Page 3 of Take Me Home for Christmas

And yes, we had worked together very efficiently and quickly to help a toddler with pneumonia get oxygen, antibiotics, and quick admission to the PICU, short for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit.

“I’ll be sure to communicate my plays from now on. Okay?” There was that smile again, hot lava to my insides. Oh, so painful, to be this close to him and constantly pretend we werefriends, friends, friends. I needed a brain reset. For my own sanity.

After he’d broken things off last summer, he’d said, “I care about you so much, Mia. We’ll be working together all year. I want us to be friends.”

With his words, my heart cracked right in half. I should have saidScrew you, absolutely not.

But you know what? We often happened to be on call the same nights, working closely to help very sick kids. Give us any emergency, and we were magic together. We anticipated each other’s moves, had the same rhythms, even the same thoughts about what to do next.

So, I had no choice but to accept his friendship, which he offered very sincerely. That worked fine, as long as I ignored the rush of hormones that released in my body every time he walked into a room.

It had been magic in bed too. Well, in my opinion, anyway. Let’s face it, if he’d felt the same, I wouldn’t be searching for a fake boyfriend to bring home with me in T minus five days, now would I?

I forced myself into the here and now as Brax walked over to Bianca and handed the beanbag to her. “I’ve got to go but keep practicing. ’Cause Pedro and I are going to whup Mia’s and your butts tonight.” Pedro was another teen on the unit who happened to love ping-pong—and Brax.

“Not,” Bianca said definitively, like the typical teenager she was, spinning her chair around and heading down the hall.

“Mia?” my mom asked.

Oh. My mom.

“Sorry,” I said. She’d been relating a story about how our whole town was excited for the big annual Christmas party, where everyone got way too dressed up, ate a fancy sit-down meal, and danced to a live band—a usually fun event that happened to be hosted by my ex’s parents. Except this year, itwould be hosted by—bonus!—my ex and his new wife. I was definitely not going.

“I’ll let you get back to work,” my mom said. “Is that Braxton I hear in the background?”

“He—um—he just said he can’t wait until we’re on call together tonight. If it’s not too busy, we’re going to put together a fake Christmas tree someone donated and get the kids to make paper chains and stuff.”

That part was true. But for the rest of the tales I was spinning, I was going to burn in hell.

“He sounds so…light. Fun loving. I can see why he’s perfect for you.”

I didn’t have to tell my mom that life had sucked thefun lovingright out of me for quite some time, starting with my longtime boyfriend breaking up with me two years ago and marrying someone else in Vegas last month.

I was okay with being single at twenty-nine, but this made my mother, who’d married my dad at twenty, worry about me constantly. Plus, the breakup with Charlie had been hard, and people in our small town, two hours from Milwaukee, asked about me a lot, which made her worry even more.

When Brax dumped me a few weeks after we’d started dating, she’d been about to start chemo, and I just couldn’t tell her. And so the fantasy lived on.

I wasdefinitelygoing to burn in hell. Since my sister had died, I’d made it my mission not to cause my parents any worry. I supposed I’d become the perfect child, determined to do everything right. They’d had enough grief in their lives. I didn’t want to give them more. But inventing a boyfriend was a whopper, even for me.

“How are you feeling?” I asked. “Maybe it’s too much, me coming home with someone. Maybe it’s better if—”Please,I prayed.Please say it’s too much.

“Sweetheart, we cannot wait to meet Brax,” she quickly said. “And I’m feeling great. Ask your dad.”

“Hi, honey,” I heard in the distance.

“Hey, Dad.” I pictured him standing there, dutifully holding an ornament box for my mom while she picked them out one by one, exclaimed over the story each one told, and hung them on our tree. I’d basically hit the parent jackpot—my dad always had my mom’s back, and vice versa. Not always easy when she tended to be Mrs. Christmas.

“Tell her, Steven,” my mom urged. “Tell her I’m just fine.”

I heard a shuffling noise as my father took the phone. “Your mother now has a total of eight Christmas trees in our house.” There was a painfully patient pause. “She’s made me haul each one to its perfect place. And she’s been decorating for the past two weeks.” In his voice, I heard an unconscious plea for reinforcements. “I can firmly say she’s back to her old self.”

Stopping my mom from decorating would be like stopping the snow from coming just south of Madison, where I grew up in a quaint lakeside town dotted in the summer with crystal blue lakes, bright red geraniums, fresh June strawberries, and the squeakiest cheese curds you’ve ever tasted. In the winter, it was all quaint old homes and rolling snow-covered hills. And everyone trying to outdo themselves in the Christmas-decoration department.

“We can’t wait to meet your young man,” my dad said.

“Knowing you’ll be here soon is the best medicine of all,” my mom said, “so hurry home.”

“’Kay. See you soon. Love you,” I said as I hung up.

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