Page 3 of Not Another Christmas Movie
“I’m still shocked he agreed to abandon Arthur for Christmas,” Marsha mused.
“Don’t worry, he has plans to give the cat a special celebration upon their return. My dad is calling it ‘Arthur’s Meowy Clawsmas,’ and my mother plans to make him a tiny Santa hat now that she’s taken up knitting,” Annie said, and Marsha laughed. “Neither mentioned having a postponed holiday for Elise or me, but what can you do?” Annie continued, thinking of her older sister who was also away this year, trekking across New Zealand with her girlfriend as a reputable environmental scientist. It had been several years now since her family had enjoyed a traditional Christmas celebration together, and Annie had no intention of changing that dynamic now.
“I guess I can’t blame our parents for wanting to escape New England for warmer weather,” Marsha shrugged. “My mom practically volunteered to work any flight stopping in a place with working sunshine and heat.”
“And mine can’t turn down a discounted Caribbean cruise with an unlimited drink package,” Annie quipped, ignoring the pangs of abandonment that seized her muscles. There was something about her parents valuing her below a floating buffet catering to senior citizens for Christmas that had taken the wind out of her sails, and she tried to ignore the swell of emotionally shipwrecked emotions.
“They’re there with the Laurels, right?” Marsha asked.
“Oh yeah,” Annie answered. They both smiled, recalling the lively neighbors who had become close friends with her parents after nearly forty years of living next door to each other. The Laurels’ house had been quite the destination for the kids of the street growing up as it was also the designated school bus stop. Mrs. Laurel always insisted that everyone wait inside when it rained and doled out warm Pop-Tarts she purchased for the neighborhood kids at any and every opportunity.
“Fine, you can go back home for a few days, but I’m still coming by on Christmas Day,” Marsha insisted, and Annie swallowed the lump in her throat that appeared whenever someone said, “Christmas Day,” refusing to let her mind return to her worst Christmas Day memory or how it had forever shadowed all the days that came after it. Marsha sensed Annie’s familiar stiffening and changed tactics. “Oh! You should find someone to hook up with while you’re there!” Marsha said, her excitement increasing at the idea.
“I’m sure Mr. Heartgraves is booked,” Annie said drily.
“Ew, no, dummy,” Marsha moaned, thinking about their cranky high school trigonometry teacher who had lived down the block growing up and had to be at least 100 at this point (and an acute point, at that). “Find someone who played on the high school lacrosse team—no, the crew team! Those guys were so hot, great arms.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” Annie smirked, knowing full well she would not be leaving her parents’ couch unless it was to retrieve a DoorDash order. Bravo wasn’t going to just watch itself.
The karaoke machine let out a loud wail that pierced the room with sound.
“Oops, sorry, Grant!” Someone giggled, “I tripped over the cord!”
“We should get out of here before Grant goes batshit,” Annie cautioned. But considering Grant and Sexy Santa were both missing, they obviously had more important matters to attend to. The first few notes of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” boomed out of the small karaoke machine; a group whooped and cheered. Annie took a bite of her cookie and let out a deep sigh. There was only so much merriment she could pretend to muster at this point, and she had no intention of doing it clear-minded.
CHAPTER TWO
“Yup, that’s disgusting,” Annie said to her seasonal seltzer before sighing and finishing the can anyway. The audacity of including a boozy and bubbly peppermint flavor in the holiday pack was baffling. Annie grabbed for another spicy pizza-flavored Pringle to cleanse her palate. She accidentally nudged Arthur, her parents’ orange tabby cat, who had been sharing the couch. He had originally been named after Arthur Weasley from the Harry Potter universe, but after J. K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets and her unrelenting urge to continually double down on them, Annie refused to acknowledge him as such or include his surname when addressing him. Arthur shot over his best death stare side-eye and retreated upstairs. Annie shoved another Pringle in her mouth, wondering if it was time to transition to wine as her fingers itched to transition from the mindless doomscrolling to the deep dive into the darker corners, like every ex-boyfriend’s Instagram account and their LinkedIn if she was feeling particularly naughty.
There was a boxed rosé on the living room table. Still, Annie didn’t have a glass or any interest in walking the ten feet into the kitchen of her childhood home, knowing her father had likely completely reorganized the cabinets again. Annie looked down at the Pringle can and made the quick decision to dump the remaining contents into her mouth, shaking crumbs all over herself and the couch in the process. That’s a problem for future Annie, Annie thought smugly as she shook the can one last time to loosen up any remaining morsels. She then poured the spout of the boxed wine straight into the can, praising herself for the quick ingenuity, and tossed back a large mouthful, taking in strong notes of marinara and malaise.
