Sitting upside down on the couch with my head hanging off sometimes cut through the worst of my anxiety in moments of high stress, like reliving an awkward moment at work in painstaking detail, an unexpected bill threatening to blow my careful budget to smithereens, or the wind blowing in the wrong direction. It turned out that getting laid off during the holidays triggered too much anxiety for my go-to remedy to handle. Instead of helping the chest flutters ease, they got worse on top of blood rushing into my skull.
I lifted my head to stare at Keaton—my roommate, best friend, and former coworker—sitting next to me on our couch. I fixated on the patch of hair he’d missed shaving under his chin. It was easier to focus on that than how I would pay my half of the rent once my severance ran out.
I couldn’t believe Winchester Publishing was laying off a fifth of its staff. At least they’d given us a two-week notice on top of the severance to buy us some time to find new jobs.
“What are you staring at?” Keaton asked as he wiped at his mouth and then ran his fingers through the mop of loose dark curls on his head.
“You missed a spot.” I pointed to the location on my own chin.
Keaton shook his head and laughed. His brown eyes twinkled with affection. How was he not panicking? Right. Keaton would find something else. He always had. Heck, he’d only been at Winchester Publishing for six months compared to my five years.
“We just got laid off because of some bonehead publishing decisions that failed, and you’re worried about me missing a spot while shaving.” Keaton dropped back against the couch and let out a rough sigh. “So that really happened, right? It’s not a shared fever dream from us spending so much time together?”
I lowered my head again and frowned. “I guess we’re about to not spend as much time together.”
My body jostled from Keaton pushing my leg.
“Too soon!”
It might be, but naming it was the only way I could start to process it. Keaton was my safe space. Most people would surely hate spending so much time with the same person, but not me. Keaton was the one person I could fully relax around. He didn’t mind when I was being particular, he filled my introvert silences, and he never expected more from me than I could give.
“What are we gonna do?” I asked after a long silence.
We still had six months on our lease and needed new jobs to keep the place. What about health insurance? I had an appointment in January for my annual teeth cleaning. The thought of starting over with a new job and having to meet people, get to know them, and talk to strangers? No thanks. And if my new job came with new health insurance, would I need to find new doctors? I groaned, and Keaton patted my leg.
It wasn’t like I’d loved my job. I’d expected to when I started working at Winchester Publishing over five years ago because I’d wanted to work with books since I was a kid. Getting my foot in the door at a publishing house was a dream come true. Even though my job was an administrative position and not directly involved with book development, I loved being around them. Though the job wasn’t what I’d hoped it would be, I appreciated the stability and routine.
I wasn’t worried about Keaton. He could convince a hermit to hire him as a live-in personal assistant. The man had more charisma in his pinky than I did in my entire body. Finding a job for me was another matter entirely. Job interviews required touting my strengths. Aloud. To people. Not to mention having to figure out what those strengths were. Shudder.
I’d have to start searching for a job, fix up my résumé, and ask Keaton to do practice interviews with me so I had half a chance to score a second-round interview. Oh no. I have to tell my mom. I squeezed my eyes closed as my stomach sank. I hated the idea of worrying her. She worked hard and shouldn’t have to add my livelihood to her worry list.
“I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to get drunk and not worry about it tonight. We’ll be all responsible and shit tomorrow,” Keaton suggested.
I latched onto his idea like Rose to that damned Titanic door. I wasn’t much of a drinker and couldn’t promise not to worry, but I could try to minimize it as best I could. At least until tomorrow.
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but drinking is a good plan.” I did a mental inventory of our pantry and fridge. “Those canned seltzer things in the back of the fridge aren’t going to do the job.”
He scrunched his face, which made his lavender eyeshadow sparkle in the overhead light of our living room. “Bundle up and go out in the snow again to get booze? Hell no. I hate Minneapolis in the winter so fucking much. Why can’t we live in a place where it’s sixty degrees at Christmas instead of cold enough to freeze my balls into ice cubes?”
Keaton despised the snow, but I didn’t mind it. Though the winter weather was a pain much of the time.
His face lit up. “Oh! I have a bottle of tequila in my closet that I smuggled out of my parents’ house.”
The blood rushing to my head was making me woozy, so I tipped away from Keaton to flip myself around and sit upright. “Is that what you were doing when you sent me to ask your mom for leftover stuffing at Thanksgiving? I saw you sneak off to the pantry.” His mom’s mission at the holidays was to send everyone home with enough food to feed them for days.
