Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Nick
The hat itches like hell. Cheap, scratchy polyester, hot as sin under fluorescent lights. I’d rip it off if it didn’t risk blowing my cover, and I’ve waited too long to get this close to her.
The fake beard’s already shoved in my jacket pocket; I couldn’t stand its fibers scraping my skin another second.
Nobody seems to care that Santa’s missing his beard, anyway.
The kids don’t notice. The parents don’t either.
They just want a picture, proof they did Christmas right.
A glossy card they can mail out as evidence of their happiness. Frauds. All of them.
But I’m not here for them.
I shift on the oversized red throne, the velvet cushion squeaking under my weight.
I’ve been sitting here almost an hour, jingling bells and ho-ho-hoing on autopilot, but my attention keeps drifting to the mall’s main entrance.
Waiting. The plastic armrest groans quietly as I grip it, feigning a jolly wave at a toddler while my heart hammers against my ribs.
There she is.
Sharp black coat. High-heeled boots that look like they could draw blood if she stepped on you. Sunglasses she doesn’t need indoors. Her dark hair twisted up tight, like she dares the world to try and muss her. Meredith.
She cuts through the crowd like the only person here who actually knows where she’s going.
Shoppers and blinking lights blur around her; people sidestep without realizing they’re yielding.
The whole atrium feels like a snow globe someone shook too hard—kids shrieking, lights flashing, speakers blaring—and she moves through the chaos untouched.
Untouchable to everyone but me.
I sit up straighter on Santa’s seat, gloved hands resting on my knees in a parody of St. Nick’s pose, tracking her every move.
She doesn’t glance my way—of course she doesn’t; I’m just another piece of scenery—but my gaze clings to her like static.
She strides past storefronts with a clipboard in one hand, phone pressed to her ear with the other.
Head high, spine straight, voice clipped as she barks instructions at some underling.
She looks like she’s conquering territory.
In a way, she is.
This place is hers. The lavish holiday displays, the ten-foot candy canes, the snowflake decals slapped on every window—her work.
She designed the winter wonderland choking this mall in tinsel.
She doesn’t just run the show; she built it.
Every December she swoops in to make sure revenue flows and the “magic” stays marketable.
But none of it is real. Not to her.
I know, because she told me once, on a Christmas that smelled like bleach and canned green beans instead of cinnamon and pine. We were kids in a hallway with peeling wallpaper, not a chandelier in sight.
“I hate Christmas,” she whispered, voice fierce and low, like she was confessing a crime. “It’s fake. It’s just another day where people pretend they give a shit.”
She was thirteen then, all sharp cheekbones and sharper anger. I was twelve, sullen and quiet. The first time she said it, something in my chest sat up and listened.
I already hated Christmas too—but for different reasons.
For me, it was the day my mother packed a suitcase and left.
Merry Christmas, kiddo. She said she “needed some air,” that I’d be “better off” with someone else.
Then the door slammed, and it stayed slammed.
The snow outside kept falling like nothing had happened, like the world hadn’t just gone hollow.
The state came next. And eventually, so did Meredith.
Tough. Angry. Smarter than everyone. She didn’t cry when bullies snapped her pencil in half.
She didn’t whine when dinner was thin soup and stale bread.
She never begged anyone for anything. She was all spine and stubbornness and bite, and I loved her the second I realized she saw through the same bullshit I did.
She was my anchor in that storm, whether she knew it or not.
Now she’s all grown up and lethal, gliding through the world she carved out for herself. My chest tightens at the sight of her in those sleek heels and that don’t-fuck-with-me coat.
She doesn’t recognize me. Her gaze slides right over the man in the red suit without a flicker of interest. To her, I’m just cheap velvet and bells. Nothing.
The boy who used to sleep on her floor flinches inside my ribs at being overlooked.
My gloved hands curl into fists on my lap, leather creaking softly.
I hate that she doesn’t see me. That she’s forgotten me.
But ignorance is temporary. I’ve come too far and waited too long to remain unseen.
I swallow back the bitterness and allow myself a small, secret smile.
I’ll remind you, Meredith.
My lips shape the words soundlessly as I watch her: I’ll make you remember why Christmas is so special.
