Page 143 of How My Neighbour Stole Christmas
“Uh, what was that from?”
He rolls up the poster and then sets it to the side. “It was after I fight I had with an ex from high school.”
“You punched the wall?” I look him up and down. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see you as that kind of guy.”
“I’m not that kind of guy,” he replies. “It was stupid. She broke up with me because she wanted freedom for the summer. Anyway, she left, I got pissed, and that happened. Last time I punched a wall though—it hurt like a motherfucker and did nothing other than prove that punching a wall is a stupid thing to do.”
“Well, lesson learned,” I say as I take a seat on his bed. Instead of a comforter, he has a fluffy blanket and a quilt covering his mattress. And the bed is made, the sheets carefully folded over. “I’m impressed that you make your bed.”
“Jesus, your standard for men must be low.”
“Before you, it was,” I say. “But you’ve raised the bar.”
“Have I?” he asks as he steps up to me. I place my hands on his hips and nod.
“You have.”
“Good to know.” He tilts his chin toward the bed. “Get in.”
Excited, I scoot back and slip under his flannel sheets, loving how warm they are, and then I lift up the covers for him, letting him slip in as well. We each take a pillow to rest our heads and then turn to each other.
“So, you were in college for how long?” I ask him.
“One semester,” he answers. “Dropped out after my parents passed.”
“What were you going to major in?”
“Wasn’t sure yet. I was thinking about business, possibly engineering, but neither sounded at all interesting. I was trying to feel it out.”
“So you weren’t into animal sciences at all?”
“Not even a little,” he answers as his hand pushes aside his flannel shirt I’m wearing and lands on my bare hip. “Everything I know about reindeer is from what I’ve read over time and talking with the Maxheimers. Honestly, it was a pity job, and then I got good at it and it became a permanent thing.”
“Well, maybe you can introduce me to your reindeer one day.”
“Yeah?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I answer.
“Okay, then maybe after, you can show me one of the Lovemark movies you edited.”
“Would you even like watching one?” I ask. “They don’t seem like your cup of tea.”
“If you had a hand in it, I’d like to watch it. Plus, I used to watch them with my mom all the time. They’re predictable, but isn’t that what’s so great about them? There’s no anxiety over what’s going to happen—they’re just feel-good movies.”
“Yes,” I say excitedly. “Thank you. That’s what I try to tell people who scoff at them. Is it so wrong for us to just be happy while watching something? Do we always have to be thinking? Do we always have to be depressed? Do we always have to participate in entertainment that highlights drugs, abuse…sexual assault? Life is hard enough as it is. Why can’t we just escape that and enjoy something that doesn’t sprinkle us with a heavy dose of depression afterward?”
“I agree,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with escaping reality. Fuck knows I’ve done it for the past decade.”
I bring my hand to his face, running it over his beard. “What did you do to escape?” I ask.
“Hung out with the reindeer. Did a lot of reading…history stuff, mostly. Did a lot of hiking and mountain biking. Snowboarding with Max. Anything that got me out of the house during the day, leaving the nights as the only time I had to face my reality.”
That makes me really sad.
“Have you had a hard time sleeping?”
“At first, yes,” he answers. “I’d spend a lot of nights at Max’s place, but then I started to realize that if I kept hiding away from the house, I was setting myself up for failure in the long run, so I’d come back at night and force myself to try to be normal. And over time, it became more and more…accepted in my brain. I don’t think I’d ever call it normal, but I’ve come to terms with it. Well, mostly. Probably should have taken down Miss Piggy a while ago.”