I’d been friends with Keaton for long enough that his enormous family treated me like one of their children. They were the opposite of my quiet micro family of only me and my mom since my grandparents had passed away over the last few years. Time with my mom was filled with quiet conversations while watching nature documentaries. Time with Keaton’s family meant multiple loud conversations happening at once.
He aimed his devilish grin at me. “Snatching it was merely payment for suffering, my friend. Having to sit through an extended meal with that many people should be a crime.”
If tequila was our only option, I needed to jazz it up. I didn’t hate tequila, but it needed something. I supposed we could make an Instacart order for limes or a margarita mix because I wasn’t too keen to throw on my cold-weather gear either.
Then, I remembered our most recent grocery shopping trip. “The pad Thai limes!”
Keaton sat straighter. “Do we still have some?”
“Maybe one or two? Grab the tequila. Let’s go.” I clapped my hands a bit too intensely, going by the way Keaton jumped. Our silly plan was the only thing giving me an ounce of happiness right now.
My anxiety level had dropped from about twelve to a manageable six by the time we’d each had a few drinks. We spent the evening eating reheated pad Thai and rehashing horror stories from work. My sides ached from Keaton’s impression of my boss.
“Remember that time Brett microwaved his leftover fish, and then they made everyone sign a document about break room etiquette?”
I frowned. “Brett kept stealing my yogurt cups.”
“That guy’s an asshole. What do you think he’s going to do for a job now?”
“Start an OnlyFans or something with cryptocurrency,” I said.
Keaton snorted and the tequila bottle tipped in his hand. “Maybe an OnlyFans about cryptocurrency. He’ll jerk off while talking about Bitcoin.”
That sparked a torrent of laughter from me. “I hate to say it, but I can totally picture him doing that.”
We started brainstorming ridiculous job prospects for our former colleagues, which brought my brain back around to the fact we no longer had jobs.
“Job hunting at Christmas is terrible. Maybe we should get holiday retail jobs to tide us over.” I groaned. I thought my days in retail had ended in college. I wasn’t cut out for front-line customer service.
“Why? The company might’ve fucked us over, but we got a decent severance out of it. No need to rush into anything.”
Keaton raised a good point. I did have some in savings, so I supposed I didn’t need to scramble and land an even worse job. I could pretend like we were on a paid vacation for a week or two. Yeah, right. Because my brain is so relaxed.
I stared at the glass holding a mixture of tequila, nearly expired orange juice, and a squirt from the lemon juice bottle in the fridge that we’d resorted to after finishing the limes. It wasn’t good, but it did the job.
I scrolled Instagram and paused on a post from a queer online magazine I’d started following after they did a great story about the Pride celebration in a small Oregon town I had a personal interest in. Dahlia Springs was my forbidden fruit.
“You’re right. We should do something fun,” the tequila made my mouth say. “Oooh, it’s Travel Tuesday. Did you know that was a thing? Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Travel Tuesday. Capitalism is intense.” I shoved my phone in Keaton’s face.
Keaton was the up-for-anything guy in our duo. I was the stick-in-the-mud anxious one whose practicality could be a downer.
“Travel Tuesday, huh? Let’s go on a cruise to somewhere warm for December and forget all our worries. A place where all we’ll need is a suitcase full of speedos, lube, condoms, and sunscreen. We could spend our days sipping drinks with tiny umbrellas.”
Speedos? Absolutely not. Showing that much of my pale skin in the sun? The light would reflect off my body and spark a fire. And trying to relax in a climate where breathing made me sweat wasn’t my idea of a vacation. Not a surprise, though, since Keaton and I never agreed on anything when it came to vacations.
“You know we can’t travel together. It would be terrible, especially if the two of us were trapped on a boat.” I still had nightmares about our last trip together.
“We’re trapped together at home and work every day!”
“Used to be trapped together at work.”
Keaton winced. “Still too soon.”
Despite being compatible in ways that had kept Keaton and me best friends for over a decade, being travel companions was not among them. We wanted to spend our time and money doing completely different things, and it always ended in both of us being disappointed.
“We could take our own vacations,” he said before taking another swig from the bottle.
I nearly spilled my drink as I straightened from my slump on the couch. An alcohol-fueled idea tumbled from my mouth before my brain had the time to assess all the ways it could go wrong. “We should send each other on vacation as a big Christmas gift. Wouldn’t that be fun? You plan a trip for me, and I plan a trip for you.” What the heck am I saying right now?
Keaton’s dark eyes widened. “A surprise? We book airfare, lodging, and everything for the other person?” I could see the wheels spinning in his brain. “I’ve got an addendum. We send the other with a dare. Something we have to complete during the vacation.”
