The Only Thing On My Wishlist

I would never admit it to my friends, but I wasn’t all that surprised when Camille didn’t show up to the holiday party. I’d gotten loads of her “meet you there” and “I’ll be a little late” and “something came up” excuses, and it’s not like she was pulling the wool over my eyes or anything. The truth is, my girlfriend was a flake. And while I knew it, could admit it to myself, maybe could admit it to a few select people, it still irked me that my friends had seemed to notice. What irked me more was the fact that it seemed to really be taking a toll on the way they looked at her. I liked Camille—a lot more than I cared to admit to her. And I wanted my friends to like her too. The problem was she was making it pretty fucking hard for them to do so.

I headed straight to Camille’s apartment after ducking out of the party early, my Secret Santa clue folded neatly in my pocket.

I guess I’m indifferent about Christmas. I mean, it’s nice to see family coming together, but when it all comes down to it, it’s just another commercialized load of crap.

It would be my luck to get the Mr. Grinch of my friends. I couldn’t even put a finger on who out of all of them could really not care about Christmas, but it was likely none of them would have the gall to say it to me. Like I said, I’m a big believer in Christmas spirit. I’ve never taken kindly to Scrooge-like business.

I knew someone would be home, be it Camille or Bailey or Gia—and let’s be honest, I was banking on anyone but the latter—but to my very best luck, all three of them were there. Plus about twelve or so others, all female.

“Er, hi,” I stammered to the buff girl who answered the door.

She eyed me grimly. “What the fuck are you supposed to be? A caroler?”

I glanced down at my sweater, the tips of my ears going hot. “I’m looking for Camille.”

She didn’t say anything, didn’t move. I stood there awkwardly on my girlfriend’s doorstep, shifting my weight from foot to foot. It was absolutely ridiculous, feeling like this girl had some sort of authority over me—but if I’m being honest, it was more than likely that she did, at least when it came to this situation.

“Who’s at the door, Becca?”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Camille,” I called into the apartment, “could you come outside a minute?”

There was a flash of brown hair as she poked her head around the door, nestling it in beside Becca’s. “Well, hello, Mr. Man.”

It didn’t take an expert profiler to know that my girlfriend was drunk. If the “Mr. Man” hadn’t tipped me off, the way she stumbled out into the stairwell surely did.

“Alright?” I asked, eyeing her flushed cheeks and heavy-lidded eyes.

She offered me a wide, innocent smile. “We were just having a drink after our Empowered Women meeting,” she explained. “We had this rally to plan and, oh, it’s going to be so amazing. We’ve got a good number planning to show, too, which should be better than last time when—”

I cut her off. “Er, Camille?”

“Hmm?” she purred, running her hands over the snowman on my chest.

I took her hand, pulling it away from my sweater and dropping it back at her side. “Camille, you missed the holiday party.”

She stared at me blankly, like she didn’t understand what was happening. “That’s what this is about? You’re angry that I missed some stupid party?”

“No, I’m angry that you said you’d be there and once again I found myself waiting for nothing,” I seethed, finally losing my temper. “You always say you’re going to be there. ‘Oh, I may be a little late’ or ‘oh I had this meeting but I’m coming now’ and then you never show up! You’re lying to me when you do that, Camille, don’t you get that?”

“Well, I’m sorry that I have important things going on in my life and can’t always make it to parties and dinner with your friends!”

“Speaking of my friends,” I started in, “you’re making it pretty hard for them, you know. Every time you don’t show or show up late, it really takes its toll on what they think of you.”

She rolled her eyes, letting out an indignant scoff. “Honestly Josh, I don’t give a fuck what your friends think of me,” she snapped, her glassy eyes becoming clearer as our fight seemed to sober her up. “I’m not dating you for their approval. I’m not doing anything for their approval. The only approval I need is yours.” She took a deep breath, but then seemed to rethink it and continued, as though she’d realized she’d forgotten something—though honestly, it may have been better off left unsaid. “And besides, it’s not like they’re all perfect! The only ones really doing anything with their lives are the guys in your band.”

I wanted to correct her—I always did when she said it that way. It wasn’t “my band.” It was “our band,” or “the band.” I hated putting a singularly possessive label on it, especially when the possession was mine. But I didn’t think correcting her when we were already fighting was likely to help the situation. It’s not like I enjoyed being angry with her—or having her angry with me, for that matter.

“I’m not even going to try to defend them to you,” I finally said, my voice low. “They don’t deserve that accusation, and I’m sure they don’t quite give a fuck what you think about them either.”

“Glad we’re all on the same page then,” she decided. “Now, are you going to stand here and try to fight with me some more, or are you going to come inside so I can give you a holiday gift?”

I could tell by the look in her eyes that this “holiday gift” wasn’t going to be a snow globe. But as much as I wanted to stay, I wasn’t quite finished being angry with her. And it was going to take more than her deciding that she didn’t need to get along with my friends and didn’t care if they liked her for me to forgive her for being a flake. So instead I left. And maybe no one would believe it, because all guys are the same—we think with our dicks, we’ll take sex whenever we can get it and from whoever we can get it from, whether we’re fighting with that person or not. But I was being morally firm, and if that meant walking away from a “holiday gift” from my girlfriend, well, that’s what Internet porn and Kleenex were made for.

