Page 55 of Due South

Blow me out!

What? But I do as instructed, enjoying the smell of freshly blown-out flame that curls around me. It’s one of my favorite smells in the whole world. I wish there was such a thing as a blown-out-candle-scented candle. I wonder if he’s noticed me lingering near birthday and retirement cakes while they were being cut up, the slices plated, so I could breathe in the scent a little longer.

I should be embarrassed, but I can’t be. He’s done this for me because he’d thought I’d like it and I do.Blow me out!It makes me giggle.

There’s another index card propped up against the next candle, and it says,Me too!

Strange.

The note after that says,Blow me too! Wait, that should read Blow me OUT too. I didn’t do that on purpose, swear. I should get another card. I have plenty. But I won’t because this will make you laugh. I love your laugh, Lucy.

He’s right. I am laughing. Because he’s ridiculous. I love it when he’s ridiculous and awkward and shy. Just as much as I love when he’s being bossy and murmuring dirty, dirty things in my ear and fucking me stupid.

So I follow the trail down the hall, reading notes as I go—No, please blow me out. Total fire hazard. What the hell was Evans thinking?—and blowing out the candles. I’m excited to get to the end, but I enjoy the smell of every one. How often do you get to blow out this many candles individually, not all at once like on a cake? When I get to the last one, there’s only an arrow pointing at Evans’s closed office door.

I knock and he yells, “Come in!”

A laugh bubbles out of me because he’s probably been waiting for me and here I’ve been taking my sweet time blowing out all the candles and inhaling smoke. Poor Evans. He was probably, as India so delicately put it, losing his fucking mind.

Pushing the door open, I’m almost blinded. Strung up in Evans’s cramped office must be a million Christmas lights. They cover the ceiling and drip down the walls. Behind his desk is a tree that leaves hardly any room for his chair. Or him, for that matter.

He’s standing behind his desk wearing the ugliest Christmas sweater I’ve ever seen. There’s a deformed-looking Rudolph pulling what I’m guessing is supposed to be a sleigh but looks more like a pile of dog poop and Rudolph’s nose is blinking. It’s absolutely hideous.

“Merry Christmas! Ho ho ho!”

My eyebrows draw together, and I tilt my head. What in the heck—

“I’m not calling you a ho, I—That’s something you say, right? Santa Claus?”

He looks absolutely panicked and fall-down exhausted. I know he says his family doesn’t celebrate holidays and they’re Jewish anyway, but he’s got to have more intel on Santa than that. Of course he says ho ho ho. Clearly, Evans has reached the point of dog-tired where he’s losing his faculties. Which is also endearing.

“What is all this?”

“It’s, you know, Christmas. For you.”

Every time I look, I see something new. There’s cotton strung out on the floor I think is supposed to look like snow and there’s a pile of presents in front of his desk.

“You were sad, Lucy. I know it’s not going home, but I thought it would make you less sad. I’m not exactly a Christmas expert, but I tried.”

“It’s wonderful. How did you—”

Half his face scrunches up in a delirious smile. “I don’t think I’ve slept for two days. It’s Christmas Eve, right?”

I nod.

“Then, yes, two days. And India helped.”

“India?”

Of course she was in on it. He couldn’t have pulled this off without her being some kind of aware. It makes me happy, though, that she activelyhelped. That would explain the note on my desk and why she sent me out for takeout she wasn’t going to eat. But if she was in on it…

“She knows?” Panic grips my insides like a tangled string of Christmas lights. We’re both getting fired for sure.

Stumbling over some fake snow and a cardboard cutout of Frosty the Snowman, Evans comes around his desk and stops short in front of me.

“She does. I told her yesterday.”

If I’d had anything in my stomach, it’d probably be decorating the fake snow I’m standing on. Panic has a way of making me ralph.

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