Chapter One

Summer Break After University Sophomore Year

I don’t know why I thought I could pull it off.

This salmon-colored button-down, I mean. I’m too pale; it washes me out in every shot—or, no, wait, that one’s not too bad. I’m standing on the steps of Lily and Iris’s estate, right before shit hit the fan, so I’m still giving that masking cocky smile. Throw it in black-and-white, and it’d be a respectable picture of me.

Ha. Respectable.

After tonight, I’m surprised I can think that word without part of my brain spontaneously combusting.

So I think it again. Respectable.

No flames. It’s like a magic trick.

And because I’ve had about four dirty vodka martinis where I order it by asking for “ vodka that at one point in time aspired to be in a martini before striking out on a solo career, ” I rock my head and go “Rrrrrespectable” to my phone, which leads to me humming, then softly singing, “R-E-S-P-E—”

“Don’t drag Aretha Franklin into your bullshit.”

The stool next to me groans as my brother heaves himself onto it. I glance around, but Iris isn’t here—yet. She can’t be far behind.

If she wants to see me anymore. How pissed will she be that I ruined her sister’s birthday? Or will she be more pissed by the way I ruined her sister’s birthday?

I lift the sweating glass of my fourth—fifth? Fourth. Fifth?—vodka martini and gulp half of my dry, bitter vice and go back to scrolling through the paparazzi site. Headlines fly past— Prince Nicholas’s Latest Disaster this and Prince Nicholas: Finally Too Far? that. The television above the bar is playing a basketball game, but there’s a scrolling news alert at the bottom with headlines like NATION GRANTED MILLIONS OF GIFTS FROM “SANTA” OVERNIGHT; SUSPECTED SHIPPING ERROR TO BLAME; STORY DEVELOPING—

“Oh, now that picture’s a winner,” I tell Kris, because he followed me here, so he knows very well that that means he’ll be the recipient of my… me -ness.

Me-ness rhymes a bit with another word.

I sit up straight on the barstool and look at the ceiling because this is where my limit is, apparently. Drunkenly laughing at self-inflicted dick jokes.

… it would not be out of line for self-inflicted dick jokes to be called masturbation jokes.

I bury my face in my hands. “Shit fucking fuck.”

“Yep,” Kris agrees. To the bartender, he says, “Two waters. He’s cut off.”

“Fuck you.”

“On second thought, give me the soda gun so I can blast him in the face.”

I drop my hands, only there’s two of him, so I squint, and ah, there he is.

Kris looks like me, but if I were sober and not a disheveled mess. Brown curls, blue eyes, pale skin that I should tell him does not mesh well with pink tones, a friendly brotherly FYI. He has his long hair thrown into a topknot and he took off his suit jacket and button-down so he’s in an undershirt—

It’s not an undershirt. It’s bright green and says Sleigh My Name, Sleigh My Name across the chest, some of his ink peeking out beneath the sleeves. He absolutely buys these shirts too tight on purpose.

“Did you have that under your suit the whole night?” I ask.

“Yeah, that’s what we should talk about right now. Fashion.”

I turn back to my phone. “That’s what I was doing before you rudely stalked me.”

“To the same bar you always run away to.”

I like this bar because it’s walkable from campus and has the benefit of never being too overcrowded. Even right now, at seven on a Friday night, it’s half full, the booths and tables clustered with chattering students in the occasional Yale T-shirt, the jukebox playing some pulsing country song low enough for audible conversation.

Kris shrugs. “New Haven has other bars, you know, if you wanted to actually hide. The fact that you came here tells me you wanted me to find you.”

“As my tiny baby brother, you are legally not allowed to psychoanalyze me.”

His nose scrunches. “I’m barely fourteen months younger than you.”

“Tiny. Baby.” I poke his bicep. Then sneer in jealousy at the size of it. The younger sibling should also not be legally allowed to get more jacked than the older sibling. But that would probably require said older sibling setting foot in a gym on more than a rare occasion, so screw that, I’ll let him have this.

When he inhales, clearly about to change the subject, I show him the first photo on the paparazzi site, of me in my salmon shirt.

“Why the fuck did you let me go out in public with—”

“Coal.”

I drop my phone and reach for my glass, but Kris puts his hand over it.

“Do you realize how much you fucked up?” His voice is low.

“Yeah.”

“All your bullshit, and I never thought you’d—wait, you do?”

I don’t look up at him. Just stare at the condensation beading down the side of my glass, still trapped under his hand. “I do. I didn’t—I just—fuck.”