My brain threw a red flag. Be at someone else’s whim to accomplish some unknown task? No way. I couldn’t handle that. Hmm. But if I agreed, I could dare Keaton to finally do the thing he’d been dancing around for years. I could challenge him to start his beauty influencer social media accounts and begin posting content.
Keaton was amazing with makeup and teaching people how to apply it. The product reviews and tutorials he occasionally posted on his personal accounts were great, and he always had a thoughtful rant at the ready about Instagram and TikTok influencers pushing products known to be bad. He got passionate when he talked about wanting to help queer men, enbies, and others find ways to use makeup and skincare to feel good in their bodies.
I’d been encouraging him to make it official, to open accounts and start formally doing videos, but he’d been dragging his feet. I wasn’t sure what was holding him back. He was usually so confident and outgoing, but something about this tripped him up.
“I think I actually like that idea,” I said slowly as my brain worked at warp speed to assess the possibilities and pitfalls.
Keaton looked startled. “Seriously?”
“But we’ve got to set a budget and parameters.” I didn’t want Keaton to go wild and blow his severance on me. Or book me a terrible place to stay.
Horrifying memories about the road trip from hell flooded my mind. “And no bed-bug-infested roach motels either. It’s gotta have at least a three-star rating.”
Keaton dropped his head back against the couch. “I said I was sorry! How many times do we have to relive that?”
Apologies didn’t erase the emotional scars of eradicating the bed bugs infesting my car. “As many times as it takes to make sure you don’t book us in a place with mattresses directly on the stained carpet. It was like a serial killer’s grab-and-go for victims.”
“I promise I’ll book you somewhere with a bedframe.”
“And no bed bugs.” I shivered. “Deal?” I held out my hand.
Keaton shook it and grinned. There was a calculating gleam in his eye that should’ve had me backing out, but the liquid courage made me confident it would be fine. “Deal.”
The tequila helped me make quick decisions. I knew if I put it off until tomorrow, I’d get bogged down by planning and trying to make the most perfect trip possible. I wanted to take advantage of the Travel Tuesday deals and send Keaton as far from the snow as possible. He deserved a nice vacation.
As I escaped to my room and settled on my bed with my laptop and a much-needed glass of water, I began searching for reasonable flights to places with nice winters. The Arizona desert would be perfect.
While I price-checked options around the state, my mind speculated over what Keaton would book for me. Maybe somewhere with great museums and libraries. I would love a few days of wandering around quiet places. Maybe this harebrained idea would be just what we both needed.
Christmas Wishes #2
Prologue
KEATON
The eerie quiet in the apartment reminded me of the unnerving stillness after a dumping of snow. Normally, after getting home from work, I’d turn on music, a podcast, TV—anything for background noise. Unfortunately, today, my thoughts gave me more than enough background noise.
When I’d gone to work this morning, I’d expected dull conversations around the coffee machine about our Thanksgiving breaks and stuffing my face with the last of my holiday leftovers at lunch. I sure as hell hadn’t anticipated getting called into a meeting at the end of the day and told that Winchester Publishing was laying off twenty percent of its staff. I was among them.
I should’ve guessed something was up. I’d been laid off before, and the signs were obvious in hindsight with closed-door meetings, nebulous time blocks on leadership calendars, and harried HR staff.
Getting laid off just after Thanksgiving was a dick move, but at least they’d saved me from spending the holiday explaining to my enormous family that I had to find a new job. Again. They probably had a betting pool on how long this job would last. Big money to the lucky fucker who bet six months.
The most shocking part was they’d also axed my best friend and roommate, Arlo. I’d known from his stories about work over the years that he gave his heart and soul to the place, but it wasn’t until he’d gotten me a job there that I’d understood how much people relied on him. He never asked for credit, which was probably why they’d deemed him disposable. The fools.
As the most recent hire with a basic admin job, I was easy to cut. Arlo wanted a career in publishing, but I only cared about paying my bills and having leftover money to support my beauty habit.
“What are we gonna do?” Arlo asked from where he sat beside me on the couch. The hitch in his voice told me he was beginning to spiral.
I’d expected it and had been thinking about how to help him since we’d gotten back to our apartment a short while ago. Sometimes, the best thing to do with Arlo’s anxiety was to ride it out. Sometimes, it was to talk about it, and other times, distraction was the key.
Distraction. That’s exactly what we need.
“I know what we’re going to do. We’re going to get drunk and not worry about it tonight. We’ll be all responsible and shit tomorrow.” I half expected Arlo to shoot the idea down and suggest we start job hunting immediately, but he surprised me by agreeing.
Within five minutes, we’d filled shot glasses with the bottle of tequila I’d snagged from my parents’ house at Thanksgiving.
