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Ben’s expression told me I was lying again. So did Liar Bob. “Oh, Fran.”
Title of my biography, right there.
“Anyway,” I said. “I would love it if you and—what’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Kyle. His name is Kyle.”
“If you and Kyle are spending Christmas Day in Christmas Valley,” I said, “then me and the girls would love to have you join us. We’re doing pancakes at our place for breakfast, which, well, you know the girls. That’ll probably be at five in the morning. Then lunch and dinner at Mom’s, with lots of fighting over board games and new toys in between.”
Ben cleared his throat, and then did it again. His eyes looked suspiciously damp. “That...that sounds very nice, Fran. Thank you.” He rubbed his forehead. He had the haunted expression of a man who had Seen Things. “Holy shit. Kyle really came all this way with me.”
“He really did.”
“He’s not a pushover,” Ben said suddenly.
“Well, maybe that means he’s a keeper then. If he can put up with this magnitude of bullshit from you, he’s probably worth holding onto.”
We regarded each other suspiciously for a moment, each of us trying to gauge if we were at the ‘Look! We’re making jokes about it!’ stage, or if my comment about his bullshit had been not-so-secretly barbed. Neither of us seemed entirely sure, but then Ben cleared his throat again and obviously decided to come down on the side of peace, love and goodwill to all men. “I think he might be, yeah.”
Funny how a few weeks ago, hearing him say that would have snapped my heart in two, but now...well, I didn’t love hearing it, but it didn’thurt. I still didn’t forgive him for dumping me on Kiss Cam—seriously, what a fuckingtool—but I didn’t hate him for realizing before I did that we were no longer happy together. “Well,” I said. “Tell him that.”
Ben glanced at me. “Maybe I will. But you should tell Cass you’re in love with him.”
The same nurse walked by and nodded again.
I sighed. “I’ll tell Cass. If you tell Kyle. Deal?”
Ben made a face and was quiet for a moment. Then he finally said, “Deal.”
* * *
“Oh, shit,” Ben said as we drove toward my place from the hospital. Lights glared across the windshield. Most of them were Christmas lights.
“What?”
He winced. “I got gifts for the girls, but I didn’t get around to wrapping them. I was going to grab some paper tonight, but I’m guessing everywhere would be closed now? It’s pretty late.”
Ah, yes. Christmas Valley had shut down for the night, for that brief period when it actually stopped aggressively shilling Christmas so that it could celebrate Christmas. But it’d be business as usual again the day after Christmas, when you had to rush out and buy this year’s decorations at heavily discounted prices as they cleared the shelves for next year’s decorations. I’d never bought into the idea that Christmas this year had to be blue and silver, but next year was all about classic white and gold. Who even got to decide something like that? Did the CEOs of Pottery Barn and Wayfair and Anthropologie get together and throw a dart at a board?“Ladies and gentlemen, green trees are out, and white trees are in!”Did people out there really worry that their Christmas tree skirt was gauche and that the neighbors might notice their color scheme was three years out of date? Then again, if it wasn’t for the frantic rotation of stock at places like Elfwood, and the ever-expanding definition of what constituted a seasonally appropriate decoration to begin with, Cass and I would never have discovered something as bizarre and wonderful as Ruth the chicken all those years ago.
“Yeah, I think everything’s shut down,” I said. “I’ve got leftover paper at my place. You can have it.”
Ben reached behind my seat and tugged a bag through to the front. “I wasn’t sure what to get. I admit, I didn’t put a lot of planning into it this year, I—”
“Was planning on breaking up with me.”
He shoved the bag onto my lap. “Well, yeah. Anyway, they’re still into those pony things, right?”
I opened the bag and saw two Pony Pals boxes inside. One was Butterberry and the other was—
“Holy fucking fucksticks! It’sPeachblossom!”
Ben threw me a wary look. “Is that...is that a good thing?”
“At least ninety percent of my recent unhingedness—that’s a word now—has been because all Ada wants for Christmas is a Peachblossom, and I couldn’t find one anywhere. Except one that I accidentally stole from Dr. Stephen Florris.”
“Dr. Stephen Florris, your imaginary boyfriend?”
“Yes.”