“You gotta give me more than that, dude.”

My mouth hangs open like a gaping drunk fish. I have nothing, though. Nothing I can say to fix anything.

It’s why I fled the party like a coward. Because I am. A coward and a screwup and tonight I bested my records in both of those areas.

Kris yanks his hand away from my glass to scrub it across his face. This energy out of my brother, pity and exhaustion and the slightest tinge of fed up, damn near burns the alcohol right out of my veins.

I always know Kris and Iris are borderline annoyed by my antics, but they usually end up laughing with me, and that laughter is more infusing than any consequence is punishing. If I can get a smile out of them, I know I not only haven’t fucked up too badly, but I’ve hit the perfect note of endearingly goofy.

Like the time I arranged for our prep school building to go up for sale. Got a realtor involved and everything. Classes had to be canceled for a full week to hash out the confusion.

Or the time I filled a cathedral with chickens right before an Easter service.

Or the time during our annual Christmas Eve Ball where I rigged the sound system to play, on loop, “I Am Santa Claus,” a parody set to the Iron Man song, and it took seventeen rounds before the staff could figure out how to shut it off. People were crying.

But that was harmless. Everything I’ve done has been harmless. That’s what I have to offer: harmless, meaningless bullshit.

Until now.

“I didn’t mean for anything bad to happen,” I try. The air is stale and smells like something burned in the kitchen’s fryer. “It wasn’t supposed to be a prank.”

“Then what the fuck was it supposed to be?” Kris is fighting not to be overtly pissed, I can tell, but it’s warring hard with pity, and I can’t decide which is worse. But then his face goes cold. “Wait. If you weren’t doing it for shits and giggles, were you trying to make it an incident? Like sabotage to expose us to the real world?”

I blanch. “No. Kris. You really think I’d do that?”

His pause is louder than anything else he’s said. If I were more sober, I’d be able to react better. Dive in with an explanation that would make all this okay. But as it is, I’m hit with a barrage of all my fuckups, my reputation for never taking things seriously and dicking around, and I can’t get any explanation out, the words all dammed up against my tongue. I suck down the remnants of my drink but there my excuses stay, glued in my mouth.

Would anyone believe me if I said I’d been trying to make things better? Prince Nicholas, headline darling, was trying to do something good for once, and in truly poetic fashion managed to fuck up worse than usual?

The press wouldn’t believe me. Would Kris?

“So what were you trying to do, then?” Kris asks slowly. “Get back at Dad for dragging you into training?”

I watch the side of his face and take a quaking breath. I will get these words out, because if I can’t say them to my brother, explain what I’d meant to do and why I’d done it, then—

My phone buzzes next to my now empty glass.

I’m shocked it’s taken him this long to call me.

Kris grabs it and holds it up. “Answer.”

Normally, I’d argue, because he knows what he’s asking of me, and I know he knows what he’s asking of me. But his tone is still hanging in the air and all the vodka in my bloodstream is doing nothing to counteract the dread cracking apart my chest.

I answer and shove the phone between my shoulder and ear. “Hey, Dad.”

“Nicholas. You will come home and assist in correcting this situation. Now .”

I scratch at a stain on the bar top. “I’m not sure my presence would help.”

“You are in no position to decide what would or would not help,” Dad says, voice immutable. “I have the staff already at work unpicking what you did, and you will be here to show that this shipping error is of utmost concern to you, and that you understand the gravity of such a mistake. This behavior is disgraceful in any respectable circles—”

My brain starts in on R-E-S-P-E-C-T again. One glance at Kris and I refocus on the call.

“—but it is certainly disgraceful for a Prince of Christmas.”

Ah, there it is. The singular point to which every conversation with my father returns.

But the rest of what he said sinks into my brain like liquid trying to absorb into an oversaturated sponge.

He doesn’t want me to fix what I did. He doesn’t want me to take the blame. He wants me there for pictures. To pose and smile and reinforce whatever story is being spun for the Holiday press, a surface-level fa?ade to salvage our reputation among the other Holidays and their people.

Fury sparks sudden and bright. I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s doing this again, but I am, and I’m pissed.

“Oh, yeah, I’ll get right there,” I snap. “Can’t have the paparazzi thinking I’m anything less than adequately remorseful. Just like this whole training sham—had to start convincing them I’m not a total screwup, no matter how much of a lie that is.”

“The training was not a sham, ” Dad says. He breezes right past me being a total screwup, and that avoidance is a confirmation I fight, hard, not to feel in the pit of my stomach. “It was far past time for you to take on a leadership role in Christmas. That you chose to get nothing out of the opportunity I gave you only solidifies that I was right in my reservations over trusting you.”

