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“I…” Failed. At. My. Whole. Life. “Moved back here. For a while.”
“Really?” I couldn’t tell what sort of “really” that was.
“Yeah. My mom’s, you know, getting older.”
“Is she sick?”
“What? No. She’s just...here. And now I am too. She doesn’t really have anyone else.”
“Except the other ladies at Donna’s, huh?” He grinned, and my heart half melted and flopped wetly down my ribs.
“Donna’s?”
“Your mom takes dance classes at Donna Fischer’s dance studio every Tuesday night. With my mom.”
“Oh.” That seemed like something I should have known. But since I’d only visited my mom a handful of times since moving back, and all of those times had been either to leave the girls with her, ask for another Xanax, or both, I could see why she hadn’t shared the finer details of her life with me. She was also dating a German translator named Jake who was very tall and made me very uncomfortable.
Cass’s teeth scraped his lower lip for a second, and that brought back memories better left buried. “I can’t believe your mom didn’t tell my mom you’d moved back.”
Maybe she had, but Cass’s mom hadn’t wanted to tell him. Both our moms had gone through a period where they’d seemed to think any mention of one of us to the other would set off fresh rounds of tears and vaguebook posts featuring Kelly Clarkson lyrics. And to be fair, they weren’t wrong. Cass and I had broken up shortly before I’d turned eighteen, and most of my senior year had involved Mom avoiding any mention of the Sullivans in my presence while sneaking out to the tennis club with Linda every Saturday afternoon.
Or maybe Mom hadn’t told Linda because she was embarrassed that I’d decimated a successful life in Boston and had come slinking back here.
Cass slid his hands in his coat pockets, and I felt the sort of instant stirring in my dick that I hadn’t experienced since I was seventeen. “Do you want to maybe grab coffee or something? Catch up?”
“Oh, I…” Fuck fuck fuck. “I have to pick my girls up from school.”
“You have kids?”
Why did he sound so shocked? “Yeah. Twins. They’re five.”
“That’s amazing. Congrats. I’ll bet you’re psyched to give them a real Christmas Valley Christmas, huh?”
I laughed uncomfortably. “Uh, I was, I guess. I had this whole, like, Christmas plan, but it actually just fell through. So I don’t really know what to do now.”
Across the parking lot, in front of the store entrance, the Salvation Army bell ringers changed shifts and the new one began ringing his bell aggressively. It was enough to send several moms scurrying into the store with their hands set protectively on the shoulders of their children’s puffy coats.
“That sucks,” Cass said. “What happened?”
I tried to lean casually against the back of my car. I was very cold, and definitely didn’t want to talk to my ex about my other ex, and yet somehow, through a truly impressive lack of self-respect, I ended up telling him the whole story. I left out a few details—like the fact that Ben’s refusal to kiss me on the Kiss Cam was now a meme, a viral video, and the subject of at least three Buzzfeed articles. Or the relationship with Dr. Stephen Florris I had invented to show Ben up. Or my general downward spiral into sugar comas and boxed wine.
He whistled. “That’s rough. I mean, I can see why it would be weird for him to come. For you, especially. That would be, like, so awkward.”
Right. So awkward. So inappropriate. I knew that. Which was why I definitely hadn’t begged Ben to get on a plane and fly here for Christmas. “Yeah. I was just trying to think of the girls.”
“I totally get it.”
“They were nervous about the move, and—I mean, they’ve had a good time so far, made some friends at school and all that. It’s just that it’s the holidays, and they’re worried about whether Santa will be able to find our house now that we’ve moved…”
Cass laughed. “A valid concern.”
“And I keep telling them Christmas will be just like always. They’ll still get presents, we’ll still decorate, they’ll still have Cookies with Santa… But it’s three weeks away, and we still haven’t finished decorating the tree, there’s some Pony Pals thing that Ada wants, and I can’t find Peachblossom online, just Sugarpie and Candysnap, both of whom she already has, and now Cookies with Santa is a no go…”
“’Tis the season to be stressed and anxious,” he said with the kind of genuine sympathy I’d always been a whore for.
“No kidding.”
“Listen, I don’t know if this would be even remotely helpful, but...I know where they sell Peachblossom here in town.”
