After cleaning up, we slowly make our way into the living room. All around me, my loved ones chatter happily about their excitement for their Secret Santa recipient to open their gift. Mom brings in an enormous platter of cookies, and Ricky follows with a pitcher of milk and some glasses stacked on a tray. Cocktails are poured, music is put on, the fire roars. It is everything I love in life, but I can’t enjoy it. What a good life lesson: be careful what you wish for. I wanted to undo the damage done with Theo, but that was intro level life-ruining. What happened with Andrew feels like getting a PhD in idiocy.
• • •
Across the room, Andrew sits in a chair, staring quietly into the fire, so different from his usual chatty self. I wonder where he was all day, what he was doing. How he can look so sad after the end of a two-day-old relationship. I’m mourning something I wanted for half my life. What’s his excuse?
Maybe he’s deciding how to tell everyone that he won’t be back next year—if we ever actually get around to next year—which, frankly, is exactly what I deserve.
When I turn back to the room, I see Kyle wearing a Santa hat, which means it’s his turn to choose the first gift to be opened. Although we each draw a name, the idea that each person will get only one gift from one other person is sort of a joke. The pile under the tree is mammoth. Gifts from parents to children, from children to parents, little things that we see throughout the year and have to buy for each other. Kyle gets random things with tacos on them. Aaron loves cool socks. Dad gets a lot of joke gifts—Whoopee Cushions, gum disguised as Juicy Fruit that tastes like skunk, handshake buzzers. He loves to play pranks on his office staff, and somewhere along the line we all agreed to be in on it. The pile of gifts under the tree is a hilarious display of adoration, capitalism at work, and our complete inability to moderate ourselves in any way.
When Kyle brings me a small box, and I look at the tag and see Andrew’s name in the From line, I feel like I’ve swallowed a basketball. This didn’t happen the first time around. I know enough has changed in this version of reality that it might not mean something. It could be something benign he bought on a random trip to the 7-Eleven. It could be a box of Snickers—my favorite candy bar—or a can of Clamato, a literal gag gift.
But the tiny groan he lets out—like he forgot it was there and wants to somehow take it back, undo it—tells me this isn’t a joke gift. It’s tender.
Under the press of attention from everyone in the room, I remove the light green striped ribbon and peel away the thick red paper. The box has the name of the store we were in together, and my stomach drops. Inside is a T-shirt with a picture of Christopher Walken that reads I’M WALKEN ON SUNSHINE.
Ouch. He must have found this in the little boutique yesterday after I ran off.
The present is so perfect that it almost pulls a sound of pain from me, but I look up, arranging my features into a smile. Odds are good that I’ll never manage the emotional fortitude I’d need to pull this shirt over my head. More likely I’ll just sleep with it nearby. That is, until I’m eighty and it’s dissolved into a pile of threads from my heartbroken stroking, and then I’ll have to cuddle with one of my seven hundred cats instead.
“Thanks, Andrew.”
“No worries.”
“It’s perfect.”
He flexes his jaw, nodding at the fire. “Yup.”
Benny frowns quietly at his shoes. Mom and Dad exchange worried glances. Ricky and Lisa, too.
But it’s my turn to pick the next gift. I stand, walking on unsteady legs to the tree, and grab the first box there. It’s for Kennedy, thankfully, and her happiness is a brief distraction.
Presents are opened. Hugs are given. All around me, the room is full of bright voices, excitement, and color. I do my best to be present; to smile when it seems appropriate and respond when someone asks me a question. I ooh and ahh in the right places—at least I think I do. My parents got me a new Apple Watch. Miles got me a giant Snickers bar. My true Secret Santa was Aaron, who got me tickets to see the Lumineers in February. For a few minutes my excitement, as I go through this all again, is genuine.
But then Mom gets up to refill her tea, and I hear the kitchen door open, and the scattery click-click of dog paws on linoleum, and then Mom’s distressed gasp. “Oh. Oh no. Oh, Miso.” She calls out, “Andrew?”