Authors: Liz Reinhardt
“Bottoms up.”
I overturn the bottle to their exuberant cheers, and an immediate warmth trickles through my veins as the burning liquid rolls down my throat. My sister grabs for the bottle back with desperate hands, but Trent and I share a glance over her panda-adorned head. He takes the bottle.
“C’mon, punk. No reason for the smallest to hog it all. Plus that, our singing is bad enough when we’re not slurring and falling over.”
I notice that the sip he takes is tiny, and when he takes a second, larger sip behind Ella’s back, he spits it quietly into the snow.
He and I leave a trail of spit vodka all along the lane that leads up to the biggest house in our tiny town, where Ella stops, arms akimbo, booted feet wide apart.
This house is so topically merry, it’s hard to imagine that it’s inhabited by Satan himself. But old Mr. Fitzgerald is a
shithead
.
“Time to wish my grandpa a merry fucking Christmas.” Trent spits a dash of vodka into the bow-adorned bushes.
Ella turns around and her chin wobbles. “Maybe we could break all the traditions and just wreck his house?”
“Nope.” Trent shakes his head. “He feeds off evil. It will only make him stronger. Plus that, mom wouldn’t care about a little holiday vodka. But this was her thing, and she wanted to carol. So, let’s carol. Do you have a request, m’lady?” Trent puts his arm around Ella, who’s weaving drunkenly.
“‘Deck the Halls,’” Ella whispers.
It’s a good choice; loud, easy lyrics, irritating, nothing sappy or meaningful.
Trent spreads his arms wide and roars out, “‘Deck the halls with boughs of holly, FALALALALALALALALA!’”
My sister takes a sip and wipes some pink vodka off her chin. “‘’Tis the season to be jolly…’”
We all ‘fa’ and ‘la’ until our voices are hoarse. We scream along the lyrics, Ella dances between the tastefully lit bushes and swings around the antique lamppost.
We sing “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Here We Come A Wassailing,” and, Trent’s favorite, “Good King Wenceslas.”
Trent is a caroling purist, and he makes us sing all five versus. By the time we’re done, I’m panting and Ella is slouched against the narrow cylinder of the lamp post. She’s torn the big bow off and is wearing it on top of her head. The bottle of vodka is severely diminished, and Trent and I stopped drinking a while ago.
“I think our work here is done.” Trent takes the bottle, passes it to me, and prepares to lift my very drunk sister into his arms.
She squirms and punches at his chest.
“Stop! Stop! That wasn’t enough! He needs to come out!”
Spit collects at the sides of her mouth and her eyes are shiny and wild. One earmuff rotated to her cheek, the other is sliding back off her pretty hair, light as wheat and puffy with static electricity.
“Ella.” Trent sits her down on the snow despite the clumsy jerks of her limbs. “He
never
comes out. That’s not the point, alright? He’s in there, aggravated as all hell because happiness makes his ulcers swell. We did what we came to do.”
“He didn’t even c-c-come to her funeral.” Ella presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. I crunch through the snow and put my arm around her. Sooty tears flow out and drip down either side of her face. “He f-fucked up her whole life. He was the worst f-f-father in the world.” She draws the last word out until it’s a low, long wail. “Who couldn’t love Eileen? Who? He really must be S-satan!” She sobs. “Can’t we br-break a window? Just one?”
I shake my head, and Trent walks a few feet away. I’m whispering about how Eileen wanted him to know that she was happy without him. She wanted him to see that his misery didn’t ruin her life, and that’s what this was all about, remember? I’m only midway through my speech when Trent yanks Ella to her feet.
“Look alive, soldier,” he barks, and hands her a rock that barely fits in her fist. “Remember the summer you pitched a perfect season for the Dynamites?”
Ella blinks through her runny makeup and sniffles. “Yeah.”
“Channel that summer. And once you throw, we all run, before we see if it hits or not. Agreed?”
“Trent—” I begin, but he cuts me off.
