How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

“You,” he said.

“Joe,” Wes stepped in. “Have you met my old friend Sam Porter?”

“Yeah,” Joe said with his chin out, like he was going to pound his chest.

I smiled, which made Joe crazy, but I had no interest in fighting this kid. He’d tried to look after Sophie that night. Protect her.

“What are you always smiling about?” Joe asked.

“Hey!” Sophie came out of the break room, saw us all standing there, and came running. Everything she was feeling—happiness, anxiety, worry, a little bit of anger—it was all over her face, and swear to God, if she didn’t get her poker face working, her brother was going to know something had happened between us without our saying a word. “Everyone…okay?”

“What’s this guy doing here?” Joe asked, jerking his thumb at me, and I put my hands in my pockets, taking a step back.

“He’s Sam,” Sophie said. Like that explained it.

“And he works here now,” Wes said.

“Newest member of the team,” Sophie said with such brightness that even Wes looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

Joe made the most of his I’m not sure of this guy posturing, and then sucked his teeth and stepped back. “I gotta go hide this,” Joe said, lifting the naked Mrs. Claus ornament.

“What exactly is the deal with naked Mrs. Claus?” I asked.

“We hide it,” Sophie said. “Person who finds it hides it next and it…it’s just a thing we do. You too, now,” she said. “Since you work here.”

“Sorry I forgot to tell you, Soph,” Wes said. “About Sam working here. I figured it was fine, right? I mean, he’s practically family, even though he’s an asshole most of the time.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “Good. It’s great.”

“I thought so, too,” Wes said, turning for the door. “Okay, I’ll let you get back to it. Oh!” He turned back. “Sophie, bring Sam on Thursday night.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Thursday?” I asked when Wes was gone.

“I go up to his office and we drink some of Dad’s good scotch.”

“Sounds like a good time.”

She smiled, and again, her face revealed so much. So much of how she felt. And it was all…a lot. She felt a lot.

“Sophie,” I breathed, a warning and…something else. Something I couldn’t help but feel.

Regret.

And just like that her face was stone cold. Her eyes sharp. And all those feelings she felt for me were gone. Like she’d never felt them. And I felt regret about that, too.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s introduce you around.”

Sophie

He had a good first day. I made sure. I’d put Bob and Denise in charge of showing him around, and Sam and Bob and Denise had been laughing it up at lunch and in the back with packaging. I tried real hard to ignore them. To not be jealous when I heard him laughing, wondering what Denise or Bob said that made him laugh, and then wondering when I might have said something that made him laugh like that.

But I got myself back to work. I had a meeting in the New Year with W.B. regarding budget and costs, and I’d never been invited to one of those meetings. So maybe I was taking it too seriously? Hard to say, but I was prepping the big year-end report with color-coded tabs on my Excel spreadsheet.

But then I got to the fun part.

“Open for business!” I yelled from my desk, and the first person who came forward was Denise. The warehouse mom.

“You still want to do the Monday food swap?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said, pushing her glasses up higher on her face and glancing around. Some of the young guys were nodding. “I think it was a hit.”

“What about trivia night?” Bob asked, leaning against my desk five minutes later.

“Friday night happy hour with trivia? You bet. But I’m inviting the glassblowers and sales.”

There were groans and cheers, which was sort of how my ideas were received. But they loved it. And I loved it when they pretended they didn’t. Affection shrouded in teasing was the only way I knew how to accept affection. It was a whole complicated thing. “Team sign-ups in the lunch room by the end of the day. I call teams with Alice!”

There were more shouts and groans, and I smiled down at my computer. I had a few more tricks up my sleeve, and I was waiting for the quote from the new packaging supplier I was looking at for a pitch I was going to make my brother and W.B. on Thursday.

And I was keeping one eye on Sam, who was being put to work by Denise. During the months of October and November and December, it had felt like we were packing seven million hours into every day and one of the last things we were able to do was clean up. That was what January was for.