PART TWO: One Night, Two Holidays

Chapters Four & Five of the holiday novella by Ali Brady

Dec 04, 2024

“Make yourself at home,” I say, opening the door wider. Hot New Guy—Jack—looks freezing. His teeth are literally chattering. “Here, sit by the fire and warm up.”

He either nods or shivers aggressively and makes a beeline toward the fireplace—one of the main reasons we keep renewing our lease. That and we all agreed it isn’t worth the hassle of moving until we can afford a place with an in-unit washer/dryer and a pool. Or until one of us gets married—which felt a lot further away at twenty-three than it does now at twenty-eight.

Jack drops to his knees and holds his open palms up to the glass. He looks like he’s praying, and I wonder if the holiday means more to him than Santa Claus, reindeer, and fruitcake. There’s something in his posture that looks more than just cold, though—he looks sad, almost defeated.

“Are you okay?” I ask. His teeth are still chattering, and his lips have a blueish tint in the firelight. The power’s only been out for about thirty minutes, but who knows how long he was outside in the blizzard before his assault on the snow people.

Jack lets out a shaky breath that sounds so cold it makes me shiver, and I stuff my hands in the pockets of my fleece-lined sweatpants. They’re toasty and warm—or maybe that’s my body heat? Isn’t that the best way to help someone get their body temperature back to normal? Skin-to-skin contact?

I take in his broad shoulders. The blanket is covering the bulk of him, but the memory of the first time I saw him is vivid enough to fill in the blanks.

It was a week or two after the Fourth of July, and I was heading out to a street festival when Jack—then Hot New Guy—was coming in from a run, shirtless. I remember being impressed by his calves, which is not a part of the male anatomy I’ve ever been particularly drawn to. The other thing I couldn’t help but notice was his height—at least six feet tall—and his barely-there chest hair, unlike the NJBs—Nice Jewish Boys—of my past.

I take a tentative step toward him and lay my hands on his back, rubbing wide circles. Maybe the friction will help? Jack makes another noise, this one more like a moan. The sound does something to me, and I do some quick math. It’s been eight and a half months since I’ve had the pleasure of getting off by something that didn’t require batteries.

No wonder I’m like a live wire around this guy. I continue making circles on his back until his breathing slows and his body seems to stabilize. Apparently, I have the opposite effect on him as he has on me. Which is for the best anyway, since Julie called dibs on him.

Plus, banging a neighbor is only convenient until somebody decides he “needs space” because you’re getting too clingy even though he’s the one who knocked on your window literally every night, and then, you have to see him bringing home a different girl every weekend because his front door was literally three feet from yours.

It's the story of my life: I’m either not enough or too much. One or the other, nothing in between. Never anyone’s first choice.

“Thank you,” Jack says now, and I hope I didn’t make things weird. I take a step back, suddenly not sure what to do with my hands.

I stuff them back in my pockets and say, “It’s the least I could do—I’m sorry your holiday keeps getting worse.”

Jack turns and smiles, a subtle quirk of his lips that makes my inner thermostat turn up a few degrees. “It’s starting to get better.”

I can tell the moment he clocks the Joy’s Noodles take-out bag on the floor. His eyebrows arch, and I follow his gaze to the coffee table where there are enough take-out containers to feed a family of four.

I’m bracing myself for a comment about the copious amount of food I got to properly eat my feelings when he says, “Thai? I thought Jews ate Chinese food on Christmas?”

“We’re not a monolith.” I don’t mean to sound offended, especially because he’s right. “But also, I haven’t found decent Chinese that delivers around here.”

“But you found good Thai?”

“The best. You hungry?”

His stomach answers for him, letting out a low, rumbling grumble. Almost like a growl. I can’t help but smile, even though I wish he were hungry for me and not my Pad See Ew.

Nessa has the most expressive eyes I have ever seen.

I wonder if she realizes this; I wonder if she knows that her emotions dance in them like candles flickering in a window, illuminating everything beneath the surface.

Like right now, as we sit side by side on the couch and finish off the Thai food she graciously shared with me, she’s telling me how her roommates took off for the holiday week—one on a Caribbean cruise, another to visit her boyfriend’s family in Michigan. She’s smiling, saying it’s fine and she doesn’t mind, but there’s a glimmer of loneliness in those big brown eyes.

“I had a lot of work to get done anyway,” she says. She’s a copywriter for an advertising agency, she told me earlier, which I thought was very cool, like a modern-day Peggy on Mad Men.

“You didn’t want to be with family for the holiday?” I’ve already told her my sad story—though I tried my best to hide how utterly dejected I feel.

She shrugs. “Eh, my parents are on a trip for their anniversary. Plus, Hanukkah isn’t a major holiday—it just got commercialized to keep Jewish kids from feeling left out when Santa’s making the rounds and everyone else is drowning in tinsel and gift wrap.”

“Fair enough. But you probably still have traditions.”

I don’t know why I’m asking this, maybe because I’m missing my family’s traditions. But also because of that something about her that makes me want to find out more.

