Annihilate Me: Holiday Edition (12 page)

“What’s
going to happen in there?”

“Round
two.”
 

He
reached for my hand, led me off the bed, took me into the bathroom, and we made
love under a warm shower for the next thirty minutes.
 
Later, when we were spent and our bodies
felt as if they had the consistency of rubber, we pulled ourselves together, I
blew out my hair and tied it a ponytail—which isn’t how I wore it when I left
the house—and looked at myself in the mirror.
 
My face was free of makeup, but it was
nothing if not glowing.
 
Still, who
was I fooling?
 
I was about to take
another walk of shame again, this time in front of our friends.
 

When
Alex was finished drying his hair, we got dressed, I told him that I loved him
while we put on our coats, and then he swept me into his arms before we left
the room.

“I
love you more than anything,” he said.
 
“More than you’ll ever know.”

I
put my hand against his chest and kissed him.
 
“Thank you again,” I said.

“For
what?”

“For
helping me with those flyaway resumes that day.”

He
smiled at that.

“I
can’t wait to tell people the date of our wedding,” I said.

“Tomorrow
night.”

“Tomorrow
night, indeed.
 
A perfect Christmas
Eve.”

And
with that said, we hurried to get home.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Nothing
could have prepared us for what we saw when we arrived back at Alex’s house on
the Point.
 

When
we stepped into the foyer, Christmas music was playing from an iPod dock on one
of the living room side tables.
 
What was playing was one of my favorite Christmas albums from my youth,
“Barbra Streisand:
 
A Christmas
Album,” which had one of the saddest and most stirring renditions of “I Wonder
as I Wander” and “My Favorite Things” that I’d ever heard.
 
With the exception of Streisand’s campy
version of “Jingle Bells,” which begins the album and which did make me smile
when I was a kid, there otherwise was a haunting, melancholy undercurrent to
the music that I responded to.
 

When
I was growing up, Christmas never was a joyous event at my house—far from
it—and Streisand’s album made sense to me that way.
 
It underscored that for people like me,
Christmas could be among the darkest and loneliest times of the year.
 
Streisand’s album refused to embrace the
happier illusion marketed to the masses via so many lighter, popular Christmas
songs.
 
To me, it told an unsettling
truth about Christmas that few wanted to acknowledge—for many, Christmas
was the worst, most depressing time of the year.

Now,
at this point in my life, hearing Streisand’s powerful version of “The Lord’s
Prayer,” which rang throughout the house with her impossibly soaring vocals,
made me view at least this part of the album in a different light.
 
I was happy now.
 
I was in love with my soul mate.
 
I’d just come through one of the most
stressful months of my life.
 
And to
hear Streisand sing about the glory of life was something I finally could
embrace.
 

There
is
glory in this life.
 
It
just took me years to find it.

Despite
the music, I could hear Blackwell and her daughters talking in the kitchen, and
not with hostility.
 
For a moment, I
think I even heard laughter.
 
Was
that Blackwell?
 
I listened more
closely, and in fact, it was.

To
our left, in the living room, was the surprise of a tall, gorgeous-looking fir
tree resting in a stand next to the sheet of windows that overlooked the
ocean.
 
There was no sign of Lisa or
Tank, so Alex and I just stood there, unbelieving, listening to the light
sounds of conversation coming from the kitchen, and smelling the tree itself,
which was intoxicating.

“What
the hell happened?” I quietly asked Alex.

He
shook his head at me while he removed his jacket.
 
“No idea.
 
Tank must have gotten it.”

“I
wonder if Lisa went with him.”

“We’ll
fine out, I guess.”

“She’ll
tell me everything.
 
And listen,” I
said in a low voice.
 
“From the
kitchen.
 
Laughter.
 
And something else.
 
What’s that sound?”
 

“Something
clinking against glass?”

I
took off my coat and put it in the closet along with Alex’s.
 
“We should creep upstairs and pull
ourselves together.
 
I left here
with a face
full
of makeup.
 
Now, it’s been completely been washed
off.
 
The moment they see me, they’ll
know.”

“We’ll
get busted.
 
The floors creak.”

“The
music might hide it.”

“We
can hear you two,” Blackwell called from the kitchen.
 
“We saw you drive in.
 
We heard the door shut.
 
There’s no need to keep whispering any
longer.
 
Come into the kitchen with
Daniella and Alexa and me.
 
We’re
cooking.”

“They’re
what?” I said to Alex.

“Apparently,
they’re cooking.”

“When
we left here, we fled from a pending war.
 
What happened?”

“We
can still hear you, Jennifer.
 
Come
into the kitchen.
 
We’re anxious to
hear where you’ve been…shopping.”

Alex
reached down for my hand, gripped it in his own, and we went down the hallway
into the kitchen, where Blackwell, Daniella and Alexa were enjoying a glass of
red wine at the large kitchen island, above which hung piercing bright lights.

“I
told you,” Daniella said when she first saw us.
 
“They’ve totes been rolling around at
some random motel room.
 
Look at
Jennifer’s hair—she’s so been sexed up.”
 
She lifted her glass of wine to us.
 
“And good for you two!”

“I—”

“There’s
no need to say anything, Jennifer,” Blackwell said.
 
