Eleanor:Tiffany, that is concerning. Can you find something to eat right now?
I glanced at the kitchen where Vlad stored his bottles.
Eleanor:Are you available for an appointment tomorrow?
Me:yes
If I wanted to be a Hallmark heroine who didn’t drain her boyfriend, I needed blood. But Hallmark heroines didn’t drink blood. It was a catch-22. A Google search forcoconut water alternativeyielded an idea: sports drinks. Vlad caught me red-handed googling Gatorade.
“You were right. Coconut water isn’t for us.” Vlad didn’t rub in that he was right, so I must have looked very bad indeed.
“How was the date?” he asked, almost politely.
Too tired to pretend, I confessed. “Ugh. I accidentally swallowed coconut flesh and I vomited in Santa’s bag.”
He started belly laughing.
“The elf said it happens all the time.” Why had I told Vlad about this embarrassing moment? He would literally remember it for eternity.
“Remember that time we went to that fair and got stuck on the roller coaster for hours?” he reminisced. “We could have just climbed down, but we waited forever like we couldn’t rescue ourselves.”
I smiled at the memory. “You could have climbed down, but I was wearing a short skirt, plus you know climbing isn’t in my skill set.”
“Tiffenie, so much is in your skill set that you don’t know about.”
I waited for him to elaborate. When he didn’t, I said, “Go on.”
While I waited for him to list my skills like a high-school career counselor, I retrieved the Christmas tree. Tyrone had told me to let it dry out on the porch overnight, but if I didn’t decorate it to within an inch of its life in front of Vlad, it would be a wasted opportunity.
“Do you mind?” I asked with an innocent smile. “You can help if you want,” I added, knowing the only thing he wanted to do with this tree was light it on fire and launch it into outer space like a flaming javelin.
“Go ahead. I was going to watch TV,” he said as if he wasn’t annoyed by my Christmas tree flaunting. He clenched the remote and stared too deliberately in the direction of the television, pretending to watch a documentary about Shakespeare. For her part, Cat jumped into the window and stared out at the field of snow. She licked a paw and cleaned her face, bored by both of us.
I jammed the tree into the stand Tyrone had given me and turned the stabilizing screws against the base of the trunk. When it came out crooked, I did it again.
Even without standing back and taking in the view, I suspected the tree was still lopsided. No matter, though. It smelled amazing. Fresh-cut pine. I had a tabletop plug-in one in my LA apartment. I left it up year-round for a couple of years because I didn’t want to have to walk to the storage closet and put it away. Like a bad wig, it had never lost the shape of the box it came in, and there were never any presents beneath its boughs. Eventually, I jammed it into the dumpster outside.
Vlad might have been pretending to ignore me while learning secrets about Shakespeare’s identity, as if he didn’t already know them, but hewas watching my every move. When I hung an ornament on a branch, he said, “I can’t take it anymore. Let me straighten this.”
“Okay,” I said, secretly delighting in making Vlad decorate a tree.
“You hold it and I’ll adjust.”
“I didn’t think you supported my celebration.”
“I would like it if you just moved into the coven and followed the rules. That would be so easy. But if you’re going to put up a tree, it might as well be straight.” With a mortified look, he said, “And you have to put the lights on before the ornaments. Were you raised in a barn?”
“You know I was.”
“Don’t exaggerate. You lived in a housenextto a barn. It was very comfortable for the 1700s. It always smelled like fresh-baked bread. The noise, though! So many children in one small space.”
I smiled at the memory.
“Could you help me haul up some boxes from the basement?” I asked. In a normal household, Christmas hides in the basement for eleven months of the year. Even I knew that. Those are the rules. A grand celebration trapped in a dark corner in a musty old box. Relatable.
“After this show is over,” he said.
I put my hands on my hips. “Vlad, come on. Help me finish the tree. You and I both know that documentary has it all wrong.”
