Page 38 of It's Mother-Pucking Christmas!

I worried Dakota would be overwhelmed, but since she was used to a certain level of family chaos, she just plopped down in the middle of the room, the seniors crowding around her, grilling her on her name, her family, her job, how many kids she wanted, and she didn’t have any exes floating around, did she? Because they weren’t sure I could fight.

“I can fight. I’m a hockey player,” I reminded the seniors.

“We’ve never seen you fight.” Horace, a Korean War vet and still spry enough to actually take me in a fight, piped up. “We watch you on the television when your games are on, and I’ve never seen you so much as shove anyone.”

“That’s not—”

“Give him some pointers, Horace,” Mildred insisted. “Now.” She turned back to Dakota. “Do you have any dick pics on that phone that you want to share with a sister?”

“She doesn’t need dick pics. She’s got the real deal.” Jean swiped out with her cane. “I swear she starts sundowning earlier and earlier.”

“How is he in bed, dear?” Myrtle asked Dakota. “We’ve tried to give him tips, but I think they just go over his lovely head.”

“I told him there’s only so much staring into those blue eyes a woman wants to do.” Frances bullied her way into the pack of curious seniors.

“Oh, those eyes can get him pretty far.” Dakota smirked at me.

“I hope he doesn’t just know one move,” Edna declared. “That was always the problem I had with the good-looking ones—they could go in, they could go out, but it’s like you took off your panties and they forgot their tongue worked.”

Mildred nodded. “I’m not waxing for a five-minute quickie.”

“Especially not after you have to sit through an excruciatingly long dinner with them,” Frances said.

“I think I got it, guys,” I called.

“Does he got it?”

“He doesn’t even swear.”

“What does he say when he, you know, scores a goal?”

“Well, we haven’t gotten that far,” Dakota admitted.

There were more offended noises.

“You gotta seal the deal,” several elderly men said to me, grabbing my arms. “Your body is your most valuable asset. Lead with your strength.”

Her friend shook her head. “That’s some Ohio rizz right there.”

“It’s what?” I asked, confused.

“It means it’s not sigma. You gotta keep up with the times. Keeps you young.”

“They spend all day on TikTok,” I told Dakota as a dog-eared copy of a 1970s book about the carnal pleasures was forced in my hands. “Just ignore them.”

17

DAKOTA

Ithink that might have been when I fell in love with him.

Fuck me, right?

Seeing how much all the seniors adored Ryder, how he wasn’t patronizing and instead just treated them like people.

One elderly man tearily told me about how his only son had died at age nineteen in Vietnam, and Ryder was like his grandson.

You’re a shitty, shitty person,I told myself. I couldn’t actually break his heart, right?

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