Merry Random Christmas (6 page)

“Prostitution.”

“For what?”

“Blowing Santa Claus behind the vegan restaurant for a $5 gas card.”

I didn’t know my brain could explode into a thousand pounds of glitter the color of Darla’s eyes, but there you go. It just did.

“
You—
what?
” Darla doesn’t even own a car.
 

“I know,” she said, eyes wide with disbelief. “I tried to tell the chick who worked the counter at the restaurant that swallowing is, in fact, vegan, but she—”

“YOU WHAT?”

She snorted. “Kidding!” Palms up, an act of surrender I’d never seen in Darla before, she looked at me. As seconds passed, her eyes filled with shiny tears. Her face began to tremor, tightening with the movement of tiny muscles reacting to an outpouring of emotion.

My God.

She was falling apart, right before my eyes.

Whether she really gave a BJ to Kris Kringle or not, I wasn’t going to stand there and watch her crumple like a tissue. My arms went around her, hands filling with wild, unruly blonde waves, and as she sank into my chest, I felt her relax.

Then tense.

“Why are you covered in oil that
reeks of
the perfume counter at Nordstrom’s? And you smell like money.”

Oh, shit.

“
I was stripping,” I replied. Honesty is the best policy. Lying to Darla was like watching a presidential primary debate. You’d end up more confused in the end, and it was a pointless waste of time.
 

She made a dismissive sound in the back of her throat that made my hair stand on end. The unoiled hairs, at least.

Darla sounded exactly like my mother when she made that sound.

“
Let me get this straight,” she said in a voice that made it clear this was only the beginning of a fiery, self-righteous blowout that was going to end with her screaming and, possibly, incredible make-up sex that would end with hair pulling and bite marks all over asses.
 

I was getting hard just thinking about it, but then I realized my cock couldn’t stand up all the way. It was
stuck
.

That candy cane one of those women had shoved down my pants left a sugary sheen, making my foreskin cling to my lower abs like
the NFL clung to Deflategate and just would not let go.
 

“It’s Christmas Eve,” Darla continued. “I am standing here smelling like camel urine, wearing flip flops from the local Salvation Army, a pair of Santa pants with suspenders, and a silk long john top that is so filthy it might as well be made from ground up silk worms that crawled out of a West Virginia coal mine.”

I nod
ded
and shift
ed
, trying to unstick my dick without shoving my hand in my pants and escalating this situation.

“And I have criminal charges against me that involve being accused of putting my mouth on the head of a penis owned by a homeless man named Tortilla, who has a chicken he keeps on a leash. A chicken named Popsicle.”

I nod
ded
again. Silence
wa
s the best approach when Darla
was
about to go batshit nuclear.

“Your mama came and bailed me out of jail—
jail
—because she was snooping through your text messages and decided to hunt me down to find you.”

I d
idn’t
nod. I d
idn’t
move. This Darla fit
wa
s taking a turn I
had
not anticipate
d
.

Wait. My mom? My text messages? I open
ed
my mouth to ask, but—

“And you’re going on a family ski trip without
meeeeeee
.....”

Whoa. Plot twist. I half expected to see Fonzi
e
ride right past us on a jet ski
dragging Jaws behind him
.

“
Meanwhile,” she sobbed, “You and Trevor have started stripping?
Stripping?
Taking your clothes off for money?” Her cheeks looked so deliciously pink after her time in the cold, winter’s night, the moonlight from outside bouncing off the stains on her silk top as it glittered through the plate glass window at Jeddy’s.
 

She was disgustingly glorious, and my penis sprang loose from its sugary incarceration with a dull thud that made the strain of the g-string twisted between my ass cheeks cause me to squint.

Ow.
A h
air
was
caught somewhere along that piece of butt floss,
like an anal epilady.
 

“Why are you winking at me?” Darla raged.

“
I’m not.” Shift. Ow. Wink.
 

“Don’t lie! You’re doin’ it right now!”

