On the fourth day...
A
breakfast smoothie, a half-eaten slice of toast and a glittery Christmas card
with a picture of Santa in sunglasses greeted Abby the next morning. She had
stayed up late oscillating between brainstorming possible admirers if it wasn’t
Raj, reading the Christmas Carol and watching
Nightmare Before Christmas on a loop
before falling into an exhausted sleep. Consequently she’d slept late and only
woken after Jess had come in to shake her awake.
Apparently
she’d also neglected to set her festive alarm clock in her mania the previous
night. And the breakfast smoothie was probably Jess’ way of scolding her for
consuming so many gingerbread cookies. The woman was sort of a health nut and
had strongly disapproved the sugary deliciousness despite how buttery and
magical they’d tasted.
The
toast was because the supermodel health Nazi was also a slob.
Sucking in the smoothie through a
straw, Abby tore the card open and eagerly flipped to the contents.
On
the fourth day of Christmas, your true love gives to thee: GTA on PS4, three
French pens, two turtle gloves and a partridge named Frosty – your unholy love
for this playstation game concerns me a little, but as long as you love it and
don’t commit real crime I’ll be ok with it. I’m only sorry I didn’t get you four
of them – X.
The only reason that Abby hadn’t
already owned the latest GTA was
because she was valiantly waiting for it to come out on PS4. Obviously, with
how popular the Xbox One was already racking up – if South Park could be believed – PS4 wasn’t the best console on the
market, but Abby had been loyal since the days of Crash Bandicoot and she was ok with that.
It took no time at all to see the case
for GTA sitting atop the shiny new
playstation she’d hooked up only the week before and had had little time as of
yet to play. The game came complete with a metallic red bow to match the
baubles on their Christmas Tree. It pretty much looked like Christmas.
On the outset she was giddy and
excited, fingers itching to tear off the bow, pop the game into the player and
start racking up trouble downtown, but since she was already running late for
work she had to resist. Resistance was hard – she’d never have made it in Nazi
Germany or as a Pagan in the Holy Roman Empire.
Grabbing her handbag, she slurped the
rest of her smoothie and stalked out the door with a scowl in the direction of
the playstation.
That night, there would be a
reckoning.
Abby was starting to really get on
board with this whole secret admirer thing. Not just because she was getting
some super awesome and personal presents, but also because she was generally
flattered that some man (or woman?) had bothered to learn so much about her.
For the first time since her highschool boyfriend, Ricardo, someone was
genuinely into her. Well, at least that she noticed.
She wasn’t convinced that the admirer
wasn’t Raj, still hoped deep down that it could be Damien, but was terrified
that it was someone she wouldn’t expect. The question of chemistry and
indifference were prominent in her mind – alongside a monstrous lust for the
new video game waiting for her at home – and she worried that when this was
over she could be disappointed in who the admirer really was.
What if it was someone she really didn’t
like? What if they were a woman?
It was the 21st century and
homosexual relationships were well out there, and Abby was totally ok with
that, but given the over the top nature of this Christmas present how would she
deal with it if the admirer was a woman? Abby had experimented, sure, but she’d
never had much lasting attraction for women or desire to be with one. Her girl
crush on Jennifer Lawrence didn’t even transcend into the realm of genuine
want, especially when she sort of wanted to be her.
But intuition said that whoever it was
sending her gifts and cards every day was most likely a man. She didn’t know
why, there was no criminal case pointing to a male suspect, but she just had
the feeling that it was.
She would have made a terrible lesbian
anyway.
By the time five o’clock finally did
come around, Abby was up and out of her desk chair in point oh three seconds to
grab her coat with the intention of rushing straight home to get her manicured
hands on her violent video game. But as she rushed for the elevator she
literally ran smack straight into Damien, casually leaving the photocopying
room with a stack of papers, and scattering said papers absolutely everywhere.
“Oh jeez, Damien, I’m sorry!” Abby
bent over to help him scoop up the mess, pretending not to notice when some of
them were lipstick-stained love letters from mystery women.
Damien cast her a boyish grin. “Anything
to get me on my hands and knees, huh, Bee?” Then he chuckled at the look of
horror on her face at the double entendre.
As much as she hated it, Abby was no
sexual aficionado and her experiences to date had run to the more vanilla end
of the scale.
Abby blushed and gathered papers at a
quicker pace, pretending that her mind hadn’t gone straight to sex involving
the man bent over beside her.
When they were all shuffled back into
a messy pile, the two of them hauled themselves upright with their arms full of
papers.
“You were certainly in a rush off home
today, Bee, got some hot date on tonight?” Damien asked as he accepted the
paperwork back from her, eyes twinkling mischievously.
Abby couldn’t resist the feminine urge
to tuck a stray strand of hair back behind her ear. “Well, sort of. I’ve got a
date with my playstation and the new Grand
Theft Auto courtesy of my secret admirer.” Just the thought of the game
made her fingers tingle with the need to clutch the controller and start in on
a mission.
Damien’s eyes lit up. “The new GTA? Oh
wow you’re admirer sure knows you! Top game that one.”
Abby barely took a moment to think
about it before blurting, “Would you like to come over and play with me?”
Damien winked and took her hand. “You
don’t need to entice me with GTA to come and play with you,” there was another
very blush-inducing double entendre there that Abby chose to ignore, “I’ve
always got time for you.”
So Abby just smiled back and the two
of them left together, stopping on the way home to pick up some greasy Chinese
food for them and a salad for Jess. Abby couldn’t just eat healthy food all the
time – she’d burn off the gingerbread cookies and the Chinese after the
holidays. She’d totally join the gym.
She’d make it a New Year’s resolution –
everyone always stuck to those.
Three hours, four calling birds, and
about fifteen joyrides through the digital city of Los Santos later, and Abby
and Damien were curled up on the couch in hysterics. There was nothing quite
like a little harmless fun with friends on a Thursday night over a fortune
cookie.
Abby’s had read: “A little Christmas
wish will come true if you let it grow; seedlings need water and wishes need
light.”
It was oddly fitting, but she wasn’t
sure whether to apply it to her Twelve
days of Christmas or not.
It was also easy to forget about that
when she was so close to Damien on the couch she had to remember to breath. But
somehow it wasn’t quite the same as it used to be, wasn’t as easy. Well,
between them it certainly was – there was no one that she got on as well with
as she did Damien – but it felt hard on her to imagine that there was someone
out there that cared about her that much that he would send her Christmas love
for twelve days when she had spent so long wishing on a star for Damien to fall
for her. Quite frankly it made Abby feel like a bad person for still wishing
it.
On the Brightside she knew she had a
good friend in Damien whoever the secret admirer turned out to be.
“Oh for god’s sake, I am not cleaning
up this Chinese food carton mess,” came Jess’ voice from the entranceway. “Is
that a fortune cookie on the Christmas tree?”
Damien, weirdo that he was, had
trimmed the tree with the fortune cookies they’d brought home. His reasoning
had been that Christmas was a time of good will, fortune and optimism. She’d
warned him that Jess wouldn’t go for it, but he’d maintained that he could
sweet talk her when she tried to tear his head off for ruining the perfection
of their green and silver Christmas tree.
His funeral had arrived earlier in the
evening then they’d thought.
Jingle Bells.
Merry Christmas
Sam xox
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