Page 86 of Fake It 'Til You Sleigh It

Then she bolts out of the room.

“Wait. I’m coming with you!” I yell, grabbing my shoes and chasing after her.

The front door slams, the sound echoing through the house like a gunshot. My heart’s racing—a wild drumbeat in my chest.

I rush outside just as Chase flings open the driver’s side door of the Mustang. She’s a tornado in human form, all wild energy and chaos. I jump into the passenger side, my hand still clutching my shoes.

“Chase, what the—”

The rest of my sentence is lost as she guns the engine. The force slams me back against the seat. We peel out of the driveway with a screech that wakes up the entire neighborhood.

“Jesus Christ!” I yelp, scrambling for the seat belt. My fingers feel clumsy, useless. We’re already hitting forty in a twenty-five zone, the speedometer climbing like it’s trying to reach orbit.

“Chase, slow down! What’s going on?”

“I can’t breathe,” she gasps. Her eyes are manic, pinballing between the road and the dashboard. “How do you get this damn top down?”

My pulse is racing, matching the car’s insane acceleration, but I force myself to focus. “Here,” I say, reaching for the console. My hands are shaking so badly that I almost hit the wrong button. “I’ve got it. Just… Just watch the road, okay?”

I’m a mess of jangled nerves, my eyes darting between her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and the blur of houses whipping past us. Sixty-five mph.

The convertible top starts to retract, painfully slow. Wind blasts through the car, messing up my hair and drowning out my ragged breaths. But Chase doesn’t calm down. If anything, she looks even more frantic, like a caged animal desperate to escape.

She turns sharply onto a road, taking the corner too fast. I swear I feel the car lift onto two wheels. My stomach lurches, and I dig my fingers into the leather seat hard enough to leave permanent indentations. Gravel sprays from beneath the tires, pinging against the undercarriage like gunfire.

Please, don’t let us die tonight.

“Why does your family have to be so nice?” she demands suddenly.

I blink, thrown by the question. “I… What? What does my family have to do with this?”

But Chase isn’t listening. She’s muttering under her breath, words I can barely catch over the roar of the wind and the engine. “Can’t do this… not real… don’t belong…”

“Chase,” I say calmly, despite the fact that we’re now doing ninety down this treacherous gravel road. “Whatever it is, we can figure it out. Just… please, slow down.”

“I was okay with my childhood of shitty Christmases because I convinced myself that it was normal,” she says, her words sharp and bitter. “That no one has arealChristmas. That everyone was as disappointed as me.”

I’m trying to listen, I really am, but my attention is split between her words and the haze of the world outside. With every sentence, Chase presses harder on the gas. It’s like her foot is synced to her mouth—the faster she talks, the faster we go.

My stomach does a backflip as we hit 100 mph.

“But not your family,” she continues. “No, they’re so into fucking Christmas, you’re the goddamn Griswolds. And your mom, she’s so loving, like really loving. She’s not pretending one fucking bit. And when I told her that I wanted to help plan next year’s family Christmas photo, she hugged me. She was so fucking happy.”

My brain struggles to keep up. “Why did you tell her you were coming for Christmas next year?”

“I have no idea!” Chase yells. “We’re fuck buddies! We’re not a real couple.”

Her words sting, but the fear coursing through me pushes the pain aside. “I think we’re both real enough to die if you don’t ease up,” I say, watching the speedometer climb to 115.

Chase doesn’t ease up. She punches it to a heart-stopping 145 mph, and the outside world becomes a dizzying blur. Palm trees morph into green smears, road signs are unreadable blips, and beachfront condos grow into focus at an alarming rate. The Marco Island Bridge, once looming in the distance, is now a concrete monster charging towards us.

The car swerves slightly, and my heart lodges in my throat. My mouth is dry, and I can hear my pulse pounding in my ears. A terrifying thought crosses my mind.

“You’re not going to drive us off that bridge, are you?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead, Chase erupts into a full-blown rant, her words spilling out so fast I can’t process them.

“Of course you had the picture-perfect Christmas growing up! Try losing your mom at eight. Merry fucking Christmas, right? Santa brought me grief and a dad who became a shitty alcoholic. And me? I was the kid stuck loving a ghost. Because that’s what he was—looked like my dad, but hollow inside. Just… fucking empty.”

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