&&

The next morning, I woke to a frantic phone call from Max.

”Please, mate, you can’t leave me here alone with her. It’s shopping, for the love of Christmas, will you please just come and rescue me?”

I could hear Lucy in the background, demanding that he hand over his phone and stop being a “whiner baby,” and then when he didn’t comply, threatening to call his mother and tell her what an awful sport he was being.

“I’m not much into shopping,” I reminded him. “Especially when it’s so close to Christmas. Do you know how ridiculous that’s going to be?”

”It’s already ridiculous,” Max agreed. ”I’ve been here fifteen minutes and already I’ve been practically assaulted for touching a set of matching dove ornaments that this old women swore she saw first.”

I laughed, but it came out as more of a tired groan. “Alright,” I finally relented, rolling onto my stomach and burying my face into my pillow. “Alright,” I said again when I came up for air and turned onto my side. “Give me a bit, and I’ll meet you there.”

”You’re my hero,” Max told me sincerely. ”I’m serious. Will you marry me?”

I snorted. “Yeah, okay. But don’t tell Lucy or she’ll skin me alive and serve me as an appetizer at the next holiday party.”

”Oi, don’t hang up!” Lucy shouted in the background. There was a bit of a scuffle, and then suddenly her voice was loud and clear in my ear—so loud and clear, in fact, that I had to pull the phone away to keep from being defeaned. ”Could you do me a huge beyond huge favor, Josh?”

I groaned—on purpose this time. “Sure, of course. I mean, why not? I am your slave, you know.”

She laughed. ”Could you swing by my place and pick up Elliot for me? If I’m going to deal with the two of you complaining all day, I at least need some back up.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I agreed, climbing out of bed. “Tell her to be ready in a half hour.”

”That’s my Joshy. You’re a doll.”

I didn’t even bother telling her not to call me “Joshy.” It wasn’t like she ever listened anyway.

Twenty-five minutes later, true to my word, I was standing on Lucy’s doorstep, freshly showered, ringing the doorbell. At first, no one came to the door. I could see that Henry and Trisha both weren’t home—away at work, I assumed, as it was the middle of the day in the middle of the week. But Elliot was supposed to be there; I’d given Lucy strict instructions to tell her to be ready.

I rang the bell again—once, twice, three times just to be generous. Just as I reached up to ring for a fourth time, the door swung open and there she was, looking quite frantic if I’m being honest.

“Was that necessary?” she demanded, pulling a pair of fuzzy white earmuffs on over her long hair.

“I told Lucy a half hour,” I informed her matter-of-factly.

She pulled back an unbelievable amount of sleeves—she had to have on seven layers, it was so ridiculous—to look at her watch. “And by my watch, it’s been twenty-seven minutes since Lucy called me, so I’ve still got three minutes to spare.”

I smiled to myself as she turned to lock the front door. “Touché,” I forfeited, giving her a small bow.

She wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her jacket tight around her torso, and followed me to the car. “It’s freezing in this country,” she told me, as though it was some sort of mysterious fact she’d just recently been the first to discover.

“Well, thanks for that astounding observation, Al Gore. It’s called having four seasons, if you haven’t heard of that concept yet. I hear you don’t get much of the seasons in Georgia. Funny enough, these seasons I speak of, I believe the coldest one—winter, if you hadn’t heard—is the reason these things we call coats were invented. I see you’ve done your best with what you own, but I think a coat would really do you some good.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a sarcastic little shit. It’s no wonder you’re the one Lucy complains about the most.”

I let out a loud laugh as I started the car. “Well, Lucy and I have that sarcasm thing in common. Must be why we get along so well.”

“Solving the mysteries of the world one at a time, you and I.”

As we pulled onto the road, she reached up to fiddle with the air conditioning knobs. I winced as a blast of cold hair shot me in the face and reached over quickly to turn it off again.

“Even if my heat did work, three and a half seconds in the car wouldn’t be long enough to warm it back up,” I told her. “Unfortunately, my heat doesn’t work at all. There should be a blanket in the backseat if you’re too cold.”

The backseat of my car. Or more accurately, The Backseat of My Car. I don’t remember who made the decision or when, but at some point it was decided that it was a proper noun. I keep my bedroom pretty spick and span, but my car… well, that’s where I keep everything else. Blankets, CDs, extra clothes, parents’ old cassette tapes, bottles of water, Chapstick, empty fast food bags, pairs of shoes, a half-eaten hotdog, cologne, hand soap, a package of spare toothbrushes and some toothpaste, a comb and a brush, baby powder, hand lotion, and a box of condoms.

“Is that a half-eaten hotdog?” she asked as she peered into the Backseat.

“Don’t toss it out,” I warned her. “It’s lucky.”

“It’s turning green.”

I shrugged.

When she flipped back around in her seat, she had an leopard print Snuggie someone gave me when we toured America the year before.

“That was a gift,” I tried when she shot me a confused look—as she wrapped it around herself, mind you.

