Page 59 of Love Letters to Christmas

I love Brian’s events. Brian’s events are the best things since airmail.

Cheerfully, I scoop my sweetened condensed milk into a large bowl and go through the self-serve ice cream making bar, adding a heaping helping of peanut butter and magic shell. Today’s event is prepping homemade ice cream with a side of hot chocolate to tide us over while it freezes. Ice cream making instructions and ingredients fill several key conference rooms in the building, and despite the initial bah-humbug I witnessed when Brian first presented his Christmas in July plans, hundreds of people signed up to put together their own ice cream flavor today. Every freezer in every break room is going to be packed with take-home containers of everyone’s favorite.

Making today even better, tonight Brian is staying late for a meeting with Liam, which means I have brought my own car and will be taking a minor detour on my way back home to retrieve my mail from the post office.

In a modest number of hours, my ice cream will be ready and I should have a Brian letter to go with it.

“Peanut butter and chocolate?” Brian asks, stepping up beside me with a pink mixture in his bowl.

I beam. “It’s my favorite. What’s yours? Strawberry?”

“Watermelon,” he says.

I pause on my way to the whip cream station. “Water…melon?”

“I’m going to add Watermelon Sour Patch Kids.”

“Aren’t those gummies?”

Blissfully unconcerned, he says, “Yep.”

“Don’t…gummies turn into rocks when they’re frozen?”

He nods, sage. “That’s when you suck on them until they soften.”

Brian, my perfect Brian, surely isn’t making a watermelon gummy ice cream. That’s a touch unhinged, even for him.

Unfortunately, he very much is making a watermelon gummy ice cream, and he spends the minutes I spend folding Mini Reese’s into mine cutting Watermelon Sour Patch Kids into triangle slices for his.

Upon completion, he has a spiral arrangement of watermelon gummies atop his bed of pink while I have a scattering of Mini Reese’s atop my bed of peanut butter. He sprinkles whatever powder he used for the watermelon flavor over his then puts on the lid.

Together, we move to the label section, where Frank is doodling a masterpieceFor Normiesign upon a paltry slip of masking tape. It cannot contain her skill. Even her penmanship puts letters to shame, for they are not worthy of her.

Her attention lifts to my container when I sit, then fixes on Brian’s. “Watermelon?” she asks.

“You know it.”

“Excellent arrangement.”

“Why, thank you.” Brian slips into a seat at the table beside me and plucks a marker from one of the cups arranged down the center. “What have you made for Norman?”

“Vanilla Bean.”

I peer out at the tables of ingredients and the simplest ice cream recipe in the world, which has been written on a whiteboard where you’re meant to begin the process—two cupsof heavy cream, whipped; one can sweetened condensed milk; add toppings and flavors. Reaching for a slip of tape to label my container, I ask, “Did we…have the ingredients for Vanilla Bean?”

“I have my ways,” Frank says.

“Love always finds a way.” Brian doodles a bunch of cute watermelon slices on his masking tape around his name, and I decide that if it’s possible, I will be stealing and saving it.

“That it does.” Frank caps her marker and rests her chin in her hand. “How much longer am I allowed to stay here before I have to go back to work?”

“Technically, this event resides squarely within the confines of your lunch break, so as to not interrupt the working day in any way, shape, or form. Which someone during the Valentine event complained about. Since their skills could not be replicated by the temps hired.” Eyeing Frank, Brian also caps his marker. “Now, of course, if you’ve already obtained your nice list points for the day, you’re welcome to stick around for as long as you like.”

Frank hums. “Assuming I havenot, what happens to the naughty list peeps?”

“No one wants to know.”

“Do they get coal? Because summer is a great time for barbeque, and Norman would not mind if I bring home a bag of coal for him.”

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