How My Neighbor Stole Christmas

Cole stumbled around, chest puffed, with a smile so pleasant.

For Christmas came early, her lips a tasty present.

He was floating around, his feet never touching the ground,

as he smiled, shook hands, and waved to the Kringles in town.

Then he tended to the reindeer, his expression laced with glee.

“And now”—Snow Daddy grinned—”I must decorate a tree.”

“What are you doing out here?” Max asks as he shoulders the axe he uses for chopping.

“I need a tree,” I say.

“You what?”

“I need a tree,” I repeat.

He tugs on his ear and laughs. “Shit, I thought you just said you need a tree.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

He doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. “Umm…what?”

“Max, don’t make this a thing, okay? I need a tree, so if you can just help me—”

“For what?” he asks.

“For my house.”

He shifts, looking very confused. I don’t blame him. He used to urge me to get a tree for the holidays, but after a few years, he knew he was fighting a losing battle. My mom and I used to decorate a tree every year together—even when I thought it was uncool. “Are you saying you’re in the market for a Christmas tree?”

“I am, and if you’re going to make a big deal about it, then I’m going to go somewhere else.”

“No, no,” he says quickly. “You’ve come to the right place. Just let me get my bearings first.” He takes a deep breath and then shakes his head. “A tree.” He makes eye contact. “Does this have anything to do with her? You never really finished telling me what happened last night.”

“Nothing to talk about,” I say.

“Cole, if you’re coming to me for a Christmas tree, there’s a lot to talk about. So why don’t we hike out to the field, find you a nice pine, and you tell me what the hell is going on.”

Normally, I’d just keep something like this to myself, but I want a tree and he has the axe. Therefore, I guess it’s time to have that conversation.

But where to start?

Thankfully, Max starts. “So last you told me, things had changed and you were looking at her differently. Care to fill in the blanks?”

I lead the way, and Max falls in line. The trail to the trees is shoveled as much as it can be—the team is constantly laying dirt down to help with slipping, but it just turns into mud. It’s why we always suggest wearing boots or shoes you don’t mind getting dirty while visiting. And thanks to the fresh flurries from yesterday, the untouched pines that surround the farm are covered in snow, the wind blowing up puffs of it every so often.

“It was sort of a mature conversation that I wasn’t expecting,” I say. “We talked about how we felt when we were younger, how we feel now, and, well…” I pause, knowing Max is going to freak out. “We made out on the porch.”

Just as expected, a stunned Max turns, slaps his hand to my chest in shock, and grips my shirt.

“You made out?” he yells, drawing attention from other groups traipsing across the farm.

We casually smile and wave to the visitors, thankful no one from Kringle is around.

“Dude, can you keep it down?” I hiss. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry—I’m just surprised. I wasn’t expecting you to say you made out with Storee, the girl who, a few weeks ago, you were hell-bent on putting in her place.”

“I wasn’t expecting it either,” I say honestly as we continue out toward the grove. “But I was out on the porch, staring up at the sky, texting you, and she came over with hot cocoa. We talked and…she moved onto my lap and started kissing me.”

“Moved onto your lap? Nice. So she made the first move?”

“I think so. I mean, it wasn’t like I was being shy about what I wanted.”

“Look at you, Snow Daddy taking what he wants.”

We stroll around the bend that takes us toward the front of the pine grove where many trees have already been cut down for the holiday season. But there are still a lot left.

“I didn’t take what I wanted, I just…fuck, I broke, man. Seeing her tears, airing my grievances, and then spending some time with her, it kind of felt like if I didn’t kiss her, I was going to lose my mind.”

“Which is different for you.”

“Very different,” I agree.

“So what does this mean? Are we still trying to win the Christmas Kringle? Are we still enemies? Are we trying to show her who the king of this town is?”

“I mean…she playfully said at the end of the night that she was still going to beat me, but I also think we don’t have to worry about her tampering with our lights again.”

“Ah, so a solid competition but a fair one.”

“That’s what I’m assuming,” I say. “And we have to keep arguing in front of her sister, because apparently Taran would get mad if she knew Storee and I were friendly. But then there’s the town who thinks we’re possibly dating, so we get to be open about our feelings in front of the town—but not in front of Taran. I don’t know…feels complicated.”

“Feels like reverse fake dating if you ask me,” Max says. “And I’m interested to see how this plays out.”

“Glad you’re invested.” I chuckle but then grow serious. “This whole thing makes me nervous.”

“What? The reverse fake dating? Dude, just pretend you hate her in front of her sister—”

“No, not that,” I say. “Letting myself feel anything for her.”

“Why? Do you think she’s playing you?”

I pause for a moment, letting that question sink in. Playing me, as in being friendly to throw me off and win the competition? I mean…I don’t think so. Not after the conversation we had last night. Not after that kiss.