“Again,” I add without thinking.

“What?”

“Over trusting me again .” I’m just woozy enough that I think it’s a good idea to bring this up. “This wasn’t my first training session, remember?”

He’s quiet for a beat. Does he remember? He has to. I was really young, but so was he. He’d showed me the globe where we track joy and magic and gifts and everything, and he’d waved his hand over it like he was literally giving me the world.

“These are the people who need us,” he’d told me. “And I do mean us, Nicholas—you and me. One day, it will be your job to make the world happy.”

Even years later, the memory is so fucking potent for a number of reasons I refuse to acknowledge. And thinking of it all now just makes me hate myself for holding on to it.

“I remember,” Dad says. Is that… fondness in his voice?

Oh look, I can be both annoyed and hopeful at the same time.

It crashes like a five-car pileup when he clears his throat and continues with, “You were a child. It’s in the past. The only thing that matters is now, and right now, you have disappointed me.”

It shouldn’t hurt. I’ve made being a disappointment like 80 percent of my personality.

But I can’t breathe for a second.

Dad’s held me at arm’s length for years since that childhood introduction that never went very far, because of his own shit and then later thanks to my damaging reputation. But something about me being halfway through my college career spurred him to action: it was time I begin taking things seriously this summer.

He’d had me start training under various North Pole department heads, which had sounded… great, to be honest. To be involved in shit, to see what was happening behind all the PR fog that Dad usually pumps out. That hope collapsed real quick under Dad’s warning that I wasn’t to touch anything. Just do exactly what the department heads tell you, Nicholas, listen to the pretty explanations of what each group does and smile for the photos so some of the headlines could be respectable for once. King Claus trying to make something of Prince Nicholas: oh god, should he be allowed near heavy machinery?

Training had been a lie, just like everything else. He didn’t want me to do anything. It was a setup for the betterment of our reputation as the biggest, the best, blah blah bullshit and I’m tired and drunk and I fucking regret what I did more than I can put words to and the fact that I can’t put words to it has me spewing the only words that come.

“You’re right. You shouldn’t have trusted me. Because I was trying to help people, not do whatever the fuck it is you normally do. Do you care what I’d tried to—”

“I do not care what you had intended, Nicholas, because the result was an economic collapse .”

A weight plummets down into my gut, snuffing out my anger so abruptly I wheeze at its absence. Dad is talking loudly enough that Kris can hear both sides of the conversation and he sips at his water, looking less pissed at me, more sympathetic.

“I—” I pinch the skin between my eyes, fighting to breathe. “I don’t—”

“The only way you can and will contribute to undoing this mess is by being here to offer your support. Never, in the history of our family, has a Christmas Prince so grossly misused our magic. Never—”

“I didn’t grossly misuse it. I was—”

“You accessed the database of unfulfilled Christmas letters and gave every single child in the capital of New Koah all of their outstanding wishes. You may have made them happy in the moment, but you didn’t think beyond that. You never think about the long-term consequences of your actions.”

I see the glow of the computer screen I’d sat down at after a full day of being shuttled around by various department heads, trailed by Holiday journalists, every action masked and every emotion capped and it was all so fake.

So I’d gone back to Letters because that was real. That was the one connection to real kids, the outside world who believes in our magic.

I hadn’t intended to do anything. I’d just wanted… something.

I’d wanted, and I still want, and it’s an aching, empty hole in my chest.

Dear Santa, one letter had said. My mom lost her job this year…

Dear Santa. Grandma says we can’t afford new shoes, so maybe you could help…

Dear Santa. Daddy left and I don’t think he’s coming back this time…

The department head had talked to the press vis-à-vis me about how they keep the letters filed to compare how the things kids ask for evolve, and extrapolate the best single gift for them each year, and so on, I’d stopped paying attention, because really? All these heartbreaking stories, and at the end, most kids ask for things like a PlayStation or a stuffed animal, and it won’t bring back their parent, but fuck, we can give them all the material things they ask for, can’t we?

Apparently, we can’t.

Apparently, when you access the North Pole database, and pick a random small country—thank fuck I’d limited it to one city in one little place, not gone global—and channel Christmas’s magic to grant every outstanding letter from every kid in that city, it causes… issues.

