It's been 10 years since Eddie and Dani found out they were having a baby far sooner than they'd planned or wanted. All of their plans for the future got put on hold, having to adjust to becoming parents at only twenty years old. Money's always tigh...
"Santa!" Jett squealed, catching sight of the fat, jolly guy in red from across the mall. He went to take off running but Eddie grabbed onto the back of his shirt, stopping him in place, his little legs getting him nowhere, before he disappeared in the sea of people.
"Whoa there, bud," he laughed. "I know you're excited but you can't just go taking off."
"Yeah, if you take off then we might lose you," Dani told him, "and Mommy and Daddy would be so worried if we didn't know where you were. And you would be scared if you didn't know where we were too."
The center of Starcourt Mall had been transformed into a winter wonderland. Fake snow blanketed the area filled with massive plastic Christmas bulbs and brightly wrapped packages. A huge tree that reached up to the domed glass ceiling was behind Santa's red velvet chair, lights twinkling in its branches. Festive holiday music was blasting out of every single speaker in the mall.
The place was packed, people milling about, dozens of bags slung over their arms as they went from store to store, searching for those perfect Christmas gifts for their loved ones. Eddie scowled watching all these conformists doing exactly what capitalistic America wanted them to do, spending all their money whether they had it or not. That's what Christmas was all about, right? How much money could you spend to prove how much you cared about someone? You had to make sure that you outdid everyone else and got the better gift.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
All the church-going, bible-thumping, goody two-shoes would preach that Christmas was about Jesus, about celebrating the birth of our savior and gratefulness to God for providing him to us. What a crock of bullshit because you could bet they were here too. They were just as guilty as everyone else, maybe even more so, as they spent thousands of dollars on unnecessary shit that would be broken, thrown away, or forgotten within a few months. He'd never met a bigger hypocrite than the ones with their ass in a pew on Sundays.
"Come on daddy!" Lyric urged, breaking him from his thoughts as she grabbed onto his hand, pulling him toward the line for Santa, the line that was so long they would probably be waiting a good hour.
Eddie gritted his teeth and put on a smile, letting Lyric lead him to the back. Dani had Jett, his little hand gripped tight in hers after his failed escape attempt. Eddie might find all this shit ridiculous but his kids did not. They had been overjoyed this morning when Dani told them they were going to see Santa. So, Eddie would swallow down his distaste at the long line and the compulsive shoppers and get into the spirit of things.
When he was a kid, the Santa myth got busted for him very early on. It was hard not to when you woke up on Christmas to your dad passed out drunk on the couch and not a single present in sight. When he moved in with Uncle Wayne, the old man tried but he didn't have a lot of money. Eddie remembered his first Christmas with him. He'd asked Santa for a Lionel train set. He thought for sure, now that he'd visited the big man himself, that this would be the year he got it. But no, he'd gotten a few G.I. Joes and an erector set. That was the moment he realized there was no Santa, his little childhood bubble popped.
