Chapter 17 Alex
Chapter seventeen
Alex
The truck's engine ticked as it cooled, a metronome counting seconds I wasn't ready to spend. Through the windshield, the theater's back entrance waited—red brick darkened by decades of weather, the stage door's paint peeling in curls that Ben probably itched to sand smooth.
I hadn't moved since he'd parked.
My hand rested over my chest, pressing against the spot where Donner's velvet nose had touched me. The cherry wood carving Ben had given me lay warm against my skin, tucked inside my henley.
"You okay?"
Ben's voice was quiet, unhurried. He'd turned off the ignition three minutes ago and hadn't once suggested we go inside.
The cast would be arriving soon, Holly's special tea would be brewing, and Mrs. Brubaker was probably already wearing a path in the stage floor.
None of that mattered as much to him as giving me space.
"I don't know yet." My honest answer surprised me. Two weeks ago, I would have deflected and performed some version of fine. "I came here to help with a holiday show. I didn't expect—"
I gestured vaguely toward the truck bed, where the toys sat wrapped in soft cloth. "Whatever this is," I finished.
Ben nodded slowly.
I looked at him. Sawdust still clung to his collar from loading the toys.
His hair needed cutting, and there were shadows under his eyes from the hours he'd spent finishing Marcus's gifts.
He was solid and present and completely unrattled by reindeer appearing at his workshop door or toys glowing with combined magic.
"How are you so calm about all this?"
"I'm not." A small smile tugged at his mouth. "I'm just better at hiding it. Blitzen family trait—we're excellent at appearing steady while screaming inside."
I laughed. "Good to know."
"Ask me again after the show. When I'm not holding it together with coffee and denial." He reached across the cab and squeezed my knee once, briefly and warmly. "Ready?"
The theater waited. The cast waited. Children were counting on a show, a community was counting on a fundraiser, and somewhere in the pediatric ward, a boy named Marcus was counting the hours until Santa arrived.
I reached for the door handle.
"Let's go put on a show."
The stage door hadn't fully closed behind me before the chaos hit.
"—can't find the second candy cane, the big one, it was right here twenty minutes ago—"
"—told you the hair gel was mine, Tyler, I literally wrote my name on it—"
"—if someone doesn't help me with this hem in the next thirty seconds, I'm stapling through the fabric, and we'll deal with the consequences—"
Mrs. Brubaker knelt in the corridor outside the women's dressing room, a stapler clenched in one hand and what appeared to be three yards of wayward green velvet in the other.
One of the teenage elves—the girl who'd smoothly rescued Sophie's dropped letter during the run-through—stood on a chair above her, looking mortified.
"It unraveled on its own," the girl said. "I didn't do anything."
"Costumes don't unravel themselves, Megan." Mrs. Brubaker attacked the hem with aggressive stapling. "They unravel because someone decided to practice cartwheels in the wings."
"That was one time!"
I sidestepped them in time to avoid a collision with two child actors sprinting past, scripts clutched to their chests.
One of them was running lines at full volume: "But Mommy, I saw him!
I saw Santa Claus!" The other was cheerfully ad-libbing responses that had nothing to do with the actual show: "And then the elves did a backflip, and the reindeer sneezed glitter! "
"That's not the line, Devon!"
"It's better than the line!"
Somewhere deeper in the theater, something crashed. A voice I didn't recognize shouted, "It's fine! Everything's fine! Nobody panic!"
Ben caught my eye from across the corridor, where Mr. Castellanos, the hardware store owner who'd volunteered to manage props, had intercepted him. The man was gesturing frantically at a piece of the department store window display.
"It started wobbling," Mr. Castellanos said. "Ten minutes ago, it was solid. Now look at it."
Ben ran his hand along the frame, frowning. "The joint's fine. The wood's fine." He crouched to examine the base. "Did someone move it?"
"Nobody touched it!"
I left Ben to his wobbling set mystery and pushed deeper into the backstage labyrinth.
The noise level swelled with each step—hairdryers competing with vocal warmups, the clatter of tap shoes on concrete, and someone's phone blasting a pop song until Mrs. Brubaker's voice cut through, demanding that it stop.