She had big plans to indulge in blatant, unabashed Internet stalking, and that was priority number one at the moment. True, it always filled her with both unrelenting dread and primal yearning, making her stomach twist in jealousy and remorse when she saw yet another romantic ghost from her mental graveyard announcing their recent engagement, marriage, or God forbid, sonogram pictures of their future spawn. Yet it was always too delicious to resist. Annie braced herself and searched Instagram for Chris’s handle, @boner4musack.
It’s not that she had been in love with Christopher Tinsel. There had been no plans to book a nail appointment, preparing for a Christmas ring finger photo shoot with this dude, and Annie had always pretended to have made her peace with that, rationalizing remaining present rather than face the reality of their future. But Chris had been the last guy she’d kissed who had meant something to her. She had liked him enough to want to keep seeing him, or at least keep hooking up with him, even when he had always been very clear that he didn’t see Annie as any kind of long-term match or even someone he wanted to take out on a real date. The whole time they were “making moments” as Chris called it (which, yeah, looking back, was pretty weird), he was fairly active on more than one dating app. He also had a habit of openly dropping comments about how “hot and bangable” some of her friends were, including Marsha, her sister, her sister’s long-term girlfriend, and, once, her next-door neighbor Nick Laurel. Chris had come across an old picture of a neighborhood “leaf blowing party” (a treasured tradition on their street where a group of neighbors worked together over the course of an autumn day to rake and blow all the leaves from each yard, subsisting on themed snacks at each house they hit). Annie learned years later that most of the adults had been consuming bottles of booze and encouraging the kids to do the majority of the actual leaf gathering, something that now she couldn’t help but applaud and yearn to emulate. But when Chris saw the picture of the group of gawky teenagers, he shared his heartfelt opinion that Nick would make a beautiful woman. Annie had tried not to let it get to her that Chris had never once called Annie beautiful or any variation on the sentiment.
Chris did, however, make sure to remind Annie at any opportunity of his preferred type: “short, busty, and blonde.” Again, Annie would try to shrug off those words from her broader-than-average shoulders while shifting her weight from one slightly taller-than-average leg to the other, crossing her hands over her average-sized chest, and throwing her mostly unruly dark hair back into a messy bun, telling herself it was fine, she didn’t need labels, she was still in control of this.
He flagged her as “the marrying type,” which Annie assumed was a pivotal step to becoming an official couple, but Chris had followed it up by asserting that he’d never want to be someone’s husband. Annie would stifle her longing to find a life partner, a potential father to possible kids. For the first time in her life, that type of commitment from someone felt like something she desperately wanted. Yet Chris never claimed her as his in any real way, even going so far as to avoid ever being caught holding her hand in public. A piece of Annie had foolishly clung to the hope that maybe somehow, in some way, she could get him to change. If she kept up her cool girl demeanor and didn’t pressure him, he’d finally wake up next to her after one of their nightly meetups, ready to be her official boyfriend. Instead, the final blow of their official end held some sort of bizarre power over her she seemed unable to break.
Chris had announced this decision the morning after Halloween, after a particularly colorful (both literally and figuratively) evening, by stating this would be their last “made moment.” He was interested in someone else. Something that might have been nice to talk about the night before and not, let’s say, while Annie was out of her very detailed “Fabio on a roller coaster after the goose incident” costume (inspired by the infamous 1999 inaugural ride of Busch Gardens Williamburg’s Apollo’s Chariot), shivering in Chris’s cold, cream-colored, cheap cotton bed sheets, still wearing the long, blonde wig he had insisted she keep on. Worse yet, Annie still had the costume blood caked to her face because Chris hadn’t wanted to wait for her to wash it off hours before. Chris had explained all of this shirtless while also clumsily strumming his guitar, which sounded pretty out of tune even to Annie’s less-than-musically-inclined ears. He never bothered to meet her eyes or even walk her to the door to say goodbye. The memory still made her body feel like it was burning from the inside, singeing the discomfort into every inch of skin.
It had been a long November after that. It wasn’t the first time she had fallen prey to the pitfalls of hoping a situationship would progress to a real relationship, but it had happened after her favorite holiday and just before the world ramped up on Christmas amphetamines. With Marsha’s insistence and assistance, Chris had been promptly deleted from her phone contacts and strategically hidden on social media outlets to avoid any temptation to pay him attention. But he still managed to take up space in her brain in unruly bursts of fireworks, leaving heavy fog in their wake. Most of December felt the same, just with a more festive filter of glittery greens thanks to the distraction of holiday parties. Annie hadn’t had it in her to get back on any dating or hookup apps, despite the constant pressure from every piece of media prioritizing falling in love this time of year. At this point, Christmas was a meaningless date on the calendar, something she had to endure until her cold heart decided to thaw or simply expire from lack of use.