“I’ve got a pubic hair caught in my g-string.”
With a massive yank, I jutted one hip up and ripped the thing out from the root.
 

“That is a sentence no woman ever, ever expects to hear from her man, Joe.”

“That is a sentence no man ever expects to utter to his girlfriend, Darla.”

Silence yawned between us. She cracked first.

“
You done talkin’ about the hair across your ass? Because I got ice cream and fried foods that ain’t gonna eat themselves.”
 

And then suddenly, I was kissing her.
She tasted like candy cane and a sweetness that came from a
sugar in her soul. Not on her tongue. A warm, wet sigh came from the back of her throat, like she was humming my name as our tongues played together, finding joy in an endless string of hours that felt like a giant joke.
 

When my hand slid against the nape of her neck and pressed her closer, my fingers found the si
lk
y strands of her blonde hair, matted and caught, like a tangled web designed to make me stay in place.

This time, it was me who sighed, my breath like a mantra that said only Darla’s name.

We paused the kisses, foreheads touching, her chest ri
s
ing and falling with the deep breaths of someone who c
ould
finally take their fill of air and catch up to baseline. To normal.

Whatever that is.

She felt dirty and soft,
vulnerable and strong, and while my eyes nearly crossed from being so close to her, when I looked at Darla, I saw more than a ragged, exhausted woman who’d been in jail earlier for committing a sin against God and, maybe worse, against a beloved Christmas icon.
 

I saw my future.

“My mom mentioned the family ski trip,” I said, gathering my thoughts. It was hard to do that when all I wanted was to breathe in every bit of air Darla let out into the world, so I could take in as much of her as was humanly possible. My arms shifted around her, my body half covering hers, as if I could shield her from anything more that might cause hurt.

“Have fun,” she said bitterly.

“I won’t go if you aren’t allowed to go. And Trevor,” I added.

She jolted in my arms. “Then you’re not going, because there’s no way your mom’s letting me and Trevor go on something that important.” She was skeptical. She was negative. She was right.

But there was something else in Darla’s voice in that moment, and it made me realize I’d said exactly the right thing.
We’d been together for two and a half years, and experienced so many travails, from Trevor’s disappearances to my multi-bone breaks a few months ago. I knew how to comfort her. Challenge her. Gentle her and obey her.
 

And every time I said or did the right thing to make her feel better, it was like realizing I could perform a miracle.

Best feeling on earth.

We looked up and over, my eyes catching
T
revor’s. He’
d
finished off half the food and watched us.

“Family ski trip?”

“Yeah.”

“To Sunday River?”
That was the ski resort in Maine my parents favored. While Stowe, Vermont, was where all the status-conscious people went, and was the place you’d expect my mother to choose, her love of Sunday River came from a place of genuine enjoyment. It was an aberration.
 

“Right.”

“And you’re going to ask your mom to let me and Darla go?”

“Mmmm hmmmm.”

“Good luck with that.” He reached across the able to give me a fist bump.

His confidence
wa
s underwhelming.

My Mom and Madge chatted like best friends catching up after a long absence. Mom had been a Jeddy’s regular? Madge had met me when I was a baby? How much more was there that I didn’t know about my mother? I’d spent nearly all of my life making assumptions about her. Correct assumptions. Assumptions based on her behaviors.

And yet it turned out she was far more complex and nuanced than I’d ever given her credit for being.

Between her revelation that she, Dad and Gene were in a long-term, permanent threesome and how she reached out to rescue Darla in her moment of need and now learning she used to come to this dive diner in—

Wait.

Hold on.

Mom rescued Darla in jail.

How
did Mom know to rescue Darla in jail?
What was this about my text messages?
 

“
How did my mom know where you were?” I asked Darla, ignoring Trevor.
 

“She’s been monitoring your texts.”

“She
what?
” I snorted. “
I thought you were
joking.”

Darla just raised an eyebrow.

“No fucking way.”

“Way,” Darla said.