In the doorway of the men's dressing room, Jack stood frozen in front of a mirror. He was already in costume—the perfectly tailored suit of a 1940s department store executive—but his face was ashen.
"I can't remember my lines." His voice came out thin and strangled. "I knew them yesterday. I knew them an hour ago. Now they're just—gone. There's nothing in my head except white noise and business jargon."
Charice appeared behind him, calm as still water in her toy department manager costume. "You've said your lines correctly approximately nine hundred times in rehearsal. They're not gone. They're hiding because you're trying too hard to find them."
"What if I walk out there and open my mouth and nothing comes out?"
"Then I'll step on your foot, and you'll be so busy being outraged that you'll forget to be nervous." She patted his arm. "Works every time."
"That's not comforting!"
"It's not meant to be comforting. It's meant to be true."
I stepped into the room, and Jack's panicked gaze locked onto me like I was a life raft. "Alex. Tell me I'm not going to destroy the show."
"You're not going to destroy the show." I moved to stand beside him, meeting his eyes in the mirror. "And you're not going to forget your lines. You know why?"
"Because Charice will step on my foot?"
"Because you're not thinking about the lines.
You're thinking about failing." I turned him gently away from the mirror—away from the image of himself in costume.
"Remember what we talked about? Fred doesn't care about being perfect.
He cares about Susan. When you're out there, forget the audience.
Forget the stakes. Just look at Charice and react to what she gives you. "
Jack took a shaky breath. "React to Charice."
"She's going to be brilliant, and you're going to fall in love with her all over again, and the words will come because they're the only words that make sense in that moment." I squeezed his shoulder. "Trust the work you've done. Trust her. The rest will take care of itself."
Some color returned to his face. Charice mouthed thank you over his shoulder.
I left them and nearly tripped over Charlie, who was sitting cross-legged in the corridor with his script open on his knees. He stared blankly at the pages.
"Hey." I crouched beside him. "How's Toast doing?"
The question surprised a small smile out of him. "Mom says she's waiting by the door. She knows something's happening." He traced the edge of the script with his fingers. "I'm not scared anymore. Is that weird?"
"Not weird at all. That's what happens when you've done the work."
"It feels different today. Like..." He struggled for words. "Like the theater wants us to do a good job. Like it's helping."
I thought about the set piece that had mysteriously started wobbling, the way the stage lights had flickered in welcome when Ben and I walked in, and the odd warmth that had been pulsing through me since the reindeer pressed their noses to our hearts.
"I think you might be right about that."
Holly materialized at the end of a corridor, watching me with that knowing expression she'd worn since the day I'd fallen on her doorstep. Her patchwork skirt swirled around her ankles, and her bracelets chimed as she pressed a steaming mug into my hands.
"For Santa," she said. "Steady hands, clear voice, open heart."
The tea smelled like cinnamon and something else—something that made me think of sleigh bells and snow-covered pines.
"What's in this one?"
"Nothing you don't already have." She winked. "I'm helping concentrate it."
She vanished into the chaos before I could ask what that meant.
Ben appeared at my elbow a moment later, a screwdriver in one hand and sawdust in his hair. "Set piece is fixed. Turns out one of the carpenters' marks had... shifted."
I sipped Holly's tea. "Shifted?"
"Hard to explain. It's like the wood was waiting for permission to do something." He shook his head. "I've seen a lot of strange things during the Twelve Nights, but this year is next level."
Around us, the chaos continued: costumes being pinned, lines being run, and last-minute crises being averted through sheer force of community will. Standing there with Ben, I felt something I hadn't expected.
I was ready.
The dressing room door clicked shut behind me, and the chaos fell away.
Silence rushed in to fill the space—the dense, anticipatory quiet of a held breath. The room smelled of old wood and decades of greasepaint, traces of every performer who'd prepared within these walls. A single bulb surrounded by a ring of dead ones cast an amber glow.
The Santa suit hung waiting on its padded hanger.
I crossed to it slowly, letting my fingers brush the velvet.
The red had deepened with age and use—not the garish crimson of mall Santas, but something richer—Wine-dark in the shadows, warming to holly-berry in the light.
The white fur trim had been replaced more than once over the years, but the coat itself was original.
Noel's father had worn it—his grandfather before that.
And now me.