Page 19 of The Twelve Months of Christmas
“Go Hawks,” she said.
“You a football fan?”
“Actually, I hate football,” she confessed, “but I like Super Bowl parties.” Crud in the mud. Did she sound like she was fishing for an invite to a Super Bowl party. “I used to host one when I was with my husband. My ex.” As if she needed to remind him she had an ex. It looked like more fishing. Not fishing here. Not even going near the pond!
He nodded. “Can’t beat nachos and beer.”
“And those meatballs in the special sauce,” she added. This was a ridiculous conversation. She clamped her lips shut.
“Well, if you’re sure you don’t want help.”
“I don’t,” she said. “But thanks for asking,” she added, to make sure he knew she really was a nice person and not the lump-of-coal finalist she’d looked like on Christmas Day. Not that she was interested, but she didn’t want anyone thinking she was the woman she’d behaved like then.
He nodded, saluted her, told Sophie she was doing a great job helping her mom and then he and his dog went back into his house where life was probably normal and drama-free.
“I like his dog,” Sophie informed Arianna when she returned to the porch.
“He’s very cute.” So was his owner.
A few moments later Alden’s truck backed out of the garage and he zipped off down the street. He was probably on his way to pick up a girlfriend to take to his parents’ house. He had to have a girlfriend. Of course, he had a girlfriend. And she wasn’t interested, anyway.
Christmas in January, huh?Alden thought as he tooled his Chevy off down the street, Buster harnessed in next to him and riding shotgun. Different. Actually, a little nuts, if you asked him. Not that she had.
And that was just as well. It was hard to be diplomatic when you thought someone was nuttier than a payday candy bar. Better to stay away. She’d seemed nice enough when she brought him those cookies, but he kept reminding himself he’d seen how irrationally angry she could get on those porch-front calls, and the last thing he needed was to infuse his life with fresh girlfriend drama. Or even neighbor drama.
He got to his parents’ place on Kitsap Lake in plenty of time to help his dad take down the Christmas lights and cut up the tree. His older brother, David, managed to be just late enough to miss out on the chores. His parents made the Griswolds of the oldNational Lampoon’s Christmas Vacationmovie look like slackers.
“About time you got here,” he called to David as he and his five-year-old son, Davie, came up the walk.
“Meg wouldn’t let me go until I took down our lights,” said David.
Alden shook his head and muttered, “Whipped.”
“No, happy,” corrected his brother. “Happy wife, happy life.”
David did have a happy life. He had his son and a new baby girl, a wife who laughed at all his dumb jokes and a thirty-year mortgage on a two-story fixer-upper not far from their parents that he revered like a work of art. Lucky dog.
David stopped long enough to help their father roll up and stow away the last of the lights in their red plastic bins and stack them in the garage, sending Alden and Davie in ahead of him. Davie hugged his grandma, then got involved in a serious game of tug-of-war with Buster over a blue chew toy shaped like a bone.
Alden went on into the kitchen to wash his hands and snag a bottle of beer. “The lights are now down for the year,” he informed his mom, who was busy pulling together enough food to last them through the game and into the next millennium. His mom loved to cook and since she was always on a diet of some sort, trying to take off those twenty pounds that were probably there to stay, contented herself with stuffing her family instead of herself.
“Thank you, darling. I know it’s a big job.”
“No bigger than putting them up,” said Alden. Although it was more satisfying putting up holiday lights than it was taking them down. “Funny,” he mused. “You’re taking your lights down and my neighbor’s putting hers up.”
“Really?” prompted Mom.
“It’s crazy. She says she’s having a Christmas redo.”
“Is this the woman you were telling us about who started the fire and didn’t pull out the damper?”
“Yep.” That had made for some entertaining talk at the dinner table on Christmas.
“Didn’t you say she’s single?”
“Divorced,” he corrected his mother. “With a kid.”
“She probably had a rough year,” Mom said.
