How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

“I feel a but coming on.”

“But I can’t…give you that all the time. I can’t even promise I can give it to you again. Half the time when someone touches me it feels…all wrong in my body.”

“All wrong how?”

He opened his mouth, shut it. Shrugged, like he just didn’t know what to say. How to explain it.

“That’s what happened this morning?” I asked.

The morning light fell across his face, harsh and beautiful.

He was in so much pain. He was in pain from twenty different things, in twenty different directions, and I couldn’t stand, couldn’t bear, that any of it was coming from me.

“It’s okay,” I said, and I put away all my own desires and wants. All my own pain, I put it down. Kicked it behind me into the corner. “We’re friends. It was…” I couldn’t finish that sentence. Didn’t know how to.

“An amazing Christmas.” He smiled at me, a real smile, and I felt joy looking at that smile. Glad I could give it to him. Even though it cost me everything I wanted. Everything I really wanted. “Sophie. You were so good.”

“Well…” I winked at him. “You weren’t so bad.”

And it felt for a second like we were back to the place we’d started. Me wanting him so badly but locked in this friendship.

It had been enough for so long, I told myself, watching him zip up his coveralls. It will be enough again.

“I’ll see you at work,” he said.

“Yeah. Right.” Oh God. Oh my God. Every day with him. Every day with this sliced-open feeling. Every day remembering how he touched me and then walked out that door. How in the world was I going to survive that?

He walked past me to the door and I reached for him, stupidly. Like a flinch nearly, like I had to stop him from leaving. I had to touch him one more time. Once more before he was gone and this weekend was just a memory with which I tortured myself.

But then I realized, reaching for him, that my touch wasn’t comfort. That it might be the opposite of it. That I might actually be hurting him and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

“Hey,” he breathed, and he pulled me into his arms. A hug. Brief but hard, like the hugs he used to give me before we’d put our mouths on each other. And I held strong, forced myself not to melt into him. Not to soak him up. Not to lean and want and desire.

“See you at work,” I said and slugged him in the shoulder.

And then he was gone.

I stood in my kitchen for a long, long time, trying not to cry. I lasted thirty second before I gave up, sat down on the floor, and cried until I was dry.

12

Sam

My first job out of the Marines. My first day. Two days after Christmas.

Mom had packed me a lunch. Turkey on rye. An apple. Some of that gingerbread.

Like I was ten.

I felt like a fool. And also…more than I’d thought, excited. Excited to be of use again. Particularly to Wes and Sophie. I mean, not that I had anything to add. I was just a warm body in the warehouse. But it felt good to be there. Among family.

Well, I hoped Sophie and I could feel like family again. I hoped I hadn’t ruined that.

I walked in the front door, saw all the Christmas decorations still up. But then Kane Co. was a Christmas company and half the decorations were up all year round. But still, the wreaths and the lights were a reminder of the party. Of what happened between me and Soph.

But those reminders were everywhere for me. Sunlight coming in through the window reminded me of her. Half asleep this morning, my own hand on my own chest had felt like hers in my imagination and I got hard. Stayed hard. Put my hand around my cock and held onto the memory of her touch. Her lips. Her beautiful self.

Managed to come with a roar all over my stomach.

Don’t think about it, I told myself walking into the warehouse. Don’t think about her. Don’t remember. The warehouse was quiet, though I could hear the hum of voices coming from what I knew was the employee break room. I walked down the hallway, past all the shelving and the packing section. The shipping desk.

Her desk. I didn’t look at it or the floor in front of it, where her dress had pooled like a puddle of blue sequins.

Nope. I was all business.

Outside the break room was a crowd of men and women drinking coffee.

I found a spot near them, exchanged nods with a few of them I recognized, and looked inside the break room where Sophie stood, holding a meeting.

“You guys were amazing,” she said, her eyes scanning the crowd. “We shipped sixty percent more ornaments than we have any other year. We streamlined all of our packing protocols. We saved this company about twenty thousand dollars this season. That’s because of all of you.” She started to clap, and around the room and in the hallway everyone was grinning. They loved her. Her spot in this family had always been unappreciated. She didn’t have Wes’s spark and drive, but she was a leader in her own way. Sparkly in her own way.