Page 7 of All I Wank for Christmas

It’s now or never. “Will you tell me your name, or is that not allowed? Are you also a Linda?”

She straightens from where she was getting a clean sheet. “Not a Linda. I’ll tell you my name, though. Most of the people in town know it anyway, so I don’t see the big deal.” She shrugs and holds out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Holly.”

Holly… Holly… Rural Pennsylvania. Messina County. I run through the mental list of everyone named Holly in this area, mentally matching the name with people around her age. It’s easy enough when I briefly close my eyes and focus. I’ve had the gift of recalling names and whether someone is a good person since I was born.

I’m my father’s son and heir, after all.

Holly…

Naughty list in 2005 for continuously pinching her sister that summer and telling her mother the marks were mosquito bites. Nice list all other years of childhood, except for the year when she rode the line after a small incident with locking her grandfather in his lawn shed when he wouldn’t buy her an ice cream cone. Dad is always lenient when it’s that close, so she avoided coal that year. Naughty list in 2017 for…my face reddens at the thought. They called her Holly Happy Hands Hepperdine that year.

Hepperdine. Holly Hepperdine.

I need to pull myself together and not let on that I know all this. I certainly can’t let on that I know her last name since she didn’t tell me. I’d sound like a crazy stalker.

I dig into my sweatshirt pocket and pull out the twenty-dollar bill I was prepared to use as a tip for a normal massage. She definitely earned it, even if I feel dirty giving it to her. I wish I could give her more, but unless leaving her my credit card is an option, this is what I have. Hell, I wish I could give her anything she wants and mentally weigh the cons of actually leaving the credit card and telling her to buy herself something pretty.

I hold out the tip money, and she takes it, smiling a small smile without teeth and nodding. At the last minute, I remember Icangive her something else.

“Here,” I say, also holding out one of the candy canes that are always in my sweatshirt pocket. It’s wrapped in green ribbon, and she eyes it like she’s never seen a candy cane before taking it. “Merry Christmas, Holly.”

Chapter 3

Holly

“I’mgladyouhada good day, Mom,” I say, tucking my mother into a burrito-like cocoon with blankets that are as old as Helena.

If I ever make enough money, I’m getting my mother all new blankets. And socks. She never buys socks for herself, choosing to patch or darn the old ones. Any money she got for clothes or bedding went into new school stuff for me or Helena every year. What she had left, she used on thrift shop finds for herself.

Some people wish they could get rich and buy their parents a new house. I’d buy my mother socks, blankets,anda new house. I’d buy her a healthy body if I could afford it.

It’s cold in here. The heat is low because it’s expensive and I give hand jobs for a living. It keeps food on the table and pants on our butts, but it won’t hurt us to wear sweaters and bundle up in extra blankets to save on heat. I try to cut costs where I can.

“Are we opening gifts tomorrow?” Mom asks. Her face looks so much older than her fifty-eight years now. The disease is hitting her hard, and I blink back the tears at her child-like excitement for unwrapping gifts. She doesn’t get much excitement now that she can’t go to her cards club or even work a regular office job. There are no nights out for drinks with coworkers or book club meetings for her. She can’t even go to church easily and requires Helena and me to help her in and out of the car and building. Funny that men stand in the parking lot and watch us struggle to lift her into her chair without lifting a finger. Maybe they don’t want to get too close to the woman that gives them their hand jobs behind their wives’ backs. So much for compassion. Since Helena works most Sundays, she hasn’t been going.

“First thing tomorrow morning after your meds. Now go to sleep.”

I turn off the lamp near her bed and pretend to catch the kiss she blows me across the room. Shutting her door, I blow out a breath, slip my high heels off, and head for the kitchen where I leave my shoes. I almost whimper with relief when I slide my feet into the black Converse sneakers that are at least five years old.

The kitchen in our small ranch house on the edge of town is a disaster. Helena works at a coffeehouse an hour away and must have been up early to work her freelance video editing gig. I may pay her tuition for school to keep her going, but she works two jobs to pay for her books, car payment for the car she uses to get to school, her car insurance, and her own medical insurance on the government exchange. Mom gets Medicaid because of disability, thank the stars, but Helena and I have to scrape enough for our health insurance since our forms for help are still processing. It’s a lot to pay for when you’re nineteen, but she never complains. Working two jobs while taking classes isn’t easy, so I don’t bust her chops too much when she leaves cereal bowls with slightly curdled milk in the sink and open cereal boxes or bags of chips on the counter.

I put the cereal away, quickly wipe down the counter with a bleach wipe, and walk to the laundry room to get a load of threadbare towels out of the dryer. It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m still folding towels. The laundry is never-ending. Now I know how Mom felt when we were kids and Dad still lived at home. There’s always something to wipe down in the kitchen and always laundry to do.

Grabbing the laundry basket and walking back to the kitchen, I open the fridge and grab an almost empty carton of generic egg nog from the top shelf, pour the last of a bottle of cheap vodka into the open spout, and swish the carton as I walk to the living room with the nog in one hand and the laundry basket under the other arm.

I may as well watch something on the neighbor’s Wi-Fi. They can finally afford Internet, and we suck off the teat of their Wi-fi password. They don’t mind because Mom brought them vegetables from the garden for decades when they were broke. They shopped at the food pantry for years when they were between jobs, and food pantries don’t have a lot of fresh vegetables for the kids. Mom kept them in carrots, green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers for years, even canning tomatoes for winter soups. Mom would also find deals on apples every fall and can jars upon jars of applesauce, always sharing it with the neighbors. When Mom got sick, the gardening and canning stopped. But the neighbors eventually found work and repaid the kindness with Internet access.

Christmas Eve in style.

I plop on the beige couch, looking through the cushions and my mother’s million red throw pillows for the remote. Always red pillows at Christmas. Pink for Easter. Green around St. Patrick’s Day. Orange for Halloween. You can tell the time of year in the Hepperdine house by the thrift store pillows on the couch.

“Alright, Sam and Dean. What are we hunting this time?” I ask the void as I flip toSupernatural. I’ve seen the show enough to know exactly what happens, but it’s my comfort show. It’s the show I watch when I’m alone on Christmas Eve and drinking the last of spiked eggnog while folding decade-old towels. I should probably watch a Christmas show of some kind, but I can’t bring myself to see all the happy couples in Hallmark movies. Not when I’m so alone.

Those small-town lives are nothing like the one I lead. No grouchy lumberjack in a flannel shirt is going to save Holly Hepperdine. I’d be open to it, but there aren’t any Christmas tree farmers, diner owners, or numb big-city executives in the vicinity, ready to sweep me off my feet.

I glance to the corner where our Christmas tree stands, proudly decorated, and smile briefly at it. With Mom sick and Helena so busy, I put up the tree and decorated it the best I could. Ornaments Helena and I made in Brownies or grade school hang from the branches, an eclectic jumble of salt dough and glitter. Silver tinsel hangs from the branches, and I mentally note a few spots where I could fluff it to stand out. White Christmas lights wrap around the branches, illuminating the room well enough that I turn off the nearby lamp and inhale, relaxing in the ambiance that only comes in a dark room with Christmas lights.

I settle back onto the pillows, pull a throw blanket on top of me, and take the last swig from the egg nog carton, even swishing it around in my mouth to savor the last bit of it. My mind wanders as I swallow the nog, wondering how spiked vodka nog would have compared to the taste of Jasper’s cock.

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