Free Annihilate Me: Holiday Edition by Christina Ross Page B

toward me and kissed me on the lips.   “Shower?” he asked.
    “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