Fuel the Fire (Calloway Sisters 3)

This issue hasn’t been important to me, not enough to disagree with Connor; so my opinions aren’t as strong as everyone else’s.

“And what was your childhood Christmas experience exactly, Ryke?” Connor asks. “How was Santa so special to you?”

Ryke shrugs. “The way it is for every kid.”

His answer is too vague to appease Connor. “Describe it for me.”

Ryke sighs in frustration. “I don’t know.” He shakes his head in deeper thought.

Jane drops her stuffed lion at Connor’s feet and tries to climb down his legs to reach the toy. I bend forward to collect it, passing the animal to her. She clings to it with such fervor that my black heart nearly softens. I stroke her head. I love every little piece of you.

“Eloquent,” Connor says.

Ryke combs his hand through his wild hair. “Wasn’t Christmas just your mom and you?”

“I’m assuming it was for you,” Connor says, both raised by single mothers. I thought they’d find common ground through this tiny similarity, but it hardly strengthened their uneven, slightly bent relationship. I know Connor trusts Ryke. I know Ryke trusts Connor. Analyzing anything beyond that gives me an unwelcome, pulsing migraine.

“Yeah,” Ryke says, “so when I saw a present from Santa underneath the tree, I got fucking excited. It felt like…” He struggles for the precise words.

“Like someone else cared about you,” Connor finishes.

Silence heavies the room, Ryke not denying this fact.

Lo frowns, as though realizing the true loneliness of his brother during holidays. Loren spent Christmas with us, the Calloways, and his father. My grandmother, with her chewy stale fruitcake and god-awful hyena cackle, adored Loren and always bought him gifts.

One year, I may have broken his Game Boy after he compared me to Angelica from Rugrats, and then he shaved my Furby, proving that he is just as much Angelica as me.

“It was like that for you too then?” Ryke questions, wondering why Connor is so anti-Santa when they “seemingly” share this bond. Connor was just being a vague asshole, so Ryke would spill more truths. I know, for a fact, that the first time he had Christmas was at Faust. Even then, it’s not the same as spending it with your family.

Connor says, “I never celebrated holidays with my mother. She found them pointless. I understand that fictional creatures can make you feel better, but we shouldn’t have to construct a lie just for that emotion. Jane will be comforted with the knowledge that Santa isn’t real and everyone else is living in fantasy.” He values the power that his mother gave him, able to see the world from the “real” viewpoint.

Loren sighs now. “Come on, man. Being a kid means getting to believe in the impossible. It means believing that fairies exist along with spells and magic, and that on your eleventh birthday you’ll receive a letter from Hogwarts. It means thinking your presents arrived from a workshop in the North Pole and not the store down the street. And Connor…” Lo’s face twists at a thought. “I’m really sorry your mom took that shit from you. If you had even a semblance of it growing up, you would realize how special it is. Don’t take that away from Jane.”

I balk at the idea of taking something from Jane, anything at all. Naturally, I want to give her everything and more—all the things that I never had. Like a sympathetic mother, not a controlling, overbearing one.

I look at Connor while he mulls over Loren’s speech. “You know,” I say, “we can see who figures out the truth first: Moffy or Jane.” This may entice him to keep the charade for Jane, so she can believe in magic too.

Lily crinkles her nose. “That’s evil.”

“Well, it is coming from the devil,” Lo says, breaking some of the tension. He flashes a half-smile at the video camera. “And Jane, if you’re watching this when you’re older, just know it comes from a place of love.” He can barely say that with a straight face.

I clap. “You’re so convincing that my heart is starting to unthaw.”

“You have a heart?” Lo quips.

“Did someone gift me something sharp for Christmas?” I ask, a threatening gleam in my eye.

Lo shoots everyone a look like whoever gave her a weapon is goddamn crazy. Then he lands back on me. “Stay away from my balls.”

“You have balls?” I snap, not as good at sarcasm as him.

“You’re mixing your dreams with reality. You haven’t cut them off yet.”

Ryke pulls Daisy closer to his chest, watching everything through the video camera screen with her. “This is the most fucked up baby’s first Christmas video,” he mutters.

