“Yeah, me too.” Andy sighed and guzzled his beer. “I guess these southern girls are hard to read.”
“Neither one of us is going to get laid at this rate.” I shook my head back and forth. “Oh well, maybe the next one won’t lead you on.”
“I don’t know. I really liked her. I was just thinking with my dick when I first saw her, but once we talked a little bit. She’s really nice—like, the kind of girl you want to take out on a date.” Andy sighed again and shook his head. “I wish I would have just talked to her instead of acting like a horny frat guy.”
“But we are horny frat guys—at least until the end of the school year.” I chuckled under my breath.
“You’d have to meet her to understand.” Andy sipped his beer and put it down on the table.
“There are plenty of pretty girls at the mall.” I sipped my beer and nodded. “I saw this one girl the other day that made me want to start naming our kids and I never even got her name.”
“Why not? I know you’re not shy.” Andy lifted his eyebrows inquisitively.
“No, I just spent so much time staring at her that I was almost late meeting you to swap the suit.” I shrugged and grimaced. “Then you weren’t even on time, so I just totally wasted my opportunity.”
“We definitely need to get laid.” Andy exhaled sharply and grabbed his beer. “Alright, well I’m tired as fuck and if I’m going to bed alone, I might as well go to bed early.”
“I’m going to stay up for a bit. See you tomorrow.” I stood and went to the kitchen to grab another beer.
Something was definitely different about the girl Andy met at the mall because he never wasted his time on a girl that had already turned him down. His philosophy for getting laid was to invite every girl at the party to spend the night because the odds were that one of them would take him up on that offer. Mine wasn’t much different, except I usually liked to know the girl’s name and make sure she wasn’t going to annoy me before I invited her into my bedroom. Andy and I had even shared a few girls over the years who thought it was hot to hook up with twins. I wasn’t ready to retire from playing sex roulette quite yet, but it was starting to take a toll on me. Nothing ever compared to being with a woman that I actually cared about, no matter how many beautiful girls spread their legs for me. Unfortunately, it had been a couple of years since I even had a girlfriend and my last relationship ended in an explosive mess.
Andy and I took a different approach when we first arrived at college. He immediately started going to parties and hooking up with every girl he met. I fell head over heels for a cute girl named Lana that sat beside me in one of my classes. He was scoring in the double digits before I ever took Lana to the bedroom. It was majestic when it finally happened and after that, we were inseparable. I thought I was going to marry her when we graduated and was already looking at rings when she broke things off. It felt like my heart had been torn out of my chest that day, and I tried everything to win her back until I found that the reason she dumped me was because she was hooking up with one of our professors—it had been going on for a while.
The only medicine for my broken heart was the carousel of very willing girls that I had been ignoring. It wasn’t complicated or confusing—it was just sex. That worked for a while, but one day I didn’t recognize the guy staring back at me in the mirror. It wasn’t a good feeling. I slowed down a little bit after that, but the temptations were too strong sometimes. I thought a change of scenery and a nice southern girl could reset my fucked up head or something—maybe I was just getting caught up in Andy’s fantasies. College would be over soon and I had to decide if I was going to law school or moving on with my life. I was leaning towards the latter. College had taught me a lot—and more about myself than I really cared to admit. I was ready to move to a big city, get a job, and have the kind of future I dreamed about before I got lost in my own lust.
And take off that fucking suit for good.
The next day
I took the first shift in the Santa Claus suit and sat alone in my chair as I waited for the mall to open. I wasn’t looking forward to listening to greedy kids all day, but that was the job. We even got a bonus if we met our quota for photographs. In the movies, when a kid went to the mall to meet Santa Claus, they always had meaningful lists that tugged at your heartstrings. Real life was a constant parade of kids that wanted the latest video game system or every game that had been released in the last year. Sometimes they asked for unreasonable stuff, like a pony, but even that wasn’t as cute as they made it seem in the movies because they were dead serious—to the point that I was slightly scared of what would happen when there wasn’t one standing in the living room on Christmas morning.
Okay, here comes the parade.
I dealt with the usual requests, giving as many ho-ho-ho’s as I could muster behind the designer beard that cost more than the list some of the kids had. A few kids tried to tug on it, but it was secured fairly well. My elven assistants were quick to save me before it got ripped off my face. I was already looking forward to the end of my shift when a young girl walked up to the top of the stairs unaccompanied by an adult. That was unusual. There was normally a mother, father, nanny, or set of grandparents chasing the little tykes up the stairs and wrangling them towards my lap so they could get their annual picture. I never had that experience growing up, because Santa visited my house every year. It was a confusing time until I was old enough to understand the complexities of the man at the North Pole.
It was almost time for me to take a break and swap with Andy when I saw a woman approaching with what appeared to be a herd of kids. I looked at the clock, hoping that I could make a break for it, but I wasn’t going to be able to leave until my time was up. The manager also didn’t allow Santa to leave if he was in the middle of talking to a family or a group. If the first kid walked up those steps and sat on my knee to tell me what they wanted for Christmas, I was going to have to listen to them all. I didn’t have a choice. I thought I might get a reprieve when a couple of the kids started wandering off, but the woman accompanying them managed to get them back in line with a snap of her fingers. She then turned her attention me and started walking up the stairs.
“Ho-ho-ho.” I did my best to make my prosthetic stomach shake like a bowl of jelly. “What do we have here?”
I know all of those kids don’t belong to you—unless you’ve been spitting them out since you were their age.
“Hello, I’m Abigail Winters. These children are from the North Georgia Orphanage.” She motioned to the group.
Oh god—orphans? No!
“Great, I can’t wait to meet them.” I forced a smile and nodded my head.
I’d rather eat broken glass, but I guess I don’t have a choice.
I had gotten so used to spoiled brats rattling off their Christmas lists that I wasn’t prepared for kids that actually needed what they asked for. They asked for shoes, coats, and basic toys if they even had one on their lists. All of their lists were short, and I saw so much turmoil in their eyes. It seemed cruel to bring them to the mall and get their hopes up. I was pretty sure the orphanage wasn’t going to break the bank to fill their stockings on Christmas Day. I wondered how many times they had already asked for things that Santa wasn’t able to deliver. By the time the last orphan finished telling me what they wanted for Christmas, I was fighting back tears. I had to swallow several times just to maintain what masculinity I had left.
“Ms. Winters.” I motioned to the woman at the bottom of the stage. “You haven’t told Santa Claus what you want for Christmas this year.”
“No, I’m fine.” She dismissed me with a quick wave of her hand, but the kids quickly started urging her to go up the stairs. “Okay, okay!”
“Why did you bring all those kids with you.” I talked extremely low so the kids couldn’t hear me as she awkwardly hovered over my knee without fully sitting down.
“It’s an annual tradition.” Her eyes flashed discomfort, but she kept a smile plastered on her face and waved to the kids.