It was atrocious.

I loved it.

I bought it.

And after we meandered, consumed mince pies and popcorn balls . . .

And after we met up with Johnny and Izzy (who was totally aglow), purchased a mammoth box filled with summer sausages, a selection of cheeses, mustards and crackers, a huge bag of some Christmas-themed Chex mix that looked the bomb, and seven tacky ornaments that would totally destroy the theme of my tree . . .

And after we sat Brooks on Santa’s knee in the gazebo smack dab in the middle of the square, every one of us frantically taking pictures on our phones as Santa desperately tried to stop Brooklyn from yanking down his beard . . .

Toby, my son and I headed to his place to get the Xbox then home to put Brooks down for his nap in preparation for making cookies.

And that was when Toby put that wreath up on my door.

On that farmhouse door, as I suspected, the tacky took a hike and the wreath worked perfectly.

It fit.

And the way it did I vowed never to get rid of it.

But that wasn’t the only reason.

Mom would love it because it was all about recycling.

Still, there was another reason.

I had a feeling that wreath was going to be the foundation to every Christmas that was to come. It would be the first thing I’d get out and put up. It’d be the last thing I took down and put away.

It was Brooks. It was Toby. And it was me.

It was family.

A Match in Heaven

Toby

THERE WAS A half a plate of sugar cookies with red and green M&M’s in them, a half-full bowl of Chex mix, a mound of cashew caramel clusters and a greasy-sided bowl that had nothing but popcorn kernels at the bottom on Addie’s coffee table.

Dapper Dan was flat out on the floor by the couch, snoozing.

John McClane had saved the day.

And Toby was on his back, Addie stretched out on him, her cheek on his chest, his hand down her jeans at her ass, and since they were done with movies, he really wanted to fuck her, but his stomach was so full, and it felt so good lying on her couch with her, he didn’t want to move.

He’d have to get her in the mood to fuck him.

Which, of course, would get him in the place he’d fuck her.

She lifted her head, pushed up, and with her hair falling down on either side of them, she looked in his face.

“At this juncture, I regret to inform you I started my period during dinner,” she announced.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“I’m afraid the bad news is gonna keep coming as I’m not a sex-during-that-time-of-the month girl.”

“Not a big fan of that either, honey,” he told her.

“The good news is, first, my mood will improve and second, you’ve been worried I’m losing weight and,” she flicked a hand to the coffee table, “I’m a consume-everything-in-my-path-during-my-monthly-visitor type of girl.”

He wrapped his free arm around her and squeezed the cheek of her ass he had in his other hand.

“Fatten you up for Christmas,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” she replied, lifting her hand to stroke his beard. “Though I would prefer it ended differently, you should know, this has been my best first date ever.”

First date?

“Say what?”

“The Fair. Caramel nut clusters. You vanquishing the Mean Girl for me. Finding a hideous wreath that’s totally dope. Cookies. Dinner. Watching TV for the first time in five months. Your hand down my jeans. Awesome.”

“Addie, our first date is gonna be at The Star on Thursday,” he reminded her.

“That can be your first date, baby,” she said softly. “This is gonna be mine.” She tipped her head to the side, hesitation coasting over her face before she went on, “You’ve been out there with me. Now do you want my real?”

He wanted everything from her.

“Yeah,” he whispered, “I want your real.”

She went right for it, gave him her real.

And he would find, in the end, just like everything about Addie . . .

It rocked his world.

“Outside of being Daphne Forrester’s daughter, I realized today I never knew who I was.”

Toby couldn’t believe that. She seemed to totally have it going on.

“Izzy, she knew who she was,” Addie continued. “She likes nice things. She likes clothes and stuff around her. She likes order. She wanted to make something of herself. She earned a scholarship and went to college and got a good job and worked hard and got what she wanted, built the life she’d dreamed of, found the man who loved her just for her. Today, I began to understand what makes me.”

“And what makes you, honey?” he asked when she didn’t go on.

“I don’t want any of that. I dig that our first date ended with a food and movie binge on my couch with your hand down my jeans, but it did after I’d slept beside you six nights in a row. It wasn’t conventional. It wasn’t storybook. It wasn’t romancelandia. It was real. It was unique. It was ours. It was Toby and Addie.”

At that, Toby started to have difficulty breathing.

Because he loved she dug it like that.

Since he dug it too.

A lot.

It was him.

It was her.

It was them.

And she got off on that.

Like he did.

Addie wasn’t half done.

“I want a job that pays the bills and gives me time to be with my son,” she tunneled her nails into his beard, “and be with you. But that’s it. Mostly, I want the opposite of what Izzy craves. I want what my mom thrived on. I want chaos. I want to be busy. I want experiences. I want adventure. They can be simple adventures, but they have to keep coming.”

She lifted farther up on him and sifted her fingers through the bottom of his beard, still talking.

“I want to get a cat because I want my kid to be comfortable around animals and love them like I do. And I don’t want to start an Etsy store because I don’t want to be tied down to making cards, since I relax when I do that. But I want to see if I can get cards in more shops around the county so doing something I enjoy can make me some extra cake. And I want to hang with Lora and her posse and find some girls close who are my girls and I can let loose. I want to dance in the rain and play in the snow and lie in the moonlight and stare at the stars. And I want to take off to ‘See Rock City’ just because it’s there to be seen. Or go to the Christmas Fair and buy an atrocious wreath that totally works for me.”

Toby stared up at her, feeling her fingers in his beard, warmed by the light shining in her blue eyes.

A light, until right then, he’d never seen.

Jesus Christ.

She was gorgeous.

But that light was stunning.

She kept shining that light on him.

“Thanks to you, the pressure is off. I got weighed down by it and forgot important things. I forgot what my mom taught me. I forgot that it’s about Brooks doing a chocolate wiggle. It’s about taking my son out in the snow and accepting God’s offering. It’s about holding on to those traces for as long as you can. I can’t lose sight of that. And since you helped me, I have room to breathe and make the right decisions about what’s next for me. Today, I went to the Fair with you and my boy and doing it, I remembered who I am. I stopped walking the path I’d veered onto and got back to the path that’s me.”