Since her parents were out of town for the actual holiday, they hadn’t bothered with any decorations (her father was still saving their now limited supply for his return, so Arthur wouldn’t go without some fun and festivities) and Annie took some comfort in the house’s escape from the constant Christmas celebration the rest of the world was screaming at every opportunity. Her childhood home looked how it always did, timeless and steady, a willing anchor she could cling to amidst any storm. Honestly, Annie was relieved knowing she wouldn’t have to sit through another occasion with her prying relatives and have to explain once again that, no, she still didn’t have a serious boyfriend and wow, thanks, a month’s subscription to Match.com was indeed a great gift, no, she didn’t plan to leave her “questionable and confusing” job to pursue a career in finance, and, yes, she would indeed probably die alone on her couch, choking on a highly processed and crumbly snack.
Annie took a deep, steadying breath, and her hesitant, hovering finger finally clicked on @boner4musack. Immediately, her phone screen was invaded by too many shots of Chris posed in mirror selfies from the gym (gross). But then she could see, starting in November, a collection of attempted artistic images with someone who Annie assumed must be his new girlfriend. Annie couldn’t discern what she looked like, given that the images mainly consisted of their hands clasped together over a shared cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows or the faint outline of her coat behind a snowman, posed with a guitar, they had created together. Each also contained some sort of vague (but almost always a Phish) song lyric that added to the annoyingness of it all; she was pretty sure he had used “come waste your time with me” at least four times and “stay with me till time turns over” another three. Aside from the text captions, though, the pictures all looked bright. And merry. Annie hated every fucking one of them.
“Where do you think you are, a shitty made-for-TV Christmas movie?” Annie audibly rolled her eyes and let out a deep burp, her mouth still very much tasting of pizza chips and warm rosé. Must be nice, she thought bitterly, her eyes burning with unshed tears. Annie grabbed for the TV remote to distract herself from whatever this feeling was, marking her messy fingerprints along its surface. As if she had summoned it, a winter scene brightened the room with a beautiful, overly emotive actress in an impractical white coat and a generically handsome actor. They gifted each other weighted stares in a horse-drawn carriage like two real-life heart-eye emojis. Both looked familiar in that they must have once been teen pop stars and/or on some moody 90s TV show and had now matured to make a living doing seasonal made-for-television movies. Annie furiously tried to change the channel, shielding her eyes from the ridiculous, unbelievable scene, frantically needing anything else to land on, but the remote crashed to the floor, spilling its batteries under the couch.
Annie groaned. There was no way she had it in her to search for the pieces and then put the thing back together when she was rotting on the couch. So, against her better judgment, she let the movie play on. Worse yet, she found she couldn’t look away.
Everything was so shiny and clean; no one ever made a mess. They orbited neatly around each other, and the only thing that threatened their humanity was the fear of losing the Christmas spirit, whatever that was. The lead character was a workaholic who never actually worked; rather, she busied herself in ridiculous holiday activities, apparently unaware that she was falling in love with the small-town, rugged lumberjack. It was like watching fast food, devoid of any true substance but mindlessly consumed. In this movie, no one sat home alone, tormenting themselves over someone’s social media account. No one’s parents left town. No one actually lost the Christmas spirit. Utter disgust radiated from each and every one of Annie’s eye rolls.
Before the movie could reach its cliché, predictable ending, Annie heard a series of loud bangs outside and remembered, from her father’s meticulous notes that she still had to bring out the trash for its weekly pickup tomorrow morning.
Fuck. She would have to leave the warmth of the house to take care of it or risk the wrath of her dad in the form of an unbearable, weighted, disappointed side-eyed sigh. Assuming the noise had been another neighbor depositing their bin, Annie stood up and pushed the power button on the TV screen corner. She tossed a red throw blanket over her shoulders as a stand-in jacket when she couldn’t immediately locate a coat. With the Pringles can rosé gripped by her teeth and one hand holding the last dark chocolate cookie Marsha had shared with her from Yes, You Cannabis, Annie used her free hand to drag the garbage can from the garage to the end of the driveway. It was a clumsy experience for all involved, but once the task had been completed, Annie rewarded herself with a small nibble of cookie and turned back to the house. But before she could take a step, another loud bang from next door caught her attention.
Always a horror movie virtuoso, Annie decided to sneak around the side of the house to get a view of whatever was happening while also avoiding being murdered. She soundlessly tiptoed closer to the Laurels’ back door, where she saw a figure outside with a string of lights looped around each limb, giving them the appearance of a walking flare recently released from its gun. Annie crept closer, drawn like a moth rehearsing its introduction to a flame.
