Chapter 17 Alex #2
I undressed methodically, folding my street clothes and setting them aside.
The first layer went on easily—the padded undershirt that would give Santa his comfortable bulk.
It settled around my torso with surprising weight, not uncomfortable but present.
A reminder that I was building someone new over the framework of myself.
The pants came next, heavy wool with perfect pleats that spoke of Mrs. Brubaker's careful stewardship. The suspenders. The wide black belt, polished to a warm gleam, with its brass buckle.
I saved the coat for last.
The velvet whispered against my arms as I slid them through the sleeves. The weight of it settled across my shoulders like a mantle. I fastened each button slowly—mother-of-pearl, Mrs. Brubaker had told me, harvested from the river that ran through the valley a hundred years ago.
In the mirror, a stranger looked back at me.
Not quite Santa. Not quite Alex. Someone in between—in the process of becoming.
I retrieved Ben's cherry wood carving from my discarded henley and slipped it into the coat's inner pocket, positioning it over my heart. The warmth spread through the velvet immediately, subtle but unmistakable.
Maybe I'm not pretending anymore.
The thought arrived without fanfare. For fifteen years, I'd built a career on transformation—becoming Danny Zuko, becoming ensemble member number six, becoming whoever the role required.
This time it was different.
I wasn't putting on a character. I was letting something out.
Something that had been there all along, buried under technique and ambition and the desperate need to prove I deserved the spotlight.
The part of me that had sat on my grandmother's floor as a child, believing in magic.
The part that had sung "Silent Night" to a theater full of strangers at age six, finding her face in the crowd and meaning every note.
A soft knock interrupted my thoughts. The door opened a crack, and Ben's voice came through—"Decent?"
"Depends on your definition." I turned from the mirror. "Come in."
He slipped inside and stopped, something flickering across his face. Surprise, maybe. Or wonder. He stood there looking at me in the half-buttoned coat with the beard not yet attached and the hat still on its hook.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just..." He shook his head slowly. "You look right. Not like you're wearing a costume. Like you're wearing something that was always meant to be yours."
He crossed to me and reached for the coat's collar, adjusting where it had folded under during my dressing. His fingers worked with quiet competence.
"Beard next," he said. "Hold still."
He retrieved it from the counter—not a synthetic prop beard, but a good one, made of something soft and real that Noel's family had maintained for generations.
Ben positioned it with practiced care, securing the elastic behind my ears and adjusting the fall of the white hair until it lay naturally against my chest.
"The trick is not fighting it," he murmured, his breath warm against my cheek. "Let it settle. It knows where it wants to be."
"Is that advice for the beard or for me?"
"Both." His hands rested on my shoulders. "How are you feeling?"
I considered the question. My pulse was elevated but steady. My thoughts were clear. The dread that had pooled in my stomach before every audition for the past year—that sick premonition of impending failure—was conspicuously absent.
"It's not stage fright this time," I said. "It's something else."
"Something you can work with?"
I met his eyes in the mirror. He stood behind me, hands resting on the shoulders of the Santa coat, sawdust still caught in his hair. Solid. Patient. Looking at me like I was something precious and impossible, a restoration project he couldn't quite believe had come together.
"I think so," I said. "I feel like I'm about to do something I was always supposed to do. Not performing it. Doing it."
"That's because you are. Those kids out there aren't going to see Alex Garland playing Santa. They're going to see Santa. The real one. The one who listens."
"Ben—"
"I mean it." His voice dropped lower, rougher. "I've watched you with Charlie, Sophie, and Marcus. You don't perform for them. You see them. That's not technique. That's you."
I didn't have words for what moved through me then. Gratitude felt too small. Love felt too new, too raw to speak aloud. I settled for leaning forward, pressing my forehead to his, breathing the same air for a moment while the chaos of the theater hummed distantly through the walls.
"If it gets too much out there," he said, "look for me. I'll be in the wings."
"I know."
"Not because you'll need rescuing. Because I want to see it." He pulled back enough to look at me properly. "I want to watch you become what you already are."
The five-minute call crackled through the ancient intercom system, Mrs. Brubaker's voice barely recognizable through the static. Ben stepped back, but he reached for my hand and squeezed once.
"Ready, Santa?"
I touched the spot where the cherry carving rested against my heart.
"Ready."
The wings smelled of sawdust and fresh paint and something older—the accumulated decades of anticipation that had soaked into these boards, every opening night layered over the last. I stood in the shadows of stage left, watching the house through a gap in the curtain.
Full. Every seat taken.
The audience shifted and murmured, a living thing settling into itself.
I spotted Mrs. Kolchek in the third row, the one whose porch railing Ben had painted one shade too dark.
She was unwrapping a cough drop with elaborate care, as if the crinkle of cellophane might disturb a show that hadn't started yet.
Scarves and coats draped over chairbacks. Programs rustled. Somewhere near the back, a baby fussed briefly before subsiding. The Yuletide Valley community had turned out in force for entertainment and for tradition.
In the front row, just off center, Noel sat with his crutches propped against the seat beside him. He caught me looking and touched two fingers to his chest, then pointed at me.
"Big crowd." Charice appeared beside me, peering through a gap in the curtain. "Bigger than last year."
"Nervous?"
"Always. But the good kind." She adjusted her toy department apron. "The kind that means something matters."
Jack materialized on her other side, pale but composed. Whatever Charice had said to him in the dressing room appeared to help. He wasn't vibrating with panic anymore—only the normal tension of an actor about to step onto the stage.
"I counted the house," he said. "Two hundred thirty-seven people. Plus the baby, so two hundred thirty-eight, but I don't think she's going to be a tough critic."
"You counted?" Charice raised an eyebrow.
"I needed something to do with my anxiety."
In the opposite wing, Ben worked on something—a final adjustment to a prop.
An excuse to be present. His hands moved with familiar certainty, and even from a distance, I spotted the furrow of concentration between his brows.
As if sensing me watching, he looked up.
Our eyes met across the dim expanse of the stage.
He nodded once. You've got this.
I nodded back.
Charlie appeared at my elbow, script-free, his small face scrubbed clean and serious. "Toast knows," he said.
"Knows what?"
"That something important is happening. Mom says she's been pacing all afternoon." He looked up at me. "Dogs can tell. And so can theaters."
"Places for the top of the show!" The stage manager's whisper cut through the wings, sharp and efficient. "This is your places call. Top of the show, everyone."
Movement rippled through the backstage shadows—actors finding their marks and crew settling into positions. The house lights began their slow dim, and the audience's murmur faded to expectant silence.
Mrs. Brubaker materialized beside me, clipboard clutched to her chest. Her eyes were bright, sparkling with what might have been tears.
"Twenty-three years I've been doing this," she said quietly. "Twenty-three Christmas shows in this theater. Never has one felt quite like this."
She touched my shoulder.
"Your grandmother would be proud."
Before I could respond, she'd vanished into the wings, off to manage the thousand minor crises that would unspool over the next two hours.
The orchestra settled into silence. The house went fully dark except for the exit signs glowing red at the edges.
The stage manager's voice sounded one final time, barely audible—"Curtain."
The orchestra struck the opening chord—a little ragged at the edges, not quite in tune, and somehow perfect for it. The sound swelled through the theater, filling the darkness.
I pressed my palm flat against the cherry wood one last time, feeling its steady warmth.
The lights rose.
And I stepped into the glow.