Page 54 of Santa Baby

I slid my phone in my pocket and turned back the way I came, following my footprints in the snow. Japan was our third largest market. This call was important. We had offices in Tokyo. I had to be on the call, no matter what.

I pulled my phone out again when I reached the lobby of my building, waiting for the elevator.

“I have to go back to the office. Can I call you tomorrow morning?” I stared at my text exchange with Fia, waiting for those three dots.

They didn’t come, and as I rode the elevator to my offices, I realized with startling clarity what I was about to lose.

And it wasn’t my company.

Colin was already seated in the conference room, his laptop propped open, coffee in hand. I sat across from him, running my hand over my face. He looked up and asked, “Are you ready?”

I was ready to throw all of this away for his little sister, but he didn’t know that. How bad would it be if I just told him now, while everything else was already going to shit?

“I’m ready,” I told him, pushing back the exhaustion clogging my thoughts.

I went home three hours later with no new texts from Fia.

23

FIA

Central Park buzzed with activity as I picked my way through a Christmas market with my mom on a blustery, chilly morning. Mom sipped her peppermint mocha and fanned through a selection of hand-painted Christmas cards, pulling out her favorites and handing the seller her debit card. “For your aunts,” she told me with a shrug. Her eyes lingered on mine, searching, scanning, trying to unravel my foul mood.

She straightened, tucking the cards in her market bag, and turned to me. “What’s up with you, Fia?”

“Nothing, I’m just tired.”

“Tired from what?”

I rolled my eyes to the snowy sky and sent a prayer to whoever was listening that Mom couldn’t see the hurt and confusion behind my eyes. “I just haven’t been getting much sleep. I have a lot on my mind.”

“So, talk,” she replied, giving me a nudge with her shoulder. “Is this about Mason?”

God, I hoped Colin wasn’t still talking about the scheme with our parents. They thought it was real, of course. Hell, for a minute, I had myself convinced that it was real, too.

“No. I’m just feeling a little Christmas depression, that’s all.”

“Christmas depression?” She laughed, shaking her head. “What’s that?”

I sighed hugely, rolling my shoulders as we stopped at a booth selling the cookies Mom bought in droves every year. Going to this market together had been a tradition since I was a kid, but it didn’t have the same kind of magical feeling in the air today. The colors were stale. The air was too cold, and my eight-dollar peppermint mocha with whipped cream had been so hot it burnt my tongue. My toes were chilled and all I wanted to do was go home, throw the Christmas bouquet Mason had delivered out the window, and wallow in my own self-pity.

“I’m just sad Christmas will be over soon.”

“You’re being dramatic, Fia,” Mom said with a laugh, roping her arm around mine. She proceeded to order several dozen cookies and made me carry the increasingly heavy bag she always brought to the market. Arm in arm, we spent the next hour exploring, eating little snacks, and stopping to talk to everyone my mom knew who’d come into the city for the market.

“You’re not working today, are you?” she asked as we reached the end of the market. I bit into a cinnamon sugar soft pretzel, shaking my head. “Good, come back to Brooklyn with me, then. Stay the night. I’ll make you some soup.”

“I don’t want soup, Mom.”

“You’re obviously getting sick. You look ill, Fia. You need some soup.”

There was no arguing with her. In her defense, I did feel like I was getting sick. Laying on the couch and whimpering over my own stupid, breakable heart hadn’t done me any favors. My eyes were red and puffy and my cheeks were slightly chapped from crying, which I would never admit to, but I had cried.

Not because I felt like I was losing Mason, but because I let myself fall for something totally, completely unattainable. I’d read him wrong, and that was my own stupid fault. This had always been, and would always be, fake.

I’d been stuck in my own head for several seconds apparently because I looked at Mom and sighed. “Fine, I need some soup.”

She wrapped her arm around mine and led me to the subway, where I sat and watched people hurrying onto the train with glossy shopping bags, bundled in scarves and hats against the cold. Mom hummed to jazzy Christmas music playing over the speakers, and I zoned out, fighting the urge to pull out my phone and send the text that had been sitting in my drafts for two days. I’d written it the night Mason told me no when I’d asked if everything was okay. I invited him over. He never came. He said he’d call me in the morning but he never did. So, I had written him a novel like I was a lovestruck high schooler getting broken up with by her first boyfriend, who she thought was endgame, the love of her life.