Free All I Want for Christmas Is You (Short Story) by Molly O'Keefe

Christmas Eve, 1996
    Madelyn Baumgarten was freaking out. If she had any fingernails left, she’d chew them down to the quick all over again. Walking through the snow toward Billy’s house, she was blind to the lights, the mechanical reindeer on the Simmons family’s front lawn.
    Tonight was Christmas Eve, and all the Christmas spirit in the world was not going to make her forget that her eighteenth birthday was in two days.
    And so was her wedding day.
    Just thinking it, it sounded ridiculous. Wedding day. Her parents were going to go apeshit.
    Stop , she told herself, stepping through the snow onto Billy’s shoveled front walk. She had to be the cool one—the one who could explain to her parents all of the logical reasons for her to marry Billy Wilkins.
    Because Billy was never the cool one. Ever.
    One quick breath, which fogged in the cold winter air, and Maddy knocked on the front door of 12 Spruce and then, without waiting for anyone to answer, just walked into the cigarette and sadness-scented interior.
    “Make yourself at home, huh?” Janice yelled over the back of the sagging yellow couch, where she sat wrapped in blankets. Jeopardy played on the TV on the far side of the room. Despite the fact that tomorrow was Christmas Day, there were no decorations. No lights. No tree.
    Christmas didn’t come to this house, and hadn’t for a long time.
    “When have you ever answered the door?” Maddy’s breath was visible inside the house. Either their heat had been turned off again, or Janice was being careful with the thermometer. There was a new space heater glowing in the corner, beating back thechill. Maddy unzipped her her tall high-heeled boots, ridiculous in this snow, but Billy loved when she wore them. She placed them neatly by the front door. The cold seeped through her thin socks. She should have worn tights, but they didn’t work with the dress. And tonight … tonight she just wanted everything to work.
    Janice had been awful for months now—ever since Billy had made the NHL draft—and Maddy was torn between ignoring Billy’s older sister or picking a fight with her just to take the edge off. “Well, don’t think you own the place just because you’re marrying him.”
    “Right.” Maddy laughed as she tugged off her gloves and unzipped her thick coat. “Because this is a place I want to own.”
    That broke Janice’s connection to the television and she turned to stare at Maddy over the edge of the couch. She looked a decade older than her twenty-two years. Chain-smoking and letting guys like Aaron Schultz walk all over you would do that to a woman. Maddy used to feel bad for Janice, for the way the world seemed to throw all its shit on her. But now she sort of saw the way Janice asked for it. How she seemed to thrive on being everyone’s victim. It was her job. Filled up the hours between Jeopardy reruns.
    “Look at you.” Janice came up on her knees to lean over the back of the couch; her eyes crawled all over the new purple dress Maddy had bought for the occasion. “All dressed up.”
    “It’s Christmas Eve. Most of the world cares.”
    “We’re Jewish.”
    Maddy laughed; “A joke?” Sometimes Janice had the power to surprise her. They weren’t Jewish, they weren’t anything religious.
    “Keeping it festive,” Janice said. She flicked her hand at the hanger of clothes Maddy was carrying. “You gonna try to put a shine on Billy?”
    “It’s just a new shirt,” Maddy said, suddenly embarrassed, because that had been her intention. Civilize him a little, just enough. “A tie.”
    “You think that will make your parents love him?”
    “They already love him.” Well, Mom did, thought Maddy. Dad, perhaps not so much.
    “Right.” Janice smirked, and placed another cigarette in the corner of her mouth. She lit it, dragging the smoke in deep before blowing it out her nose. Gross. Honestly.
    Enough. The stress relief of fighting with Janice wasn’t worth watching the woman