“ Millions of gifts,” Dad is shouting. “Many of which just showed up labeled as from Santa in people’s houses in June. And aside from the gifts themselves, thousands of people were given exorbitant amounts of money directly into their accounts. You flooded their economy and instigated hyper-inflation and—”

“Dad—”

“— riots, Nicholas. The Prince of Christmas caused riots .”

I glue my eyes to the bar top and will myself not to think about the ramifications of what I’ve done. The pain I’ve caused. Riots.

News of what I’d done just so happened to pop up right in the middle of Lily’s birthday party, so my authentic horrified reaction got immortalized by the press as I’d managed to make it clear that I’d somehow caused this. And then Lily had started screaming at me, also immortalized, along with my very public running the fuck away because I broke an entire country.

My focus pops back up to the TV. One of the headlines scrolling above me now is PRESUMED BANK AND SHIPPING ERRORS LEAD TO RIOTING AS CITIZENS BUY OUT STORES, ROBBERIES INCREASE.

Whatever story the Holiday press are running with, it’ll stay within our magically bubbled circles. The real world will continue to think this influx of cash and gifts was due to tech glitches from various shipping companies and banks.

Dear Santa.

Daddy left.

I don’t think he’s coming back this time.

I really want my mom to have some money for Christmas so she doesn’t have to worry about him helping us, okay?

I’d been trying to help people. I’d known I was helping people.

But I made their lives so, so much worse.

“How—” I clear my throat, willing my vodka daze to evaporate, but it only seems to double down. “How are you fixing—”

Dad ignores me, barreling right on with his ranting, and I only let myself get pissed for half a beat. I have no leg to stand on right now, not a single one.

“Maybe you have not paid attention to our reality,” Dad says, “and the fact that our Holiday is positioned to become more renowned worldwide than ever before in history. Spreading our reach will require things like magic and reputation .”

“Is that really what’s important right—”

“Christmas dominates the stories spun within Holiday presses. It is a responsibility and a gift you have for too long scorned. Do you see the way other Holidays are talked about? Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, even Easter to some extent—they are barely taken seriously. We are the epitome of wholesomeness and joy—”

“Dad—”

“—and that means we do not initiate the economic collapse of a small Pacific Islands nation!”

“STOP!”

I don’t mean to shout. Only I do mean it, a little, and Kris frowns at me, all understanding, and fuck if I deserve that from him. The people nearest me look over too and I curve down, pulling the phone to my chest to grimace before raising it back up to my other ear.

I slam my eyes shut. “I’ll come home. I swear. Just… let me sober up.”

“You’re drunk ?” Dad shrieks in my ear. “You left this disaster you created to get drunk ?”

“I’m here.” Kris leans over and speaks into my shoulder. “I won’t let Coal do—”

“ Nicholas, ” Dad counters, and Kris flinches back.

Kris chose irreverent Christmas clothing and a myriad of tattoos he keeps hidden under said clothing as his hipster-like acts of rebellion; I chose, among other things, that nickname. It’d been too perfect to resist, right there in the name I inherited from dad. Nick-coal-us. My father has never appreciated the delicious irony.

Seems like a pretty fucking tame thing to do now, doesn’t it.

Dad’s silence is pointed. So pointed I can imagine exactly how he’d be glaring at me if he were here, eyes dark, using some kind of magic as an intimidation tactic—dimming the lights, plummeting the temperature. Kris and I may be able to tap into Christmas’s magic in small ways, parlor tricks, but Dad’s connection to it is a thing beyond.

“The things you do matter, Nicholas,” Dad says. “The image you present to our people and other Holidays matters. Everyone involved in bringing Christmas to the normal world looks to our family. That’s thousands of people, you realize, in North Pole City. What if they stopped taking their duties seriously because of the example you set? In the past few decades alone, Christmas has extended to countries we once could never have reached. Every Holiday looks to us .”

“Looks to us for what ?” My insides have been battered up and down this evening, and what is usually a background pain rages front and center where I’d naively woken it up by thinking I could effect any real change. “We plaster on a picture-perfect image for the Holiday press, the Claus name is blemish-free, we keep raking in joy for one single fucking day that’s forgotten as soon as it happens, and what ? That’s really it?”

“Is that all you truly think we do?”

Yes. No. Fuck, I shouldn’t have answered his call in this state.

Another well-earned sigh vibrates in my ear. “You see firsthand now why we do not use our magic more extensively. We do spread joy. Even if all we do is as frivolous as you make it seem, what more do you want? Isn’t that enough?”

I’m so drunk. I’m so fucking drunk. And that’s why my response is, “It wasn’t enough to keep Mom from leaving.”

All my muscles seize.

