Page 3 of Oh, Christmas Con

“Okay, well, I don’t wanna break up, babe,” he said. “So I’ll propose. Obviously.”

Sheila smiled as a light applause broke out. And then the room fell silent.

“Listen,” Chris interrupted the awkwardness, “if Sheila is still single in the next three minutes, I’m taking her on a romantic getaway to Paris.”

The audience “ooOOoo’d” and “whoop’d.”

“Actually,” Brittany said from her seat on-stage, “Chris would probably take her to Budapest, but it would look like Paris in all the pictures,” she joked.

The audience laughed and then settled and listened intently for Sheila’s boyfriend’s response.

“Well, um, yeah, I mean, will you marry me, Sheila?”

“Yes!” she shouted as she jumped for joy. “Yes, yes, yes! A thousand times yes!”

The audience erupted. Chris leaped up and then ran across the first row of seats, high fiving each audience member. “Woo!” he shouted. “What a rush! I am in the zone! Let’s do some more. Does anyone else need some relationship advice?”

A rush of audience members lined up at the microphone. The chat was loving it, too. It seemed like every single one of the 311 live viewers reacted with a heart emoji. All except for one.

“This is absurd!” Maye said. She typed a long string of angry face emojis.

On her phone, Maye watched Chris as he turned to look at the viewer reactions on the screen behind him. His radiant smile slowly dropped into a disconcerting look.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, pointing towards the screen. “What’s this about?”

“Everyone’s loving it, Chris, keep it up,” Marcus said.

“Not everyone. Who is…” Chris squinted at the screen. “It’s Gonna Be Maye? Is that right?”

Hearing the username she created to lurk online called out in front of a large crowd made her cheeks feel warm. “I created that a long time ago…” she said to herself.

“Hey,” Chris said, “we all have screen names and email addresses and MySpace top 8s that don’t hold up. No judgement here.” He stood up and walked towards the screen, still pointing towards Maye’s comments. “Tech guy, can you stop the comments from scrolling? I want to read this one.”

An anxious pit sat in her stomach like a boulder as the spotlight grew bigger on her. Maye instantly regretted what she had typed. At the moment, she was trying to convey her strong feelings, but she didn’t think she’d actually have to answer for them.

Maye’s comments sat frozen in the middle of the giant screen as Chris read the text aloud. “This is detrimental and dangerous advice, and you could hurt someone. Thumbs down emoji.”

Chris turned to the audience, “Can you believe this?”

The audience booed.

“It’s just one comment, Chris. The rest are overwhelmingly positive,” Alec said.

“Right,” Chris said. “That’s why this one stands out to me. I’m just wondering if ItsGonnaBeMaye has some better advice to offer. I think we’d all love to hear it. Tech guy? Could you work your magic and invite ItsGonnaBeMaye to join the livestream? I’d love to hear their insights.”

The audience erupted in cheers.

When a request to join the livestream appeared on Maye’s screen, she tried furiously to tap the Decline button, which of course led to her tapping the Accept button and, within moments, she saw her face on the gigantic screen at the back of the stage. Her scared face, full of regret and dread, filled the screen.

“Well, well, well,” Chris paced the stage.

Her hair was falling a bit flat since she had skipped her normal nighttime routine, and she definitely didn’t have time for her morning refresh, something she had picked up from following her favorite curl gurl online. Maye dipped offscreen and shook out her roots, hoping it would settle nicely.

Chris looked back at the screen and then turned to face the camera, then twisted his head back and forth. “Hey, where’d she go?”

Maye slid back in front of the camera and looked at her handiwork. Not bad for two days removed from wash day, she thought. And thanks to her father’s Mexican ancestry, her medium-olive skin looked perpetually sun-kissed and contrasted nicely with her dark hair and dark eyes.

“Oh, I love those curls,” Chris said. “Reminds me of Kathryn Davis’s hair.”