Page 5 of Grinch Girl

“Just a few things,” he mumbled offhand, but I could tell he was pleased. He looked around my living room as if someone else might have been hiding behind a curtain or something. “No one else is coming?”

“Nope.” I hadn’t had a family-type Thanksgiving or Christmas in a long time. Greta always traveled and, “Kelly—my mom—is always invited, but…” Kelly never turned down holiday time-and-a-half pay. She also tried not to attend celebratory events, if she could help it, which I totally respected. Not all addicts recognize triggers so well.

We ate the turkey breast I’d roasted, which was dry and almost flavorless, Sean’s potatoes, which were incredible, along with a salad and a store-bought pumpkin pie. A soda for Sean and a glass of cheap, ultra-buttery Chardonnay for me. Bruce kept us entertained during the meal by constantly butting our hips with his nose, snuffling for handouts.

After a glass of Chardonnay, the room seemed way too quiet, so I filled Sean in on the town’s woes. “That’s sad,” he said. “I always liked the Christmas Village in high school.”

Not me. “I liked it more when I was a little kid,” I said. Greta had always taken me and Bella for cocoas and to sit on Santa’s lap. By the time we were teenagers, we mostly thought we were too cool for it. And the area high school still had the Christmas Princess pageant back then, which I hated. Thank God the school board had finally realized how anachronistic it was and stopped it about five years ago.

“Well,” Sean said slowly, grinning a little. “I’m not sure if it was the Christmas Village I liked so much as the fact that there were sometimes a few cute girls from out of town walking around.”

“That makes sense.” I grinned back at him for a moment. That was a familiar sentiment. Bella and I would blow out our hair and pull on our tightest jeans before strolling around the square, on the lookout for hot strangers.

Bella. It was either the thought of her or the grim new reality that there would no longer be any Christmas Village or out-of-town strangers that caused my grin to fade. “But not anymore, I guess.”

He sighed heavily. “Yeah. It’s gotten so…quiet…around here.”

So quiet. Quiet and dark and empty.

I grabbed the bottle of Chardonnay. “Want to watch some crap TV?”

“Sure,” he said, looking kind of fascinated. “I don’t even have a TV.”

“You don’t watch TV?” I gaped at him. I maybe could understand this if there wasanythingelse to do in Falworth. “What do you do at night?”

He snorted. “I watch stuff, just not normal TV. I binge some series on Netflix on my laptop. Lately, I’ve been sort of into some web series too.”

Not wanting anything remotely holiday-related, I flipped on a few old episodes ofThe Bachelorstored on my ancient DVR.

“This show is terrible,” Sean announced, but he grabbed a fresh can of Sprite from the fridge and plopped down next to me. “But somehow I’ve seen at least a dozen episodes.”

“So has everyone in America,” I said, slurping wine. “It’s ridiculous. I hate-watch it.” We groaned and rolled our eyes every two minutes, and yet, we watched. Two full episodes.

“Why can’t we look away?” Sean wondered.

I had several theories. Dating shows in general were an eternally popular source of entertainment—they never went out of style because it was a distraction from your own life, pureand simple. Jeering at the fumbling bachelor and his idiotic harem kept me decidedly not focused on the shit show of my own life. I couldn’t deal with the tidal wave of fear and complicated emotions that yesterday’s meeting brought to life if I was too busy judging the behavior of these reality TV folks and wondering where I’d choose to go and what I would wear to my very own fantasy date.

Also, it was very easy to feel superior to these dum-dums who were crying and talking about soul connections to someone they’d spent less than thirty minutes alone with. I never felt superior toanyonein real life.

Sean went to grab the bowl of leftover potatoes, and we dove in with two spoons. “I beg of you, J. Can we please watch something else? My IQ is falling by the minute.”

So I switched it toThe Amazing Race, another staple of much higher quality. I loved this one because when your life is navigating shit jobs and freezing weather in Falworth, Wisconsin, it’s therapy just to know that other places on the planet exist. I’d planned an imaginary trip to every place I’d ever seen on that show.

I got up to go to the bathroom, and when I returned, Sean had flipped toDiners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. He passed me the bowl of potatoes, which I handed back for the first time. “I can’t watch a food show and eat food. It’s a weird quirk.” I sighed as Guy Fieri took a Mustang-sized bite of a cheeseburger and mugged at the camera. “Really trying not to hate the Mayor of Flavortown right now.”

Sean put the bowl he’d scraped clean on the coffee table. “Did you watch the episode where he visited that falafel place in Milwaukee?”

I shrugged. Probably?

“It’s owned by a cousin of one of my high school friends. Apparently, it was about to close, but then Triple D came, andafter the show aired, so many people, food tourists, went to eat there that it turned everything around and now they’ve opened two more locations. One is in Kenosha—we should go sometime and try it.” He paused. “What is falafel anyway?”

I reached for the bottle of wine again, but it was empty. God, how did one even explain falafel?

“Um, it’s—”

Wait a minute. Wait. One. Minute.

I blinked a few times. Fragments of something were running through my mind, but they were Chardonnay-coated and slippery.

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