The line goes so quiet I think he hung up.

When he starts again, his tone is wholly emotionless. “This is the final warning I will give you. No more disasters, no more embarrassments. You will be the embodiment of the heir of Christmas. Luckily, I will be able to fix your mess this time. Come home. This is not only your future at stake, Nicholas. This is Christmas’s future. Your brother’s future, even. It is high time you started thinking of more than yourself.”

There’s a click, and the call goes dead.

I gasp in the vacuum of silence.

Stiff, I lower my phone and swing back around the barstool, fighting for an expression that plays it all off. It’s what I do. This was all another funny shenanigan from Coal, haha, more memories in the long line of my usual careless chicanery.

Kris is—blushing? So I know Iris is here, and the tunnel vision of vodka has my reaction processing beat by beat that that’s her standing behind him.

I should warn him off Lentora women. Don’t get involved, man, they’ll—do what? I fucked up my relationship with Lily. She should be warning Iris off Claus men.

Iris has her arms folded, looking like she wants to be pissed but is waffling now with pity.

She went to her sister’s birthday in full glory, and she’s still done up from it, not a hair out of place. Her box braids are twisted into what she called fun buns, and they’re set with purple gemstones that match her glittery purple dress. I don’t think I’ve seen her in any other color, which is part of her own sculpted image as the perfect Easter Princess, even in this grungy college bar.

My throat grates as I force a swallow. I should explain to Kris and Iris why I did what I did. I should beg their forgiveness. I should do something to make up for being me but my phone is lead in my hand and the bar is suddenly so fucking hot, I can’t get a full breath.

“What’d he say?” Kris asks like he’s trying to calm a spooked animal.

“Are you all right?” Iris adds.

Great. Pity and caution.

“Nothing. It’s fine,” I lie and wedge my phone in my pocket. “I’m going home as soon as I sober up. I need some air.”

“Coal.” Kris starts to stand when I do, but I wave my hand at him and do fuck all to hide my panic.

“Just give me a second, all right? I’ll be back.”

“You are coming back,” Kris tells me. “Don’t make me chase you again. We’ll go home together.”

“Yeah, sure. I promise.” And I head for the bar’s front door.

But I take one glance at the window that looks out on the sidewalk, and I freeze.

The normal world hasn’t figured out how my dad gets to “every house” in one night. It isn’t that exciting: magic. The staff of hundreds doesn’t hurt, of course, but it’s mostly magic. One way is we take a sprig of mistletoe, jam it at the top of a doorframe, and: voilà! Instant portal anywhere we envision.

Which is how Holiday press have gotten here as fast as I did, once they figured out where I went; most Holidays have some form of transportation magic. And I realize I am rather predictable, like Kris said, because there are at least three Holiday reporters here, and when they see me heading out, they swing to attention, ready to photograph whatever I do or don’t do and spread it across our tabloids. I recognize their badges and I hate that I see them enough to clock them by a glance through a grimy window: one is from Christmas Inquirer, an outlet that only features Christmas, while the other two are from Holiday Herald and 24-Hour Fête, broader publications that harass—I mean, feature —the antics of a myriad of Holiday reigning families.

No small amount of our magic goes towards keeping us separate from the ordinary world, and that extends to the internet—so while normal people might see our pictures, all they’d be able to find out is that they’re of foreign royals. They wouldn’t see the captions, wouldn’t see our names or who we are.

Doesn’t stop it all from sucking the life out of me.

Headline: Prince Nicholas drinks away sorrows in lieu of anything productive, but what did we really expect.

I turn past Iris and Kris. “I’ll be out back.” And I’m gone before they respond.

I duck down a hall that leads to the bathrooms, bypass a door marked STORAGE, and shove into one labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY . How do I know this door leads to the back alley? Thanks to my first week of freshman year, a fake ID, and one too many tequila shots.

The alley is empty, thank god, a dead end capping off to my left and an opening to the road farther down on the right. The night air is no less muggy than it was inside, summer heat trapping the moisture from a recent rain, but I slam my back to the brick wall and breathe like it’ll help balance the ever-wobbling scale lurching between Everything is fine and Hahahahahahaha fuck.

Usually, my only intention is ever Oh, this will be funny , and then I’m off and running with no other rationale able to beat through the concrete casing around my brain.

But this time?

I’d wanted to do something real. And it’d been easy. Easy to access the database, easy to set up the off-season gift deliveries. Easy to carry on like normal and go to Lily’s party, and I’d been happy, because I’d done something good for once, and fuck, if that wasn’t a sobering feeling.

