2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Walter

“Why must you drag me to these events?” My complaint came out sounding a little too childish, and I wanted to suck the words back in.

Some days, I really didn’t like that I was as curmudgeonly as I was. Other days, I really leaned into it. Today, I leaned into it.

“Oh, come on, this is fun!” my oldest friend, Mason said.

“Fun?” I looked around. We were inside an ancient house, which still had its original wallpaper and trim, of a recently deceased 94-year-old woman who apparently had a penchant for porcelain teacups with intricate floral designs that were way too small to hold any liquid of actual sustenance.

And Christmas. So much Christmas.

“What is up with these sales and always having an overabundance of Christmas things? Haven’t people figured out that Christmas is just a silly holiday?” I frowned at the mountain of porcelain Christmas village houses.

More than one person in the cramped room shot me a glare.

Mason scoffed. “Silly holiday? Goodness gracious, Walter.”

“Well, I’m not wrong, am I?” I spoke quieter now in an attempt to keep this conversation between us.

“You are absolutely wrong. Christmas is the best!” Mason didn’t have the same volume setting.

“Well, it’s February, and I’m allowed to think that Christmas is stupid. No one’s even thinking about it right now. They won’t think about it again until November, when they’re all scrambling to buy gifts for people they don’t actually care about, all in the name of one-upping each other.”

He rolled his eyes. “Someone obviously got coal in their stocking this year.”

Actually, truth be told, I had received nothing in my stocking this year, just as I did every other year. I had stopped decorating for Christmas altogether. It had been eons since I’d even attended a Christmas dinner. The invitations had long since been non-existent. I had no one to blame but myself, of course. I had once thought that I wanted everyone to just leave me alone, and now they did. I had a bit of buyer’s remorse about it, but I was going all in on my grumpiness. There was no changing it now.

It wasn’t as if I was going to have some sort of Ebenezer Scrooge moment where I woke up Christmas morning with my spirit renewed and a new lease on life.

“When’s the last time you even decorated for Christmas?” Mason asked.

I lifted my chin. “I don’t have any decorations. I got rid of everything when I moved.” The move I made out of my long-time boyfriend’s, now ex-boyfriend’s, house and into my own home, which I’d had to purchase on a whim since I couldn’t spend another day living with the cheating jerk. I’d been humiliated when I’d found out my omega, whom I thought was The One had been cheating on me.

Mason rolled his eyes. “I have seen your house. You have a beautiful fireplace, and those vaulted ceilings? Oh, you could really decorate that. I bet it’d be beautiful.”

“I bet it would be a mess to clean up, not to mention a fire hazard.”

That didn’t stop me from imagining it, though. When I’d bought the house years ago, I had let myself imagine what a decorative holiday would look like. At the time I assumed I’d fall in love again and have an omega to share my life with. Over there years, that image had died. It was a silly idea. Who did I even have to share the holidays with? As a thirty-eight-year-old, single, grumpy alpha, I wasn’t exactly a catch.

I stopped next to the table that held a collection of Christmas gnomes... or elves? I wasn’t sure what they were. Fifty or more statues covered the table. They were all shapes, colors, and sizes, all in reds, greens, and blues.

“Now, what the hell is a person supposed to do with these? They sit in the attic for ages just to come out for one month out of the year. It’s a waste.”

“Some people start decorating in October and don’t put their decorations away until February.”

Yikes. I was not that person. I should move on from this display and go look at something else, maybe there were some old cast-iron pans. I loved cooking with cast iron. Despite the complaining, I really did enjoy antiquing. You never knew what you could find in a place like this. I always skipped the Christmas stuff, though.

Then I could’ve sworn one of the statues winked at me, and I had to do a double take. It had to be a trick of the light. This particular elf statue had rosy-red cheeks, plump lips. It was an elf omega. I don’t know how I knew that for sure, but I’d go with it. The vest and curled-toe boots were donned with pink sparkles, and the rest of it was covered in a coat of glitter.

I picked it up. It was heavier than I thought it’d be and smoother. With all the sparkle on it, I expected a rough texture, but this was like it was coated in resin. It shined in my hands. I wanted to put it back down. I should have put it back down. Instead, I found myself asking, “How much do you think they want for this?”

“The gnome thing?” my friend asked.

“It’s an elf,” I said. What the hell was happening?

Put it down, I told myself. But I couldn’t. “I think I’ll take this,” I said, as if it was the most normal thing in the world and not something completely out of the ordinary.

“What the hell are you going to do with it?”

“Well, you were just complaining that I don’t decorate my fireplace. I think it’ll go there.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll put it right on the mantle.” I currently didn’t have anything up there except for a blown-glass vase that had been one of the last gifts I ever received.

My friend put the back of his hand to my forehead. “You feeling okay, Walter?”

I jerked back. “I’m fine.”

“If you say so. I think I’m about done looking. I didn’t find anything I want. Let’s get out of here.”

“Hold up, I’ve got to pay for this.”

He looked between me and the statue again, then back to me. “You’re serious?”

“Yes.”

He held up his hands in defeat. “Hey, man, I was just giving you a hard time about decorating for Christmas. I get it. I really do. You don’t have to buy something just to prove that you’re not Ebenezer Scrooge.”

I was a Scrooge, but he didn’t need to know that. And that wasn’t the reason I was buying it. I was compelled to buy it. Like this elf was mine already, and there was no way I was leaving without it.

“No, I really do want this,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, still bewildered.

I gave the lady running the sale my money. She offered a bag, but I held the gnome—no, the elf—close to my chest.

“I’ll carry him,” I said.

The minute I got home, I took him directly inside and placed him on the mantle. From there he had a view of the large living room and the pass-thru window that led to the kitchen.

“You look good there,” I said.

The elf wore a pointed red hat with a green scarf and a red shirt with gold cuffs. His green pointed boots sparkled under the dome light above the mantle.

I could put him away, since it was February. Then again, no one was going to visit my house, so what did it matter if I kept my only Christmas decoration up?

He looked perfect exactly where he was.