And then responses start appearing on my desk—the other Holidays, saying they’ll come to the Christmas Eve Ball. I do what research I can on these various ruling families, trying to keep it under Dad’s radar, but I won’t be ignorant anymore. The responses from my invitations say they’re eager to talk about the future with Christmas’s heir, butwill the reigning Santa be involved in these discussions as well?
Yes. No. He will but I’m dreading it and I have no idea what I’ll say when they all show up here and I’ll have to face the music, shit will hit the fan, and other such final colorful phrases.
I keep expecting Dad to flip out. For him to discover the coming guests or see the pictures in the tabloids and realize I’m changing his image of us. I keep expecting him to ban me from events or snap at me about my relationship with Hex, which I’m getting better at hiding in public but it’s obvious that he’s the focal point of my existence now.
But Dad doesn’t intervene. He doesn’t stop me. He makes eye contact with me at events and doesn’t glower and I think, maybe, he’s impressed? But that’s impossible. Categorically. Metaphysically. I’m ruining his carefully sculpted persona of us.
Aren’t I?
Maybe it’s been this easy the whole time. Maybe all I needed to do was exactly what I’ve done andchooseto act instead of wallowing in my own shit.
Maybe one fuckup didn’t have to define the rest of my life like I let it.
I come up beside Kris at an after-dinner mixer in the courtyard and I’m at war with hating myself for taking so damn long to improve and pride that hey, this all seems to be working? Tall space heaters warm the area—and it only takes one second of thinking back on the text fantasy I’d tormented Hex with to realize that I’m probably the first person in history to be turned on by a space heater—but we’re in coats still, and I’ve just left Iris with Hex after yet another round ofstaking my claimfor the cameras. It’s easier to play pretend now, knowing it’ll come to an end soon.
Dad isn’t here. Which isn’t odd that he opted out of a low-key event, but something about his absence triggers an itch in the back of my mind.
I shrug it away, fighting to breathe through the well of anxiety.
The Christmas Eve Ball is only three days away. We’re so close.
It’ll be fine. It’ll work.
It has to.
“I need your help,” I say to Kris, but my eyes are on Hex. He’s next to Iris by an ornamental pine, nodding along to something a noble says to them both.
He tugs on one of the tree’s limbs. Idly. Like he’s not aware he’s doing it.
Then he makes me watch as he elegantly arches his middle finger and runs it all the way down the center of the branch.
My body rocks in place. I feel that finger as if he’d run it down my stomach.
He pops me a playful smile.
Is it possible to shake apart from loving someone too much? They’re going to feel tremors all the way down in North Pole City and think it’s an avalanche but no, it’s me, combusting because of the calamitous power this one man has over me.
“Coal?” Kris snaps in front of my face.
I jump and spin on him.
He’s laughing. “Good lord, dude.Youwalked over tome,said you needed my help, thenimmediately zoned out to stare at the guy you’re sleeping with.You are the poster boy for disaster bisexuals.”
“They’re sending me the trophy any day now.” But I shake my head, press my thumb to my forehead, and get my brain to switch tracks. “Your help. Yeah.” I turn to my brother. “I need you to help me write out what to say to the winter Holidays when they get here.”
Kris’s face smooths from mockery to understanding. “Oh. Yeah, of course. But I kind of assumed you were going to wing it?”
“You think I’d leave this to chance?”
He gives a look I can’t decipher. “What’d you have in mind?”
I shove my hands into my pockets to cover the roiling, panicky urgency in my stomach, the feeling of possession that’s been growing, day by day.
“We can talk about the potential we all have together,” I start. “And how much more capable we could all be if we pool our resources. And how Christmas never should’ve tried to stretch globallyon our own because we can’t be everything to everyone, but together? Together—” My mouth goes dry, and this is why I need Kris to write it out, to take these thoughts and figure out what I’m trying to say because I want to say italland it needs to becoherent.“Together we can be the start of everything. People have a masterful capacity for creating something solid out of the smallest seed of joy, and we all contribute to giving them that. And we can—”
I stumble to a halt when I see the look Kris is giving me: surprise. Soft, startled surprise.
I’m careful to still keep my voice low. “And, uh, lots of apologizing. Obviously. Add a fair bit of groveling. And put ample redirects if and when Dad tries to cut in. Then more apologizing.”