I’d been so arrogant. So certain that I’d finally done something to spread joy.

And then the news reports of the New Koah collapse had started rolling in with dead-perfect timing.

I cannot believe I brought up my mother.

The door bangs open next to me and I jump about a foot in the air.

There’s still enough vodka swirling through my system that I have trouble focusing on who it is—the alley has one light flickering a few yards down, and it backlights the guy, his frame thin and slight.

My first thought is paparazzi, but he has no camera or badge. He’s in a black T-shirt and distressingly tight black skinny jeans, and my confusion clears because isn’t that what the bartender was wearing? Then I remember the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign I barreled past, and I roll my eyes into my skull.

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

The guy makes a startled noise, almost a laugh. “You’re—what?”

For being shorter and smaller than me, his voice is gravelly deep, and him saying these two words sets off a roll of percussion that shakes down to the pit of my gut, a reverberation that could make a fortune doing ASMR.

I break through the hypnosis that causes and drop my shoulder against the alley wall. “Sorry. Which I should get used to saying, because I owe that word to a lot of people. Actually, if you wouldn’t mind getting in line, that’d be great.”

He blinks at me, still a bit alarmed. “I—”

“It’s not a very long line.” I press the heel of my hand to my temple. It doesn’t stop the alley from gyrating like the inside of a zoetrope. “That’s a lie. It is a long line. You’ll be squashed in behind my ever-disappointed father, my girl— ex -girlfriend, whose birthday party I ruined, and the people who—uh—”

I cut myself off.

He’s most likely a normal guy, and I can’t admit to him what I did. It was bad enough spewing it all out at Lily’s party in a way that just painted me as floundering and irresponsible—and Dad’s made it clear whatever story is being spun now, it’s more about saving face than owning up to what I did.

Which is fucked up. I should take the blame for it.

I will, though, by showing up at home and standing there as better people fix it.

God, that’s pathetic.

I shut my eyes, swaying a little, and disjointedly, I chuckle. “You ever have one of those moments”—my lips are numb—“where you think you’re doing a good thing, like you’re fucking certain you’re doing a really good thing, only it blows up so marvelously that you should offer your scorched-earth services to—to the um—fuck. The assholes. The people who follow wars around and siphon off money by selling weapons and shit.”

The guy doesn’t answer.

I look down. He should be fleeing back inside at the very least, reprimanding me for barging out the employee entrance at the most. But he stands there, cast into shadow. His stick-straight, glossy black hair is shorter on the sides but long enough on top that a few strands brush his forehead, and he’s staring up at me with raised brows and the roundest, most focused eyes I’ve ever seen. I suddenly feel like being the object of his attention is a stroke of luck.

It makes my slack muscles go tense. My spinning, drunken mind latches on, an anchor, and I frown at him for lack of being able to make any other facial expression at the moment.

“You’re drunk,” he notes with a cast of those eyes up and down my body.

“Astute.”

He meets my gaze again. “Please don’t sell yourself to arms dealers.”

“That’s it! Arms dealers. Ow—shit.” I snap my fingers. Or try to. My hand isn’t working well and I end up scraping my thumbnail along my finger.

Is that…

It is. There’s a hint of a smile on his lips. It drags—demands— wrenches my focus to those lips. And they are, suddenly, those lips, in that way, and I think, in some corner of my mind, that I should not be looking at this errant bar employee like that, but I can’t remember why.

Oh. Because I just got dumped. Is there some kind of moratorium on flirting post-breakup? There should definitely be a moratorium on flirting post-collapsing-an-entire-economy.

So I say “It’s not funny” to those lips, frowning harder, like it’s their fault.

His ghost of a smile doesn’t abate. “Of course not.”

“No—no, it isn’t. I know funny. I am funny. This? This wasn’t funny.”

One eyebrow lifts. Waiting. For me to keep talking?

Sure. Why the hell not. Because I suddenly need to talk about it, need to get it off my chest, and he’s here, and maybe he’s the crazy one, because he could leave but isn’t.

Shit. Is he Holiday press? No. He’s too hot to be paparazzi.

But here comes the whole sad damn story, like I’ve been shunted out of my body and I’m watching myself spill my guts to a perfect stranger.

This is officially the big red bulb ornament on the Charlie Brown Christmas tree that is my life.

