Chapter 12
“For the love of God, Mel, it is not a pity date,” Ally says, lounging against a clothing rack while I panic-shop for tomorrow.
I’ve hit critical mass in the nothing-to-wear department, so I dragged her to the mall—her happy place, my ninth circle.
She’s already juggling three shopping bags for a wedding-date weekend with Teddy.
Apparently, she needs options. “He wouldn’t blatantly ask you out if there were a real-life Mrs. Eben Claus in the equation. ”
“I heard him say it,” I say. “He loves someone. The ladies said he’s always with someone named Anne.”
“Grandma. Great-aunt. Hospice bestie. He volunteers at a nursing home for fun, remember?”
I groan, unconvinced.
“Fine, maybe he wants a throuple?” she deadpans.
I nearly choke. “A what? Ally!”
“What? Could be fun. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”
“No, thank you,” I gag. “I don’t do throuples.”
Ally shrugs, gleefully ruthless. “At this rate, babes, you don’t do singles or doubles—you’re not even picking up a racket.”
“Whatever,” I sigh, still unsure and slightly queasy. I hold up two red midi dresses that look almost identical. “Which one?”
“Uh…” She looks between them. “I like the brighter red one.”
I hold it to my arm and frown. “Is it too orange?”
“Hmmm… okay, the darker red then?” She’s out of her depth, and we both know it, but I still need her opinion.
“Does it have too much of a blue undertone?”
She just stares at me.
“You can’t tell the difference, can you?”
She sighs, grabs both hangers, drapes both dresses over her arm, and heads to the register.
“Wait, what are you doing?” I ask, practically stepping on her heels.
“Getting them both for you,” she says, setting them on the counter. “Santa’s going to salivate over you in either dress, but your nerves are clouding your judgment.”
“What?!” I say, alarmed. I reach for them; she knocks my hand away.
“It’s an early Christmas gift,” she says, pulling out her wallet. “The gift of getting laid.”
“I’m not going to sleep with him on the first date!” I say it too loud, and heads swivel. An aggravated mother covers her daughter’s ears and scowls at us. Ally rolls her eyes as the puritan escorts her child to safety.
“God, this isn’t a Toys ‘R’ Us,” Ally mutters, leaning on the counter. The cashier side-eyes us while ringing up the dresses. “You’re at least going to make out with him, right?”
Do people make out on first dates? I wouldn’t know.
The last time I was in a “serious” relationship, I was still part of a strict purity culture—penetrative sex before marriage was sinful.
Still, everything else somehow existed in a theological gray area (I'm not sure the elders would’ve agreed).
We got great at dry-humping like fully clothed bunnies, eventually graduating to hands under clothes, then no clothes with mouths everywhere.
Needless to say, I can blow a guy like a porn star.
“If he even makes a move,” I say, twirling a lock of my hair innocently as the cashier folds my dresses into a bag.
“Of course he will,” Ally says, snatching the receipt and handing me the bag. “He’s not a teenager in a sex-shaming cult.”
The face that pops into my head has a dimpled smile and a floppy mop of hair—and it sends shudders down my spine for a very different reason than my cult nemesis, Courtney.
Jordan was the spindly ex everyone had in high school: the fast-food job, the car that barely started, the parents who hated me for not being church-perfect (I occasionally ducked out early to grab Wendy’s—sue me). He was my first everything—first dance, first date, first kiss.
It was a slow burn, and when we finally did have sex, he cried afterward. No, not kidding. Then he turned around and blamed me for “leading him into temptation.” He actually tried to pressure me to marry him and threatened to tell the Heralds if I didn’t agree to it.
Thank God for Ally. When I told her, she threatened to show up at his house with a baseball bat. I broke up with him instead—so, technically, I saved his life. You’re welcome, Jordan.
He married some other poor nineteen-year-old less than a year later, who, last I checked, has popped out at least four of his moppy-haired spawnlings. The circles under his wife’s eyes are Grand Canyon-sized. I want to sneak over, nudge a window open, and set her free.
As for me, I was branded tainted goods—no one in Heaven’s Heralds would touch me (what kind of cult would they be without a hefty dose of misogyny?).
I tried dating outside the church, but I was too sheltered for that world, too.
It’s probably why I’ve avoided dating altogether—why I’ve mortared up stone walls around a stained-glass heart.
Subject change, stat.
“Why are you leaving me tomorrow?” I whine, clutching my bag to my chest.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m leaving the munchkin,” Ally says with an excited skip. (The “munchkin” is her horse-sized dog, of course.)
Ally and Teddy booked a pet sitter for Tidbit while they road-trip to Chicago to attend Teddy’s cousin’s wedding.
Teddy has approximately one million cousins, and I’ve met almost all of them, but this just happens to be a second cousin I’ve never met—so I’m not invited (boo).
Unfortunate, since it’s at the Ritz and I hear Vogue is covering it.
(Apparently, the bride is the daughter of some famous fashion designer.) I’ve only ever seen them dance together at prom—the night their romance began—so yeah, I’m a little bummed I won’t be there to recapture the magic.