“My mother was a fucking angel, and I know that. She’s a better, kinder person than I’ll ever be. But she’s gone, Sadie. And she deserves this.”
His eyes are bright with tears he’s not about to cry here on the street in front of his grandfather’s house. I nod because he’s right. And because I know this is the last time we’ll ever do random caroling. And because Ella hasn’t cried for Eileen since the day we buried her.
Ella’s arm pulls back, and that rock flies so swift and smooth, even though we promised to run, we
have to
watch. It smashes the glass, and that crash and tinkle makes us all whoop and shriek like wild things, hugging and jumping up and down.
The door swings open, and we scream, knocking into each other as we try to hightail it as fast as we can. Trent and I are fairly quick, but Ella is slowed down by her drunkenness and the fact that she keeps peeking over her shoulder.
Trent finally picks her up and tosses her over his shoulder.
We don’t stop until we collapse, winded on my front porch.
“Ugh, put me down,” Ella groans.
When Trent flips her over, I can see how green her face is. The panda earmuffs coil around her neck. I hold her short hair back off of her forehead as she leans into the bushes and throws up everything in her stomach, then dry heaves violently. I rub her back and her neck.
“I feel so shitty,” she sobs. “I want Eileen! I want her
so bad
, Sadie. I want her.”
I put my arms around my sister’s willowy shoulders and my eyes sting until the tears pour out, so many, so fast, they mix together and there’s no way of telling which are hers and which are mine.
“I want her, too, baby. We all do.”
Sobs wrack her thin body for endless minutes, and finally they subside into whines, then dip down into occasional bleating moans.
She balls her fists in my jacket and rubs her head on me, just like she used to when she was little and needed a nap. Suddenly, her full weight falls against my arms, and I hear a long, low snore. Trent crouches by us, eyes red-rimmed.
“She’s out. Let me have her. I’ll take her to bed.”
I let Trent heave my sister in his arms, and I open the front door for him. He wriggles out of his boots quietly and pads up the stairs to Ella’s room. I kick mine off too and follow him. The door creaks when he opens it, but we wait a few seconds, and it doesn’t seem like the noise woke anyone. He lays her on her bed and pulls off her earmuffs and coat. I work her boots off and pull the covers up to her chin.
“Night, Ellie. Love you,” I whisper, and plant a kiss on her forehead.
She moans and burrows her head deeper in her pillows.
Trent and I tiptoe back to the living room. Mom must have come down and put the presents out under the tree while we were gone. There are way too many gifts for all of us. There are more than I’ve seen since those inflated Christmases of my childhood, the ones that left us eating canned spaghetti and beans and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until March because Mom had blown out the savings account.
Trent reaches down and picks up a green and silver striped rectangle with his name on it.
“Your mom is amazing. You know that, right?”
“I do.”
I sit on the edge of the couch and he walks over and collapses on the cushion next to me, circles my waist with his arms and pulls me back so we’re in a cuddle hold.
“Trent this is a bad—”
“You know why I liked when Danny hung out with us?” he interrupts, flipping me so I’m straddling his lap.
“Why?”
I try not to press closer to him, but it’s like I’m suctioning to him, and don’t have the ability to pull back if I wanted to.
There are a million answers to Trent’s question that make sense. That Danny was fun. That he was crazy. That he was charismatic. That everyone loved Danny because it was like he put everyone he met under his spell and there was no escaping his charm.
“When Danny was around, Georgia was always busy running around after him. That left you wide open.” He reaches up and nuzzles my neck. “I felt like if you just looked over and just noticed me, just for a second, you’d see all the awesomeness I have to offer.”
He pulls back and gives me a slow, sweet grin that’s offset by the nervous flicker in his eyes.
“You are…
amazing
,” I whisper, my head swimmy from the many swishes of candycane vodka that managed to slide down my throat. And his hands, now up my back, pulling me closer, short-circuit the connections my brain is so desperately trying to make. “But you know we can’t do this. Again.”