“It would’ve been a doomed night from the start anyway, because Lily and I were going to break up after the party regardless—just had to hang on for one last night of press shots. Right? But last week, I’d—I’d tried, that was the dumbest thing. This was me trying. And I—my family has resources. Right?” Why do I keep asking him that? I think I’m pacing too. “And we never use them for anything that would actually help people. So I did. And it only made things exponentially worse, but of course it all came out during this party, so add a very public breakup on top of me realizing how badly I’d screwed up people’s lives, and no, nothing is funny. At all. Shit.”

I collapse against the alley wall and scrub my face, trying to get feeling back into my cheeks.

And I’m only now realizing I’m still wearing this fucking salmon-colored shirt.

The guy’s brows are bent in an analytic squint, like he can’t figure out how he got here, listening to a stranger divulge his disastrous evening, but he’s not jotting down notes, so it’s unlikely he’s press after all. And he looks… sad, almost? Mournful. Like he understands.

Which is crazy. I’m drunk.

I wave my arms pathetically. “I shouldn’t be saying this to you.”

“No. I get it.”

My face screws up in question.

He looks away, the absence of his gaze a visceral pull, and I stagger a step closer, one hand bracing on the wall because the alley is still undulating at the edges of my vision. He doesn’t react to my movement, seemingly lost in thought.

Then he lifts his chin and looks up at me. “We can feel like we have the best of intentions,” he whispers, “and still cause disaster.”

His rawness beckons to me, bait on a line, and before I can stop it, I’m saying, “I just want to feel good. To feel real .” I sound as fragile as his voice was, void of any of my previous self-deprecation, stripped down to the core of me, and I go immobile.

His gaze pins me in place, keeping me from shoving back inside to avoid the burn of reality.

“I don’t know if feeling good should be the goal,” he says, still in that brittle, aching tone. “It’s more realistic to center on little things. One thing, each day, that isn’t sullied by grief. One by one by one until you’ve started to rebuild the foundation that got obliterated. Because that’s what happiness is, at the root. A foundation. And foundations aren’t ever one thing, they’re many little things interlocked together.”

It’s a pretty concept. But. “That’s never been my experience, that little things have a long-term impact. They shatter the moment weight is put on them.”

“Maybe you’ve been putting your weight on the wrong things.”

“What are the right things?”

His smile changes. It’s the contained kind where it doesn’t reach any other part of his face, a kick of response more than an emotion.

“My,” he says. “This is awfully philosophical for a bar alley chat.”

“Wait.” I put my hand up. Only he turns for the door, into my hand, and my fingers curve of their own accord around his arm.

He stops. Half turned away, my arm across his chest.

“What are the right things?” I ask again.

He’s staring up at me, pupils shifting back and forth through mine. Then he licks his lips, and I’m dazed by the sheen of wetness on his lower lip, the quick flash of his pink tongue.

I should let go of his arm. I’m spellbound by the words out of him, happiness and foundation, and that’s all I see, my disaster fading to the edges of my mind so everything is whittled to this moment. No, to him, and I can’t tell if he’s at all feeling this too or if I’m blowing it out of proportion in a combination of my regret and drunkenness.

The air is charged and drowsy and I don’t think it’s me at first. But suddenly there’s a mouth, a mouth and a tongue and those lips against mine, and it had to have been me, and I collapse. My fingers dive into his hair and that is my anchor now, his face beneath mine, the taste of soda in his mouth but something else, something dazzlingly male and my pulse is driving hard against every vein in my neck and fingertips.

His hand clenches into a fist against my hip and his tongue darts out to lick at mine. I snatch it up, sucking on it, and am rewarded with a palpitation resonating from his throat—he’s moaning. Moaning, and my god, I feel those vibrations in the arches of my feet.

There’s a metallic squeal next to us, and reality knocks politely on the wall of my drunkenness and murmurs the door to the bar is opening, and I’m plunged back into this world like I got dunked in an ice bath.

The bar. The paparazzi. The breakup. The disaster I created. And here I am, kissing a stranger instead of doing the barest minimum.

I launch back from the guy, but he’s already flying away too, and I spin, hands out, to see Iris pushing the door the rest of the way open.

“Shit,” I say, because it was her sister I only recently got dumped by, and she’s the one who catches me doing this ?

She blinks, eyes adjusting to the shadows, and when she frowns, it’s concerned, not accusing. “You’ve been out here awhile. You okay?”

“I’m—”

I turn. The alley is empty, and I spin again, which reawakens the heaving whirl of the bricks, and I grab the sides of my head. My headache is toppling down the back of my neck and my lips are all soft and warm and—

What the fuck just happened?