She wouldn’t play me.

“No,” I answer. “But…she doesn’t live here, and I know she apologized for saying she hates this town and that she didn’t mean it, but it still worries me. What happens when Cindy is better? Does she go back to California to be with her ficus?”

“She has a ficus? Nice. Do you know if it’s a fiddle leaf?”

“Really, Max?”

He bashfully smiles. “Sorry. I just love all trees and plants.”

“Right, so what happens when she leaves?”

“Well, you could follow her.”

I shake my head. “No, I couldn’t.” I pause as we stand in front of a tree that’s about an inch taller than me. “I can’t leave Kringle.”

“If you’re worried about me,” Max says with a smile, “I can handle being on my own. I might cry into my pillow every night knowing my best friend left me for his lady friend, but I’ll survive.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” I say and sigh. “I can’t leave here because this is where I feel my parents the most. I feel their presence. And I can’t leave the house. That’s…that’s all I have left of them.”

“Is it, though?” Max asks. “You have sheets covering the furniture so it doesn’t collect dust. You still live in the finished attic because it was your teenage bedroom. You don’t even open the door to your parents’ room, and you haven’t unboxed the Christmas decorations in ten years, not since my mom and I put them away for you. I love you, man, but you haven’t been really living. You’ve been shuffling through the day-to-day.”

“I know,” I say while tugging on my hair. “And I’m trying… Doing this competition, seeing her again, I don’t know, it’s making me feel like I don’t have to hide all the time. That I don’t need to avoid the holiday. But what if…what if I put myself out there and she leaves?”

“Valid concern,” Max says. “And if she does, then we look at it as maybe she was brought here to get you out of your funk. Maybe you needed that blast from the past to shake you free of the weight you’ve been carrying, the weight of your parents’ death.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Hey.” Max grabs my attention away from the tree that I’m pretending to study. “Cole, I haven’t done you any favors as a best friend when it comes to making sure you move on, and that’s why when you wanted to do this Kringle thing, I was all in. Do you really think I wanted to pant like a dog while you pranced around in lederhosen?” I chuckle. “I didn’t. But I saw a spark in you that I haven’t seen in a really long time, and I know credit goes to her. So don’t let this opportunity slip by. If you like her, go for it, and see where it takes you. Living situations can be reworked. What can’t be reworked is the way you feel about someone.”

I let out a heavy sigh and look my friend in the eyes. “When did you become so wise?”

“I always have been,” he says with a puff of his chest. “You’re just finally opening your eyes.”

I pull into my driveway with a Christmas tree in the bed of my truck as I spot Taran and Storee in their driveway, packing up the car.

Suitcases.

Pillows.

Dread immediately fills me.

Is she fucking leaving?

After one kiss, she’s leaving?

Trying to keep calm, I hop out of my truck and remember the position I need to take—reverse fake dating.

I move around my truck, lean against it, and fold my arms as I stare over at them. “Leaving so soon? What a shame.” The sarcasm in my voice is heavy, but the pounding of my heart is nearly making me want to walk up to Storee and pull her into my chest so she can’t leave.

Not yet.

Not when things have just started.

Storee looks up as she’s putting a suitcase in the car. She’s about to say something when Taran steps in. “I’m taking Aunt Cindy into Golden for a doctor’s appointment. Not that you need to know that, but don’t go thinking we’re out of this competition.” She shuts the trunk of her car and turns toward me. “We are totally in it, and Storee has been coming up with a candy cane idea that’s going to blow your lederhosen right off.”

She crosses her arms, and Storee steps up next to her, looking cute as shit as she adds, “Yeah, blow your lederhosen right off.”

I hold back my smile as I lift off the truck. “Doubt it. I saw your candy cane-making abilities. Good luck stretching the sugar—you’re going to need it.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Taran says to Storee. “You’re going to kill it. And don’t let him mess with your mind when we’re gone. Stay strong.”

“Ha, as if he could mess with me. Remember who’s in first,” Storee says.

“Girls,” Cindy calls from the car. I didn’t even notice her in there, I was so fixated on the suitcases. “If we’re going to make it to Idaho Springs for a driving break and dinner, we must go. You know I’m going to need breaks.”

“Hold down the fort,” Taran says to Storee before moving toward the front of the car.

I watch Storee say goodbye to her aunt and sister, and then she stands in the driveway, bundled up in her jacket, waving to them as Taran pulls out and drives away.

Once they’re down Whistler Lane and headed onto Krampus Court, Storee turns to me with an evil smile.

“What a shame?” she asks, walking up to me. “You would have been happy to see me go?”

“Would have been easier to be named Christmas Kringle, that’s for damn sure.”

“Aw, so you really do see me as a threat.”

“Have you seen our competition?” I say as she stands right in front of me now. It takes everything in me not to pull her into my chest.

