I’ve never been so happy to be such a shitty liar.
“Are you guys done with all the girly feelings out there? Me and the big guy want to come chill on that sweet-ass couch, but we don’t want your emotional breakdowns cramping our style. It’s hard to relax with all this crying going on.”
Charlie and I both burst into laughter. After one more squeeze, I let her go.
“Yeah, we’re done,” I call out. “I’ll order that pizza now so you can get on the road.”
“Oh, yeah. About that,” he says, walking back to the living room with my son in the crook of his arm. “Mom told me to spend the night and drive back in the morning. She doesn’t want me driving alone at night in the winter. I don’t know what she thinks I do after work at home. It’s usually pretty late by the time I get out of the market.”
Charlie sits next to him on the couch, her eyes on Lincoln. “There’s a huge difference between driving five minutes in Fallbridge at ten at night and driving on the highway at two in the morning. Especially in the middle of winter.”
“Yeah, yeah. Okay,Mother,” he teases. “I’m already staying the night. Happy?”
“You bet,” she says while ruffling his hair, taking advantage of the fact that he has his hands full feeding Lincoln. “We just wuv you so much, Gavvers,” she adds in a baby voice. “It would devastate us if anything happened to you.”
“Hey, no fair. Hands off the hair. Do you know how long it took to get it like that?”
They sit side by side, alternating between cooing over Lincoln and bickering with each other while I busy myself with ordering the pizzas. After I do that, I focus on unpacking my few boxes. The best part about finding a furnished rental is how little I had to pack to come here. It would have sucked if I’d had to move my furniture out of storage for such a temporary stay. Three months isn’t long enough to justify renting a moving van.
I only hope three months is long enough to find Lincoln’s dad.
The doorbell rings, and Gavin hops up to grab the pizzas. “Oh, thank god. I’m starving,” he says, spreading the boxes down on the coffee table and flipping one open. “I’m a growing boy, you know.” He grabs two slices and stacks them sandwich style.
I bring plates and napkins out from the kitchen. “We know, Gavin. You tell us every time you get even the tiniest bit hungry.”
He wiggles his eyebrows, and grins before shoving the makeshift sandwich in his mouth.
“So, Phoebe. Why don’t you tell me how you’re going to find this guy? You didn’t go into much detail when you announced you were moving here for three months to look for him. Do you even have any idea where he is?”
I heave a sigh. We’ve hit on the biggest problem with my plan. It sucks. Getting drunk and hooking up with a stranger after skipping your own wedding would be a lot easier to get over if you didn’t get yourself pregnant in the process. Failing that, it would be nice if you remembered the name of the guy or any detail about him other than he’d been dressed as Santa Claus for a Christmas party being held at the same hotel as your wedding. The only things I have to go on are the luxurious red velvet coat I stole when I crept out, and a blurry photo I took of his face mashed into the pillow. Not great clues.
Why did I take his jacket, you ask? I guess I thought my walk of shame would feel less shameful if I covered my wedding dress with Santa’s jacket. It didn’t. But I made it back to my room without being seen, packed up, and headed home with no one finding out I spent what should have been my wedding night with a stranger.
Until a month and a half later, when two pink lines gave me the shock of a lifetime, ensuring that everyone would know exactly how I spent that night.
That’s right.
My fiancé left me at the altar and the first thing I did was run out and get knocked up by Santa Claus.
Talk about Ho Ho Ho.
Chapter 2
Christmas Party Do-Over
Archer
“You’resureyouwantto do this again? I recall it didn’t work out so well for you last year.” My best friend, Eric Baxter, sits on the couch in my hotel suite, arms spread wide across the back, looking more relaxed than I’ve ever felt, as he waits for me to get ready for the company Christmas party.
Truthfully, I don’t know if I want to do this again, but I have a feeling that replacing a shitty memory with a better one is the best way to put this past year to bed. A last farewell, if you will.
I step out of the bathroom, sporting a fake stomach strapped to my front and a pair of red velvet pants held up by wide, black suspenders. I spin the luxurious white beard dangling from my fingers and walk over to grab my scotch from my desk.
“Yes. I need to do it. It will be fun for the staff and their families, and it’s my way of putting everything that happened with Annabelle to bed.” She didn’t ruin Christmas for me, despite her ill-timed wish during last year’s party for Santa to destroy the sex tape she’d made with her trainer so her rich boyfriend wouldn’t see it. The rich boyfriend in question? Yeah, that was me.
Eric bursts into laughter. “Her eyes, man. You should have seen her eyes when she realized you were in the Santa costume! I’ve never seen eyes get that wide. I honestly thought they were at risk of popping right out of her head and rolling across the floor. It was the funniest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.”
Yeah, looking back, I can see the humor in the situation. Not that I found it funny back then. Considering I’d hoped she would ask Santa for a proposal, her wish to hide a sex tape she made with someone else set that ring in my pocket on fire. But it also did something else: set free the stirrings of relief.
