How My Brother's Best Friend Stole Christmas

So stupid. So much stupid.

“I’ll be upstairs in a little bit,” I said. “You know where Wes’s office is?”

“Sure,” he said, glancing down at the papers in my hand. “I can wait for you.”

“I don’t want you to,” I said, and it was snappy and mean because I didn’t know how to talk to him without using that voice. Everything that had been easy between us was broken now. “I’m just…working on something.”

“You’ve been working on this something for a while.”

He’d noticed. Of course he’d noticed.

“A few months.”

“The last few days quite a bit,” he said, and I felt like a rabbit in a field with something hunting me. “What is it?”

I was really nervous. I was nervous about talking to my brother. I was nervous about being wrong. About being told that I was stupid. That maybe I was stupid.

“Nothing,” I said and put the papers in a stack.

“Sophie—”

“It’s a cost thing. We lose money to breakage, and I think if we upgrade our packaging we’ll save money. But the packaging costs more than what we usually spend. I want to pitch it to my brother.”

“Well, you sold me.”

“I think you’re an easy sale.”

There was a joke there about how he was just easy. Or maybe I was the easy one and I wanted to make it, but swallowed it back.

“I’ll see you up there,” he said and he left.

Sam

“Hey!” Wes cried as I came in the door. He had his feet up on his father’s old desk. The whole office was a bit of a throwback to some kind of Mad Men situation. There was the big desk and a leather couch. But his father had never allowed any Christmas decorations in the office, so in true Wes style, Wes had put up lights and an obnoxious light-up Santa on the wall. When he pressed a button, Santa would dance, sing “Jingle Bells,” and say “Ho ho holidays!” in a way that would give anyone nightmares. Wes got a satisfied smile on his face every time he pressed that button.

“You know,” Sam said as he went in. “I know you hate your dad and all, but you can take that Santa down anytime.”

“Now you’ve hurt Santa’s feelings,” Wes said. “He’s going to haunt you for that. Where’s Soph?”

“On her way.” I thought about maybe saying something about how nervous she was but she would not appreciate me getting in the middle of her and her job.

“How… how is she doing?” Wes asked.

“You can ask her in ten minutes.”

“Yeah, but has she been weird? With you or anything?”

Weird? That was one way to put it. But Wes didn’t really want to know everything going on between me and Soph. “She’s been good. Busy. She runs a tight ship down there.”

Wes pursed his lips and nodded. “She’s been giving me the cold shoulder.”

Oh, I thought, Wes had no idea what kind of cold shoulder Sophie could give. We were stumbling over snowbanks down there in the warehouse, me and Soph. Ignoring each other in a way that made the ice climb the walls. And then we’d catch each other’s eyes and the heat that flared turned it all to steam. It was so obvious I’d caught Denise staring at me a few times.

We were a mess down there, and I’d made it that way. The only thing that would make it better was leaving and it was the one thing I could not do.

“So, what are you drinking?” Wes asked as I sat down in one of the swanky leather club chairs in front of the desk. Wes opened up the liquor cabinet and it was like a cave of wonders in there. Booze covered in dust. Booze that looked like it had been bottled by monks a hundred years ago. Some of those bottles cost hundreds of dollars, and there were a lot of them.

“The company was going down the gutter and your dad was drinking top shelf booze?”

“What can I say? He’s an asshole. And a lot of this stuff might be top shelf, but it tastes like garbage. Once Sophie and I drink all of this, I’m throwing out this cabinet.” He looked at the bottle in his hand. “What kind of throwback has a liquor cabinet in his office, anyway?”

“The kind who embezzles money, I guess.”

Wes grinned at me. “Look, I’m making the choice. You’re drinking scotch.”

“Perfect.”

My old friend sat back down with a sigh and splashed very old, very good scotch into two gold-rimmed glasses. Honestly, when I thought about Sophie and her casseroles and the potlucks and the trivia nights, I thought for the millionth time that their father did not deserve his kids.

“So,” I said sipping my scotch. “I take it you’re not getting divorced, as planned.”

His smile made me pause, the glass halfway to my mouth. I’d seen my friend drunk for the first time and I’d seen him the first night he got laid, and I’d seen him the night his father got arrested for embezzlement, but I’d never seen him like this. Happy. Like someone had put a lightbulb up his butt. “Nope. No divorce, though thanks for the idea. We’re staying married. I’m telling you man, my parents, your parents, no one gave us any idea how good it could be.”