Logan
Logan knew he shouldn’t do it, but he did.
Under his bed, he had an old cardboard box. Inside the box were the Christmas cards and ornaments that Bellini had made him, starting in kindergarten, all the way through high school. She was always a talented artist, and even the cards she’d made as a young girl were fantastic, but the ones from high school were detailed, colorful, and finely drawn. They had all taken hours of work which, even as a teenager, had touched him deeply.
One was a drawing of Santa’s village. One home was labeled “Logan and Bellini’s.” In another, she’d drawn a snowman and a snowwoman kissing. On a pop-up card, the elves, including Bellini and Logan, were working in an elaborate toy-making shop. One card pictured a naughty list and a nice list. They were both on the naughty list.
He’d written her poems and short, funny notes with pictures. She always laughed. And then…she was gone, and Christmas was never the same. Life was never the same.
But Bellini was back this year. His emotions were already raw, spinning, taking over every minute of his day. He wondered if she would go to the Christmas tree lighting downtown. He wouldn’t go—as he hadn’t gone, if Bellini was in town, to her family’s Christmas activities these last years—no matter how many of her cousins invited him. He never wanted to make her uncomfortable. He never wanted to intrude on her life.
He knew that Christmas would be lonely again, his father as obnoxious as ever. He would go skiing, he told himself, andpretend that Christmas was not happening. He hadn’t had a happy Christmas since he and Bellini broke up.
“Merry Christmas,” he muttered to himself, then swore. He blinked through tears then told himself to man up.Merry Christmas.
He hardly slept that night, the moon shining bright into his bedroom, the aloneness and loneliness he felt because Bellini was not in his life wrapping tight around him like a black cape.
9
Bellini
“I don’t need your help, Logan,” I panted as I pushed myself between Lewis Standard and Parker Helcher and tried to shove them apart. It had been a long evening at the bar, and I was ready to go home. It was mobbed—I knew many of the people in there, so there was a lot of chatting—our wait staff was overwhelmed, and our cooks were working at a bionic level. Now this. A bar fight. Two men hollering and taking swings at each other. People stood around and watched, grinning and cheering, as if this whole scene was going to make their night extra special.
I heard, “Here she goes, everyone!” and “Bellini’s doing her thing!” and “Now they’ve ticked Bellini off. You know she’s got a temper!”
For heaven’s sake! I ignored it all.
Parker was upset because Lewis was an über-rich executive in Seattle and a snob to boot, and Lewis was upset because Parker beat him at pool and was bragging too much, which he had a habit of doing. “Stop it, Lewis! Parker, get control of yourself. What are you doing?”
They yelled at each other over my head as I tried to wrangle them apart, and Logan popped in beside me and shoved both of them, hard, one hand on each chest, sending them sprawling to the floor with no effort at all. Lewis did a backward somersault. It was like watching a superhero.
“You may not need my help,” Logan said to me, not even breathing hard, “but I don’t like seeing you smashed between two fighting men.”
“You think I haven’t been in this position before?” I wheeled on him, my hair falling into my face. Lewis scrambled to his feet, and I said, “Out, Lewis, now!” and Parker, slower to get up because he’s the size of a tree, swore at Lewis and called him an “entitled, wealthy, spoiled worm.”
I raised my eyebrows at Parker. “An entitled, wealthy, spoiled worm? That’s all you could come up with?”
Parker shrugged in defeat. He has an English degree. He writes poetry. “I’m on the ground, Bellini. It’s all I could think of.” He awkwardly wrangled himself up, brushed himself off, and pointed at Lewis. “Go back to your mansion.”
“Why don’t you go back to your hovel?” Lewis said. “And quit bragging about pool, you big braggart!”
Wow. A hovel? “That’s rude and unkind, Lewis,” I snapped at him. Parker does not have a hovel. It’s a home. Run-down and worn out, but it sits on twenty acres on a lake. Probably worth millions. “Take that back, right now.”
“Do not insult my home!” Parker charged at Lewis, and Logan and I caught him. To calm him down I grabbed the plastic ketchup bottle off the table and squirted him on his chest.
I heard people clap and cheer. “There she goes!” and “That’s ketchup clever!”
“Ketchup calms the crazy, cacophonic clamor!” someone hollered out, a startling alliteration. I figured it was Mrs. Elliot, a college English professor.
“Come on, Parker. This is my bar, and I’m telling you to chill out,” I told him, as he sputtered and wiped the ketchup off his chest.
Lewis kept charging, his mouth open and hurdling insults about Parker’s “dumb truck” and I squirted him in the face once Logan and I grabbed him.
What a mess! He looked like he was bleeding from the mouth.
The customers clapped and cheered again. “Peace by ketchup!” someone shouted. “Fake blood!”
“Lewis, what the hell?” Logan said, standing smack in front of me as if I needed protection, which I don’t. But my goodness. His shoulders were so wide. His back so huggable. His hips, well,solid. “Do not insult someone’s home.”
