Lonely and Tired

Jingle Jangled

"What's wrong?" I sat bolt upright fighting my way through my hair has my bedroom door slammed open. God, what time was it? My room was dark but light streamed in from the hallway.

"Get out of bed. Santa Claus has been," a high pitched voice demanded. Harper.

I groaned and flopped back pulling the covers over my head silently bemoaning the lack of respect that kids these days were showing to their elders. I conveniently forgot the year that my cousins, including Harper's mother, had visited us for Christmas and Mum had made us all sleep in a tent in the back yard and locked the back door so we wouldn't wake the adults up at dawn. It wasn't as bad as it sounds, Uncle Joel volunteered to be the adult sacrifice who slept outside with us. He'd taken possession of our Nintendo and threatened to toss it in the pool if we misbehaved.

How I wished I'd confiscated one of Harper's prized possessions as the duvet inched ever so slowly down the bed. "Harper..." I growled.

"Get up! Mommy says you're the Grinch." I was going to kill Cathy.

"I'm tired Harper," I whined.

"No you're not. Aunty Mel told me you went to bed early last night. So I know you can't be tired. Anyway aren't you excited about Santa?" My mother and Cathy could share a shallow grave. Okay so it was true that I'd gone to bed early, but just because I was in bed didn't mean I was sleeping. Obsessively watching my ex-boyfriend's music videos on YouTube? Maybe. Sleeping? Not so much. Hey, don't judge me. At least I wasn't recording them over my parents wedding video. You can only make that mistake once.

I was not excited for Santa. What I wanted to do was don some red velvet and white fur and go the full Mariah Carey on Brian's arse. I wanted to unleash a little of Mariah's crazy on him along with a lot of her festive season hit. I wondered how he'd take it, if I appeared in his driveway with a boom box 'Say Anything' style and played 'All I Want for Christmas is You'.

I hadn't spoken to him again at Matt and Val's barbeque but every so often I'd been aware of his eyes on me and I'd even smiled briefly at him once before I'd managed to catch myself. Harper had cornered him and he'd been looking around nervously for a rescue. I'd left his tiny admirer to do her worst. Karma was now extracting revenge on his behalf, not that he knew it.

Resistance was futile. I clutched for the edge of duvet as it slipped off the end of the bed. Succumbing to the inevitable I rolled off the bed, slipped on my hoody and stumbled downstairs. My mother was in the kitchen layering ham and cheese into the middle of croissants spread out on a tray. Dad was mixing a bowl of batter that I knew would be turned into pancakes.

"You're here early," I said climbing onto a kitchen stool and rubbing my eyes. My father slid a coffee cup toward me. "You sent the demon child after me," I grouched as I took a welcome sip of coffee.

"It's been a few years since we had a family Christmas." My mother smiled brightly at me, if you didn't know her as well as I did you'd have missed the sadness behind her smile. It had been a long time since we'd had a family Christmas. The first year after Ryan had died we'd not been in any mood to celebrate and the following year my parents had decided to spend Christmas on their boat. With Ryan gone our family Christmas's would never be the same. Cathy was right I was being the Grinch. In that moment I decided that I needed to suck up my own misery and be less Grinch-like because my parents, who had always unconditionally supported me regardless of some incredibly stupid decisions on my part, needed to enjoy this Christmas.

Picking up my coffee cup I slid off my stool. "I'm going to take a shower and get changed." It was the least I could do. There were Mum and Dad looking like a street style photographers wet dream and I was slobbing around in leggings and an old t-shirt of Brian's that had found its way into my bag when we went to Lake Tahoe.