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“We have old Halloween stuff,” Matty finally said.
Renzo tugged on his hand, leading him toward the exit. “Good. I’m gonna need some stuff for my apartment. Last time you slept over, you complained the whole time that my walls were boring.”
“You have no style,” Matty said with a sniff.
“Thank you, Picasso,” Renzo said with a laugh. “You should paint me something.”
Matty shook his head. “Nuh-uh. I keep my own stuff. It goes in my room.”
“Fine,” Renzo groaned, tugging Matty harder and making him laugh. “I guess I’ll have to do it myself.”
Their hands swung between them, and Renzo felt content for the moment. At least until they passed by the giant tree and the Santa Village, which seemed to get smaller and smaller every year. He felt Matty’s shoes starting to drag, and he let him pause.
“I’m too old,” Matty parroted.
“For what?” Renzo asked.
Matty jerked his chin over at the giant tree where Santa was sitting at the base. Renzo frowned for a beat, then realized what Matty was saying. “Who said that? Tell me Camilla didn’t say that shit to you.”
“Don’t say s-h-i-t,” Matty scolded.
Renzo wasn’t going to let up. “Who said it, Mattia.” Full-naming him almost always worked, but this time, Matty lifted his chin in defiance. Renzo sighed again, pulling Matty toward the doors. “Don’t let anyone tell you that, okay?”
“I know Santa’s not real,” Matty told him in a stage whisper. “I knew when I was ten. He’s just a story.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t like Santa. That doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as Christmas magic,” Renzo argued. “People don’t need to take away things that make you happy just because they’re miserable.”
Matty said nothing, and Renzo wasn’t sure if the concept was beyond his brother or if he was just tired of the argument. They’d been through it before—too damn many times. Like when Matty’s dickish coworkers made fun of him for watchingBlueyor for wearing light-up shoes, which had taken Renzo and Camilla months to find in his size.
Sometimes, Matty would be rebellious and do the things that made him happy. Other times, he made a big show of giving them up, and whenever they caught him trying to sneak episodes of old TV shows or sitting on the closet floor watching the walls light up purple and blue, he just curled into himself and refused to talk about it.
But Renzo would begoddamnedif he let someone take the holidays away from his brother.
There was so little joy left in the world as it was.
“What would you ask Santa for if you could?” Renzo asked as they reached his car.
Matty sighed. “I can’t tell you. It’s a secret.”
“That’s not exactly helpful when I want to go shopping,” Renzo pointed out as he hit the button on his fob and opened the car door.
Matty just smiled at him, and Renzo knew that night was a losing battle. He was too damn tired to fight though, so instead, he took them through the Taco Bell drive-thru and spent the rest of the night watchingStar Warsand telling himself that six tacos was not too many.
CHAPTERFOUR
“…eight, nine…ah,fuck.”Renzo stood up, his back twinging with phantom aches as he stared at the remaining logs that needed to be split. Either an animal or the wind had come along and ripped the tarp off the woodpile in the middle of the night, and what he had prepared for the week was now soaking wet with no hope of drying before the afternoon.
He hadn’t anticipated breaking his back twice in forty-eight hours, but that was just his luck lately.
As he walked toward the chopping block, his gaze cut across the yard to the neighbor’s house. Renzo hadn’t ever paid it much mind over the years, and his sister only rarely complained about an occasional garbage smell when there was an updraft. They knew a woman lived there. They’d seen her a handful of times answering the door when someone delivered food or groceries, but she never said hi.
Then one day, the deliveries stopped.
And then Camilla spotted animals running in and out of a couple of busted windows, and she knew there was a reason the house had gone quiet.
She had been the one to call the cops since none of the other neighbors seemed to give a shit, and Renzo was there the night paramedics showed up to haul the woman’s body out of the door though. When she was gone, he and Camilla had taken bets on whether or not anyone was going to show up and handle the mess she’d left behind.
Renzo had gotten brave once, on half a bottle of wine, and had crept over to peer through the window. They were filthy and fogged, but he got a glimpse of trash piles and enough bugs to give him the heebie-jeebies for weeks.