“I’m sure it was,” she replied, though she didn’t sound very sure at all.

The ride to Carnaby Street, where Lucy was currently dragging Max around looking for Christmas gifts, wasn’t too far of a drive from the house—but it felt like an eternity. The thing about girls is that, for me, they’re just really not easy to talk to. First of all, when I have a girlfriend, I just automatically assume that speaking to a female will get me into trouble—with the exception of the girlfriends of my mates, as I talked to them quite often. This was a habit I formed while dating a girl when I was about fourteen. She was convinced that as soon as I even bumped into a girl in the hall at school that I was cheating on her.

The second thing about girls that makes it really hard for me to talk to them is the fact that they’re one part fascinating and one part absolutely terrifying. Girls intimidate me. I mean, they’re obviously brilliant, and they’re beautiful. I mean, it’s just a lot to deal with, especially having one right in your car when you’re in a fight with your girlfriend and she happens to be the new stepsister of your best friend’s girlfriend who has a tendency to offer death threats to you specifically whenever you do something to make her a little bit upset.

What I mean to say is, Elliot was smart and attractive and her elbow kept bumping mine, and I was finding it very hard to concentrate on how to speak.

I guess that’s how I ended up blurting out this line of pure genius: “I just fucking love Christmas.”

“I bet you’re the favorite when it comes to your grandmother, then,” she replied easily, as though talking to me took no thought on her part whatsoever when I was just trying to find a braincell in the vast empty space that was my head. “She can knit and buy you all the hideous holiday sweaters she’d like, and you’ll wear them all twenty-five days of December until Christmas, won’t you?”

I glanced down at the sweater I was sporting today—a cherry red number with a reindeer on the front. It even had a lightbulb nose that lit up when you pressed its stomach. “Well, I was brought up to respect my elders.”

“And you just fucking love Christmas,” she reminded me, as though I could have forgotten in the minute and I half I’d just spent mentally kicking myself in the arse for letting it slip out.

I didn’t respond, instead opting to pretend that the shit show that was finding a parking space was just absolutely riveting and consumed all of my thoughts. But if I’m being honest—and I always am, for the most part—only half my mind was on finding a parking space. There was one fourth on the girl sitting beside me and another fourth on the girl who was probably already off finding another dumb bloke to give her holiday gifts to. I’d be lying if I said the latter didn’t upset me at all. It’s not like having a pretty girl in my car could make me forget that I had a pretty girl of my own already. Flake that she was, I still cared about her, and the thought of another guy putting his hands all over her kind of made me sick to my stomach.

As if she could read my mind, just as we were climbing out of the car, my mobile rang in my pocket.

“Just a second,” I said to Elliot, and she gave a shrug like she didn’t have a care in the world while I stepped away, staring intently at the name on the screen, like it might speak to me before I even answered the phone. “Er, hello?”

”Josh,” Camille said in my ear, and I braced myself for the inevitable. She’d found someone else, I was history, “Sorry you didn’t make the cut.”

“Hi,” I replied flatly, caught off-guard.

”Oh, Josh, I can’t believe myself. Really. I feel awful about yesterday. Could you come by, babe? I want to make it up to you.”

Babe. I was shocked, to say the least. Camille was not the kind of girl who used mushy pet names. She said they were nauseating and sexist. But I hadn’t misheard her, I knew that for certain.

“Well, actually, I’m out holiday shopping with a few people,” I heard myself say after a brief pause. “I think… Maybe I need some time to cool off a bit, yeah?”

My mouth was moving without any connection to my actual brain—or maybe that was my penis that didn’t have the connection. Either way, something in me was screaming to tell her I was just kidding and I’d be there in ten minutes, leave Elliot in the parking lot to find her way to Max and Lucy, and drive to my girlfriend’s for the holiday gift I’d so self-righteously passed up the night before. I’ll be honest when I tell you this—I was aching for it. But I wasn’t a sex addict, and I was still being morally firm, I guess. Camille, of course, was not too pleased with my response.

”You’re being a child, Josh,” she told me in her best Empowered Woman voice.

I scoffed. “Well, if I’m being a child, then… then I don’t even know what you’re being,” I finished brilliantly.

She let out a sinister laugh. ”Well, fine then! Go do some of your holiday shopping! But you better think about what you’re missing out on. I’ve got rallies and meetings for the next week, and this offer isn’t going to happen again!”

“I’ll see you later, Camille,” my mouth said while my libido wept.

When I returned to Elliot, she just smiled. “The feministic tit, I take it?”

“I think we prefer the term Vegan Princess,” I replied without thinking—there seemed to be a lot of that going on lately.

She didn’t offer anything else, not an opinion or advice or any other load of crap some of my friends might have laid on me at that moment. It was nice, actually, because for a second I felt like someone was actually giving me a moment to figure out what I wanted rather than what everyone else wanted for me. Camille may not have been what my friends wanted for me, or what my parents wanted for me, but she was what I wanted—for the moment at least. Things are always changing—feelings and relationships, everything with time—but I needed my own time to figure it out for myself. Today wasn’t going to be the day I broke up with Camille. Maybe I never would. But I liked having the option to choose for myself for once.