Page 43 of Donner

I enjoyed the walk past the front windows on the way to the elevator on November first and every day after. Every tree was ringed with red and green lights and hung with LED candy cane displays. Our windows were also decked in lights that appeared to be permanently affixed to the frames. I'd never seen anything like it before. It made my job easier since I didn't have to put them up or take them down.

When we took the bus to go shopping, our neighborhood blended in with the others, forming a giant Christmas scene. The fresh snow, only marred here or there by children's footprints and the occasional path for a rolled snow person, added to the beauty. I'd never much cared for the cold, but I couldn't imagine living anywhere else after my first true holiday experience.

At the beginning of November, after I'd settled into my job, we had a dinner party at the dance hall so all Jax's friends could meet me. Derek came, which was a relief. Jax had worried he hated the entire building, even the parts above ground, but Derek said he was fine if he could see the sky outside.

Jax's friends were all charming but absorbed in their own careers. Even Derek seemed obsessed with the latest toy design he was working on. I accidentally asked him about it and ended up nodding and agreeing through a fifteen-minute tirade about the delicate work of using country-destroying technology to build a robot for entertainment.

Finally, Iris, a brown-skinned elf with curly black hair and an upturned nose, rescued me. She led me to a table where Jax had set up a game of Scrabble.

"This is a great space," Iris said. "Why don't we hold our Christmas Eve eve party here?"

"Because Derek hates this place," Iris's sister Melody said. Melody had her hair pulled up into a high ponytail, and her curls bounced as she nodded.

"I do not!" Derek huffed. "This is really nice. I didn't know they had a ballroom or whatever this is." We called it a dance hall, but either way, it was a large room with a high ceiling, a stage, and plenty of room for both a dance floor and dining tables.

"Is it too late to book it for December 23rd from six until at least midnight?" Derek whispered to me when the others started talking about something else.

"Let me check the schedule." I pulled it up on my phone, confirmed it was available, and booked the room for Derek. "I'll give you the employee discount if I can invite my friends from work, too."

"Of course!" Derek looked far more relaxed than I'd ever seen him. "I really like the stage. It will give me some space to set up my equipment. Last year," he raised his voice so the others could hear, too, "an accident-prone little sister spilled punch in my sound mixer and we had to end early."

"Still?" Melody asked. "You're still giving me grief about that?"

"It took me months to replace everything!"

Their friends chimed in, each taking sides. Jax was on Melody's side, which made me laugh. Even though Derek was his best friend, he sided with his disaster-prone friend Melody who everyone in the group treated like their little sister. She looked like she wished Derek saw her as something more. Maybe that was how her drink ended up shorting out his sound mixer in the first place.

After our little get-together, we didn't see much of our friends. Everyone was obsessed with Christmas for the final quarter of the year. I'd expected to miss the night life in Miami, but by December, I realized it didn't bother me at all. I loved spending evenings at home with Jax even more than our evenings out. We cooked and cleaned together, and then we played a game I invented the first time Jax came home with gray skin and all the light gone from his eyes. He looked like he'd been sucked dry by an emotional vampire. The game was called, "Revive Jax." That first night, I tossed him in the shower with all his clothes on until he spit and sputtered at me and asked me what the fuck I thought I was doing.

"I'm bringing you back to life. I don't know what happened to you at work, but you might want to take a wooden stake and some holy water with you tomorrow."

"It's the simulations," he said. "They're too easy. I let my team put them together, and they're soft balling it, like they don't remember what wind shear is." He turned off the water long enough to strip out of his soaking wet clothes, handing them to me to wring into the sink before he started the shower again in earnest. "It's like they want to die out there," he muttered just loud enough for me to hear him over the water.

"It's going to be all right," I reassured him once he was finished. I handed him the fluffiest towel in the linen cupboard and helped him dry off. Then, I made him a cup of creamy hot chocolate while I boiled some water for pasta and meat sauce.

I quickly learned that hot chocolate with a candy cane chaser was one of Jax's favorite things. I bought candy canes by the boxful at the grocery store and sometimes added powdered flax seed to the hot cocoa mix to give it some nutritional value. Jax grimaced when he got to the bottom of the cup, but he thanked me each time. I was the grateful one. I was glad something revived Jax after his long hours at work.

Chapter 25

Jax

Santa 30's reindeer were going to be the end of me. Our Dasher was one of the youngest recruits on any Santa's team. I almost sent him back to the training program and asked for someone else, but I recognized the drive in his eyes. He had something to prove, and I respected that. I wouldn't stand in his way, but he'd better pull his weight when it came time.

Our Rudolph was small for a reindeer. He'd worked hard all year and put on some muscle, but I still worried about his stamina. Yes, eight of us could pull the sleigh if we must, but it would be best if our guide led us. It wouldn't bode well for morale if he ended up sitting in the sleigh with Santa.

The others were all seasoned veterans. I had no qualms about their skills, but some of them didn't seem to understand what "prepare for the worst" meant. They were planning and running simulations with minor disruptions. They hadn't included a single full-on blizzard, gale, or volcanic eruption!

One day in November, we reviewed Comet's simulation in our conference room before we took it on a test run. When I asked Comet why his route didn't have a single snowstorm or wind shear scenario, he told me to calm down, which only riled me up even more.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in Santa's office by myself.

Santa popped in a moment later. "I told the others to take a five-minute break." Santa handed me a cup of steaming hot chocolate and a plate of cookies. I grinned, thinking of all the hot chocolate I'd been drinking lately, thanks to Beau.

"I appreciate your attention to detail and your ability to prepare for the worst," Santa said before taking a bite of his own cookie.

I nodded, glad he saw it my way.

"I have one question for you." His gaze bored through me as he considered his words. "What if everything goes right?"

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