The tinsel snowflakes still swung from the ceiling tiles when I walked into work four days later, but somehow this place looked even more washed-out and florescent than usual. If I hadn't wanted to be here on Christmas Eve, I really didn't want to be here now. At least back then I'd been sleeping at night.

"Hey Al," I said. I pulled my apron over my head and tied it in the back. "How was your Christmas?"

"Wonderful. Quiet day at home with the Mrs.. Caught up with some reading."

"Was Santa good to you?"

"Always is," Al said. His signature smile was there, as per usual.

"Good." I reached into the pocket of my apron and pulled out a carefully wrapped box. Some chocolates and a gift card to a bookstore in town. I tossed it over to him and said, "He left this at my house for you."

"He shouldn't have."

"He really appreciates it when people cover for their coworkers. Straight to the top of the nice list for that."

"You let him know I only do that for good reasons."

"He knows."

It wasn't long before the onslaught of customers started. The afternoon shift trickled in, and soon every register had a line behind it. New Year's Eve was in two days, and with every hummus and fruit salad and champagne bottle I scanned, the beep etched further into my nerves.

And then, sometime around three PM, there was a pack of gum between two grocery dividers. Some weirdo had waited on a twenty-some-odd-person line for a single pack of gum.

"I know you're a little swamped right now," said weirdo murmured, "but if on the off chance you get a couple minutes anytime within the next hour or so, do you think you could meet me outside?"

My eyes found Tommy's. They were brown and creased at the corners, like always, but there was some apprehension there, too. I wasn't used to seeing that.

"I really can't take any breaks until this line ends."

"I can wait."

"Out in the cold?"

"My car has heat."

People were starting to fidget behind him. One lady tapped her nails against the metal. Another scoffed. "For Christ's Sake, flirt on your own time," she mumbled.

"Tommy…"

"Please?"

I looked at him again. He smiled, but it only pulled at one side of his mouth.

"Okay. I'll try."

He dropped a few dollars next to the register, took his gum, and took off. The fidgeting customers relaxed a little, but not much, and while I muddled through the transactions, my mind was out in the parking lot. He was going to say it'd been a mistake. He'd left without a word, he hadn't called or knocked or made any attempt to see me for four days, and now he was going to take it back. Right outside my job, so I couldn't make a scene.

I noticed my line starting to shorten, but when I looked up, all the other registers were still packed. Especially Al's. He was waving people toward him.

"I can take care of you right over here, ma'am. She's closing up," he told one lady.

"For what?"

"For a good reason."

I pulled my coat closer around my body. The temperature had been dropping steadily for days, and clouds and weathermen threatened snow.

Tommy's station wagon was parked pretty close to the grocery store entrance. I made my way over, caught between delaying the conversation and escaping the cold. The numbing in my fingertips won out. I opened the door and got in.

"Hey."

"Hey," I repeated.

"You got through that line pretty quick," he said. "Only scanning every fifth item or something?"

I forced a smile, but didn't say anything. He heaved in a breath.

"So."

"Yeah."

"I think we should talk about what happened," Tommy said. "On Christmas. At your house."

Again, I didn't respond.

"In your living roo—"

"Yeah, I know what you're referring to."

"Oh. Okay. Yeah."

Over the whirring of heat through the vents, we could hear people out in the parking lot. They were talking and laughing and hurrying and complaining and rustling plastic bags from one hand to the other, and the longer Tommy stayed quiet, the harder I wished I could be one of them—any of them—instead of myself right now.

"I know it's an insanely awkward situation. But I think we should settle it."

"So settle it, then," I said, and there was a bit more animosity in my voice than I'd intended.

"Okay," he breathed. "You didn't seem happy afterwards, so I guess that's that."

"What?"

"After I kissed you. You kind of freaked out a little, so I left, but I didn't feel right about just leaving, and I also didn't feel right about just knocking on your door and bringing it up, like 'hey, Mrs. Hughes, I'm here to see your daughter about that make-out session we had at your Christmas party.' So I came here, but you don't seem happy about this either, so I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do."

"Tommy," I started, and I went to go tell him that it wasn't him that I had been unhappy with. It was the seven year old boy who'd made a house-wide announcement to half my family that I (Amelia Hughes, most-likely-to-be-voted spinster of the Hughes family) was currently playing tonsil-hockey with a strange boy in the den. That explanation, however, never left my mouth. He'd already launched into one of his own.

Tommy Barton told me that he liked me. Like, more-than-more-than-platonically liked me. He also told me that he'd made up a teensy little white lie on Christmas Eve; there hadn't been a girl who'd pregamed too hard. There had been a flexible number of allotted slots per team, and he'd come into the store that night specifically with the intention of recruiting me.

He told me that ever since his dad finally took off two months after Kat was born, he'd felt like it was his job to take up the roles that other people had left wide open. He realized he was good at it, and everyone had roles that they needed filled, so he filled them. He told me what he'd always suspected, but what that night spent driving around in his station wagon confirmed for him: that I didn't need any roles filled. Or that the role I needed was exceptionally close to the one he provided naturally, without shifting into anything else. Either way, he felt good around me. He felt less like a chameleon and more like a person.

These words left his mouth in rambling, ongoing sentences, and then all at once, they stopped. He looked down at his hands. They were a tangled mess in his lap.

"Yep. Okay. That was a lot. I'm sorry. I acknowledge that you are not a psychiatrist, and therefore not prepared to respond to that, so if you want to head back into work and forget that I just spilled my guts all over you, I get it and that's totally cool, and maybe I'll see you around and we can pretend like I'm normal and that—"

"We do New Year's, too."

"Huh?"

"We have a New Year's Eve party every year, at my house. It's not as big as the Christmas one, but everyone brings something, kind of like a pot-luck. I always make spinach artichoke dip. It's usually pretty fun."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You should come. On time. And I won't even keep you quarantined."

"But, Mia… All the questions."

"Yeah. All those British-accented questions."

"What are we gonna do about them?"

I shrugged. "I guess it won't be so bad if we settle on one specific answer, y'know? Get our stories straight. Act like we're on the same page."

Tommy nodded, slowly, his head still pointed downward, but his eyes sneaking glances at me. The apprehension was gone from them. The green flecks were as prominent as ever. He looked good that way.

"How does the term 'boyfriend' sound to you?"

"Pretty solid. I think it just might work."

The End

That's all! Thanks for reading, and to those who reviewed and followed, you are my Christmas lifeblood. So much appreciation, and any final feedback would be incredible. Have lovely, lovely holidays, and be well.