Last Christmas (Private 0.60)

her. "Worse. They don't speak. Ever. Even when they're in the same room. She just looks at him with this

pathetic longing and he completely ignores her presence."

"Well, silence is good," Thomas offered.

"Not this kind of silence," Ariana said sadly, looking down at her hands.

Thomas turned away for a moment and stirred the pancake batter. Ariana let the rhythmic sound of the whisk

lull her.

"I never really thought about it as a kid," Thomas said finally. "Thought about what?"

"The way things were. How they screamed at each other if they

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were ever around each other for more than twenty minutes. How at the end of every meal, they ended up

passed out in different rooms. And then, one Christmas Eve when we were really young, they were out of

town on business. Tokyo or some shit. And so my brother and I-" "Blake?"

He nodded. "We went over to a friend's house for dinner. And it was like something was off. The dad wasn't

screaming. The mom wasn't crying."

Thomas poured the batter onto the hot griddle and a frantic sizzling sound filled the room.

"Now you know why I like the Sticks-Up-Their-Asses," Ariana said.

"They're normal?" Thomas asked skeptically. He put the bowl down on the counter. "I find that hard to

believe.""Way more normal than I'm used to."

Thomas finished up with the pancakes in silence, then flipped them onto two separate plates and slid them

onto the countertop. He sat down on the stool next to Ariana's, his elbow grazing hers. Neither of them pulled

away.

"Syrup?" Ariana said with a smile.

"As you wish," Thomas replied, handing it over to her atop his forearm as if it were a bottle of wine.

Ariana poured a splash of syrup onto her stack and cut a perfect triangle out of it. Meanwhile, Thomas

grabbed the bottle, doused his pancakes, and used his knife and fork to decimate them into

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a thousand tiny pieces before shoveling a whole forkful into his mouth.

"So were your parents always like that?" he asked after he swallowed.

Ariana's food turned to cement in her stomach. She had never told anyone about her mom. Not even Noelle.

She had never wanted to. Never felt she could. It felt disloyal ...and embarrassing. She lowered her fork and