In my head, it’s Christmas Eve in that house again.
The hallway reeks of bleach and overcooked vegetables, and the linoleum is so cold it burns through my socks.
Meredith crouches in front of me in the half-dark, knees popping, a chipped paper plate balanced on one hand.
“I’m not hungry,” I mutter, stomach growling loud enough to make the lie pathetic.
She just snorts and slides her second cookie onto my plate anyway, fingers brushing mine like she’s daring me to push it back.
Later, when the yelling downstairs spikes high and sharp, I’m on the thin mattress beside her bed, staring at the brown water stain on the ceiling while her hand dangles over the edge, palm open.
I take it, and the noise dulls, like someone shut a door between us and the rest of the world.
She was the only good thing in that place.
In years of gray, she was the one thing that didn’t feel rotten.
She’ll probably never know the full extent of what she did for me—how just knowing someone else out there hated the world the way I did made it bearable.
In a system that treated us like paperwork, she made me feel like I wasn’t a mistake.
Meredith saved me.
In some ways, she saved herself too—that hardness, that ability to numb out, it kept her alive.
But I saw the fissures then, even if she never shed a tear.
And I see them now, beneath the power suits and perfectly controlled tone.
She’s lonely, even if she’d rather die than admit it.
I see it in the way her shoulders drop the second she thinks no one’s looking, like she’s shrugging out of a coat that doesn’t fit.
A flash of red velvet in my peripheral vision yanks me back to the present. A little girl in a dress that matches the bows on the mall wreaths stands a few feet away, clutching her mother’s hand and eyeing me like I might bite.
Show time.
I paste on a warm Santa smile and beckon her closer. She clambers into my lap, patent shoes digging into my knee, sticky fingers gripping a handwritten list that’s longer than her arm. She smells like sugar cookies and the artificial pine from the giant tree behind us.
“Have you been a good girl this year?” I boom, voice deep and jolly.
She nods so hard her hair bow wobbles. “Mostly,” she whispers. “Sometimes I make Daddy mad.”
The words nick something raw inside me. My smile doesn’t falter.
“I’m sure you’re doing just fine,” I tell her, and for a moment it’s not Santa talking at all. Then I clear my throat and slide the mask back on. “Santa’s very proud. I’ll see what I can do about this list, okay?”
She giggles and scrambles down, her mother snapping a photo and thanking me. I barely register it. As the kid runs off, my eyes are already searching for a sharp black coat.
Meredith is only a few yards away now, standing in front of a malfunctioning animatronic reindeer that’s refusing to light up.
She gestures at it with the tip of her pen, giving instructions to one of her assistants.
Clipboard in one hand, phone in the other—multitasking like the world will stop spinning if she doesn’t hold it up herself.
The assistant scribbles frantically, nodding at every word.
Meredith doesn’t spare a single glance in my direction.
She doesn’t see the man in the red suit.
She will. Soon.
My fingers slide into my coat pocket, brushing over the crumpled brown paper there—the leftover scrap from last night. I spent hours wrapping that gift, hands shaking. Not from nerves. From anticipation.
Anyone else would call it what it is. Stalking. Obsession.
I call it paying attention. Catching all the things no one ever caught for us.
I’ve been watching her for weeks now. Waiting.
Planning. All for her. When I saw the seasonal posting go up for “Holiday Character Performers,” I applied that same day.
It’s humiliating work on paper—sweating in a cheap suit while sticky-fingered kids pull at my sleeves—but it got me into her building.
Got me close. Proximity is everything. A mall Santa can wander almost anywhere without being questioned.
I’m just a prop to them, a moving decoration.
That anonymity is exactly what I needed.
From my red velvet perch, I’ve mapped her world.
I know her schedule by heart—when she arrives each morning, when she leaves, which days she stays late to harass the window dressers.
I know she takes her coffee black with two sugars from the gourmet stand by the east escalator at 8:45 a.m. every weekday.
I’ve watched the way she taps the end of her pen against her lower lip while she reviews sales numbers, completely unaware she’s begging someone to lean in and replace the plastic with skin.
God, how I’d like to be that someone.