“We’re a little drunk. Everyone we love cried their asses to sleep tonight. It’s Christmas Eve. It doesn’t have to mean anything, Sadie. It can just be one more weird thing in this long, weird night.”
His hands tug me closer, and his lips brush over mine, first soft and light as snowflakes on your skin the second before they melt, then harder, hungrier, deeper.
It’s not because I’m drunk. It’s not because I’m sad or weak or unsure. It’s because I
want
him, because the last few months I’ve been starving. My whole life is anemic, and I want to feel anything other than the weak, bloodless nothing I’ve been feeling. I’m hungry for him. The taste of him is exactly what I crave, and I want to grab him and devour.
I climb off his lap, and he takes a deep shaky breath and nods.
“I get it—”
“Do you have a condom? I’m not on birth control right now.”
His mouth falls open, but he clamps it shut quickly. “Yeah. I do.”
“Give me five minutes? I’ll be downstairs.”
Before Trent can answer, I race into the stark, low-ceilinged basement playroom we all spent so many hours of our youth in. There’s a tiny bathroom, and I flip the light on and stare at my reflection for a few chilly seconds.
I hope that seeing my own eyes will knock some sense into me. But I think I look
good
. I look
sexy
. I look like I want whatever I’m about to get.
I brush my teeth with a toothbrush I’m not sure is mine, and drag the tangles out of my hair with a few rough pulls of a brush. I grip the sink hard while I listen to Trent’s footfalls on the stairs, then the springy clunk of the pullout mattress pulled out, the swoosh of a shirt being pulled over his head, the metallic whine of a zipper dragged down, the heavy drop of denim, so much denim that had covered such long legs.
Trent has amazing legs.
I peek out and he’s sitting on the edge of the thin mattress in just his boxer briefs and his St. Christopher medal, and there’s a small metallic square next to him.
“Trent?” I creep out of the bathroom and he strides over, three long steps and he’s right there, in front of me. “Maybe—”
He yanks me to him and covers my mouth with his. His breath comes hard and fast, and my lungs respond to his frantic gasps. His fingers curl around the stiff line of my shoulders and work in a quick, pulsing rhythm to loosen their bunched tightness.
I loosen.
I unknot and unravel so fast his arms catch me around the waist before I puddle on the floor at his feet.
“Sadie.”
He says my name like he’s tearing it out of his throat. He drops me on the bed and springs on top of me, his body tight and long over mine, pinning me from my shoulders to my toes with extra Trent to spare.
“You’re so tall.”
My hands splay out and run over the smooth skin on his back, slightly raised at his shoulders where the tattoo artist went too deep on his bold, black ink.
“I’ve been the same height for the last three years.” He kisses the dip between my collar bones. “You’ve never paid any attention to me.”
“What are you talking about? I think about you…”
His head lifts slowly, and the smile that slides across his face is part triumph, part surprise, and all pure sexiness so fatal it murders my breath on its rush to my lungs.
“Finish what you were saying,” he orders as his fingertips coast over my neck and up along my cheek—up and down, tracing a long, ticklish path.
“It was stupid.”
I wiggle closer in an attempt to distract him, but he puts a palm to my chest and pushes me back down with a soft laugh.
“Hold on just a minute. I feel like I need to hear this. You said, ‘I think about you…’” He raises his black eyebrows and pulls his lips in a sweet pucker I want pressed on every centimeter of my body. “Tell me.”
“I think about you—” I stop, his eyes widen in anticipation. “I think about you all the time.”
The last words come out on a whisper.
He studies his hand, still pressed against my body, and his thick lashes stop me from seeing his expression. I’m so busy focusing on his eyes, I startle when he speaks, low and brusque.
“You ignored my phone calls for months. You didn’t say more than two words to me at Thanksgiving, then you got so blitzed you passed out. I don’t...I don’t think I believe you.”