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So I just stopped trying to sleep, just sitting up in bed flicking through channels or reading or messing around on my phone or online.
But somehow, by some miracle - or likely the fact that I had been up to all hours the night before prepping some of the food for Christmas - I had managed to pass out around five in the morning.
And I had dreamed of him.
In as vivid detail as the memories of the pain came back to me.
I was wrapped up in his arms, feeling his lips on me, his fingers teasing over me, his words in my ear.
And then the real world made his image float backward like fog meeting the morning sun.
"Santa came!" Astrid declared, being obnoxiously perky because, for one, she loved Christmas. And, I suspected, because she was trying to drag me out of my admitted funk.
"Being that I was Santa. Yes, I know," I agreed, but a small smile pulled at my lips.
"I mean... nothing looks like a hamster in a box, but that's okay. There's bound to be something awesome in there. Don't you want to come and open presents?"
I didn't have the heart to tell her that I really didn't care about the presents that much this year. Because, no matter what, she and Cam had likely put a lot of thought into their gifts for me.
I just needed a cup - or ten - of coffee. Then I could at least fake the enthusiasm one needed to have on Christmas.
"Yeah. But I have to throw the turkey in first," I told her, folding upward in bed, feeling sleeplessness around me like an embrace that didn't want to let go, trying to pull me backward onto the bed.
"Fiiiine," she said, hopping off the edge of the bed, making me realize for the first time that she was in candy cane printed pajama pants and a Rudolf long sleeve tee that said I'm safe. Rudolph ate the naughty list.
Her slippers even had Christmas bulbs on them.
This was her day.
Her birthday didn't mean much to her.
But Christmas?
Christmas was the one day of the year that got that lightness in her, that joy.
And, damnit, I didn't care how shitty I felt. I was going to get up, get dressed, and fake it. For her. Because she deserved it. Because she had sixteen years of no Christmases to make up for. Because I had promised her from day one that I would make each Christmas one to remember.
And maybe, just maybe, if I faked it hard enough, I could even trick myself into believing it.
An hour later, the loft was slowly starting to smell like cooking turkey, something that managed to make a little of the tension left in my shoulders fall away.
We were in the living room under a pile of wrapping paper and bows.
And Astrid was laughing and snapping pictures of a very unhappy Camden who had just gotten a gift - courtesy of her, of course - that was just a glitter bomb. Cam hated glitter. And not only was it glitter, oh, no. It was penis glitter.
I felt my lips curving upward as I helped him brush some of the pink and yellow and blue cocks out of his hair and off his shoulder.
"I thought prank gifts were for birthdays."
"Prank gifts can be appreciated any day of the year," Astrid told me with utmost authority as she tucked her phone away, reaching for her next gift.
We were down to the last three, all of us with piles stacked haphazardly next to us on the floor.
After presents came watching Astrid's favorite Christmas movie - The Family Stone. But we always had to turn it off before the mom died, listening to Astrid bitch about Whose genius idea was it to kill a main character in a feel-good Christmas movie? But she thought Ben Stone was the best thing since sliced bread, so she was willing to overlook that giant flaw.
Then we would take a break so I could do a bit more food prep. And then it was time for Cam's favorite - Die Hard. No surprise there. Even though Bruce Willis himself came out and said, unequivocally, that it was not a Christmas movie. We would eventually round it out with my selection sometime between dinner and dessert. They always complained - or in Cam's case, grumbled - about I'll Be Home For Christmas and my obsession with Johnathan Taylor Thomas even though I was a full-grown woman. What can I say? It brought back memories of a simpler time for me.
"My pants are too tight," Astrid grumbled, rolling around on the couch holding her stomach.
"You are wearing an elastic waist," I reminded her.
"It doesn't have Christmas Dinner Stretch," she told me with authority.
I tended to try to make up for my lack of cooking throughout the year by going a little - or a lot - overboard on holidays when we were home.