“I have. I’m specifically waiting to see if Jimmy Short can pull an upset.”

“You might have to keep waiting.”

She tugs on my flannel. “Why is there a tree in your truck?”

I glance back at the bed of my truck. “Uh, thought I would put it up in my house.”

Her brows quirk up. “You got a Christmas tree?”

“I did,” I answer as I tentatively place my hand on her hip. Her smile grows.

“Do you need help bringing it into your house?”

“Umm.” I bite down on the corner of my lips. “I could probably handle it.”

“Okay, but do you need help decorating it?”

My skin prickles as I realize I didn’t think this all the way through.

Max wasn’t lying when he said that I haven’t really been living in the house. There are white sheets draped over most of the furniture, I eat meals up in my room, nothing has been moved or touched since my parents passed—it’s a house frozen in time. And if she came into my house, she’d see that.

The question is, do I want her to see that?

“Your face has gone a little white,” she says, her hand smoothing up my chest now.

“Sorry.” I swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m, uh, just thinking.”

“Okay, do you want to talk it out?”

I sift my hand through my hair and think about what Max said to me out in the field. Don’t let this opportunity slip by. If you like her, go for it, and see where it takes you. I could do just that. Go all in and see where it takes me.

“I would like your help,” I say hesitantly. “But, uh, I need to warn you about my house.”

She rubs her hand over my heart. “Cole, you don’t need to warn me about anything.”

“I do,” I say. “It’s, um…it’s preserved.”

Her expression softens. “I get it, Cole. If I’d gone through what you did, I would have probably done the same thing. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, if that’s what you’re feeling.”

“A little, yeah.”

“People deal with grief in their own way. If you’re really that uncomfortable, I don’t have to help, but I’d love to hang out, so if you want to come over to Aunt Cindy’s, we can hang out there.”

The option is tempting. To not give her a view of the life I’ve been living for ten years, to just fall in the comfort of continuing to hide.

But that’s not what I want to do.

I want more.

I can feel it deep within me. This change. The certainty I have surrounding me, telling me that I’m ready. That I can do this, and I don’t want to lose that courage.

So I clear my throat. “I’d actually like it if you came over.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive,” I reply.

“Okay.” She smiles up at me, her expression like a warm summer’s day, pulling me into a tight embrace. “Do you want me to help you with the tree first?”

“Think you can manage?” I ask. “I watched you trying to stretch sugar and saw what an embarrassment that was.”

She playfully pokes me. “I can handle a tree.”

“We shall see.” Before I move away, I pull her into a hug. Her arms wrap around me tightly, and I love the feel of it. I love the contact with another human. I can’t remember the last time I actually hugged someone like this.

Probably when my parents were still alive.

“You okay?” she asks as she looks up at me, her chin resting on my chest.

“Yeah,” I answer. “I am.”

“Okay.” She squeezes me one more time and then moves to the back of my truck. She takes in the tree, feeling the needles on the branches. “This is so soft.”

“It’s the Evergreen Farm way,” I say as I lower the tailgate. “Full, lush pines with soft needles. They’ve perfected the Christmas tree, which is why people come from many miles away to grab a tree from them.”

“I can see why,” she says as I tug on the trunk. “I’m surprised you didn’t wrap it up. Weren’t you afraid you were going to lose needles?”

I shake my head. “Short drive, and we tend to not wrap trees up when we can avoid it. The Maxheimers are all about sustainability and the netting has been found to be dumped in the ocean. Max went on a rampage one day about it, tearing through the farm and telling every single person, including his parents and siblings, that there would be no more netting usage. Then he flashed a picture of a seal being strangled by netting and that was that.”

“Oh God, that’s sad.”

“It was. So now when people buy their tickets to come to the farm, there’s an email sent with a barcode for their tickets, and then a large warning in red that says ‘If you plan on buying a tree, bring old sheets or blankets and we’ll properly wrap your tree up for you.’”

“That’s a good idea, actually.”

“Max was proud of it for sure.” I tug on the tree until it slides out of the bed of my truck and stand it up by its trunk.

“Wow, that’s pretty tall,” she says, staring up at it. “You don’t get a Christmas tree for ten years and then you just…go for the biggest one.”

“This wasn’t the biggest one,” I say. “But it’s up there.”

“Daring,” she says with a smirk. “Now, how do you want to do this?”

I could really handle the tree on my own, but knowing she wants to help, I tip the tree down so it’s on its side and say, “You can take the top, I’ll grab the base. Let’s bring it up on the porch and then leave it there while I get everything else ready.”

“That works,” she says.

Together, we lift the tree and haul it down the walkway to my house and up the steps to the porch. We slide the tree to the side and then brush off our hands.

“Any sap on your hands?” I ask her.

She flashes me her gloves. “Wouldn’t know.”

