“I’m sorry. This is all coming out wrong. We agreed to one year. That’s it. We have families and friends and lives and jobs to go back to.” I bite my tongue hard. I shouldn’t have said that last part. It’s such a force of habit.
Patrick barely flinches this time, which I suppose is a good thing. “Why do you want to go back to that school where they treat you like a workhorse and our marriage like it’s an abomination?”
“I don’t,” I say, surprising myself. It’s the first time I’ve voiced this. The words taste equal parts bitter and delicious. They ring clearly, announcing their truth. “I think maybe I want to work in a nonprofit that specializes in mentorship for queer youth. Something tangible and connection based. No more teaching toward a test or ripping my hair out with district mandates or trying to siphon my attention in thirty different directions.”
“You can have that here. Look at all you did for Blizzard,” Patrick says.
“I helped one elf inside a perfect utopia,” I begin, flabbergasted we’re having this conversation when he’s supposed to be practicing for Christmas-present delivery. Hobart should be rushing out to stop this. “I can’t stop thinking of all the queer kids, like Tyler, who we delivered the unicorn pillow to last year, who need support and guidance and a soft place to land when the people in their lives meet their identities with roughness and disapproval. The mission of the North Pole is to make the world a better place, but I can’t do that when I’m stuck here, cut off from the world. I have so much more to accomplish back home. Don’t you feel that way, too?”
He shakes his head, causing my stomach to free-fall. “I have so much more to accomplish here. I belong here.”
“It’s only been eight and a half months.”
“I knew you for less time when I realized I belonged with you.”
His sweet words hit me in a sour spot, square in my upset stomach. He’s right. I’ve seen his evolution. Far be it from me to negate his truth. “Pat, are you really okay with giving up our life?”
“This can be our life now,” he says. He does what he did that day we toured the New Jersey house: he stretches out his arms, spins, physicalizes the expansiveness of what this could be for us. “We’re so in love here.”
“That’s true, but I’ve been treating this like a vacation,” I tell him. “It’s easy to be in love on vacation.” Just like it was easy to be in love in college, I want to add but don’t.
“It doesn’t feel like a vacation for me, Quinn. This is work. Maybe even my purpose.”
The determination in his blue eyes scares me. I’ve never seen him this set on shaking up his life, and by extension mine, before.
I’m at a complete loss for words when a child’s voice rings out behind me.
“Santa Claus? Is that really you?” The mousy sound comesfrom a holographic girl in Christmas pajamas behind me. Clearly the elves have not yet shut down the simulation.
“Yep, kid,” I say, stepping out of Patrick’s golden circle of protection. “That’s really him.” Because it is. I can’t believe I hadn’t wrapped my head around it sooner, but when I stare over my shoulder at Patrick, my husband, the storybook man standing there is unmistakable. I don’t know what to do with that information, but I know I can’t remain here fizzling out any longer.
Feeling like the harried, frazzled Santa we met on Christmas Eve last year, without a goodbye, I walk through the hologram, through the foyer, and right out the front door into the vacuous night with no sense of direction and a wounded heart.
44(IM)PRACTICAL MAGICPATRICK
99 DAYS ’TIL CHRISTMAS
We end up back where we started.
Quinn’s sleeping down the hall. I’m awake in the middle of the night. Worrying about what my game plan is now.
Even our move across the globe and abundant magic couldn’t repair us. I’m saddled with a fear that there isn’t any hope left.
I stayed to finish the simulation because I couldn’t risk losing my husband and the Santa position in the same night.
The fact that I had to finish it in a lovingly crafted dream home that Quinn turned his nose up at and then stormed out of was the biggest lump of coal in the stocking of my night. My whole year, if I’m being honest.
On my trudge back to the chalet, I removed the cloak and stuffed it into my satchel. Back in my real body, I could breathe again. At least enough to face the music of my miscalculations. However, Quinn wasn’t awake to talk. He was tucked away in a room in the far wing. Tossing and turning or dreaming? The closed, locked door won’t allow me to know.
The déjà vu of it all is too strong to stomach.
In the main bedroom now, I remain sleepless. The darkness is too bright. The silence is too loud. My heart is a malfunctioning wind-up toy, fritzing one second and failing the next.
I replay Quinn’s and my argument over again. I can’t believe we said all of that in front of the elves. I thought walking with myhead hung low and my box of belongings out of Carver & Associates was rough. But our public showdown was a whole new level of brutal.
My spiraling thoughts are interrupted by a whirring I haven’t heard in the chalet before. A shaft of cold air blows straight onto my face. I reach over to turn the light on. It’s only then that I notice I’m positioned right under the air vent.
There’s a thermostat in the hallway. I need only a quick glance to confirm the air-conditioning has kicked on. Drowsily, I clamber downstairs. The sun is cresting on the horizon, but the light hasn’t touched enough of the village to show me what I sense but can’t quite see.
