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She nods.

“I want to kiss you.”

I watch the heat rise up her throat, turning her skin the same color as her shirt.

“Then why don’t you?” she asks.

I can’t remember.

Swear to God, I can’t fucking remember. Maybe there’s no reason at all.

Maybe I never had a good reason, and I’m just a moron. Maybe I’ve always been a moron. Which raises the question why she’d go to all this trouble to get me back in her life.

She’s looking over my shoulder at the closed blinds. Her forehead’s wrinkled, her eyes out of focus the way they get when she’s thinking.

“I had to read this story for class,” she says. “It was one I already knew—O. Henry, ‘The Gift of the Magi.’ Have you ever read it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I bet you know it—it’s that story about the couple, they’re really poor, and the woman wants to buy something nice for her husband for Christmas, so she cuts off her hair and sells it to buy him a chain for his watch. Only he wants to do something for her, too, and he sells his watch to buy her combs for her hair.” She glances at me. “What?”

“I never liked that story.”

“Me, neither. But tell me why you don’t.”

“It’s supposed to be romantic, right? This big sacrifice they make, you go, ‘Aw, true spirit of Christmas.’ But it’s not.”

“How so?”

“You can tell me they’re happy under their Christmas tree because they’ve got their love, but they had love in the first place, right? Love was never the question. The question was what’s he got to give her other than love? He can’t keep the house warm. He can’t buy her a cruise to the Caribbean or whatever the fuck. All he’s got is a watch, and he decides, Okay, I’m gonna sell the watch and give her something that makes her feel beautiful. Only it doesn’t work, because now she’s bald, and that probably makes her even more miserable than she already was. It’s a depressing fucking story.”

I run my hand over the back of my neck, self-conscious. I don’t know where all those words came from.

She just watches me.

It’s more than I can take. The way she looks on my couch. The way she engages with me like I’m important, like everything I say is interesting, like I deserve to be talking to her after what I did when I don’t.

I fucking don’t.

There’s my reason why I can’t kiss her. Whether it’s adequate—I haven’t got a clue.

“I was just surprised,” she says, “by how much more complicated it was than I expected.”

“How so?”

She looks at the beer in her hands. Looks at my face.

“It’s supposed to be about sacrifice,” she says. “The beauty of sacrifice, because he makes this sacrifice for her, and she makes it for him, and it’s a disaster, like you said. It’s depressing. But look what they were willing to do for each other.”

“They already knew what they were willing to do, though—tha

t’s my point. They were trying to feel different for one day, just one day, get away from being starving pathetic losers, and they ended up looking like assholes. You know who really made out? The guy who sold her the watch, and the guy who sold him the combs. I bet those two had a happy fucking Christmas. I bet those two think it’s a fantastic story.”

She’s smiling at me. Drinking me up with her eyes.

She’s eating away at me, making the black ache inside me bigger and louder.

I wish I had a cigarette.

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