Halloween #3
“I can skip it all this year. I will. Maybe you’re onto something. And Kat.” Kat? “I could—I don’t know—tag along with you two for the season. I could write about it. A Year Without Christmas. Something like that.” She bites her lip, eyes bouncing with her thoughts. “Too negative.”
“You know Christmas still happens without parades, right?”
She scoffs. “But is it the same? Is it—that’s it.
I’ve always talked about the importance of traditions as I experience them, this year I could show what happens without them, in turn proving their necessity to the season.
Show everyone how dire it makes things.” She looks at me, face filled with hopeful desperation.
“You could show me what you two do, and I’ll prove it’s not real Christmas. Not really. Please.”
I swallow a hefty gulp of beer.
“Can’t you tell the magazine you want to write about something different?”
“I’ve done it every year for four years,” she says, offended.
“I don’t half-ass my commitments like my ex-husband.
Plus, I love my job—especially this time of year.
I’ve built a community. Moms everywhere depend on me.
And” —she looks at me with what I would dare call judgment—“I’m not some kind of-of-of—” Her eyes bounce all over me again.
“Easy on the eyes, mustached Santa dabbler like you. I’m a professional. I can do this. I will.”
My eyebrows lift. “Easy on the eyes, eh?”
“That’s not the point.” She huffs out a frustrated breath. “The point is that I need your help.”
Marv returns from his vent quest, hands on his hips, brows hitched high on his head.
“Marv doesn’t like new members,” I tell her.
“Eh. No wire,” he says, looking from her to me. “What do I care? Jay? You good with it?”
Fuck no, I’m not good with it. She’ll change things. Write about them. Marv and I have a great thing going—these last five years have been the easiest holiday seasons of my forty years of holidaying. I invited her to bowl one game, not be part of the club.
She’s already had multiple meltdowns. Already attacked me for not being married. Already put words in my mouth I most definitely did not say.
“Please, Jay,” she begs with a bounce and her hands pressed together. “You’ll barely notice me.”
Judging by the crying and all the talking, I find this highly unlikely.
“We do things outdoors,” I tell her. “Even when it’s cold.”
“I have a coat.”
“We stay out late. End up in weird places.”
“I’ll drive myself.”
“No kids allowed.”
“Are you deaf?” She huffs. “I don’t have my kids. That’s the whole, stupid point.”
Dammit.
“Sometimes we pick up women.” This is a lie—Marv scares all women off. “That a problem?”
Her eyes bounce all over me—again. Pink splashes across her cheeks. “I can be a wingwoman.”
She’s not backing down. I either have to be an ass and point-blank tell her no—which might lead her to crying again—or just go with it. Just let her in. Risk the ruin of this good, easy thing we’ve built.
No.
Absolutely not.
I look at Marv; he shrugs.
I grab the ball for my next turn and look at her. I hate how sad she looks. Hate that I even care.
“Fine.”
I pull my arm back, and she squeals as I swing it forward. The ball slips from my hand and slams into the gutter without hitting a single pin as I mutter a swear.
“Marv, Jay, I’m Hollis Hartwell. Officially.” She’s beaming as she thrusts her hand out to Marv. “Newest member of The Holiday Club.”
Marv looks at her hand with a disgusted frown. “No touching.”
Her eyes widen and hand drops. “Right. Sorry.”
“You like hot peppers?” Marv asks, digging into his pocket. She presses her lips into a tight line as he pulls out a little plastic bag of peppers. “Over 100,000 on the Scoville scale.”
Her chin pulls back slightly as she eyes the bag. “I’m good.”
Marv harrumphs, plucks one out, and drops it into his beer then pockets the rest before taking his next turn.
“Marv’s into conspiracy theories,” I explain as she watches him.
“The hot peppers?” she asks with raised eyebrows.
I laugh over the rim of my beer. “Into those too.”
She studies him intensely. “I see.”
Marv gets two strikes in the tenth frame to win the game, pumping both fists into the air with a gloating, “Cheating can’t save the sheep.”
I laugh, resetting the computer for the next game and add Hollis’s name. Whether or not she’ll show up at the next club meeting, I have no clue, but she’s here, clearly going through something, and it’s Christmas. Even with my unorthodox approach to the season, I have a heart.
I’ll let her bowl. Let her have this day and this win that she seems to need for the next forty-five minutes.
Hollis, to her credit, doesn’t cry anymore.
She also doesn’t shut up. She tells us about each of her four kids—repeatedly—and shows us more photos of them on her phone than I’ve seen of my six nieces and nephews combined.
I know the oldest, Owen, plays soccer, the youngest, Jack, is in kindergarten and likes dinosaurs, and the middle two are girls, Ava and Millie, and like painting fingernails and Lisa Frank—whoever that is—which thrills Hollis because she loved Lisa Frank when she was their age.
Her ex-husband is a doctor named Ryan and couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
She’s animated, the worst bowler I’ve ever met, and charming as hell. Her ridiculous stance on traditions unnerves me, yet when she pauses from talking, I’m anxious to hear what she’ll say next.
When we’re done, we stand under the lights of the parking lot. Marv next to his spray-painted box truck, Hollis in her catsuit next to her minivan, and me next to my SUV.
“How do we know what to do at the next meetup?” she asks, pulling her keys out of her purse.
I slide my phone out of my pocket. “You give me your number, and I’ll send you a text.”
Without batting an eye, she takes my phone out of my hands and enters her information, cute smile on her face when she hands it back to me, pausing slightly. Our eyes meet for a split second, the slightest hint of pink splashing across her cheeks before she looks away.
“Thank you for letting me tag along,” she says politely. “And I’m sorry about the cat costume and all the crying.”
Marv and I just nod, watching as she hurries into her minivan, tail swishing behind her as she goes.
I’m not much of a phone guy, but if I were, I’d call her, right now as she’s driving away, just to hear what she’d have to say.
If she wasn’t just crying and carrying on about her ex-husband, I’d probably ask her to go out to dinner with me.
Tonight.
“Think she’ll show?” Marv asks as she disappears down the road.
I look at him with a wry smile. “Crazy ones always do, Marv.”