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I let the minutes pass, but by thinking about them, I make them pass slowly. This is not my house, and I am caught in the knowledge that it never will be. I half expect Lana to come back out, to tell me to go home. Why are you still here? she’d ask, and the only answer I could give would be her brother’s name.
I know he wanted me here, but why did it have to be like this? I want him to introduce me as his boyfriend. I want to be sitting at the di
I am worried about being in love, because it involves asking so much. I am worried that my life will never fit into his. That I will never know him. That he will never know me. That we get to hear the stories, but never get to hear the full truth.
“Enough,” I say to myself. I need to say it out loud, because I need to really hear it.
I listen for Riley. I listen for Lana. I hope they’re not listening for Santa, or for me.
I make it down the hall. I make it past their doors. Co
It’s only when I am standing in front of it, only when I am about to let myself inside, that I sense there’s someone else in the hall with me. I turn around and see her standing in her doorway—Co
I want to be as much of a ghost to her as she is to me. But there can be no hiding. I am about to explain. I am about to tell her the whole thing. But she stops me by speaking first.
“Where have you been?” she asks.
I suddenly feel I could never explain enough. I could never give the right answer.
“I’m not here,” I say.
She nods, understanding this. I think there will be more, but there isn’t any more. She turns back to her room and closes the door behind her.
I know I should not have seen this. Even if she forgets, I will know. And for a moment, I find myself feeling sorry for Santa. I can only imagine what he sees in his trespasses. But, of course, those would all be people he doesn’t really know. I have to imagine it’s less sad with strangers.
I am not going to tell Co
I have never seen him sleeping before. I have never seen him like this, enfolded in an unthreatening somewhere else. My heart is drawn, almost involuntarily, toward him. I see him asleep and feel I could love him for a very long time.
But here I am, standing outside of it. Even as I love him, I feel self-conscious. I am the interruption. I am the piece that’s not a dream. I am here because I climbed through the chimney instead of knocking on the door.
I take off my hat and unstick my beard. I take off my boots and move them aside. I unfasten my stomach and let it fall to the floor. I pull the red curtain from around my body, pull it over my head. I shed the pants, feel the cold air on my legs. I do this all quietly. It’s only as I am folding Santa’s clothes into a safe red square that I hear Co
It should be enough as I step over to him and see the welcome in his eyes. It should be enough to see his hair pointing in all different directions, and the fact that there are cowboys on his pajama pants and he is telling me he can’t believe he fell asleep. It should be enough that he is beckoning me now—it should be enough to join him in the bed, blanket pulled aside. It should be enough to feel his hand on my shoulder, his lips lightly on my lips. But something is not right. I still feel that, in some way, I should not be here.
“I’m an imposter,” I whisper.
“Yes,” he whispers back. “But you’re the right imposter.”
Without my Santa suit, I am shivering. Without my Santa suit, I am just me, and I am in his house after midnight on Christmas Day. Without my Santa suit, I am real, and I want this to be reality. I want this to be the way things are, or at least how they will be.
Co
Outside, there may be reindeer that fly across the moon. Outside, there may be questions with the wrong answers and lies that are better to tell. Outside, it may be cold. But I am here. I am here, and he is here, and everything I need to know is that I will hold him and he will hold me until I am warm again, until I know I belong.
Fairmont’s second a
Everything wrong with Fairmont was exemplified in the Krampuslauf. It was for charity and came with free hot chocolate. They had turned the whole thing into something completely against the true spirit of Krampusnacht, which ought to be about scaring the living shit out of people, ru
Despite how Roth thought all Pe
I had hoped Pe
“This is a perfect chance to find out,” she’d said when she’d explained to me about the flyer she’d seen in Roth’s room, with the date circled in Sharpie. “We’ll be in disguise.”
That part was fun. We made horns out of papier-mâché—ripping up old newspapers and mixing them with flour and water. The resulting gluey slop had stuck in our hair, clumped on our clothes, and made six sweet-looking horns.
Pe