Who knew he had crinkly skin around the corners of his eyes?
He is unrecognizable right now, and hotter, in a whole new way that I never expected.
“I win!” Paxton says as he runs out of the office.
I didn’t realize we were competing, but he definitely won.
I look back over at Elijah, who was also watching his son run out of the room.
His gaze shifts to me, and suddenly his expression is oh so serious. “Tomorrow, Miss Cleo. You and I are really going to get down to work.” He says even more with his eyes. Things no one would be allowed to say in a four-quadrant holiday family comedy, if you know what I mean. But I would pay ten hundo dollars to hear him say it out loud.
Oh my…
Paxton returns with a gingerbread cookie, and I squeeze my thighs together, grateful that I brought an extra pair of red-and-white-striped tights to change into.
12
CLEO
FROM:[email protected]
Dec. 22, 2025, 8:12 AM
SUBJECT:The kiss I can’t forget
Hi. First of all, I just want to say that you and Alyssa have made a really wonderful little boy.
Secondly, I want to assure you (even though you may never actually read this) that I am not feeling this way in response to the little song Paxton sang yesterday. I do not, in fact, hope to marry you before the new year. But the truth is I think about the kiss and that night from just over eight years ago quite often. Usually when I’m in bed. Even when I was lying in bed next to the guy I was living with for my last two years in NYC. After the first six months, we didn’t do much in bed together besides sleep, you see. It was one of those Manhattan relationships for busy people wherein we liked each other enough to share an address and even eat together when we were actually in the same space at the same time, but there wasn’t much in the way of passion or shared goals for a future together. For a year anda half, it wasn’t worth it to break up because we both liked our apartment so much more than we disliked each other. It was in a fantastic building on the perfect street in Greenwich Village. So the days passed by and our address stayed the same.
And then, all of a sudden, he met a French girl and she loved the apartment even more than I did. She obviously loved my ex-boyfriend more than I did too. So we all mutually agreed that I should move out as soon as possible.
But that’s not what I wanted to write about in this email.
I wanted to tell you how I remember our last night together, back when we were in film school, before I left for New York. It probably doesn’t surprise you that it plays like a short film in my mind. Not an artsy, experimental one—don’t worry. It’s very straightforward.
We fade in to the expansive poolside bar at an iconic hotel in the heart of Hollywood. It’s after nine when our heroine shows up. Technically, she isn’t supposed to be there, given that she is not yet twenty-one years of age. But fuck it—no one’s checking IDs for the private party. She was invited, she bought a ticket, and she’s celebrating. Celebrating her Best Short Film Award and celebrating the news of a second callback for a role in the world premier staging of a Broadway musical that’s based on one of her favorite films. It isn’t her goal to have an acting career, she just loves being creative and working with other inspiring creative people. Her penchant for telling fart jokes to children had not yet become apparent as an income portal.
The film school she’s been attending has rented out the entire outdoor lounge area for their annual Christmas party. The stately palm trees that line the perimeter of the patio have white Christmas lights wrapped around their trunks. There’s a DJ remixing Christmas songs with vintage hip-hop and disco hits. There’s a screen withNational Lampoon’s Christmas Vacationbeing projected onto it. There is rampant debauchery. Ourheroine loves to have fun, but this particular brand of fun isn’t really for her. However, she’s here because her friend Franklin insisted she show up to this party to see a certain someone before making her final decision about dropping out of film school and moving to New York.
She herself is quite certain that the certain someone, who has been her rival ever since they first met in their required Film History class and he revealed his terrible taste in movies, is now also mad at her for winning an award that he felt was rightfully his. But she is wearing her new boots, along with a short red-and-green plaid skirt, nonetheless. Despite everything, she is attracted to him, you see. Not just physically but mentally. He turns her on in so many ways. She knows how he feels about the theatre in general, though, so she hasn’t even told him she auditioned for the Broadway play. While she is confident in her talent, it had seemed unlikely that she would get a video callback, much less invited to New York to meet with the director and producers. It seemed like a sign that she should move out east sooner rather than later. As much as she loves her mom, she knows now that it wasn’t her own dream to go to film school and that her mother will understand her change of heart.
What shedidn’tknow was that her stomach would flip when she walked out onto the patio of that poolside lounge, looking up to find her rival standing twenty feet away in a dark blue suit. She did not expect him to give her a slow once-over that is in no way lascivious but is also somehow…totally filthy and promising at the same time. She has never shuddered like this before. Never felt that kind of erotic electricity shoot down her spine and sparkle through her center.
And he hasn’t even touched her.
Wordlessly, intensely, he closes the distance between them.
“You,” he says in his deep, disarmingly warm voice. “You’re here.” He offers to buy her a drink, and they find a secluded spotin a not very quiet corner, sharing a lounge chair. He tells her he wants her to know that he’s glad she won the award for her short film. That he thinks it was, objectively, better than his. It surprises and moves her. Not that he deserves to be celebrated simply fornotbeing a jerk or anything, but it seems significant for him to admit this to her. He seems to really mean it. He also seems to be saying it because he wants to do things to her. Things that she wants him to do to her. She is twenty, after all. He is twenty-five. It’s the holidays. Why shouldn’t they put aside their differences and make out under the palm trees?
He teases her about her cocktail of choice. She takes a sip of his scotch. They get up and dance to the remix of “Ice Ice Baby.” He’s a much better dancer than she expected, and this bodes well for his ability to do things to her if things should go that way later.
She really wasn’t expecting him to be this friendly with her. A couple of months ago, when she first found out that the Broadway musical was in development, she had an inkling that it might be time for her to move to New York. She may have pulled away from him a bit because of this. She may have ceased to engage in banter with him because she knew they shouldn’t get attached. He may have sensed her pulling away from him and responded by pulling away from her too. He may have pulled away from her so much in response that it made her realize just how drawn he had been to her before this. And it may have made her sad and mad—smad—to realize how much he was withholding from her now.
But no one is pulling away from anyone tonight.
There’s holidayandHollywood magic in the air, even if one of them doesn’t believe in that first kind of magic.