“Oh, right.” I shake my head. “You really put on gloves to pack the car?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s freezing here. I will never get over it and will always bundle up because I don’t want frostbite.”

“Ridiculous,” I say as I move to my front door, nerves starting to inch up my spine.

She must notice because she places her hand on my back. “I won’t judge you, Cole.”

I look over my shoulder and softly smile at her.

“Thank you,” I reply and then open the door, letting her into the first floor that has gone completely untouched.

And unseen by anyone besides Max and myself.

To the left is the dining room and the long table that’s covered in white linen. A place where we used to have “fancy meals,” as Mom used to call them, but has been vacant for quite some time. I can’t remember what it’s like to hear silverware clatter against fine bone china or my father’s boisterous laugh as he sipped on his bourbon after a three-course meal.

To the right is the living room, with a fireplace, couch, and two wingback chairs where I used to sit and chat with my dad about the upcoming Foghorns season.

The chairs are covered in sheets, but the couch is not.

Because the couch is where I sit and stare at the fireplace.

“I, uh…I covered everything up so it wouldn’t get dusty or sun-damaged since the rays are stronger here.”

“You don’t need to explain yourself,” Storee says softly as she takes in my home.

She’s never been in here before. She’s only ever been on my porch.

She walks over to the fireplace and runs her finger over the mantel and across the nails where we used to hang stockings. She takes in the pictures one by one, a smile playing on her lips when she sees the one of Dad and me when I was twelve. We found a lake on a hike and decided to fish bare-handed. Somehow, I grabbed one, and I’m holding it up in the photo. Storee then walks in front of the most recent picture of Mom, Dad, and me, when they dropped me off at college. My first and only semester at UC Boulder.

“That was the last picture we took together,” I say, stepping in closer to her.

“I remember this boy,” she whispers. “I remember all these versions of you, Cole.” She picks up the picture of Bob Krampus and me when I was fourteen. “I remember this haircut. God, I thought you were so cute.”

“Thought?” I ask, loving that she can make this hard moment feel so…easy.

She looks over her shoulder. “You’re still cute, but now you have this rugged handsomeness about you that’s actually really unfair to possess.”

“Rugged handsomeness?” I smooth my hand over my jaw. “Think it’s the beard?”

She motions over my body. “It’s the whole package.”

That makes me smirk.

She puts the picture back and moves over to another. It’s of Max and me, our arms around each other, standing in front of the Ornament Park Christmas tree.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“You two really haven’t changed, have you?”

“If you look inside the frame, you’ll see that we have.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mom took a picture of us in front of the Ornament Park tree every year. This is the one from when we were seventeen because she never got the chance to print the one from when we were eighteen. But she kept all the past pictures one on top of the other in the frame.”

“That’s so sweet,” she says and then turns to me. “Do you look at these pictures often?”

“Not so much anymore. When I first lost my parents, yeah. I’d mindlessly sit on this couch for hours just staring. It’s why it’s the only piece of furniture not draped in a cloth. I would numbingly sit here and do nothing. It wasn’t until Max offered me the job at the farm that I started to leave the house. For a while there, all I had were the people in town coming in and out and offering me support. Since I was eighteen, I was technically an adult. My parents had a hefty life insurance policy, so I didn’t need to work if I didn’t want to, and, well…at the time, I couldn’t fathom leaving. But the Maxheimers couldn’t take me being alone all the time, so they took me in as one of their own.”

“Makes me love Atlas even more.”

I raise a brow at her. “You love him?”

She rolls her eyes. “Not like that. But I’m glad he was there for you. Was Aunt Cindy ever helpful?”

“Yes,” I reply. “She had me over for dinner once a month. It was only once a month because it’s all I would allow. I think if she’d had it her way, she would have done once a week. But those dinners fizzled out once the feeling inside of me started to return again. It’s why I always helped her with her lights, why I shovel for her—”

“You shovel for her?”

I nod. “Yeah. I want to make sure she’s safe. I know it’s not easy for her to shovel, so I just do it when I do mine. It’s not a big deal.”

“I thought she’d hired a service. She never said that it was you,” Storee says, looking confused.

“Probably because I was adamant about her not talking to you about me.”

“Yeah, I guess she kept that promise,” she says, her lips twisted to the side. “I wish she hadn’t, though.”

“It’s fine,” I say.

She takes my hand in hers and entwines our fingers. She then presses a soft kiss to my knuckles.

“What do you want me to help you with, Cole? I’m here to help you with anything you need. Anything you want.”

I glance around the room, taking in the emptiness of it all. My mom would hate it looking like this, especially now. She would be upset with me, with how I’ve blocked out the season, how I’ve set it aside when, as a family, it was the time of year that brought us that much closer.

The joy.

The traditions.

The togetherness.

On a whim, I ask, “Will you help me decorate for Christmas?”