Page 12 of Sexted By Santa
Once that was done, I’d needed to unwind a little before I could sleep.
In the end, it’d been nearly 2 a.m. before I went to bed. And as usual, my mind spun with everything I needed to do.Refill Tori’s prescriptions. Call about her next follow-up with her pediatrician. Find childcare for the five days Shirley will be gone over the holidays. Oh god, why does Shirley have to be gone?
Like a Tilt-a-Whirl, my mind went round and round until pure exhaustion pulled me under. My tired brain wasn’t ready to wake, despite Tori’s insistence.
“You didn’t eat cake, did you?” I mumbled, still half-conscious. “Need to…check your sugar…”
“No!” Tori shook my shoulder. “I didn’t eat it. I want to make it!”
“I thought…decorations.”
“That too. I want to do it all!” Tori was full of energy, bouncing on the bed. I smiled into my pillow even as I mourned the sleep I’d never get.
“We need to decorate the tree,” she said. “Oh, and I want garlands! Madison has garlands, and they’re so beautiful. Wrapped around the stair banisters—”
“We don’t have stairs,” I pointed out. The Craftsman-style home was one story, with gleaming wood floors, a tiled entryway, and beautiful exposed ceiling beams and wide window casings, but it was cozy rather than spacious.
“We’ll put them on the fireplace then,” Tori said, undaunted.
That, we did have. It had a natural rock surround and was flanked by built-in bookshelves that held a mix of children’s books at various reading levels, from books I’d read when Tori was a toddler to the chapter books she was beginning to read on her own.
“And lights!” she added as her tone turned accusing. “You don’t have any lights up outside. We have tons to do.”
I nodded against the pillow.
“Daddy! Are you listening?”
“We need to decorate,” I mumbled. “And bake a cake?”
“Yeah!” She tugged my hand. “Come on! I decorated cookies with Shirley, but I haven’t done any fun holiday stuff with you yet.”
Cue the guilt. With a mournful groan, I let her pull me out of the bed.
“Let’s check your glucose and calibrate your pump,” I said. “Then I need to shower.”
Tori looked like she wanted to argue, but she relented with a wrinkled nose. “Fine, but we have to hurry!”
She’d make a fine dictator when she grew up, I mused.
The shower cleared the last of the sleep haze, and I dressed in comfy sweats and a T-shirt. Tori was in the living room, digging through a box of decorations when I emerged.
“There’s no garlands in here. I wantgarlands. Madison has them.”
I sensed a pattern. “Do we have to be like Madison?”
Tori straightened, placing her fists on her hips. I flashed back to a memory of her mother. Tori looked a lot like Marissa, but her personality was so different their similarities didn’t often strike me. I’d loved Marissa the way a teenager loves his first serious girlfriend, but our relationship had been short-lived. That young bloom of love had faded even before Marissa, exhausted and desperate, turned up at my dorm room with our child and told me she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. She’d handed over Tori and a diaper bag—nothing more—and left for a new start with a guy she’d met. A month later, documents arrived signing over full custody of Tori to me, and that was that. I was a single parent, who learned very quickly just how difficult those early months must have been for Marissa. Because raising a child without a good support system was hellishly hard. And not just financially—though kids were more expensive than I’d ever imagined—but emotionally and mentally.
I sympathized with how she must have been feeling, even though I wouldn’t give up Tori for anything in the world.
“If I can’t go to Madison’s, then I have to invite her over here,” Tori said. “Otherwise she’ll think I don’t want to be her friend.”
I nodded thoughtfully. “You could just explain why.”
She huffed. “I did explain, but Iwantto have a sleepover with Madison. If I can’t go there, then I want her to come here. But our house needs to be nicer.”
I frowned. Out of everything I’d done since Tori had come along, providing a nice house was the one thing I’d gotten right. “This is a nice house, Tori.”
She waved a hand. “There’s barely any pictures on the wall. There are no decorations. Madison’s house looks like it’s out of a magazine.”
