Page 53 of War on Christmas

I force myself not to blush as I chew my Lucky Charms. I’m pretty sure she’s fucking with me. Which means she definitely heard me sneaking in my late-night visitor. Or she heard Freya sneaking out early this morning, while it was still dark.

“Um…” I consider my words carefully. “I’m feeling…great,” I hedge before shoveling a giant spoonful of cereal into my mouth. You’d think by the ripe old age of thirty-four I’d have learned how to tell a halfway decent lie to my mother, but nope. I eat faster, crunching so furiously I can barely taste the sugary burst of the marshmallows.

To be fair, it’s not a lie. Idofeel great. Amazing. I want to sprint around Northview like George Bailey through Bedford Falls at the end ofIt’s a Wonderful Life, exclaiming to every poor stranger I meet how goddamn fucking wonderful life is.

But I didn’t get a lot of sleep.

“And it seems like your date the other night went pretty well.” She doesn’t bother hiding her smirk as she sips her coffee, and it’s game over. My face blazes with a fire hotter than a blacksmith’s forge.

“Um, yeah…it was…” Lucky Charms are my only defense. I’m cramming them in now, hoping the spectacle of my overstuffed mouth will distract her from my flaming cheeks.

“Let me guess…great?” Mom asks.

“Um, yeah,” I mumble around my cereal. That’s me, the silver tongue of Andersen & Sons Architecture. My empty bowl stares up at me, and I release a sigh of defeat along with my spoon. It clinks against the edge of the bowl, and I run a hand through my hair. “Like I said in my text, we both had a little too much to drink. We lucked out that they had rooms available—”

“Ah,rooms. Plural.” Her brow lifts. “Right…”

Just as I’m hoping for a chasm to break open in our dining room and drop me into the bowels of Middle Earth, the front door gives a loud squeak and Thad pushes inside, covered in a thin layer of snow. He didn’t bother knocking—we never knocked as kids because we were back and forth so often—and the sight of him casually letting himself in is oddly comforting. Familiar.

His arrival is also the perfect opportunity to distract my mother from this conversation.

“Coffee, Thad?” Mom asks, getting up from the table and already walking toward the coffeepot. She’s still in her pajamas, but so is Thad. He smiles at her as he shakes the snow out of his hair and brushes off his plaid pajama pants.

“Yes, please, Mrs. Cassidy,” he answers as he toes off his winter boots, then crosses the living room to plop down next to me at the table. When he sees the Lucky Charms box, he grabs my empty bowl and fills it with cereal. “Could I get some milk too, please?” he asks her.

My face twists. “Gross. We have clean bowls, man.”

But Thad just shrugs and grins a thank-you to my mom as she sets the milk carton and a mug of coffee at his elbow. Then, as he pours milk over his giant helping of cereal, he looks up at me, clears his throat, and jumps right in. Because why not? The water’s warm.

“So, what’s happening with you and Freya?”

I never get snippy with Thad. I’m not, in general, a snippy person. However, Thad is the last person I want to talk to about this. I’ve tried to be straight-up with him about dating Freya, but it’s still awkward as fuck, and I don’t know exactly where the boundaries should be. It’s my own discomfort that has me leaning back in my chair and throwing Thad’s old words back at him.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you pick up a phone and ask her?”

My mom scowls at me as she settles back into her chair across the table from us. “Jem,” she mutters. Thad, on the other hand, throws back his head and laughs.

“I knew it,” he crows around a mouthful of cereal.

I run my hand through my hair again—I’m sure I look like a porcupine—and stare up at the ceiling. Apparently, Thad isn’t as uncomfortable with the whole situation as I am. Neither is my mom, who leans forward on her elbows.

“Ooh, Jem.” Her brown eyes sparkle. “Tell us.”

“Tell you what?” I shoot her an exasperated look. “Exactly.”

“What’s happening with Freya,” she says.

I turn to Thad for help. Surely he understands that he and my mom would be my last choice of confidants. Especially since things between Freya and I have escalated in the bedroom. I mean, what exactly does he want me to confess? That Freya enjoys a good slap to the ass as much as I enjoy giving it to her? Or that she has an uncanny ability to maintain her role playing right through orgasm?

But he just blinks at me as he steadily works his way through my Lucky Charms.

“We’re dating? I guess?” I shrug, trying to ignore the itch on the back of my neck. “But last we talked about it, which was before our date, Freya was pretty damn adamant that she doesn’t want to stay in touch when we get back to Chicago. Whereas I…”

Whereas I’m free-falling into a place where a future without Freya seems downright unimaginable. Coming into this trip, I’d been hoping Freya would shake things up. But instead of bringing chaos, Freya’s presence has instigated something altogether different. A fullness, a completeness, that was lacking before. Sure, she may be rearranging all the furniture—things aredifferent—but she’s also been dragging out all the dusty artifacts I’d packaged up and put away in storage. The parts of me I’d let go of because I didn’t know how they worked in my new, responsible, grown-up reality. My sense of adventure and my inclination toward bending the rules. My love of fantasy and art. My urge to compete, to acknowledge a conflict between myself and another person and challenge myself towinit. With Freya, life isn’t about constantly acquiescing to what’s expected of me. It’s about truth and integrity. About being the most complete version of me, even when it gets a little messy.

And the thought of going back to Chicago without her…of returning to golf and cookie-cutter office buildings and girlfriends who would, at best, scoff at Ulrik the dwarf? It feels repulsive to me.

“You…” Thad prompts.

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