I tried to keep the mood light by reminding him of ridiculous stories from work. If too much silence lapsed, Arlo’s brain would take over, and I wanted him to have at least a small reprieve from the stress before it fully settled in.
I didn’t doubt we would find other jobs. I’d bounced around enough over the years that I’d learned a little about a lot of things—enough to get me a good response rate with invitations for job interviews. Once I got an interview, I was golden. I could schmooze with anyone.
Arlo might struggle with the interview, but anyone with half a brain would hire him because he was an incredibly hard worker with great ideas. We’d be okay. I was sure of it.
Once we’d finished the lone lime in our kitchen, we moved on to questionable mixers with the tequila, then taking swigs from the bottle. Arlo was giggly and adorable. Not in a hubba-hubba way, but in an awww, my platonic bestie is such a cutie pie way.
Arlo started talking about the Travel Tuesday deals, and I immediately pictured Arlo and me sunning ourselves on a gay cruise, so I suggested it. Well, Arlo was more likely to hang out under an umbrella to avoid burning his pale skin. A side effect of being a natural redhead.
Arlo looked horrified. “You know we can’t travel together. It would be terrible, especially if the two of us were trapped on a boat.”
“We could take our own vacations.” I took another drink from the bottle. I doubted Arlo would go for it, but we’d learned long ago that we weren’t compatible travel buddies. We did great as friends, roommates, and coworkers, but travel partners? Polar opposites. Not in the way that we enhanced each other’s experience, but the kind where we had to compromise so much that we risked ruining our trip and resenting each other.
He preferred audiobooks, and I liked upbeat music. He enjoyed museums, but I wanted to go shopping or walk around the city. He wanted shade when I craved the sun. Neither of us could truly relax and enjoy ourselves on vacation with the other.
Arlo startled me when he suddenly sat straight from his slouched position. “We should send each other on vacation as a big Christmas gift. Wouldn’t that be fun? You plan a trip for me, and I plan one for you.”
Who is this, and what have they done with my best friend?That idea was way too adventurous for Arlo’s comfort zone. It was a reckless use of a severance check, and I loved it. My kind of idea.
I straightened as the idea took hold. “A surprise? We book airfare, lodging, and everything for the other person?”
An idea began circling my brain. If I played my cards right, I could help Arlo do something he’d been too scared to do for over a year. “I’ve got an addendum. We send the other with a dare. Something we have to complete during the vacation.” I kept my expression neutral so he didn’t get suspicious.
Ever since Arlo had discovered the identity of his late father last year—a man he’d never known—he’d been debating reaching out to his dad’s family. They were nowhere near us in Minnesota, which had made it difficult. But if I got to book a surprise trip for Arlo, I could send him to Dahlia Springs, Oregon, where that side of his family lived.
Arlo would probably send me somewhere warm if it was cheap enough. He’d never sentence me to a vacation with more snow. God, I hated the stuff. Yeah, this could work out perfectly.
Arlo and I went back and forth on rules. He thrived on structure, and I didn’t mind because it made him feel better. Though I preferred to go with the flow.
“And no bed bug-infested roach motels either. It’s gotta have at least a three-star rating.” Arlo jabbed his finger in my direction in an unusually loud outburst, but it was warranted.
I dropped my head back on the couch and groaned. “I said I was sorry! How many times do we have to relive that?” That road trip from hell had been a complete nightmare.
“As many times as it takes to make sure you don’t book us in a place with mattresses directly on the stained carpet. It was like a serial killer’s grab-and-go for victims.” His bearded face scrunched.
It was hard, but I managed to bite back a laugh at his scowl. “I promise I’ll book you somewhere with a bed frame.”
“And no bed bugs. Deal?” Arlo held out his hand, and I didn’t comment on the slight tremors.
He’d stepped right into my trap. A loving trap, if such a thing existed. “Deal.”
Hopefully, he’d send me somewhere with a pool. I could use part of my severance to get new tiny swim shorts.
Arlo might get mad at my plan initially, but I would never force him to do anything he didn’t want to do. All I wanted was to remove the geographic barrier—and excuse—to avoid contacting them. If he were in the same town, he could make a more informed decision about what was best for him without immediately writing it off due to distance.
I needed to make it the best trip possible, so I stayed awake until three a.m., hunched over my laptop and researching. The buzz from the booze had worn off long ago, which was good because I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. If everything went as I hoped, this trip would change Arlo’s life.
My eyes were blurry by the time I found and reserved the bed and breakfast. Time to call it a night.
As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered where Arlo would send me. Spending December with the sun out and my toes in the sand? Heaven.
