled low over her eyes and a fry dangling from her mouth like a cigarette, I can’t help but think that she looks so much like she did when we were in high school—tomboy charm, full of attitude and junk food.
Though now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time Ally asked for fast food. Usually, drive-thru runs are reserved for post-doctor visits, sick days, or when I’m bribing her.
I reach over to test her forehead for a fever. She swats me away like a mosquito.
“So tell me…” she says, slurping her Coke. “What’s with the cookie-baking marathon?”
“Missy gave us a list of errands for the pageant,” I say.
“What kind of errands?”
I hand her my phone so she can read the checklist I copied from Missy’s clipboard.
Her eyes skim down the list. Her lips twist.
“Soooo… you’re staging a Christmas fever dream for one seriously over-nogged nursing home administrator?”
“In her defense,” Eben says, not looking up from his burger, “the nursing home’s severely understaffed.”
Ally groans, crumples her wrapper, and shoots it into the carryout bag like a basketball.
“Fiiiiine, I’ll help.”
“What? Ally, you don’t have to—”
“Shhhh.” She presses a fry-salted finger to my lips. “I want to. You need me.” She dusts off her hands. “Besides, I’m the only one here with theater experience.”
My brain flashes back to Ally’s standing ovation as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, our senior year. Onstage or off, nobody can verbally spar like Ally.
Still doesn’t explain her sudden interest in our Christmas errands.
“Let me get this straight,” I say, eyeing her with suspicion. “You want to help with Christmas errands?”
Ally has never—not once—offered to do any kind of Christmas errands with me. She is the kind of holiday celebrator who shows up on the day. Maybe Christmas Eve, if someone else is cooking and the booze is good.
Sure, she’ll plan the fundraiser, organize the bake sale, and boss the planning committee into tip-top shape. She lives for logistics, not twinkle lights—a doer, not a dreamer.
Trinket shopping? Baking? Decorating?
She’d rather poke herself in the eye with a sharp stick.
She avoids my eyes when she says, “Yes. I love Christmas.”
Eben groans. “Oh no. Not another one.”
I glance between them. “Don’t worry. Ally’s just okay with Christmas.”
“It’s like you don’t even know me,” she says, clutching her chest in mock offense.
“I do know you,” I say, rolling my eyes. “That’s exactly the problem.”
She smirks. “Relax, Frosty. I don’t have to love Christmas to be good at it.”
That’s Ally in a nutshell—give her a clipboard and a cause, and she’ll run the North Pole like a Fortune 500.
Ally scrolls through Missy’s list. “Okay, what's next?”
“Hmmm,” I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest and narrowing my eyes at her.
She ignores me and stops on a line that makes her snort.
“Feathered angel wings?” Ally eyes me like that shit is bananas. She squints at the note again. “And make sure they’re real feathers?”
Her eyebrow shoots up. “Is this a shopping list or a scavenger hunt?”
I shrug, and it’s my turn to avoid eye contact. “Yeah, Missy is directing the seniors in a choir number before the pageant. She has a vision. She also has a thing against synthetic materials.“
“God,” Eben mutters. “Getting old is so humiliating.”
I glance at him, lost in his own thoughts, and wonder just how loaded that statement is for him.
“Where the hell are you going to get real feathered angel wings? Heaven?” Ally asks.
There’s a long pause. Then, simultaneously, we both look at Eben.
“What?” he asks, brow furrowing. Then, slowly, realization dawns. “Oh no. No, no, no, no.”
Heaven, all right. And my freaking version of it.
My eyes widen. I squeal.
“Please, please, please.” I clasp my hands, trying not to jump up and down and rock the truck.
“Come on, Mr. Scrooge,” Ally adds, attempting a pout. It’s not really her vibe—she mostly just looks like she smelled something weird.
“Where else can we get angel wings with real feathers?” I ask, hearts in my eyes.
“There’s only one place I know,” Ally says.
Eben lets out a long, defeated sigh.
When we roll up to Golding Home, excitement rushes through me like I just snorted a pound of crushed-up candy canes.
The parking lot’s small, shared with a hardware store. I feel a twinge of guilt as Eben barely squeezes his truck into a spot and idles.
“All right, see you ladies soon.”
“You’re not coming in?” I ask. I know it’s pushy. I’ve been inside Golding Home a million times—if they had a loyalty program, I’d have Platinum status (and my bank account would weep)—but I want him there.
I know things are strained with his dad, but selfishly, I still want to be introduced to him.
I want to see the store through his eyes—not as the Christmas-obsessed menace I am, but as his home turf.
The place he grew up. The place he works—the place he’s paid for, in more ways than one, to keep running.
“You already know your way around,” Eben says, eyeing the sweeping double doors wrapped in pre-lit garland, poinsettias, and more tinsel than a 1950s Christmas movie—like they’re gussying up the gates of Hell.
Ally starts to fumble her way out of the truck, not caring one way or the other if Eben comes with us. To her, this is just another store. She’s lived here her whole life and probably set foot inside twice.
I feel bad for dragging him here on his day off. But he does work here, so how bad could it be?
“Don’t you work here, bud?” Ally asks, slugging his shoulder. There she goes, reading my mind again. “I work from home, mostly,” Eben says.
He’s clearly torn, eyes flicking between me and the tinsel-gilded gates of his own personal Hell.
I can’t help it—I hit him with the biggest puppy-dog eyes I can muster, plus a bonus lip tremble.
He swallows and looks away, white-knuckling the steering wheel as if we might physically drag him out of the car (I won’t rule it out).
“Melody can tell you the whole story,” he says to the dashboard.
It’s cute that he thinks I haven’t already.
I inhale, ready to launch into my dramatic recap—like I didn’t call Ally the second I found out about his mom—
But before I can breathe a word of my Oscar-winning performance, Eben lifts a hand.
“Later, please.”
I nod and flick a quick, knowing look at Ally, who’s currently half in, half out of the car.
Not that it matters. Because, as much as I feel for Eben—for everything his dad put him through—everyone has their weaknesses.
And my kryptonite? One-of-a-kind Christmas trinkets.
Ally and I slide out of the truck and start toward the entrance—when someone catches my hand.
I look down at our interlaced fingers, then up at Eben. His smile is weak, and he looks a little green around the gills, but he’s doing it anyway.
My heart swells.