14. The Fifth Night Before Christmas
The Fifth Night Before Christmas
Scene II
[Closing time on the Santa loft balcony.]
Viola, as Santa, and Olivia chat. Olivia stands very close to Viola, who edges towards the door into the loft.
After the morning’s excitement of having Duke ask me (as Viola) out, the rest of the day was relatively uneventful. Until now.
Since today was the last Friday before Christmas, we mostly had school groups in. So, while Snowspruce as a whole was extremely busy, my station was dead. Apparently, no one wants to get Santa pictures with their teacher. Go figure.
This meant that Olivia and I were able to do a lot of our cleanup while we were still open. That’s how, just a handful of minutes after close, Olivia and I were done with our station and ready to go.
It was still early enough that I was pretty certain the guys would be busy cleaning up the tornado that was their station for at least twenty more minutes. That would give me enough time to change and sneak out of the village without anyone noticing.
However, now that I’m standing on the little balcony leading into the Santa loft, I see the glaring flaw in my plan: Olivia. She stands, leaning against the door, chatting away, unaware that she’s blocking my escape.
“Then there was Stefan, who cheated on me with a bus driver. While she was driving her bus route.” For a second, Olivia looks upset, then she shakes her head and smiles. “The fact that the bus finished its route on time even after they fucked behind some bushes speaks to his sexual prowess.”
We laugh. It’s the soul-soothing laughter that comes from twin pain, the healing of seeing your pain mirrored in someone else. For a moment, Olivia’s eyes meet mine. The laughter fades and is replaced with something else.
I redirect.
“I don’t get it. How have you been cheated on four times by four different guys?” And I truly don’t get it. I had assumed that Mal cheated on me because I’m, well, me. But Olivia is Olivia, so… why?
“It was actually five,” she says, splaying her fingers in front of her. “I’m not done with my stories.”
“Five!” I practically yell, half in my Santa voice, half not. “You do know you’re incredibly attractive, right? Like you could have your pick of any guy. You don’t have to keep picking the garbage ones.”
Pot, meet kettle. She may have been cheated on, but at least she didn’t put any of those assholes through med school.
“Well, it’s not like they tell you they’re shit up front,” she says.
I nod along because, yes. It happens in pieces, not all at once.
Each indiscretion is like a tiny snowflake that falls.
One alone is nothing, just a slight shiver on what was once purely warm skin.
Then, they start to add up. There isn’t one single snowflake that’s too much.
They all accumulate, though. Before long, you’re suffocating and shivering, with no memory of warmth and no idea how to get out.
“At least you got out when you saw the red flags. I stayed for years with my ex.”
Olivia tilts her head, curious. “You’ve heard all my stories now. What about yours? What did she do?”
She. Right.
I shake my head. “Too fresh.”
Olivia takes a step towards me. “Well, she was an idiot to hurt you,” she says, her voice a touch deeper and smoother than it normally is.
“I was an idiot to stay.”
“And I was an idiot to fall, again and again for guys like those.” She looks at me, taking another step towards me. “I should have known I needed a different guy. A guy like none I’ve ever known.”
I nod, thinking of Duke. I couldn’t dream up a man more of Mal’s opposite. “That’s exactly what we need sometimes. Someone completely different. Someone who sees us in a way the others don’t.”
Olivia reaches for my hand and laces her fingers in between mine. It’s a comforting gesture—we’re both, after all, on the same journey.
“I met this guy not too long ago who I really liked. He wound up ghosting me—sort of. It's complicated. You remind me of him. You’re both just different. ” I smile a little.
I may not believe her just yet, but I’m getting there.
“Like him, you really listen to me. You see me for more than what I look like. Plus, you both have such beautiful eyes…”
I freeze. Wait, what?
And then it registers. She’s standing as close as she can get with my Santa belly in the way, she’s holding my hand, she’s looking at me with her head tilted up and mouth parted…
“Olivia—” I hedge, wondering how to let her down gently when she’s been pouring her heart out to me.
“Sebastian,” she whispers back.
Before I can even register what she's doing, she winds her hand around the back of my Santa be-wigged head and pulls me in for a kiss. Her lips ghost mine, just the barest hint of a brush, until my brain computes what's happening, and I react.
With a sudden neck of steel, I pull back and lock myself in place, for once over the moon that I’m too tall for her to easily reach with her lips.
