Page 151 of The Temporary Fiancée
He laughs, serving me a steaming cut of turkey. I grab a spoon and ladle out some mashed potatoes, smothering them in gravy.
“Don’t tell me youneverhad a turkey dinner on Christmas,” I say. “It’s traditional.”
“Well, I went to Christmas parties that had turkey at them,” he admits. “But it was never really a holiday to me, if that makes sense. It wasn’t a home-cooked meal, and I didn’t share it with my family. In fact, it was almost always just a business thing for my father.”
“Even when you were a kid?”
He shrugs. “Even when I was a kid.”
“But… didn’t you get gifts from your parents?”
“Sure,” he acknowledges, “but… well, coming up, we weren’t exactly wanting for anything. There wasn’t anything particularly special about Christmas or birthdays.”
“No stockings? No tree?”
“There was a tree.” He wrinkles his nose in distaste at the memory. “It was, like, an avant-garde art piece my mother hadcommissioned for the foyer of the Hamptons house. And we weren’t allowed to touch it, because it was worth a fortune.”
I gape at him. “So, let me get this straight… you never decorated a Christmas tree, because your mom… hired an artist to make one?”
“It was glass,” he says, carving one of the drumsticks from the turkey, “and it was two stories tall.”
“So you never even had a real tree? Did she at least put presents under it?”
He gives me an amused look. “Absolutely not.”
I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It seems so sad to me, to raise kids in a place that’s more like an art museum than a house. “But… what did you guys even do on Christmas, then? Did you stay up late waiting for Santa Claus, or…”
“I tried to, once.”
“What happened?”
He sighs, then smirks. “I’d heard a few classmates in my elementary school talking about Santa Claus, and getting into debates over whether or not he was real. I’d never heard of Santa before, so I decided to figure it out for myself. I stayed up until midnight, hiding behind the curtains and watching the fireplace.”
“And?” I grin. “Did you catch him?”
“Not even close, I’m afraid. My father found me there while he was having his evening brandy, and when I explained what I was doing, he just said, ‘Son, there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.’” He rolls his eyes as he imitates his father’s stern voice.
“Are you kidding me? How old were you?”
“Six, I think. Somewhere around there.”
“That’s crazy! Who would say that to a six-year-old?”
“Lionel Eastwood,” he says drily. “Have you met him?”
As he serves both of us spoonfuls of roasted Brussels sprouts, I stare at him, thinking. I can’t fathom what kind of parent would deny their child the whimsy and wonder of simple superstitions. But he’s right. I have met Lionel Eastwood. And I know exactly what kind of man he is.
Fortunately, his son is nothing like him.
The real Reed—the one I’ve gotten to know—is so much better than the version of himself that his parents want him to be, the idea of him that only exists in their heads. He puts on a performance around them, but never stacks up to their expectations—and quite frankly, that’s a good thing.
“So what did the Quinns do for Christmas?” he asks, digging the corkscrew into the top of the wine bottle he selected, an aged red. “What can I expect when I join your family for the holidays?”
The subtle insinuation of our future—that he’ll be with me this time next year, and that he’s willing to spend Christmas with my family—makes me feel warm inside, as if I’ve already downed a glass of wine.
“Well… it’s always a pretty understated thing,” I say. “Since I was a kid, they’ve celebrated it at their house in Queens.”
“That would be the perfect place for Christmas.” He pours each of us a glass of cabernet. “It’s so cozy. Do they light a fire?”