“Okay,” Connor suddenly says, a hush falling upon the room. Jane prattles a few soft syllables and looks up at her dad. He tells her, “Tu seras magnifiquement naïve.” You will be beautifully naïve. I know that he’s at peace with this concept when his lips rise in a genuine smile. Lo must’ve convinced him.

Daisy whispers to Ryke, “Is this good?”

He can translate for everyone, but instead of reiterating word by word, he nods. “Yeah. He’s going to let them believe.”

“Thanks, man,” Lo says, his son sounding out noises while he whacks the action figure on the rug.

Connor nods. “I think you all still have my presents left to unwrap.”

Daisy stands to hand them out, passing the video camera to Ryke. While she works on finding his gifts beneath the tree, I return to the crossword and find twelve boxes, horizontal and using the “p” from a two-box word: DP.

A nearly perfect word comes to mind, but it’s slightly tainted by its definition—which may cause Connor to arch a what the fuck brow.

“Stumped?” he asks, staring over my shoulder at the giant inkblot beside Fornication and no progress on my end.

“No,” I snap. Stumped. I’ll stump him. I lick my bottom lip and neatly write the letters: s-c-o-p-t-o-p-h-i-l-i-a. Scoptophilia.

A fetish for looking at erotic photography or watching sexual acts. Like through mirrors. Or with sex tapes.

He reads my new answer as I pass him the paper and collect Jane off his lap, hugging her with two inflexible, solid arms. My little gremlin hardly cares that I suck at hugging—she still smiles. I couldn’t love her any more than I do. My heart is full.

When I steal a glance at Connor, both of his brows are raised in confusion and intrigue. We’ve never watched those tapes together. Hell, we could barely talk about them until Scott returned. They’ve been this toxic stain in our relationship that we’ve covered with a rug instead of removed with bleach.

We’ve finally begun scrubbing at it.

His fingers brush my neck, questioning in the electric stroke. My hairs prickle, and we lock eyes. I can’t say whether or not I’d want to watch them—if they’d just stir something worse. I can’t know because we’ve never tried.

I hear Lily whisper something to Lo

like mind reading—which is ridiculous, albeit a cute thought. Connor can’t read my mind, but maybe he can read my wants and desires and insecurities. Anyone who knows me well enough can, and Connor, of everyone, understands me the most.

“Here you go.” Daisy plops a package beside me, a heavy square object perfectly wrapped in light blue paper. We peel our gazes off each other.

Connor skims the crossword. “You should all open them at the same time.” He’s already filling in the crossword. Really?

Daisy hands the last present to Ryke, and we all begin to tear at the smooth, crisp creases. I open presents like I plan to save the wrapping paper for later, but every year, someone (Loren Hale) throws away my stack of neatly folded pieces. It’s extremely rude. His defense is always: I’m saving you from becoming a hoarder.

So I’m the slowest to reach the present.

Everyone is already shouting exclamations.

“What the fuck?” Ryke says. He hasn’t unwrapped the present all the way, so I can’t see.

Lo laughs and looks to Connor. “If you hated it, love, you could’ve just told me.” Moffy’s empty bouncer is in my damn view of Lo’s gift.

“Huh?” Lily holds her hefty set of The Chronicles of Narnia.

I gape. No, he didn’t. That was the present Lily gave him last year for Christmas. He asked all of us to give him presents that we enjoyed. We chose books as the overall theme.

“You re-gifted?” I ask him in distaste.

Loren must have A Song of Fire and Ice beside him, a stack of five books. Daisy is holding The Iron King by Julie Kagawa, a young adult fairy novel, I believe.

I haven’t even finished peeling off the paper of mine, but I’m certain a vintage copy of Shakespeare’s The Tempest lies beneath, my present to Connor last year.

“Open them,” Connor says, unconcerned. He spins his pen in his left hand.

When I finally unearth The Tempest I flip open the cover. Sticky notes lie inside the margins. Dozens of them, his neat scrawl in blue ink. I thumb through the pages, my heart racing. He annotated it.