Page 31 of My Holiday Hookup Road Trip

The kids giggle as they lock their limbs into place, and I whisper urgently to Darby, “Can you keep them away from all these breakable things for a few minutes?”

“Not until you tell me why you’re looking for an ostrich ornament.” Darby crosses her arms over her chest in a stance I recognize as herI’ll die before I back downpose. I give in with a sigh.

“There’s a girl, okay?”

Her face immediately brightens. “I knew it! I told Mom that it had to be—”

“Not a word to Mom.” I point at her in warning. “You’ll notice the girl isn’t here with me. I don’t know if she actually wants that, but I’m going to try. And I don’t need all that Mom energy directed my way until I figure my shit out.”

She gives a wicked laugh and grabs my face in her freakishly strong librarian fingers. “I knew this day would come eventually.” Giving my cheeks a squeeze, she baby-talks, “Widdle Sebastian’s all growed up!”

“Jesus. Get out of here,” I grumble, batting her fingers away.

“Rademacher kiddos! Let’s leave Uncle Seb alone and see if we can find Santa!”

The kids shriek in delight and abandon me without a backward glance, which lets me peruse the merchandise without worrying about having to buy the whole shop thanks to grabby little fingers.

For some reason, I’m convinced I need an ostrich ornament. Why, I don’t know. I don’t have her phone number or her address or anything to go on except the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and it’s not like I’m going to mail a gift to her academic department. That would make me worse than the creeps at the bar. Worse than the rental-place guy, even.

So yeah, leaving her the fuck alone is the right call here. But when I spot a fancified blown-glass ostrich in a red tutu with a goddamn tiara, I immediately know that I’m going to buy it. I may never have the chance to give it to her, but that just means I’ll have my own reminder that once upon a time, I had something special for a few days in late December.

It’s Christmas afternoon, and we’re all a little sugar-drunk and weepy.

Gabe proposed to Darby this morning after all the presents had been opened and we were still sprawled around the tree in our pajamas. She cried. My mom cried. My dad cried. Gabe cried. I cried. I’m sure Celeste would’ve cried too if her kids hadn’t been having some kind of crisis in the backyard with their new toys.

After we’d pulled ourselves together following the gift-opening frenzy and emotional rumpus of watching Gabe get down on one knee with a promise to make meatless lasagna for Darby for the rest of their lives, we celebrated with Mom’s hot chocolate and a huge tray of cookies she’d baked in the shape of wedding rings and passed off as the ones fromThe Twelve Days of Christmaswhen Darby asked what was up with all the gold circles.

And now the three women I love the most are gathered in the kitchen debating the merits of various wedding venues and shades of pink while the kids are scream-laughing somewhere upstairs and the men are gathered in the TV room for a football game that none of us cares about. My dad and Aaron are both passed out on the recliners, and Gabe and I are on the couch debating different honeymoon locations.

“I was thinking somewhere in Europe,” he says. “Austria is gorgeous.”

“Forget Austria. Try Australia.”

“G’day, mate!” he bellows in the worst accent I’ve ever heard. “Wait, where can you fly us?”

“Boston,” I say. “How do you feel about Paul Revere?”

“Meh. How about Hawaii? She’s never been to Hawaii. Plus, you know, I get your sister in a bikini.”

“Or I hear Alaska is nice,” I say brightly.

“Oh, dude!” He slaps his forehead. “I completely forgot to ask. Did you hear about the weird cloud in Alaska a few months ago?”

“I didnot. Tell me.”

One thing my future brother-in-law and I have in common is a love of ridiculous conspiracy theories that we torture Darby with whenever we’re together. He pulls up the picture on his phone, and I say, “UFO. Easy.”

“That’s what they want you to think.” He taps the side of his nose. “But it’s clearly where they’re hiding an escape pod that’s taking the chosen few from Earth to the secret moon base.”

I pretend to study the picture more closely. “Actually, that’s just a gender reveal gone wrong, I think.”

“Speaking of,” Gabe says, pocketing his phone, “I’ve got to tell you about Jonesy’s latest bachelorette party hijinks.”

“I feel like a need a course of antibiotics just to listen to this.” Jonesy, first name unknown to me and possibly even to his best friends, is the part-time server, part-time stripper who’s working with Gabe to get their landscaping business off the ground. I have yet to meet the guy, but every story I hear about him is more chaotic than the last.

“Nah, nothing like that. But the bride wanted to ride him like a pony, so he agreed because he wanted to give her a send-off she’d never forget, but she slid on the new body oil he was trying out and her earring got caught on the collar he was wearing, and they ended up stuck together until somebody could find a pair of scissors that could cut through leather to set him loose.”

Gabe tells the story without stopping for breath, and all I can come up with is, “Wow. So the moral of the story is to carry leather shears?”

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