The prettiest little wrinkle of a frown appears between Olivia’s eyebrows as she can’t quite compute why we’re not kissing.
She rises on her tiptoes to kiss me, but I just pull back further.
Finally, she opens her eyes. The frown on her face deepens, no doubt as she sees my contortionist-esque posture as I bend away from her.
“You don’t want to kiss me?”
Heartbreak splinters through her eyes like cracks on a spring ice underfoot.
Aside from lying to Duke, this is by far the shittiest thing I’ve ever done.
I’m going to make her feel all sorts of feelings that she doesn’t deserve, that she won’t understand, and I won’t even be able to explain anything because I have to keep this stupid charade up.
How do I do this? How do I tell her that I don’t want to kiss her without making her feel like Mal always made me feel?
“You’re… not my type.”
She flinches, immediately dropping her hands from me. “Not your type?”
“I mean, you’re a beautiful girl…”
Embarrassment and heartbreak flood her face, but something else sneaks in: tenacity. Between being rich, smart, and beautiful, I doubt there’s much that Olivia’s been denied.
“We get along, don’t we?”
I nod. We really do. I wish things were different and we could be friends. I need someone like her in my life. I’m more myself, more proud of myself, around her. We both shine without dimming the other person.
“Then, why not? We click. We make each other laugh. I can talk to you like I’ve never been able to talk to anyone. I feel like I’ve known you my whole life. So, why not?”
Her eyes shine with tears as she looks up at me. This time, it’s me who reaches for her. I take her hand in the way I had hoped she was taking mine and squeeze.
“I feel all those things too. I value you and this friendship more than I can say, but that doesn’t mean we’re meant for something more.”
Before Duke, I’m not sure I would have said this. I would have believed that compatibility would be enough. Now that I’ve felt it, felt the way the heat between Duke and I transcends any barriers that I manage to put between us, I want more. I want it all.
“Tell me, do you truly feel it?” I continue. “That spark you felt with that guy before he went MIA, do you feel it? Do you like me, in a romantic way, or do you just like someone liking you for you?”
Olivia keeps her hand in mine, except now it feels like she’s holding on in earnest. Like I’m anchoring her.
“I like you,” she says, although it sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself.
“But is there a spark? Is there something that we need deeper than friendship?”
Her lips press together as she looks up at me. “We can’t know until we try.”
With that, she throws her hand, the one not holding mine, around my neck again. In that same motion, she falls into me, pressing against every groove of my fake belly. Dangerously close to my chest. My ample, womanly chest.
She closes her eyes as her mouth parts prettily. I feel like I should be taking notes. Even though I’m not attracted to her, I feel a strange compulsion to kiss her. She’s just set the scene so well, it feels almost rude not to.
Whenever I try to get a guy to kiss me, I probably look like a fish with a—
“Daaammnnn!” comes a chorus of voices.
I flinch, trying to wrench myself away from Olivia, but the balcony is small, and she’s got a surprisingly good grip on me.
“Sebastian?” Duke asks.
He’s the first one up the narrow steps. His eyes are wide as they dart between the two of us. Olivia’s eyes are closed as she leans in, still fully expecting this kiss.
“More like king !” Curio adds, leaning against the railing to get a good look at us from his place behind Duke on the stairs.
“Does this mean I’m out of the running?” Valentine asks.
This is enough to make Olivia open her eyes. “You were never in the running. In fact, none of you even made the ballot,” she snaps at him. She gives my hand a little squeeze—the hand that’s still holding her own.
I pull my hand out of hers. Duke catches the motion. His face plays the constant refrain of heartbreak I’ve been dishing out today.
“It’s not…” I start. “I wouldn’t…”
“You definitely were before these guys showed up,” Olivia mutters.
I glare at her.
“How’d you do it?” yells Captain from the back of the line on the stairs. “Was it poetry? Because I’ve been trying to learn the ukulele and I think I have this one song that—”
“It wasn’t poetry!” Olivia and I both say at the same time. Despite everything, we smile. Captain is just so…Captain. Of course, he thinks a ukulele is the way to a woman’s heart.
Duke finishes climbing the steps. He stands as far away from us as possible, holding me with his dark stare and clenching jaw.
Unfortunately, the other Santas don’t get the memo about the real estate shortage up here.