I turn again. No way he got out of the alley that fast, unless he seriously booked it to the open end. God, did I scare him off that badly?

“A guy,” I say. “He was—he was here .”

Iris gives me an unimpressed stare. “A guy.”

“I swear! Iris—he was here. Where’d he go?”

“And you want to go off in search of a mystery guy instead of facing your own music, is that it?”

“No! No. That’s not what—”

Did I hallucinate him? Fuck no, his taste is still in my mouth.

Was this interaction something else I screwed up tonight? I didn’t even ask his name.

Wherever he is, whoever he is, it’s just Iris in this alley now, but it could have been press opening that door, and I have to be smarter, I have to change. Shape up. Be a fucking adult.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble at Iris.

Right before I bend double and vomit all over her shoes.

Iris and the Claus Boys

IRIS

did you find your mystery guy coal?

no. bartender said no one by that description works there and he didn’t see anyone like that even come in

IRIS

well that’s not surprising. most people can’t see ghosts.

HE WAS A REAL PERSON IRIS

KRIS

Honestly, you’d better hope he was a ghost, because there’s a very good chance you spilled your guts to and then slobbered on a member of the Holiday press.

eloquently put, thank you

we’ll know if the details of the story come out won’t we

fuuuuuuuck

IRIS

allow me to distract you

please

IRIS

i’ve decided it’s up to us kris to think of a suitable punishment for coal

KRIS

I’m always good with torturing my brother. What’d you have in mind?

the staff reined in the effects of the gift situation before it caused any real damage

no one was hurt by the riots and the robberies were sorted out

i scared people but

god no “but”

there’s no way you can punish me more than i’m punishing myself

IRIS

i’m not talking about punishment for that

you puked on my favorite louboutin heels you son of a bitch

okay no i literally JUST sent you the confirmation number for the new ones you had me buy

IRIS

yeah i decided that isn’t good enough

oh so you’re an extortionist now

beneath that glitzy purple springtime exterior beats the heart of a cold blooded mob boss

KRIS

I could’ve told you that.

fine, whatever, i shall nobly take whatever punishment you idiots throw my way because i am the biggest person in this fucked up trio

IRIS

you say that now

will you keep saying that when i have kris pick out an ugly christmas sweater for you to wear every day of your first month as a junior at yale

like not even a different sweater every day, just the same nasty ass sweater over and over

KRIS

OH I AM ALL OVER THIS

wait

KRIS

Okay, I have one that lights up, one that has about a pound of tinsel garland sewn into it, and one that’s neon yellow with two reindeer fucking on it.

But like, in a classy way.

IRIS

oh yellow classy reindeer fucking obviously

i have to give credit to the hilarity of christmas embarrassment in what will be august but why the christmas motif exactly

IRIS

cuz we know it irritates you and punishments should hurt

okay ouch christmas doesn’t irritate me that much

but just you wait, you both will be back at university by then too, which is plenty of time for me to concoct payback

IRIS

payback for the consequences of your own actions??

you’re the one who chose to throw the unstoppable force of practical jokes up against the immovable object of my personality

i will respond in kind

especially because i just spent almost a grand on shoes for you

KRIS

A GRAND???

yeah that was ONE PAIR

really put into perspective how i normally would’ve just sent you a new pair with christmas’s magic and not thought twice about it, so thanks for the second helping of guilt-riddled self-awareness iris

again, not sure why you’re doling out even MORE punishment

IRIS

because i bought that first pair myself from working my shitty uni job

do you know how many hours i had to spend making deli sandwiches to save up for those shoes

KRIS

Yeah, fuck, you’re right, this punishment still isn’t enough.

.… that is not the point i was trying to make

MY ORIGINAL POINT is that you two had better think long and hard about what hell you inflict on me

it will come back upon you tenfold

IRIS

that, my darling, is what is known as an empty threat given that you promised to be a good boy now and stop enacting shenanigans

KRIS

Iris, I heard that mic drop.

HA. Coal’s gone silent.

IRIS

did we really succeed in shutting him up??

KRIS

Coal, don’t pout.

Wait, sorry, I mean:

You’d better not pout.

IRIS

you’d better not cry

KRIS

The lyrics are off.

Shit, how does it go?

You’d better not—something something, I’m telling you why.

IRIS

oh is that what we were doing, i was just telling him not to be a baby

i accept the terms of your punishment and do so solemnly swear not to carry out any payback, no matter how deserved it may be

KRIS

This text thread is legally binding.

fuck you guys

from here on out it’s gonna be me and my ugly christmas sweater against the world