How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

“We’re pretty hot, Joy,” I said, pulling us together, side by side, to look at ourselves in the mirror. The Bond Girl and the Disco Ball.

“I wasn’t sure about this, but I have to agree. We are pretty hot,” she said.

Joy reached up and did a scrunchy type thing she’d been doing for two hours to my hair. Like there was any chance my hair was going to lose the curl. I’d been praying for my hair to lose its curl since I was a kid, and no dice.

She’d covered my lips in bright red lipstick. My eyes in glittery eye shadow. I was me but…sexier. Brighter.

I had not expected miracles here, but it sort of felt like one had happened.

“He doesn’t stand a chance,” Joy said to my reflection.

I’d said not one word about Fucking Sam Porter. Not one. But Joy knew. Hell, maybe everyone knew. Butterflies exploded in my stomach.

“Am I that obvious?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. I mean, if I walked into that party and people knew what I was after…forget it. I’d put my jeans back on and drop this stupid idea.

“No. But I have a sense about these things,” she said. “As long as I’ve been here, you haven’t been interested in shopping or makeup or hair products, and suddenly your brother’s best friend shows up and you’re…” She waved her hands around me.

I groaned and put my head in my hand. All this time, I’d thought I was playing it so cool. “You want to talk about it?” Joy asked.

“God no,” I said. Talk about Sam? How? Like, what words would I even use? If there were words to describe him and how I felt…well, I didn’t know them. I didn’t know the language.

Joy laughed. “If you change your mind, I’m here.”

Joy was the big-deal ornament designer my brother had hired to turn Kane Co. Inc around. Prong one of his three-pronged approach to saving our family business. Joy was half witch, half artist, half…absolute goofball. And yeah, yeah, that was three halves.

I stood there in the shipping break room in a sequined gown and high-heeled shoes (that weirdly didn’t hurt my feet) among the beat-up lockers and the old fridge and the bulletin board with the Heimlich and CPR posters and the sign-up sheet to buy popcorn from Rodrigo’s kid’s Boy Scout troop.

So, yeah, I looked like a fish out of water in this place I’d created and controlled. Where I felt strong and capable and the lingering shit from my parents couldn’t touch me.

But up there. Up on the top floor with the new windows and the big deck and all the staff and everyone in suits and dresses and my mom floating around like some kind of poisonous cloud…ugh.

This was a mistake. I could feel it in my bones. I wasn’t some woman in a rom-com whose life got wrapped up in a bow in an hour and a half.

I was Sophie Kane, the black sheep of the Kane family. The embarrassing one. The screwup. And I just looked stupid in this dress.

“Stop!” Joy cried. Because she was part witch, she could tell I was about to tear the thing off my body. “Stop. You look beautiful. You do. And I won’t fight you if you want to go out there in your jeans and hoodie. You’re beautiful that way, too. But that dress cost so much money.”

It really had. Come to find out, sequins were expensive.

“Fine,” I snapped. “Let’s just…do this.”

I’d spent most of my life wearing smooth the grooves between embarrassment and anger. I’d made that a real easy transition for myself. I could go from embarrassed to outrage in .05 seconds. I wasn’t proud of it, but whatever. When you grew up with my mom you learned some fucked-up coping mechanisms. I mean, look at my brother. The shit that guy did? That bravado? Getting engaged to some strange woman on a whim? It wasn’t healthy.

Joy handed me a little black purse. “What do I need that for?” I asked.

“Lipstick. Key badge. Phone. Condoms?”

I felt myself blush bright red. So fast and so hard I got dizzy.

“Isn’t that the point of all of this beauty?” she asked. Waving a finger over all her hard work. “To get laid?”

Was that what I wanted from Fucking Sam Porter? To get laid? I mean, the truth was that I had imagined it more times than I could count. But my imagination and reality were miles apart. Sam talked to me all the time–about the Broncos and Skyrim. Books we were reading. Some politics. My brother, Wes, and how he had lost his mind with this crazy engagement.

So, what I wanted…really, really wanted was for Sam to look at me with…I don’t know, softness? Care? Not see me as one of the guys, but as…me?