I watched her trail down the hall. The house was about to be quiet so I could think, but unease still churned in my gut. Was that worry I was feeling? For Aubrey?
Cole, you need to worry about yourself.
So true and yet…
I carried my satchel to the little table in the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. I had a lot of fine-print reading to do.
3
Aubrey
Icalled in sick the next day.
Was this the responsible thing to do?
No, absolutely not.
Did I need a mental health day?
Oh, yes. I most certainly did.
Sure, Cole had been surprising comforting the night before, but I still needed to get myself together.
I’d been thinking about the Not So Naughty List and Mercury in retrograde and the spectacularly craptastic day I’d had yesterday. Rationally, I knew the two couldn’t be related, but, then again, I’d rarely been accused of being rational. If I had a dollar for every time the words “free spirit” had been used to describe me, then I wouldn’t have to go back to my ridiculously crappy job.
And on that subject, something weird happened at the office yesterday. The pictures of me sitting on Santa’s lap had been ruined. All of the other pictures had downloaded just fine, but not a one of the pictures of me and Santa had been clear. Isaacclaimedthat they’d been just fine when he checked them. He was convinced that I’d done something to them. Then he yelled at me for ruining his calendar—for ten minutes straight.
A little nagging part of me remembered how Santa didn’t like the provocative outfit or the bottle of tequila on my hip, and I hadn’t been that comfortable with it, either. So if he were the real Santa, he’d probably have some kind of way to mess with the image…
If he were the real Santa. Do you even hear yourself, Aubrey?
The doorbell rang.
I opened the door to Mrs. Potts, our neighbor to the left. She’s an older woman who’d dyes her hair purple and likes to wear her eyeglasses on a rhinestone chain, so naturally she was one of my favorite folks in the neighborhood.
“Mrs. Potts, come on in!”
“No time, dear. But the mailman put this in my box by mistake.” She handed me an envelope before starting to back away slowly. “Don’t shoot the messenger!”
She was already speed walking down the sidewalk as I turned over the envelope to see…a jury duty summons?
That was it. There had to be a way to get off this so-called Not-So-Naughty List, and I was going to find it.
Once I gotto the mall, Santa was off “feeding his reindeer.”
Of course he was.
After a few minutes, he returned along with the older woman in the green elf costume. I leaned over the fence. “Excuse me, could I speak with Santa for a minute?”
She gestured to a line full of mothers and preschoolers, many of whom were starting to fuss. “You’ll have to wait in line like everybody else.”
I took a deep breath and got in line. At least I could make faces at the cute baby in front of me. When the baby fell asleep, I counted the number of mothers and children ahead of me. I could only guess, but there appeared to be twenty family units in line before I would get to Santa. People were beginning to line up behind me, too.
I kinda needed to pee, but I also wanted coffee.
Who’d have thought that all of these people would be here? Don’t these moms have to work? Why aren’t there more stay-at-home dads? I need to remember to make this trip in November when I have kids.
When I had kids.
