2. The Eleventh Day Before Christmas
The Eleventh Day Before Christmas
Scene I
[The same dingy apartment.]
Enter Sebastian. He looks down at Viola, who is huddled up on his couch, unmoving. He sits down beside her and angles his phone at her face.
On the eleventh day before Christmas, I have the world’s biggest headache.
It could be from the hangover, it could be from the lumpy futon that I somehow stumbled to in the middle of the night, or it could be from Sebastian sitting right beside me with his phone shining on full brightness, scrolling non-stop.
“Do you have to do that now?” I moan, through closed eyes.
“I’m trying to find you an extra-bushy beard,” he answers, his words stabbing into my head. “You’re supposed to start tomorrow, which doesn’t leave us with a lot of time.”
I moan.
I know people usually say ‘everything came rushing back’, but that’s not what happens.
Everything—the joblessness, the homelessness, the boyfriendlessness—was already there, just obscured by the previous night’s drinking.
Now, it unmuddies; it comes into focus like a big, wacky, inflatable man, waving to draw attention to the trainwreck that is my life.
I peek an eye open. “You’re not looking at beards. You’re scrolling dating apps.”
Sebastian switches tabs on his phone. “I was looking at beards, but the shiny hair reminded me of her. ” He says the last word with a sigh.
“Your dream girl,” I finish his thought, only half-mocking him.
“My dream girl.”
I roll over on his couch and pull the blanket over my head, facing away from the glaring light of his phone and his wistful, hopeful face. Both are equally as affronting to my sensitive eyes.
He pulls the blanket off my head and keeps talking like I’m not giving him very clear signals to fuck off. He puts the phone in front of me and swipes left on girl after girl.
“None of these are her,” he whines.
“I feel like you could be doing this in your room.”
“She was just so pretty.”
I try to pull the blanket back over my head. The last thing I need is to watch him reject girl after girl, all of whom are objectively far prettier than me, before I’ve had any coffee.
“And we had such a connection.”
I roll my eyes, which feels like hot coals rolling around in my eye sockets. In the two days since they met, I’ve heard about this mystical connection until I cursed myself for being born with the misfortune of having ears.
“I thought me and Mal had a connection,” I mutter.
Sebastian pauses in his dreamy reminiscence to look disgusted. “That’s because Hannibal Lector started dating you before your brain fully developed.”
Okay, that one hurts as much as my hangover.
Still muttering to myself, I try yet again to cocoon myself into my blanket, but Sebastian just pulls the blanket off me. Again.
“If you and this dream girl had such a connection, then where is she?”
Sebastian narrows his eyes at me. “Not funny. You know I broke my arm.”
I smile. It was, in fact, very funny. To me.
Unfortunately, at birth, our luck was not divided equally.
Historically, everything has always worked out for Sebastian.
He’s the type of guy who travels abroad with nothing but the clothes on his back and he gets offered meals and places to stay by nearly every random person he meets.
He gets job offers and phone numbers thrown at him like confetti at a wedding.
I don’t get anything thrown at me, aside from metaphorical shit.
I literally can’t think of anything that hasn’t worked out for him—except for the other night.
The other night, he lost his dream girl, his easy job, and broke his arm.
Sure, that was also the night that everything went down the toilet for me, but at least I wasn’t alone in getting stomped all over by life for once.
“Stop smiling,” he grumbles, shoving at my arm.
“I’m not smiling.” I totally am.
“I’m heartbroken.” He clutches at his chest dramatically—unironically, but dramatically all the same.
“And I’m not? Mal and I—”
Sebastian throws my pillow at my head. “Don’t say his name in my apartment. I’ll need to hire a priest to perform an exorcism or something.”
I push the pillow away from my face. “We were together for—”
“For too long.” He throws the pillow back at me. “Trash took itself out.”
I bite back the urge to point out that it looks like his apartment has literally never had anyone take the trash out. “You never liked him.”
“The guy who encouraged my sister to drop out of university so that she could support him through med school?” he deadpans. “You don’t say.”
I pull the blanket tighter around me. Sebastian’s still holding onto it with his good arm, so I don’t have any chance of pulling it over my head. Apparently, after a lifetime together, he’s onto my tricks.
“It wasn’t like that. I hadn’t technically started the program.”
Sebastian nods. “You’re right. It was worse. At least if you had started it, you would’ve known if it was right for you or not.”
I roll away from him. “You’re an asshole. I’m glad karma broke your arm.”
He pulls at my shoulder, trying to get me to turn around to face him again. I’m not budging though. He can force me to uncocoon, but he can’t force me to face the world.
“For your information, love broke my arm. Dream girl flipped her beautiful hair over her beautiful shoulder—”
“And the beautiful bar railing broke, leaving you to fall down half a flight of beautiful stairs to break your beautiful arm in the middle of your beautiful conversation,” I finish.