But the timing couldn’t be worse. Call Ally and Teddy my security blanket in human form, but I’d prefer the four of us go out together. Instead, I’m at the mall helping my best friend abandon me for the weekend.
“Having a Saint Bernard isn’t that different from having a toddler,” Ally explains, steering us toward the food court. “Except imagine your toddler—with all his new-to-the-world impulses—weighs 175 pounds. Teddy and I need this weekend.”
The smell of freshly-baked pretzels permeates the air. We follow our noses to the royal blue-and-yellow temple of mall carbs: Auntie Anne’s.
“I know, and I’m happy you two are going,” I say, exhaling. It’s… mostly true. “I just—I don’t know, that’s a weird way to ask someone out, right?” I know, I know, I can’t stop ruminating. It’s a disease. (Also: trauma.)
I’m losing Ally’s attention (fair) to the intoxicating aroma of pepperoni pretzel bites and the hypnotic churn of the frozen lemonade machine. We stare at it, our mouths watering.
“It’s also hard to get a read on people when you’re eavesdropping and invading their privacy. You have no idea what he was talking about, and you’re making a lot of assumptions.” She shrugs. “Did you try—just asking him?”
I glare at her. She already knows the answer to that question. I would rather snack on roadkill than ask Eben point-blank about his conversation with Missy. Ally is much more confrontational than I am; she’d have barged in and demanded names.
Ally sighs. “No, of course you didn’t.”
I shrug, a little embarrassed.
“If I were you… Well, I’d ask,” Ally continues, “But if you can’t do that, assume that if he’s asking you out, he’s either available—or wants to add you to his ethically non-monogamous harem.
” She sticks her tongue out when my face contorts, then marches up to the Auntie Anne’s counter. “Do you want to split—”
“Duh.” I cut her off. In fifteen years, we have never not split Auntie Anne’s at the mall.
Snacks secured, we park our butts firmly in the food court. With Ally’s hanger (more like hungry aloofness) solved, she can focus on my anxiety again—critical, considering she’s leaving town for three whole days.
“Listen, you were super weird first,” Ally says with a mouthful of warm, salted pretzel goodness. “Which is fine. I think he kinda likes that.”
“I wasn’t that weird,” I say defensively, fishing a bite from the bag. “I was upset.”
Ally laughs. “You get weird when you’re upset, and you get upset for weird reasons. And for the hundredth time, you shouldn’t have been eavesdropping anyway.”
“Okay, Mom,” I say.
“Not because it’s rude,” Ally says, wagging a pretzel at me—salt flying. “Because you don’t know who they were talking about.”
I shrug and pop a pretzel in my mouth.
“So,” she dusts her hands, “where’s he taking you?”
As if Mr. Eben Claus and Ally are on the same wavelength, my phone vibrates. My whole body stiffens with simmering expectation. I keep my phone face down for a reason.
Ally smirks. “You gonna answer that?”
“Not sitting here with you,” I say.
She gives me the look—the one that means I’m being a giant baby—and I crack. I flip the phone to see that Mr. Hates Christmas has indeed texted.
Pick you up at 7 tomorrow, Mrs. Claus?
Ally peers down. “He calls you Mrs. Claus outside of the nursing home?”
What a weird sentence to hear out loud, but… yes.
“It’s just a joke,” I say, flushing. My fingers fly over the keypad.
Perfect, where are we going? I text back with a Mother Christmas emoji.
Ally shakes her head, dismayed and amused. “Y’all have the same kink,” she says.
I blush. Hard.
“No—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Santa hates Christmas, whatever. But he’s getting off on this Mr. and Mrs. Claus thing. He clearly wants to fuck the Christmas right out of you.”
“Let’s see if he actually follows through,” I say.
My phone vibrates again. Ally grins.
“That sounds a lot like follow-through to me.”
I open our chat, trying (and failing) to shield the screen. Ally has the neck of a giraffe when she wants to see something on my phone.
It’s a surprise.
What should I wear? I type, thumbs flying as I hit send.
He replies instantly. Ally opens her mouth to say something, and I cut her off—
“You’d better just be making room for another pizza bite,” I warn.
Disappointed, she sighs, dips a chunk of pretzel-pizza into marinara, and lets me have a moment to flirt with the man I made a complete ass of myself in front of the other day—which somehow ended with him asking me out. I don’t know. Whatever.
“Maybe you should embarrass yourself more often,” Ally says between bites. “Seems to be working for you.”
I swear it's like this bitch can read my mind.
The phone buzzes again. God, he’s a fast texter. I mean, he does have a job. A very Christmas-y job, too, I swoon silently.
I flip the phone over.
A coat for sure. What’s underneath is up to you ;)
His words catch in my chest.
“Are you okay? You’re purple,” Ally says, raising a brow.
I hand her my phone.
She scans Eben’s text and looks up. “Girl, that man’s going to make you limp.”
I peg her in the forehead with a pretzel—but honestly? I hope to God he does.