WHO: Chris Hoffman & Ana Abedini WHEN: December 2011 / 2016 WHERE: The Woodsbridge Mall SUMMARY: December Challenge - Last Christmas. STATUS: Complete!
It was no secret that Chris was a sucker for the holidays. He had a fondness for all of them, but Christmas had always been his favorite. He’d go out of his way cooking and decorating, watching seasonal movies. This year he was taking things even further and had decided to start volunteering as Santa Claus in the mall. Oh yes. So he’d donned the red suit (with appropriately padded tummy) and the beard, and he gave the Woodsbridge toddlers and children a chance to tell Santa all the things they’d been wishing for that year. It came as no surprise to anyone that he ended up being great at it. So much so that the line extended far longer than it had in the past, and Chris completely lost track of the time.
Eventually his poor bell-covered assistant called that they were ending for the day and Chris waved goodbye to the tiny girl with long black hair as she scampered back to her father. As he stood up from his (highly uncomfortable) chair, he spotted Ana shaking her head at him from off to the left. They’d decided to meet afterward to do some Christmas shopping together. He grinned and made a show of tipping his hat toward her.
Her lips quirked, though she rolled her eyes as well, and soon she went in and out of view as she maneuvered through the mall-goers to get to him. When Ana approached, arms crossed, the affection was more visible through the crossed arms and cocked head that she presented him with.
“Chris-mas,” she said, and then her grin couldn’t help but widen, delighted by the joke that surely no one had ever made before. “Now there’s a holiday I could get more behind. So is it inappropriate for a girl to kiss Santa hello in front of the kids?”
“Ha, ha, ha.” It was an awful joke, and one he’d heard many times over. But coming from her, it still made Chris smile. He reached out to those crossed arms of hers and pulled her close. “Isn’t being inappropriate half the fun? I hope you have a secret thing for beards.” His teeth flashed in another grin from behind his fake white whiskers before he leaned in and kissed her.
“Ha ha ha?” Ana repeated, “but isn’t your line more like, ho ho h—”
Then she was shut up, and the one or two gasps coming from behind them only made it sweeter. “Swoon,” she laughed as she pulled away, “I mean, I could take or leave the beard in general, but right now it’s sort of the whole package that I’m enjoying.” As if to punctuate her sentence, she reached out and tugged on one end of the moustache, shaping it back into its curl.
It was easy, dating Chris: easier than any other relationship she’d had, if she were being honest. Easy to fall into step with him, to be comfortable, to keep her feet on the ground when he was there. Almost too easy, but she tried not to think about it, either because she might find that she didn’t like it — or worse, might find that she really did.
“So you’re done granting wishes for the day, then?”
He was fairly certain he was going to get a word or two later on about kissing Ana like he had, but at the moment, Chris decided it was worth it. When she was looking at him like that, he’d have done any number of things without any regrets. She made him happy in a way he hadn’t felt before. And part of him - the part everyone always told him to keep in check - was already thinking ahead to future holidays spent kissing her and making her smile.
“Almost,” he shot a glance over his shoulder before reaching to take ahold of her hand. “I’ve got one important one left.” He helped Ana over the velvet ropes that had surrounded Santa’s Village and pulled them both down into his chair, Ana on his lap. He gave his best jolly laugh and let out a loud ”Ho, Ho, Ho” that caused more than a few glances in their direction.
To them, she just smiled and waved, only for a moment before she turned her face up, that fake beard close enough to tickle her nose.
It was a good moment. Ana was all for moments, more than past or future thoughts, and this one deserved to be remembered.
“Dear Santa,” she began, “your presence is driving me out of my mind, and I can’t remember any of my wishes, so how about we take a picture together for the occasion and I’ll tell you… later?” One hand reached for the phone in her pocket, the other skipped over towards his.
It was difficult to resist the urge to kiss her again. But there would be time enough for that later and he didn’t want to push his luck too much. So instead he took her hand and pulled her close for the picture. “Merry Christmas!”
***
That picture was the background on her phone, for the rest of their relationship. Changed abruptly to her dog with his dumb tongue out when it ended, awkwardly deleted off her phone entirely when she, inevitably, began dating someone else. But Ana could still remember it, when she chose to try.
Or when she was forced to, like now, glancing across the mall to be struck with deja vu, the kind that took over your whole body and made you wonder, for a moment, if you hadn’t really just gone back in time. Chris, dressed as Santa, in the fancy chair. It’d been years. And things in this particular corner were still pretty awkward.
And maybe she’d been using her power a bit too much these days, because bad luck reared its head in that moment: as Ana was staring, her ex-boyfriend glanced up and their eyes met; there was a moment without a reaction, no emotion in her face, before the corner of her lip tipped up in a tight sort of smile. It was the sort of thing that might have called her, another day, when she might have walked over, tested the waters, checked to see if their friendship — or — ability to have a normal conversation, even — was as impaired as it always seemed.
But not today. The month had been rough. The holidays brought little cheer to her as a general rule. That strained smile stayed, but today it was Ana’s turn to tear her eyes away, and turn around.