“We all had a feeling that your shopping
text to Lisa was a ruse.
 
So, by the
looks of you two, the gig is up.
 
Still, at the very least, it appears that you got your cardio in today,
which naturally I support.
 
I can
feel the energy coming off you in waves.”

“Well,
I—”

“Not
a word.
 
It’s not an issue.
 
Love is in the air.
 
We all need our private time, even if we
have
only just arrived from Manhattan this afternoon and have been
together for a few short hours…”

“It’s
just that—”

“I
don’t blame you for getting out while you could,” Daniella said.
 
“We were being a couple of bitches.
 
I’m sorry about that.
 
But thanks to Alexa—and I mean
that, Alexa—it’s all out in the open now.
 
Everyone knows I’ve been dumped by yet
another boyfriend.
 
And so be
it.
 
The three of us talked about
it, we worked through it, my mother and sister were fabulous, and I have to
agree with them.
 
Screw him.
 
Ever since we got through that little
maelstrom of mine, we’ve been having fun.
 
And I’m sorry if we made things so tense earlier.
 
In fact, that was mostly on me.
 
I was awful in New York and also when we
got here.
 
I apologize for
that.
 
I’ve also apologized to Tank
and Lisa.
 
I know you told me I
should leave it alone, Jennifer, but I owed them that.”

“That
was very kind of you, Daniella,” I said.

“I
know how I can come off,” she said.
 
“I get it.”
 
She waved her
hand in the air.
 
“But enough of
that.”
 
She nodded at Alex.
 
“You’ve got some killer bottles of wine
in this joint, Alex.
 
There’s, like,
a whole wine cellar downstairs.
 
Alexa and I found it and I think with this bottle, we got the good
stuff.”

“I
told them about the cellar,” Blackwell said.
 
“I hope you don’t mind, Alex.”

“Not
at all.
 
As far as I’m concerned,
those bottles still belong to my parents.
 
I think there are hundreds down there.
 
Indulge.”

“You’re
the best, Alex,” Alexa said.
 
“Did
you know that wine is a sustainable resource?”

“I
didn’t, but that’s good to know.
 
And I’m glad to hear that things are evening out.”

“They
have,” Blackwell said.
 
“But all of
that’s history.
 
My girls and I have
been busy tonight.
 
Come and see
what we made.
 
Look—our first
apple pie.
 
We made it together by
following that fat contessa’s recipe.
 
And I have to say that she’s good—it was fairly easy to make,
especially her pie dough.
 
I would
have failed without her advice.
 
Who
knew that ice-cold butter is the key to a flaky crust?
 
Who knew that I’d put butter into anything?
 
Here.
 
Come look.
 
It’s divoon.”

Alex
and I walked over to the island and I have to say that the pie looked and
smelled delicious.
 
The crust was
golden brown and looked perfect—and I knew for a fact that pie crust
isn’t easy to make.
 
“It looks fantastic,”
I said.

“Don’t
sound so surprised, Jennifer.”

“I
didn’t mean to.
 
It just does.”

“Thank
you.
 
But now that I have my baking
elves with me, at least I can promise you all that Christmas dessert will be fine.
 
The dinner is still on me, so we’ll see
how that goes.
 
But I’ve done my
homework, and I’m confident that I’ll come through.”

“Mom,
we took it back.
 
You don’t have to
do it all by yourself,” Daniella said.
 
“We want to help.”

“And
I appreciate that.
 
I also
appreciate the help I’ve received tonight.
 
But I’ve never cooked you girls a proper holiday meal.
 
So, I’m going to do it before I go to my
grave so neither of you will put on my headstone, ‘She never made us Christmas
dinner.’
 
That I can’t have.”

“Oh,
Mom,” Daniella said.
 
“Just let us
help.
 
Tonight was fun.”

“I’ll
call on you should I need you.
 
But
I’ve got this, young lady.”

“We
also made the fat contessa’s cheesecake,” Alexa said to us.
 
“It’s in a water bath in the oven.
 
Twenty more minutes to go.”

I
locked eyes with Blackwell, who just lifted her own glass of wine to me.
 
I’d never seen her like this.
 
I’d never seen her so relaxed and
happy.
 
She wasn’t shooting barbs at
anyone.
 
She looked content and
loved, as though she’d thoroughly bonded with her daughters.
 
I winked at her, and she winked back at
me.
 
I mouthed the words “I love
you” to her, and she just raised her eyebrows at me and sipped her wine.

But
her eyes sparkled.

“Does
anyone know where Lisa and Tank are?” I asked.

“Earlier,
they went out and got the tree,” Alexa said.
 
“I hate that we had to kill it, but it’s
better than an artificial tree, which is filled with toxins.
 
So, I’m good with it.
 
Sort of.”

“Alexa,”
Daniella said.

“Right.
 
Anyway, they’re downstairs.
 
When they got Jennifer’s text, they went
searching everywhere on the grounds for the perfect tree, and they found
it.
 
Tank had to lug it back.
 
Lisa helped, but come on.
 
She’s tiny, and look at that tree.
 
It was all on Tank.
 
When they got it in its stand, Lisa said
she was going to give him a back rub.
 
That was about thirty minutes ago, so they’re either in his room or her
room.”