Page 1 of Santa Baby

1

FIA

Nothing beat New York City during the holiday season. The sparkling lights. The flurries of snow. The street markets that spiced the air with the sweet, heavy scent of mulled wine and fresh pastries. Everything sparkled from the last week of October to the second week of January, when real life started again.

As I crossed the street, even the piles of garbage on the sidewalk gleamed under the shine of string lights hung in a bodega window. My laptop bag was tucked under my arm as I fought for my life against a burst of bitter cold wind. A taxi honked its horn and the driver shouted and gestured for me to hurry the hell up. I promptly flipped him off, then darted under the scaffolding of another huge project to repair another historic building’s façade. Ah, the joys of NYC. Not everyone was feeling the holiday spirit yet, apparently.

I supposed flipping off a taxi driver wasn’t very festive of me, either. But hey. He didn’t need to be so rude. Someone must have spat in his eggnog this morning.

I fell in step with a sea of nameless, faceless people. That was the beauty of this city. You never saw the same face twice. You never passed the same group dancing to the newest TikTok trend or stood in line behind the same grumpy businessman waiting for that hot, bitter cup of coffee from a cart on a busy intersection. No, every day was different. Every day brought new challenges and adventures. Every day was also freaking expensive as hell, but I wouldn’t want to be broke anywhere else.

I slipped through the heavy glass doors of the workshare space I spent forty dollars a month to frequent and I sighed with relief. In the little entranceway, the cold bite of the wind disappeared. I hiked my bag higher on my shoulder and dug in my pocket to find my keycard. A quick scan of my membership card and I was in, greeted by the smooth scent of coffee and the light tap, tap, tap of total strangers working on their laptops at long, white communal tables.

I didn’t really need to be there. My walkup studio apartment in the East Village had a little desk in the corner where I could work whenever I wanted to, but right then it was home to various pieces of camera equipment I didn’t have the money or time to repair, and I had made myself a promise last New Year’s Eve that I’d break the mold and start working outside of my apartment. In reality, that specific New Year’s resolution had nothing to do with socializing or getting out of the house more, and everything to do with Liv, my best friend, going through a self-help book phase and practically beating into my skull the idea that “Your bed is for sleeping, Fia. Your brain is all in a tizzy because your mind is telling you if you’re in bed, you should be working!”

I hiked my laptop bag onto the table in the corner of the wide, poorly decorated room. It was soulless. White walls. White tables. White coffee mugs. But the WIFI was cheap and the best in town, so it wasn’t all bad. I was untangling my power cord, setting myself up for another quiet day of editing some micro-influencer’s latest brand deal, when my phone started to buzz in my pocket.

Colin, my brother, had been calling me all morning. I’d been ignoring him, not because he was the most annoying person I knew, but because I knew for a fact that he was going to ask what my plans were for Thanksgiving. What was I supposed to say? That I planned on sitting in my apartment eating takeout from the Haitian place downstairs while he lounged at his girlfriend’s parents’ house in East Hampton, drinking wine that cost more than my rent?

I let the call go to voicemail and set up my station, humming to the song raging through my wireless headphones. All around me, strangers were oblivious to me, wrapped up in their own little worlds.

Sometimes when I came here, all I wanted to do was whip out my camera and start taking pictures. There was something calming about watching people work, lost in their minds, while the world spun and spun outside. So lost, in fact, that they didn’t realize they were making a flurry of expressions, ranging from serious to lighthearted. A little flick of the brow while reading a particularly strongly worded email. The soft, knowing smile that came with getting a text from a loved one. A frustrated shake of the head as they found another error. I noticed it all, which was why I found it so hard to focus sometimes.

I rested my chin on my fist and turned to the window, watching people walk back and forth, talking on their phones, laughing with friends, generally ignoring everything else happening around them. When I was a kid, I thought I’d grow up to be a famous photographer. My pictures would be fawned over in galleries all around the world. People would debate my motives, my inspiration, all while I slunk around in secret, sipping champagne with my camera slung over my shoulder.

I loved the anonymity of it. I loved being part of something bigger than myself, even if the picture I took was nothing more than my mom talking on the phone with her friend who lived back in Georgia, smiling around her coffee mug. I wasn’t part of the conversation, but I was part of the moment because I captured it.

Now, I took pictures of models peddling the latest “Super Greens” powder.

On the bright side, I had worked a few weddings this summer. Those jobs had been successful. Mostly. All but one. I had fallen into the wedding cake trying to get a perfect shot of the groom dancing with his mother. The unpleasant memory trampled through my head like a herd of stampeding reindeer. In my defense, it had already been cut and served. I only ruined some of it.

And I had gotten buttercream frosting in places it had no business being.

My phone buzzed again, rattling in my laptop bag. Sighing, I pulled it out. Colin. Again. I slipped it back into my bag and continued to watch the street. A man in a long black coat stopped in front of the window, his phone pressed to his ear. He looked vaguely familiar.

The man turned around and I saw it was Colin, his dark brown hair slightly wet from the snow. Spotting me through the window, he glared at me and motioned toward the door to the workshare, still holding his phone to ear.

Damn, busted.

After another dramatic sigh, I trudged to the door reluctantly and let him in.

“Screening my calls, huh? That’s not very Thanksgiving of you.” He laughed as he ran a hand through his damp hair.

“Thanksgiving isn’t until tomorrow,” I reminded him, my hands firmly planted on my hips. “And it’s not an adjective, either. Are you stalking me now?”

“There are only two places you’d be and you weren’t at home.” He followed me to the coffee station, looking around and taking in the nameless people. “Nice digs. Really white.”

I poured coffee into a mug and topped it off with powdered creamer. “It’s quiet here. At least, it was.” I threw him a look over my shoulder. “Did someone die? Is that why you’re calling me nonstop and following me around the city?”

He leaned his hip on the counter and shrugged like he had done nothing wrong.

I loved my brother dearly, but at thirty-five, he was ten years my senior, and we were so, so different. Where I was artsy and creative, he was tightly wound and always focused on numbers and dollar signs. Where I was short, he was tall. Where I was fighting for my life to set up a future for myself, he’d had his life planned out since he turned five.

Smart and sensible, he wore a Patagonia vest beneath his black, puffy jacket. The vest covered what I knew was a light blue button-down shirt. Gray, tailored slacks completed the ensemble. It was the uniform of every finance bro in the tri-state area.

“Nobody’s dead.” He chuckled and motioned toward the rack of clean mugs. “I like mine black.”

“Make it yourself,” I grumbled around the lip of my mug. “Seriously, Colin, why are you here? I have stuff to do.” I walked to my table by the window as he fixed himself a cup of coffee. He took it plain and bitter, like always. Colin was a creature of habit, always had been, always would be. If he had come here in person, whatever he had been calling me about had to be serious.