Page 263 of Back in the Saddle

While we did, things got concerning as Tex handed each of us a microphone, and Tito moved to the front of the stage with his iPad facing out in front of him.

We barely got there before the Gypsies jumped into The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” and I got a bad feeling that was confirmed when the karaoke words to the song scrolled on Tito’s iPad.

I hated karaoke.

I mean, seriously.

The worst.

But it was Christmas.

So…

What the hell?

Right?

Wrong.

I’ll tell you, if there’s a karaoke song to cut your teeth on, this wasn’t it.

We were a disaster.

Catastrophic.

But we went for it, everyone was laughing with us, dancing in front of us, and the best, Mace had joined Eric, Cap and Jacob, Javi and Jeff did too, Knox reappeared, and Brady, Gabe and Liam joined the crew, and they were all smiling at us.

Fortunately, Hugo could play a damn fine horn, and everyone out in our audience was screaming the words with us (or trying, seriously, that song washard), both mostly drowning us out.

Topping that, Tito’s Santa-hat-topped head was bouncing to the beat, his beard sometimes obscuring the words on the screen. Tex was stomping around the pool deck dance floor in some bizarre version of dancing. Tallulah had joined us girls in singing onstage, while Walsh seemed to be attempting to break dance by his mom where she was playing the guitar, and that was hysterical.

And I was up there with my girls, doing stupid shit, my stomach hurting because I had to sing and couldn’t do what I needed to do: bust a gut laughing. My chicks all looked gorgeous. They looked happy. And it was nearly Christmas.

So I was oh so very wrong.

It wasn’t a total disaster.

With Eric standing with his phone in front of him, videoing this mess, a huge smile on his happy, handsome face, his gaze on me, watching me make a massive fool of myself with my chicks, what it was, was one of the best memories I’d made in my entire life.

And spoiler alert.

It always would be.

* * *

By the way:I got Jacob’s name to be his Secret Santa. He was totally jazzed by the bottle of McCallan 12 I gave him.

See?

I had this shit down.

Martha was mine. She gave me a box filled with a dozen different colors of edible glitter.

Some mixologists might set those aside for sole use in their cocktails.

I might use some of it in cocktails eventually.

But when Eric and I got back to my place after the Holiday Extravaganza, we had other ideas.

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