They follow Duke up onto the small balcony, pushing everyone together until we’re bunched up like sardines.
On one side of me, Olivia is still looking at me, batting her eyes and somehow making her lips look impossibly glisten-y.
On the other side of me is Duke, scowling in a way I never imagined that he could scowl.
Unsurprisingly, I’m very into it, which is just all sorts of wrong, given that he’s still wearing his Santa costume.
“So, are you two dating?” asks Valentine from somewhere behind the wall of scowl that is Duke.
“Are you?” Duke breathes in my ear, too quietly for anyone else to hear.
“Yeah, are you two boinking?” calls Curio.
There’s a sharp inhale from Duke. When I chance a look at him, an undercurrent of pain is etched in the lines of his face.
“After whatever that was that happened between us in the shed yesterday?” he murmurs.
I glare at him. “Didn’t you ask out my sister this morning?”
At least he has the right to look abashed. Still hurt, though.
Olivia laughs. “We’re just feeling things out right now.” She grabs my hand again , albeit awkwardly in the cramped space on the balcony.
I roll my eyes. I love Olivia, but she truly has no concept that she might actually be getting turned down. I extricate my hand from hers.
“Nothing is going on with me and Olivia,” I say, my eyes locked firmly on Duke’s.
“That didn’t look like nothing!” yells Curio. The other guys ‘ ooh ’.
Duke’s eyes hold fast to mine. Even though it goes against my mantra of aloof and cold and distant, I give a small shake of my head. I couldn’t bear to let him think I’m anything other than his—even for a moment.
The faintest of smiles appears on his face as he somehow fills my space more completely. It’s like having the sun come back after months of rain.
“It’s definitely not nothing,” Olivia cuts in.
Hurt flickers back in Duke’s eyes. Despite myself, I snap. I love Olivia, but my heart breaks or heals with Duke.
“We are nothing. Olivia is not my type. I like her as a friend and that’s absolutely it. For now and forever.”
And fuck me if I don’t want to swallow those words as soon as I say them. The guys, perpetually boisterous, fall silent. Not a single sound breaks the stillness of the night, until the sound of a muffled sob shatters it.
“Excuse me,” Olivia says, pushing past us.
Her exit jostles us enough that Captain backs down onto the stairs again. There’s once again room for me to back away from Duke, from the heady, dizzy feeling he gives me whenever he’s too close.
“We should talk,” Duke says, leaning in towards me again.
I don’t let myself look at him. If I do, I don’t have a hope. Instead, I watch as Olivia half runs down the stairs, wiping her arm against the flood of tears on her cheeks.
Olivia, who bared her past embarrassments to me, who’s been nothing but a good friend to me. Olivia who’s been cheated on and stepped on by men. I hurt her. I hurt her, just like I’m going to hurt Duke.
“Sure,” I say to Duke, stepping away from him towards the balcony. “We can talk right after I change.”
It’s a lie. A small one compared to all the lies I’ve told him—all the lies I’ve lived around him. I sigh. I’m no better than his ex.
I slip inside the loft, trying to avoid looking at his trusting face. When this is all over, I vow to just ghost him. Me disappearing might hurt, but at least he can think of me fondly. At least he won’t think of me as a liar. At least he won’t know how thoroughly he’s been lied to.
I lock the door to the loft bathroom, then go about the business of taking off my costume.
As I do, I can’t help but stare at myself in the mirror.
I don’t recognize myself in the costume.
I don’t recognize myself out of the costume.
I certainly don’t recognize myself as I open the window to sneak out and climb down onto the barn roof.
I try to leave that girl far behind me, with all her betrayal and lies, as I unlock my phone to shine a light on my escape route.
When I look at my screen, I see I have my usual dozens of texts and missed calls from women who have seen my brother’s poster. One message among the plethora of unknown numbers is attached to a name—one is from Mal.
It says: Hey
I’m beyond scared as I climb down the decorative candy cane that leans against the barn roof, not just because I’m afraid this decoration will snap under my weight.
I’m also scared because I’m walking away from the sound of laughter in the loft.
And with my phone weighing heavy in my pocket, it feels an awful lot like I’m walking towards Mal.
Exit Viola down the candy cane leaning against the barn roof with her beard tucked under her arm. Her Santa suit lies in a pile on the bathroom floor.
Duke waits outside the bathroom door, even as the other Santas change and leave.