Simple Gifts: A Romantic Christmas Story Read online

A Simple Christmas Gift:

  A Romantic Christmas Story

  By Rusty Fischer, author of A Town Called Snowflake

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  A Simple Christmas Gift

  Rusty Fischer

  Copyright 2012 by Rusty Fischer

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  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.

  Cover credit: © detailblick – Fotolia

  This story was formerly released under the title “A Simple Christmas Gift.”

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  Author’s Note:

  The following is a FREE short story edited by the author himself. If you see any glaring mistakes, I apologize and hope you don’t take it out on my poor characters, who had nothing to do with their author’s bad grammar! Happy reading… and happy holidays!

  Enjoy!

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  A Simple Christmas Gift:

  A Romantic Christmas Story

  “Look,” I snap, carting the last of the cardboard boxes from April’s walk-in closet onto the rented dolly. “If I have to scrap most of my T-shirt collection, the least you can do is scrap most of your purse collection.”

  April’s wearing a ball cap, like she does sometimes when she cleans house or runs to the store for a few quick errands and doesn’t feel like washing her hair first.

  She has her raven black ponytail sticking out the back, which she knows I love; this time, though, she’s not doing it for me.

  “Fine, Rex, whatever,” she sighs, the sound of packing tape being stretched across the top of another box marked “purses” as her exclamation point. “Take ‘em all to Goodwill, okay? At least someone will get some good use out of them!”

  Her brown eyes look hurt, her young face etched in the permanent scowl she’s worn since Thanksgiving.

  “I mean, keep a few…” I offer quietly, trying to soften the blow.

  “Why?” she snaps. “So I can be the envy of The Real Housewives of the Snowflake Motor Court?”

  I grit my teeth and try to avoid flinching.

  Her voice, like mine, is terse and strained; neither of us has been sleeping well lately.

  “Hey, I’m not happy about it either, okay?”

  “You’re a lot happier about it than I am,” she points out, ponytail shaking with her smoldering wrath.

  She kicks aside the packing box and leans back against the wall; her chin quivers and her eyes moisten but she doesn’t cry.

  We both promised each other we wouldn’t cry.

  The master bedroom is barren now, the tortilla painted walls freed of their expensive wall art and dark-framed oval mirrors.

  Her friends from work got most of those, the beneficiaries of our recent “It’s All Got to Go, Bring Your Own Margarita Mix and Pickup Truck to Haul the Goodies Away” party.

  The king size bed is gone, too, as is the down comforter and dozen or more gilded throw pillows with glittery accents we spent weeks picking out.

  Her sister got the bed, I think.

  Or no, maybe it was her assistant manager.

  Either way it was too big to fit in the new trailer, and why let it go to waste?

  Her legs look long and tan in her short gray gym shorts and running shoes with short socks, one of my old, powder blue dress shirts tied at the waist over a white ribbed tank top.

  Why does she always look the sexiest when we’re the maddest at each other?

  I open my mouth to apologize, again, but every time I do it just sounds hollow and forced and rehearsed; maybe because… it is.

  Instead I hoist the dolly for my 40th trip to the U-Haul double parked downstairs and ask, over my shoulder, “Are you serious about Goodwill?”

  “Are you seriously asking me if I’m serious about Goodwill?”

  I take that as a “yes.”

  Sure, a “yes” under duress, but at this point if I stopped to fight about every tiny detail we’d still be standing here when they hold the foreclosure auction the day after Christmas.

  I trundle down the wide foyer, the one she was so gleeful upon seeing some six years ago when we’d first moved into the spacious oceanfront condo we’ve called home ever since.

  I remember her bouncing from alcove to alcove moments after we’d signed the condo docs in the kitchen, sumptuous brown eyes alive with promise as she announced, “The drop leaf table can go here, but we’ll have to get a new vase to put on top. Maybe something silver, hammered, like I saw at Pier Imports last week. And here, maybe… a potted palm? No, no, I saw just the perfect thing at Pottery Barn the other day; a hat rack, and we can fill it with those vintage hats and boas, like something out of an old 50s movie.”

  Her eyes had been so alive then, her face full of promise and pride.

  I’d just gotten the new job at Snowflake Super Sports, an ad agency specializing in only athletic clients.

  I was running the entire extreme sports division, handling advertising campaigns for everything from a new rock climbing sports drink to protein bars scientifically designed for base jumpers to a new line of fashion BMX bike helmets.

  It was heady times for a young, married couple from Wisconsin who’d never seen the ocean before.

  Back then, with bonuses for every new account I brought in and a six-figure starting a salary, a $300,000 oceanfront condo seemed like a “starter house.”

  Four years later when the bottom fell out of the extreme sports market and I got a demotion to “entry-level creative,” well, those $1,900 mortgage payments started to feel more like a noose around our neck.

  And that was before the $400 monthly condo maintenance fees, the pricey gym memberships and premium slots at the country club.

  We’d been cutting corners for the last two years, scrimping and saving.

