Matt Webb sat on the ancient sofa, the same one he'd known from the time he'd been able to remember things at all, and twisted his fingers in the red ribbon his mother had so neatly tied around the small box for him. The shiny green and white paper boasting a smiling snowmen pattern stared up at him. They had no idea that there was no reason to smile. Maybe a couple of months from now, if everyone was lucky, but certainly not now.
"Hi, Mrs. Ramsay!" Matt said brightly over the phone to the woman who had given birth to one of the people he was closest to in life.
Josh Ramsay was the bouncy, obnoxious, energetic eighteen year old self-declared lead singer of their newly formed band. Always optimistic, he swore that they were going to make it big someday. "Internationally famous!" he would strut through their practice space declaring, with the neck of his guitar in one hand and a lit cigarette between the fingers of the other. Matt, being a couple of years younger, hung on every word the older boy said, believing it almost whole-heartedly thanks to the fact that Josh himself refused to consider anything less. He seemed certain that Marianas Trench would be a household name, and Matt had no reason to believe otherwise. That was, until the phone call he made on the twenty-fourth of December.
"Matt?" she asked, sounding a bit frazzled. He chalked it up to being simply anxious about the holidays. He knew the Ramsays always had a large crowd for every family function, and Josh's mother started worrying about making room for everyone, the food, the decorations and all the gifts months in advance, and she seemed to panic a bit more each day as the twenty-fifth drew closer.
Nodding due to habit alone, the young guitar player switched the phone to his left hand and pressed it back up against his ear as he leaned on his elbows over the kitchen counter, poking at the square gift box with his right pointer finger, spinning it in circles as he spoke. "Yep! Is Josh around?"
"Oh, honey...no, Josh isn't home...," she said quietly, offering no other explanation.
Matt frowned slightly and pulled his finger away from the box, turning his body and sliding easily up to sit on the counter instead. He swung his feet a bit, wondering where his friend could be. He knew he usually had a fifty-fifty shot of catching the older boy at home, but he felt certain that, being so close to Christmas, he would have been around. "Do you know where he is, or...um...when he might be back?"
"Matt, sweetheart...Josh, well, he... I can't say for sure when he'll be back."
Huffing quietly to himself, Matt wrapped, unwrapped and rewrapped a loose string that trailed from the hole in the knee of his jeans around his finger. He supposed it was no big deal if he couldn't give Josh his Christmas present today. He'd wanted Josh to have it, but it was nothing that couldn't wait if it absolutely had to. Still, if there was a chance the singer could open it with all of his other gifts in the morning, he could make use of it with his family around. "Would it be okay if I dropped off his present? It's fine if it's not, I just wanted him to have it and if he's not home now, he can still open it tomorrow...-"
"Matt," Mrs. Ramsay stopped him with the gentle way she said his name. "Josh won't be home for Christmas."
The guitarist pushed himself off the counter and stood in the center of the kitchen, confused. Who wouldn't be home for Christmas? What kid their age would be allowed to ditch out on a family holiday? "Oh...," was all he managed before asking once more if he could still drop off the gift.
"I think you should hang onto it, honey," Josh's mother said. "If everything goes as well as we all hope...," she stopped herself before rephrasing her words. "You might be able to give it to him in person in a couple of months."
