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Not by much, but it did.
“Hey, Jenna,” Dean said, “why don’t I come help you unpack?”
“I’m already unpacked,” she shot back at him. “Maybe your ‘friend’ shouldn’t bother doing the same if he’s going to be such a negative impact on our holiday.”
“Jen,” Lexi said. “Why don’t we go wrap presents? Don’t you think the place will be so much homier with gifts under the tree?”
“It’s not going to be homey at all as long as someone is just here to shit all over something special to us.”
Her voice broke, and I realized I had been kind of nasty about this. I didn’t realize it was a tradition when I got here, but I did know when I called it cheap. But I didn’t know how to apologize now without looking like an asshole, so I decided to do the stupid thing and stand my ground.
“Sounds like you’ve already made up your mind about me and how this holiday is going to go, so I guess there’s no point in me trying, is there?”
“Alright,” Dean said, finally getting directly between me and his sister. “Jenna, out. Go wrap presents or something like Lexi said. Gabe and I are going to talk and see if we can’t work anything out.”
“Good luck,” she said with a wry laugh before turning and walking out the door, her long, shining hair flowing behind her, leaving me looking like a jerk.
Because I was.
Chapter Three
Jenna
“Whatintheworldwas he thinking?” I asked, throwing my hands in the air, knowing Lexi probably didn’t have any more answers than I did. “Gabe is the poster child for a soulless, corporate robot. How in the world does Dean expect someone like that to have fun with us?”
Lexi shrugged, took a long drink of her hot chocolate, and smacked her lips. She had suggested we calm down with cocoa, but given the circumstances, I’d insisted on giving it a little kick. So we had spiked it with rum soGabewould be more tolerable, but since the booze was loosening my tongue, all it succeeded in doing was making me more focused on how much he irritated me and giving me the motivation to let those thoughts rip.
We were in my bedroom with Dean’s presents in front of me. He and I had a tradition as far as gifts went. One sweater, one set of pajamas, and one funny t-shirt for clothes. One pack of the other’s favorite childhood candy—Butterfingers for Dean. And one gift that was a “from the heart” gift. This year, I’d gotten Dean a new watch, since he’d said his was looking rough. It cost me two weeks’ pay, but I’d gotten him a really nice one at a discount on Black Friday.
“Could be worse,” Lexi said, shrugging like Christmas hadn’t just been ruined by my stupid brother and his “two sizes too small” friend.
“How?” I asked, unsure what could possibly be worse than some hunk of burning coal making ruining my special Christmas his own personal mission.
Dean knew how important Christmas was to me. He knew that it was the time our family had always been the closest, and that it was the time of year that I felt closest tohimsince he did so much to help me through their death. Hell, he’d personally paid for the cabin up until this year, when I said I’d wanted to do it. He’d tried to insist since he made so much more than me and I still had to pay for school, but it felt important to me to do it.
So why would he bring someone to Christmas who was such a sour apple? It didn’t make sense. It went against everything he ever said, including what he promised me when we said we were going to bring friends this year.
“I promise, Jen,”he had said to me.“I have this really great friend who always spends Christmas alone. This is going to be the best Christmas we’ve ever had. You’ll see.”
And not only did he break that promise, he went entirely in the opposite direction.
“I mean,” I said, taking another sip of cocoa before pulling my suitcase open to take out a gift to wrap, “how does someone like that even end up friends with my brother? Dean’s a great guy, and Gabe is just… not.”
“Dean is pretty great,” Lexi said. “Maybe we’re just not seeing—”
“Exactly!” I interrupted. “What aren’t we seeing? How did he trick my brother into bringing him here for Christmas? How did he pretend to be nice long enough to get an invitation?”
Lexi opened her mouth to answer me, but clearly couldn’t think of anything to say. She gave me an apologetic smile and a shrug, then went back to wrapping something with the gold and blue paper she had in her hand. It was a thick, luxe wrapping paper that had probably cost more than I spent on most of the gifts I was wrapping.
I couldn’t imagine spending that kind of money on paper that was just going to get ripped off, but Lexi had always believed that the presentation of the gift was almost as important as the gift itself. And she always managed to make gifts look like works of art, so I guessed it helped in some way.
I, on the other hand, believed the thought mattered more than how it looked. And right now, I was holding Dean’s gift and was contemplating which paper I should use to wrap it. I had bought a bunch of discount wrapping paper at the end of last year’s holiday season, so I had a lot of options. I had some with superheroes, some with wintery scenes or symbols, some that readMerry Christmas, and some that were fairly plain.
And when it came to the “thought” I had about him and this gift, right at that moment, I felt like using an old newspaper to thank him for bringing his coworker to our Christmas—right before I threw the several hundred-dollar watch at the wall. Instead, I grabbed a roll of cheap, shiny red paper, not wanting to waste anything too special on the person who brought Scrooge to Christmas, and laid it out flat to measure before I cut it.
Mom always taught us it was better to measure twice, cut once to ensure accuracy. Mom was serious about gift giving, and the wrapping was part of the experience. She and Lexi would have had parties about it if they’d ever gotten to know each other, I was sure. Even with measuring twice, I was lucky if I managed to get it right enough to cover the whole gift without having to cut a patch to cover where I messed up.
Indeed, despite trying three times to make sure I had the right size, I managed to leave a square about two inches big open on one side. Rather than try to blend it in, however, I leaned into my shortcomings and cut a piece from the superhero roll—one of Dean’s favorite characters from when we were kids. He always made fun of me for my less than stellar wrapping skills, so I figured I may as well preempt the teasing.