“Sure, when I was a kid. My grandma was really into all the holidays—but once she died, we kind of stopped. The last few years, my roommates and I would have a latke night, and we’d play drinking dreidel and watch cheesy movies.” She glances at me, smiling, but her eyes tell a different story: she misses the way her family used to be, and the friends who are like family.

I understand completely.

Then she blinks and looks away. “So, is your family a Christmas Eve family or a Christmas Day family?”

“Both,” I say, smiling at the memories despite the hollow feeling in my chest. “Christmas Eve dinner, followed by forced family caroling—picture my mom singing Jingle Bells off-key while my dad tries to harmonize. Then, we’d put on matching pajamas and watch It’s a Wonderful Life while drinking my grandma’s famous homemade peppermint hot cocoa.”

“Sounds delicious.”

“It’s the best,” I say, sighing. “The next morning, we always open stockings first. Mom fills them with the same things every year: a book, Chapstick, chocolates, and a lottery ticket. Weird, but…”

“It’s the tradition of it all,” she finishes, nodding.

“Exactly. Did you know that people who have strong family traditions are sixty-three percent more likely to report feelings of happiness and contentment on holidays?”

She laughs, shaking her head, and I realize I’m doing the thing I do when I’m a little nervous: dropping random trivia I’ve picked up.

“Sorry.” I grimace. “I tend to overdo it with the factoids—kids love them, especially when I bust out details about their favorite YouTubers or cartoon characters. But adults, sometimes not so much.”

“No, it makes sense,” she says, smiling. “There’s something magical about doing the same things year after year. Like a thread that ties us all together, a tapestry of memories woven through time.”

Warmth spreads through me, and I glance over at her. “That’s…beautiful.”

And so are you.

The thought flares in my mind like a shooting star, and I press my lips together to keep from accidentally blurting it out. It’s not just her eyes—it’s her wavy dark hair, the fullness of her bottom lip, the way her oversized sweatshirt keeps slipping off one shoulder to reveal a pink bra strap against lightly freckled skin.

Knock it off, I order myself. I’m in her space, and I’d never want to make her feel uncomfortable—partly because I might freeze to death if I go back to my apartment before the power comes back on.

But mostly because, for the first time in months, I think I’m having…fun?

“Hopefully, the airport opens tomorrow, and you can get a flight home,” Nessa says.

If it doesn’t, I’ll probably curl into a fetal position and sob until I’m hoarse, I think. But I don’t say that, of course. Instead, I tell myself to pull it together, to act like the guy I used to be—pre-residency, pre-burnout, when I still had a personality. When I had at least some game with cute girls.

“Can’t wait to get rid of me?” I say, summoning up a grin.

Her cheeks turn a slight shade of pink. It’s surprisingly adorable—but I can’t help but wonder what else would make her blush, where else that warmth could blossom. “No, that’s not—”

“I get it.” I chuckle. “I’m sure the last thing you wanted tonight was to become a shelter for freezing refugees from downstairs.”

She rolls her eyes playfully. “Actually, my roommates and I have been trying to figure out a way to introduce ourselves. To you.”

She’s noticed me, too? That’s…unexpected. Though I couldn’t care less about the roommates; I can’t even remember what they look like.

“Well,” I say, trying to ignore the way my heart picks up a little, “I’ve been trying to figure out a way to introduce myself to you, too.”

“My roommates will be thrilled to hear that.”

Her tone is light, casual. But her eyes say something else, flicking down to my mouth and back to my eyes. The air between us seems to crackle with electricity.

I’m struck by the thought that maybe she’s not just being polite. Maybe she’s not annoyed that I’m here. Maybe she’s even a little bit…glad?

I push past the exhaustion weighing me down, forcing myself to be present. To be fun.

“Not your roommates.” I lean in a little. “Just you.”

Her lips part, surprise flashing across her face. “Oh.”

The word hangs in the air, charged with a feeling I can’t quite define. For a second, it’s like I’m right back in those moments when I’ve noticed her. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but there’s something about her that captures my attention, makes me want to know more.

Then my phone chimes on the coffee table, shattering the spell. I grab it, hoping for an update on my flight:

O’Hare International Airport will remain with a full ground stop until December 25, 2024, at 3:00 pm. Unfortunately, we expect extensive delays and/or cancellations. Further information to be posted by 12:00 pm tomorrow. We apologize for the inconvenience.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“What?”

I show her the message, my chest constricting as it hits me that I might not make it home at all. That my four days of vacation might be spent alone in my apartment, riding out this snowstorm, dreading my inevitable return to the hospital. And then it all crashes over me again: the exhaustion, the burnout, the simmering fear that I’m on the wrong path.

“I’m really sorry,” she says softly.

“Me, too.”

After a beat, she straightens up, determination flashing in those wide brown eyes. “Well, I don’t have homemade peppermint hot cocoa, but I have something that might be even better, given the circumstances.”

I raise my eyebrows, intrigued. “What’s that?”

“Wine.”

Ali Brady HQ

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