Page 13 of My Christmas Alien Mate

As soon as the entire contraption was fully blown up, soft music began to play.

"Do you like it?"

I hadn't noticed that she had stepped next to me; I had been too engrossed in what was happening in her yard, but I slowly nodded. "It's beautiful."

"That's Santa." She pointed at the jolly-looking fellow sitting on the vehicle, looking as if he was having a hell of a time.

It was easy to picture him delivering presents to younglings; he looked the part. One question, however, stuck in my mind. "You said he enters the houses through the chimney?"

She elbowed me in the side, and for some reason, I really liked that intimate gesture, as if we were old friends. "It's just a fairy tale. Just let your imagination loose and go with it."

I could do that. Especially for her.

I placed my arm around her shoulders because it felt right doing so, and we stood there for a little while, taking her decorations in, until she let out a slight cough, and I decided it was time to go back inside where she would be warm.

Itwasstrangethinkingthat a man was lying on the couch in my living room right now and an alien at that, but for some reason it felt right. As if he belonged there.

I fell asleep soon after I snuggled into my pillow, surprising me. Ever since my grampa's death, I had been having a hell of a time falling asleep, often laying there for hours, worrying about the future.

My grampa's death had been sudden and surprising. He had been fixing me breakfast one moment, and the next, he was gone. Not so surprising had been his will where he declared me his sole heir. But then I found out that he had mortgaged his previously paid for house to cover my student loans, and devastation hit me hard.

He told me he was paying for my college from a fund my parents had established for me before their deaths. I should have known better. My parents were young when I was born and when they died, they were just a couple of years older than me now. They wouldn't have had the time to establish a college fund for me. A drunk driver had robbed them of that and so many other opportunities.

It was typical of my grampa though to do something like that to, one, keep my parent's memories alive for me, and two, to take on such a burden without telling me.

I thought of all the times I bought a brand-new lesson book instead of a used one and shame racked me, making me sick to my stomach as I wondered if the mounting bills I accumulated with that kind of reckless spending had caused my grampa's heart to fail. If only I had known.

I didn't know how he managed to pay the mortgage with his social security income, but somehow, he did until he died and left me with the debt.

The debt and no job, because the one I had been promised after my graduation dissolved into thin air when the company flopped belly up, followed by a few others, flooding the field I had dreamed of working in with programmers who had a lot more experience than me.

The little money Grampa left me was gone within three months of paying the bills. I found a couple of freelance jobs that made me some money to keep this place afloat until last month, when I received a letter from the bank threatening to take my cottage from me if I didn't pay.

So here I was, with no job and soon with no place to live. I had already sold everything that was sellable, starting with my car, because it brought more than selling Grampa's old beat-up truck—which would have been out of the question for sentimental reasons anyway. Followed by a few knickknacks in the house, Grampa's tools—which nearly broke my heart—and anything I could think of that would make some money. I stopped at the few pieces of jewelry from my mom and Grandma, knowing full well that selling them would only stall the inevitable and leave me bereft of the memories that came with them.

As much as I searched the job market, even looking in other states, there was nothing, and when I did see something, the companies were looking for programmers with more experience than I had.

I advertised in the local newspaper to help anybody with their computers if they needed it, but the fifty or hundred dollars I scraped together that way mostly went to groceries and gas, not to mention the utility bills that still had to be paid.

We had water from a well, but I still needed electricity, the internet, and my phone.

So I had resigned myself to the inevitable. I would pack everything up after this Christmas and vacate the premises per the bank's instructions, abandoning the place that had been in my family for generations. Which was exactly the reason why I had such a hard time sleeping at night, because all this was my fault.

Grampa's house had been paid for until I decided I needed a college education. I could have worked in our small town, where I would have made enough money to pay the monthly bills and bring food home, but no, I had to get my head set on becoming an app developer and making more money than I could have ever spent.

My fault.

I lost everything and only had myself to blame for it. Worse yet, I couldn't stop the biting suspicion that I was the reason for hastening my grampa's sudden death.

So, when I finally did fall asleep at night, nightmares plagued and awakened me nearly every hour, bathed in sweat and sometimes crying, hugging my pillow tighter.

It was still dark when I finally decided to get up, since sleep was more torture than restful.

I took a long hot shower, blow-dried my hair, and put on warm, comfy clothes, and applied a light makeup, fully set to start on the Christmas baking today.

Our neighbors were few and far in between, but it was an annual custom to create Christmas cookie baskets and take them from house to house. It was something my grandma and her friends started decades ago, and it was still going to this day.

I pushed back the tears that wanted to form at the thought that this would be my last year doing this for them and swore that wherever I ended up, I would honor this tradition by taking baked goods to my new neighbors.

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