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She opened the door and stepped aside, and I whistled when I got a look at her suite. “So this is how the other half lives? The cockroaches in my place kept me up half the night singing ‘La Cucaracha.’”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I’m joking.”
“Thank God.”
“They were actually singing ‘La Bamba.’”
Sarah smiled and pointed to the bag in my arms. “If you don’t have Gatorade in that bag, I can’t promise the next time I puke it won’t be on you.”
I reached into the bag and pulled out a red Gatorade. “Even though the alternative is so tempting…”
We sat down on the couch in the living room. Sarah chugged electrolytes while I unloaded the rest of my custom-made Mexican-hangover/Montezuma’s-revenge kit. I held each item out to her like I was Vanna White.
Pepto Bismol – “Fun fact,” I said. “There’s no medicinal reason it’s pink. The manufacturer adds the color to make it more appealing to children.”
Saltines – “It’s less about the cracker and more about the salt. It helps you retain water when you’re dehydrated.”
Ginger Ale – “Settles the belly.”
A giant orange – “Vitamin C.”
The last item on the bottom of the bag was a movie-theatre-sized box of Red Hots. Sarah’s nose wrinkled. “Those cure an upset stomach?”
“Nope, these are for me. I love these damn things. I like to shove a whole handful into my mouth so my eyes water.”
Sarah laughed. “Thank you for doing all this.”
“No problemo.”
“I hope I wasn’t too obnoxious last night. I’m normally a two-glasses-of-wine-max drinker. Maybe three on Christmas when I’m with my entire family. I guess since I skipped Christmas this year, I made up for the lost alcohol by drinking five at once.”
“Nah, you were fun. But what do you mean you skipped Christmas?”
“My parents are super festive—Christmas sweaters with bells and all.” She shrugged. “I just didn’t feel much in the mood to celebrate, so I lied and told them my flight got canceled at the last minute.”
“What did you do on the big day?”
“I stayed home in my pajamas and ate a frozen Lean Cuisine. I think it might’ve been the first time in my thirty years that I didn’t open a single present on Christmas.”
“That sounds…sad.”
She chuckled. “It was. I don’t recommend it.” Sarah cracked the top of the Pepto bottle open and chugged from the plastic. “What did you do for Christmas this year?”
“My family’s pretty small. It’s just me, my mom, and my uncle, Jimmy. Mom is super religious, so I took them to midnight mass on Christmas Eve. I sleep over at her house on Christmas Eve every year because the thing that makes her the happiest in the world is putting presents under the tree after I fall asleep and waking up to open them all together.”
“Awww… That’s so sweet.”
“Yeah, my mom thinks so. But that’s mostly because she has no idea that I slip Uncle Jimmy his real gift without her seeing.”
“Which is…”
“Weed and German porn.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. He looks forward to his one joint and 1950’s-era German pornography all year. It’s become sort of a silent tradition, ever since I stumbled onto his collection during a visit when I was eighteen.”
She laughed. “That’s so funny.”
“Not to Uncle Jimmy. He takes his porn stash very seriously.”
Over the next few hours we wound up talking about our favorite Christmas memories. I told Sarah about the year my mom woke me and my sister up at the crack of dawn, put us both in the car in our pajamas, and drove us to the airport for a surprise trip to Disney. It was my happiest Christmas, until I realized the vacation had been my sister Elizabeth’s Make-A-Wish trip, and it meant she’d be gone a few months later. She’d had terminal leukemia. Sarah told me about the boy next door whom she’d had a crush on from the time she was ten, but he was four years older. And how at eighteen she’d tricked him into standing under the mistletoe. Then when he went to kiss her cheek, she turned her head and slipped him the tongue.
By the time we came to a lull in our conversation, it was already dark outside.
“Oh my God. What time is it?” Sarah asked. “We’ve been sitting here rambling all day.”
I looked at my phone and realized it was also the first time I’d touched it all day. “It’s almost eight.”
“I monopolized your entire day sitting here talking about Christmas. You could have been outside enjoying the sunshine.”
“It’s okay. I like talking to you.”
She smiled shyly. “I like talking to you, too. Even though all of our talking about Christmas made me realize I was an idiot for skipping Christmas this year. It’s going to be a long three-hundred-and-sixty-two days until the next one.”
That gave me an idea. “Why wait that long? There are no rules about when we celebrate the holiday.”