  April even got a part-time job at the local pet grooming store, Snowflake Snips ‘N Snouts, which eventually turned to full-time and, just recently, a gig as assistant manager.

  But still, the debt kept mounting.

  And when I lost the Biceps Buster home exercise account just after Halloween, well, forget it; the bank was tired of hearing my excuses and getting another demotion at work hadn’t helped any.

  The foreclosure finally became a formal thing on paper and not just some specter lurking quietly in the dark, haunting us with 12 phone calls a day from the mortgage company, the bank, the lawyers.

  And now?

  Now… here we are; angry, tired, scared, anxious, upset and uncertain – on Christmas Eve, no less!

  “Bah humbug,” I mutter as the rickety wheels of the rusty dolly clatter across the expensive marble tiles we’ll walk no more after this December the 24th.

  I pause at the front door, turning to face April, standing uncertainly in the empty living room, bordered by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking picturesque Snowflake, South Carolina.

  “Did you say something?” I ask.

  She’s leaning a little to the left, one hand on her hip, one dangling and fiddling with the hem of her shorts as mid-morning sun bathes her in warm, winter light.

  “I asked if you could pick up my dry cleaning on the way home from Goodwill,” she says in a small voice, the one that hates to ask but has to.

  “Babe,” I croak, the dolly still in my hand, my wallet still empty. “I can’t. I just had to send the lawyer the last of my paycheck for his bill, and we emptied our savings to put the deposit on the… trailer. I’m tapped out until payday on the 28th.”

  “But I need that stuff for work on Monday,” she whines, and I know she’s hating the sound of her own
voice almost as much as it hurts me to hear it.

  I wince and say, “Well, maybe Aunt Edna sent us a check in this year’s Christmas card. She’s always good for $20 or so.”

  “What are we, 12?” she asks, almost… almost… smiling.

  “Kinda feels like it lately,” I shrug.

  “It’s okay,” she says before turning to stare out the nearest sliding glass door. “I have a backup uniform packed somewhere. I’ll find it tonight.”

  “Sounds fun,” I offer, but she’s already miles away, shoulders set against our tired, lonely Christmas Eve as the newest residents of the Snowflake Motor Court.

  Trailer # 19, to be exact.

  At the front door I turn, the sun brightening as the last day before Christmas gets into full swing.

  Down the long walkway to the elevator I pray that everyone will still be tucked away safely inside their 3,200-square foot apartments, enjoying their families in town for the holidays or using their binoculars to spot seagulls from their wraparound balconies.

  It’s “so far, so good” until I push the “down” button, then like clockwork Mrs. Rubens from 12-A trundles out her door, pocketbook in hand, sunhat squarely affixed to her bright red wig.

  “Morning, Rex,” she says, ignoring me and focusing instead on the towering stack of We-Haul boxes marked “evening purses,” or “spring purses” or “holiday purses.”

  “Such a shame,” she says, shaking her head ruefully as the elevator doors ding open and I hold them so she can get in first.

  “What’s that?” I ask as she trundles brusquely by.

  She wedges herself in the corner, giving me just enough room in the tiny elevator to back myself and the dolly full of boxes in behind me.

  She’s closest to the buttons, but makes no sign to touch any.

  I sigh, scrunch by and push “P” for the parking lot.

  “Just that we won’t be seeing you and your lovely wife around here anymore after today.”

  I nod grumpily; her voice says she’s anything but sorry to see us go.

  “Any word on the new tenants?” she asks, already fishing.

  It just so happens Mrs. Rubens – sorry, Mrs. “Real Estate” Rubens – runs the local realtor’s office and has been snooping around ever since the foreclosure was announced in last week’s paper.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I grumble noncommittally, trying for all the world to hide behind my tower of purse boxes.

  “No,” she says as we reach the bottom floor. “I suppose you wouldn’t.”

  I try to inch off first but she blitzes past, a blur of sequins and baubles and thick gold rings wedged onto her short, pudgy fingers.

  “Merry Christmas,” I grunt behind clenched teeth and the foul stench of irony; she hears neither.

  “You too,” she says, by rote, as I trundle the dolly across the elevator threshold and turn sharply to wheel them toward the 10-year-old Honda we drove all the way from Wisconsin in.

  “Don’t forget to check the zipper pockets first,” Mrs. Rubens offers over the shoulder of her leopard print caftan as she slides into the driver’s seat of her just-polished Jaguar. “We ladies always like to tuck something away for a rainy day!”

  “Yeah, right,” I snort derisively under my breath as she nearly clips my passenger door while backing out as I start to unload the first of April’s boxes. “Like I should be so lucky.”

  But the suggestion weighs on me the whole way through tiny Snowflake, its storefront windows bedecked in all the holiday finery, each with a matching holly wreath and blinking Christmas lights.

  I smile to recall those special holidays past, quiet evenings spent arm in arm with April, inching through town from store to store, wallets full of credit cards that weren’t maxed outs and hearts free of the shame, the disappointment, of crushing, crippling failure.