10. The Seventh Night Before Christmas
The Seventh Night Before Christmas
Scene II
[The Santa photo courtyard after closing.]
Viola, in Santa attire, cleans with Olivia.
During my shift, I do no better at keeping my distance.
Olivia, the boss’s granddaughter, is officially the most dangerous person to me. She’s also the hardest to keep away, including Duke, which is saying something.
I guess it doesn’t help that I’m staying late to help her clean up and avoid the guys as they change. It also doesn’t help that we really get along. In another life, one outside the Santa suit, we’d probably be best friends by now.
“How about that one kid who just held my face in both his hands and looked at me?” I ask, rehashing all the heart-melting kiddos from today.
“Did he even wind up asking you for anything?” Olivia asks.
“Nope. Didn’t say a single word, the whole time. Just looked at me.”
Olivia laughs. “The pictures were priceless. He looked like a mini eighty-year-old man trying to figure out where he knew you from.”
My heart swells. I always knew that I wanted to work with kids, but this experience has solidified it all for me. While I like my office job, especially the people I work with, there was never any spark. Never any heart. I never had any stories to tell at the end of the day.
I know it was the right thing to do to get an office job—it paid decently, after all—I stop. Those words, those reasonings are Mal’s. Not mine.
If I’m honest, I wish that I’d had a job like this all along and forced Mal to take out a bigger student loan or donate plasma or something to cover the difference. His difference.
“How adorable was the one little girl who wanted a hundred bags of carrots for Christmas?” I continue, shaking off depressing thoughts of Mal and office drudgery.
Olivia puts a hand over her heart. “So cute, but her dad”—she sticks out her tongue—“major creep. He asked me out, which okay, not the best while your kid is on Santa’s lap, but then his wife joined the line. She’d just been taking their other kid to the bathroom.”
“Creep,” I agree.
“Aren’t men just the worst?” She winces. “No offense. You’re great, but you’re different from other guys.”
You have no idea.
“I will always agree with you about guys being the worst. I knew this one guy who used to ask his girlfriend to buy his mom’s birthday and Christmas presents and then take all the credit for them.”
It’s me. Mal used to ask me to buy all her gifts because I had ‘such an eye for it’. Half the time I wouldn’t even get invited to the celebration.
Olivia wrinkles her nose. “My ex used to insist I wear a full face of makeup any time we went out in public.”
“Did he also make a stink every time you took your makeup off before bed?” I clear my throat. “I’ve heard of guys doing that. From friends of mine. Who are girls.”
Olivia rolls her eyes. “Every night, he’d ask if I felt okay. Tell me I looked like I was a bit sick.”
I shake my head. “Not that you even need to put on makeup anyways.” If I had skin like Olivia, I’d toss half of my products in the trash immediately. Not literally because that shit’s expensive, and I love it all.
A blush rises on Olivia’s face as she smiles slightly. “At first, I thought, it was sweet. Like he cared. Then, I realized he was just being a dick.”
“And he probably started the relationship out by telling you that you were so beautiful and he was so lucky to have you. Then, by the end, he’s micromanaging your appearance, like you haven’t been reading makeup tips in shitty magazines since before you even owned any makeup.”
“He used to set aside clothing that he thought I should wear when we met up with his friends. Once, I had to tell him that the lovely ‘top’ he thought I should wear was actually a lingerie bustier. He, of course, doubled down and said it was fine.”
I roll my eyes, oddly feeling validated. I had assumed that Mal did this with me because I was such an embarrassment, so beneath him. But if girls like Olivia, objectively a gorgeous girl, got it too…
“But let me guess, he was fine to go out in raggedy jeans and a ballcap,” I continue.
“Yes!” Olivia yells. “You get it!”
“Get what?” asks Valentine, as the four Santas saunter over from the laundry.
They’re all wearing jeans and ballcaps.
Olivia and I burst out laughing. She walks over to me and rests a hand on my forearm, stroking it slightly. “It’s an inside joke between Sebastian and I.” She flips her hair and smiles at me.
It makes my heart jolt.
She flipped her hair at me.
She flipped her hair at me.
It’s a hair flip I’ve done a hundred times before. Olivia is flirting with me.
Olivia is flirting with me.
Because, of course, she is. I’ve been having this conversation like we’re two friends gossiping about guys, but she thinks I am a guy. We are not having the same conversation.
With a wiggle that would make a breakdancer proud, I extricate myself from Olivia’s touch.
Aloof and cold and distant. I really have to start remembering my motto.
“It’s not really an inside joke, more like a passing happenstance shared between acquaintances,” I hedge.
Oliva flips her hair again and steps closer to me, so that it’s very clearly us on one side and the guys on the other.
“Definitely more than acquaintances.”
I close my eyes. This could not get any worse. I have the boss’s granddaughter hitting on me. I’m tricking someone into falling for someone who doesn’t exist.
Then, I feel it get worse. Even with my eyes closed, I can feel Duke step closer to me. His presence hums on my skin like feather-light kisses in the dark.
“Yeah? Sebastian and I have inside jokes, too,” he says.
“We do?”
Duke laughs, his dimple popping. “Sure, you’re always pretending to not like when I stroke your face”—he reaches up to stroke my face, and I bat his hand away—“and you’re always hitting my hand away, like you don’t like it.”
“I don’t like it,” I mutter. I do, though. I really do.
“That doesn’t seem like a joke,” Olivia says, her eyes narrowed. “That seems like a future HR complaint.”
“Please, like any of us are brave enough to voluntarily talk to Maria.” He stops and looks at me. “Don’t you think she’s scary?”
Before I can answer, Olivia steps even closer to me. “Well, I think she’s nice. She’s a very good friend of the family. Don’t you think she’s nice, Sebastian?”
“I… she apparently loves paperwork?” I offer. It’s not my best zinger, but it’s the best I can do while these two are both staring at me like cartoon dogs looking at a hambone. Needless to say, I’ve never been the hambone before.
“I think she’s kind of hot,” Valentine chimes in. “Does anyone know if she’s single?”
“Shut up!” both Duke and Olivia snap. Then, they turn back to look at me again.
“I-I’m going to go. Away from this.”
Both of them step into my path. “Do you want to—” they both start. Olivia glares at Duke, who throws up his hands. He shoots me a smile, eyeing me with a patient knowing. He may have ceded the floor to Olivia, but my attention is all on him.
“Do you want to go grab a drink or something? Catch up on the day?” Olivia asks, flipping her hair again.
“We’ve just been catching up for all of close…”
Duke laughs. “Do you want to go out with us, then?” He smiles, popping his right dimple.
Behind him, the guys all cajole in agreement. For a moment, I can picture it—all of us crammed into a booth together. The guys are so large that it would be squishy, so I’d be pressed right up against Duke. He’d probably have to put his arm around me to free up some space…
Which are all things that absolutely can’t happen.
“Definitely not,” I answer, perhaps a bit more rudely than needed. Whatever. Aloof and cold and distant.
Duke’s smile never falters. ‘We could also stick around here for a bit…”
“Or we could…” Olivia starts.
“Sorry, I need to—” that’s as far as I get. The group gets caught up in interrupting each other, suggesting after work plans. I take the opportunity to slip off to go change and sneak out.
I speedwalk away, complete with a little Santa belly waddle. Just before I’m out of sight, both Olivia and Duke call out to me. I just wave them off without turning around.
Seriously, when did I start getting so popular?
Olivia and Duke go quiet as a drizzling rain starts to pour down on them. They both watch Viola walk away.