Sebastian flicks my earlobe. “Your sarcasm is noted and not appreciated. I leaned back in complete awe of her beauty”—I once again roll my eyes; although, with me facing the couch, the barb is a little dulled— “then the railing broke, and my dreams of settling down with her disappeared as my ambulance drove away.” He sighs. “I never even got her name.”
Of course, the rest of the story ends with the entirety of my life going down the crapper, but he doesn’t care. He only cares about a girl he talked to for ten minutes at a bar.
“Tragic,” I mutter, shuffling closer to the back of the couch and away from the world.
For a while, I’m not sure he heard me. He doesn’t respond, at least. Instead, we just sit in our palpable heartbreak in the middle of the dirtiest apartment known to man.
Two days ago, I was in a beautiful apartment in a relationship with a doctor.
Today, I’m on a futon that smells like boxed macaroni.
“Hey,” Sebastian says gently, squeezing my shoulder gently, “you know this breakup is a good thing, right? You are way too good for that asshole.”
Something, either laughter or a sob, bubbles up in my chest. I always knew I was lucky to have Mal.
Tall, good-looking, a (future) doctor—he had it all.
I’m just a tall, broad-shouldered girl, who sometimes gets mistaken for my twin brother, with no degree, and who is constantly an emotional mess.
I’ll be lucky if I ever find anyone, let alone someone like Mal.
So, instead of responding to him, I close my eyes and will everything away.
“Come on,” Sebastian prods. “You just have to get back in the game a little and you’ll see how shitty things were.”
I grunt. “Not only am I never getting back in the game, I’m also never getting off this couch.” My breath comes out a little too ragged, a little too close to the sobs I feel building at the back of my throat. “I’m just done with everything. I can’t do it anymore, Seb. I can’t.”
Once again, there’s silence. I assume he’s gone back to swiping through dating apps in search of his dream girl—although, he’d probably be sighing more if he did that.
After a few minutes, he finally speaks. “Well, you’ll have to get off the couch tomorrow anyways.”
“No,” I mutter, my face now fully pressed into the grimy fabric of his couch. “Never leaving. I am the couch, and it is me. We are one.”
“You have to. You start at Snowspruce tomorrow.”
“Right. Sure. Snowspruce tomorrow.”
He pulls me back out of the couch. “I’m serious. You’re starting tomorrow. You promised last night, Vi.”
I squint at him, the sun stabbing daggers into my eyeballs. I certainly don’t remember promising him. I remember a lot of talk about it and practicing my Santa voice. I remember agreeing to it, but not promising.
“Be serious.”
Sebastian sets down his phone. The fact that he actually looks away from it and forces his eyes on me lets me know that he’s serious. “You promised .”
I sit up, scanning his face for any hint of levity. “You can’t be serious? I’m in no condition to work right now. My life is…” I gesture. There aren’t any words for how shitty my life is right now—although his apartment is a good visual representation of it.
“And what about my life? I just got the job. I can’t lose it before I’ve even worked a single day. If I do, I won’t get re-hired for next year. We talked about this. You agreed. ”
I close my eyes. He can’t seriously be asking this of me. Not now. I’ve done so much for him. I give and I give, but I have nothing left to give.
There’s nothing left of me to give.
“Sebastian…”
“Please? Remember, you can keep all the money, even. I just really need this job for next year. Think of what you can do with that bonus. Your work is closed until January, and I know there’s no way you have any savings with you supporting Lucifer.
Especially since, despite what he told you, he’s not going to give you a thing.
He’s not giving up the apartment or give you back any of the damage deposit or any of the rent he owes you.
He’s going to look after himself, and that’s it.
” He blinks those big blue eyes at me—my eyes.
Well, what my eyes would look like if my spark hadn’t gone out.
“Please, Vi. For us?” He pauses. “For me?”
I sigh. There wasn’t ever really a question of if I’d say yes or not. I always say yes. At least he said please, though. Mal never said please, and I still gave him absolutely everything.
“Fine,” I mumble, pushing the blankets off me. I guess I have to shower. And brush my teeth. And put on clean underwear. God, that feels like a lot. “But you owe me.”
“Big time,” he agrees.
I shake my head. Like Mal, Sebastian has never once paid me back for anything—couch surfing aside.
“But you’re going to do all the work of tracking down that extra bushy beard for me.”
“On it!”
He’s not. I can see that he’s already back on a dating app, looking for his girl. I make a grumbling noise in the back of my throat. One more thing for me to do today . Since I don’t have any time to waste, I get going with the day. I suppose I can always wallow later.
With that, I get off the couch. I have to. Tomorrow I’m Santa Claus, after all.
Exit Viola to the bathroom. Sebastian looks up from his phone and smiles. Then, he starts to fold up her blankets.