Trevor just let out a low whistle. “
T
hat’s bad, man,” he said, shaking his head. “You’re a quarter of a century old and your mom’s still trying to wipe your ass.”

I leapt to my feet and was across the diner, blind rage drawing me to my mom. I interrupted her conversation.

“You’ve been monitoring my cell phone?” I growled at her.

Mom just kept talking to Madge like I wasn’t even there.

I grabbed her shoulder and spun her toward me. She was a strong little thing, and my hands felt weird, moving my mother’s body in anger.

“You will not ignore me,” I informed her. Mom’s eyes grew wide, like full moons.

“Somebody grew some balls,” Madge muttered under her breath as she left us alone. “
About time.”
 

“You will not speak to me like this!” Mom snapped back, finger in my face, wagging like she could shame me out of standing up for myself.

“
What makes you think you have the right to monitor my cell phone texts!”
 

“Your father and I pay the bill.”

I reached in my back pocket, pulled out my phone, and dropped it to the ground. I was wearing thick winter boots, with hard soles that ground neatly into the glass screen, the twist of my ankle complementing the shout of my words.

“No more.”

“That’s a six hundred dollar phone!” Mom protested.

“Now it’s trash. And it’s gone. I’m getting a new phone and a new number. And you’re done financially helping me. Period. Done.”

She smirked. “If I weren’t checking in on your life, your girlfriend would still be rotting in jail.”

“And if you weren’t stalking my life like a creepy hover mother who tries to co-opt my identity, you’d have your son there on the family ski trip, Mom.
B
ut you won’t.”

She turned an unnatural shade of grey as she opened her mouth to say something snide back, then realized what I’d just said.

“What?” she gasped.

I heard shuffling sounds behind me, then a warm, soft hand interlaced its fingers with mine.

My heart tightened. My gut ached and my legs twitched and everything in me that was coiled up loosened, like
it had permission to be free.
 

“You heard me.”

“You can’t!”

“Watch me.”

I
t took everything in me not to turn back and look at her as I reached into my pocket and peeled off three oiled-up twenties, throwing them down for the bill.

And marched out into the crisp, Christmas Eve night.

Darla

My boobs vibrated again, suddenly, as me and Trevor scrambled out of the booth and followed Joe
outside
. I schlumped along with my unlaced boots. You ever wear construction boots in the middle of winter in Massachusetts without socks? It feels about as glamorous as it sounds.
When we’d walked into Jeddy’s, Madge had given me some craptastic old coat and these boots that reminded me of the Juggalos back home.
 

Bzzzzzz.

I answered my breasts.

Mama.

Tears filled my eyes as I said, “Hi, Mama.”

“What’s wrong?”

“What do you mean, what’s wrong?”

“I could tell somethin’ was wrong with you before I even heard your voice.”

“Did you feel a disturbance in the force?” I joked.

“What does that even mean, Darla Jo? Are you high?”

“No. I’m pretty fuckin’ low, actually.”

“Spit it out,” she said, her voice going soft. When Mama got tender, it just made me cry even harder. Joe was half a block ahead of me and Trevor, storming off into nowhere here in the city. We were miles from our apartment and I wasn’t quite sure what the fuck had happened to our holiday.

“So I just got outta jail.”

“Jail?”

“Yeah, jail.”

“Congratulations.”

“Huh?”

“You made it to twenty-five before being arrested. I think that’s a record for a Peters girl, Darla.
The mayor should have a ceremony.
”

I snorted, tears spilling onto my cheeks, leaving icy trails. Trevor put his arm around me. I looked at him, gave a shaky smile, and mouthed,
Mama
.

He just nodded and pulled me closer.

“
What you arrested for?”
 

Trevor’s body tensed. He bit his lower lip, his face shifting to an expression of cringing empathy.

For me.

I stayed silent.

“Darla Jo, this is like rippin’ off a Band-aid. Just do it.
Blurt
out the words and you’ll feel better afterward.”

“I was accused of blowing Santa Claus for a five dollar gas card,” I said, taking her at her word.