“So,” he says, setting his mug down. “Hollis the Writer, you still missing parades and bazaars and bad movies this season?”
I fill my cheeks up with air then deflate them with a slow exhale as I consider this question.
Parade versus surprise tree farm. Movie in the park versus the drive-in. Bakesale versus beertending. The truth isn’t a revelation: I haven’t missed any of it. I’ve noticed it as I’ve reread every weekly article I’ve submitted to my editor these last weeks. The parades don’t matter. Most of it doesn’t. But the kids, that’s an entirely different story.
“I miss my kids,” I tell him honestly. “I really miss my kids. Everything else so far?” I shrug. “Looks a bit lackluster now that I’m removed from it.” I stare at my mug of hot chocolate and trace the retro pattern of holly leaves on its side with my finger. “I don’t know if they like any of the things we’ve ever done, now that I talk to them about it.” I laugh softly, folding and unfolding my napkin on the table. “I don’t know if I’d be saying any of that if I hadn’t met you—and Marv—so thank you for that. It’s been what I needed.”
I brave a look at him, and his lips tug to one side.
“You’re what I needed,” he says with a playful nudge my way.
“Oh, really?” I tease. “How’s that?”
The waitress brings our plates of pancakes and bacon and the biggest bottle of maple syrup I’ve ever seen.
“I needed,” Jay says, not hesitating to pour syrup on both our plates, “to learn not everyone who likesIt’s a Wonderful Lifeis a complete moron.”
“Ha. Ha,” I say flatly as I take my first bite of pancakes. And—“Holy buttery goodness, Batman. Why are these so good?”
He makes an agreeing sound, smiling as he chews; there’s syrup in his mustache.
“That thing on your lip is obnoxious,” I tell him before my next bite.
He grins, says, “Might be, but you love it,” and fills his mouth with more pancakes then moans.
And that is our date: Me with a corsage, him with a mustache, both of us laughing as we eat pancakes in an oddity shop with spiked hot chocolate.
We talk about everything—how he learned to brew beer in college with a DIY kit he got for Christmas one year. How my writing career started in high school where I wrote essays for hire for most of the football team. How he runs for fun and I find that news completely offensive. How the mustache came to be—a lost bet on a football game—and how he would miss it if it were gone.
He tells me about his sister, Caroline, and how when she drinks too much wine, she confesses that she and her husband, Ben, smoke pot out of their master bathroom window after the kids go to bed then proceed to have kinky sex.
About his younger brother, Brent, who sometimes tells his wife he’s going to work out but really goes to Jay’s camper and plunders his fridge for beer in an effort to escape his screaming kids.
About his parents who have gotten into pickleball.
“They sound great,” I tell him. “Don’t you miss them around the holidays?”
“They dole out this kind of crazy all year,” he says with a wry grin.
“Do you think you’ll—I don’t know—ever want to have a Thanksgiving with them instead of Marv?” The way he talks about his family it’s evident he loves them. Even not knowing them it’s hard to believe this man sitting in front of me doesn’t spend the biggest holidays of the year with them. “Or if you meet someone you want to be with—” His smile turns to something slightly more serious at what I’m implying. “Not me,” I add quickly. “I’m not saying me, I’m saying anyone ... I’m saying—I don’t know what I’m saying.” I’m rambling like an idiot and screw my eyes shut. “Never mind.”
He’s quiet as I take a long sip of hot chocolate, and I wonder if I’ve overstepped.
He clears his throat. “If I meet someone who wants those things without changing anything else about me”—he shrugs—“I don’t care where I eat Thanksgiving. But Marv is a nonnegotiable. You don’t just quit that man.”
And though I laugh, part of me wonders if there’s something deeper there too. If he’s with Marv because Marv has no one else. It adds a whole new layer to my admiration for him.
Before I can ask, he pivots the conversation to my kids.
We laugh, talk too loud, and take a picture with the waitress in her candy cane top hat while we toast our mugs like dorks.
And in between it all—he drops pecks of kisses on my hands and cheek, like commas in a sentence making me pause just briefly. Little gestures to remind me we’re right here, right now. I thumb his mustache, he toys with my hair. Christmas polka music plays as we sit on the same side of a booth. All I can think:Hollis Hartwell, this might be the most romantic thing that’s ever happened in your life.
When the food is gone, we browse all the shelves filled with oddities and leave with gifts. He buys six creepy dolls for his nieces and nephews; I get four outrageous top hats for my kids.
“Now what?” I ask as we load our bags into the back of his SUV.
He closes the door and walks around to the passenger side with me.
