My mom gives him a kiss on the cheek and hands him a cut-crystal pitcher. “Mix it quick. Alyssa just texted Molly that they’re almost here.”
Every year on Christmas Eve afternoon, Dezzie, Rob, Alyssa, Ryland, and their kids gather at my mother’s house for a cookout. Ryland grills steaks and veggie burgers, Dezzie brings fancy desserts, my mom buys the kids a sickening number of presents, and Rob hands them out in a tropical Santa costume. At sunset we pile into my mother’s eighteen-foot speedboat, and she captains us across the bay to the marina, so the kids can see the sailboats decked out in holiday lights.
It’s a capitalist fantasy come to life, and one of my mother’s great joys of the year. Given that I am her only child, she is bitterly divorced, and I have not provided her with grandchildren, she likes to spoil my friends with her great stores of affection and material wealth.
“Punch?” Rob asks, holding out the pitcher. I decline, knowing this concoction is mostly Captain Morgan with a dash of Sprite and maybe a thimble of cranberry juice. I’m not trying to get torn up for a kids’ party and fall off my mom’s boat.
Rob shrugs and chugs a glass of it.
“Jesus, slow down. It’s eleven a.m.,” Dezzie says, taking the glass.
“Santa has to stay toasty up in the North Pole,” Rob says, waggling his eyebrows.
Outside, there is a bloodcurdling shriek.
“The kids are here!” my mom says.
She throws open the door, and Frankie and Amelia run in, passing all of us in favor of jumping on Rob. “Uncle Santa!” they cry.
Ryland is close behind them, juggling a stack of presents. “Whoa, guys, slow down,” he says. “What did we talk about? Don’t break Aunt Kathy’s house.”
My mom waves this away. “Oh, they’re fine. How are you, darling?”
“Fantastic, now that I’ve seen you.” He shoots her his killer smile—at once charming and sincere, like it emanates straight from his heart. She practically swoons. Not even Kathy Marks can resist his striking good looks—olive skin, expressive eyebrows, and just the right amount of stubble.
He looks over his shoulder. “You good, Lyss?”
Alyssa’s walking toward the house very, very slowly with a hand on her belly, which is even bigger than Rob’s.
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she calls.
Dezzie and I rush out to meet her. She looks amazing, her skin all glowy from hormones or the Florida humidity or the effort it is taking her to walk.
“Look at you!” Dez cries.
“Yep. Fourteen months pregnant.”
“Mama, come on,” Amelia yells, sticking her head out the door indignantly. “Santa’s here.”
The next six hours are a flurry of Christmas-scented chaos as the kids open presents and the adults try to keep them from diving to their deaths at sea. It isn’t until we get back from the marina, and the kids pass out in the guest room, that the adults get a chance to catch up in peace.
“So we have some news,” Rob says. He’s been steadily working his way through the polar punch and seems a little on the tipsy side.
Dezzie gives him the side-eye. “Hey. Don’t—”
“Oh, come on. We’re all family here.” He raises his glass in the air. “Ms. Chan here and I are officially trying to get pregnant.”
“Aww, guys!” I say. “That’s amazing.”
Dezzie and Rob have wanted kids forever, but they’ve been waiting for him to finish his master’s in social work first.
“You should follow their example, Molly,” my mother says. “Some of us aren’t getting any younger.”
“Um, I’m single?”
“Let’s work on that,” she says. “Do you all know any nice men?”
This question surprises me. My mother has never given me shit about my spinster status before. Given her own romantic history, I thought she was relieved I’ve never shacked up with anyone.
But actually, she’s been acting funny all week. She keeps wandering off to take mysterious phone calls and coming back all distracted. And when a massive bouquet of holiday roses arrived, she snatched the note before I could read it and would only say it was from “a client.”
Either she has a disease she’s not telling me about—which seems unlikely, as she’s in very high spirits—or she has the unthinkable: a crush.
“We don’t know any single guys anymore,” Alyssa says. “We’ve somehow become those people who only have parent friends.”
“Well, Seth says hi,” Rob says impishly.
“Seth?” my mom asks.
“Rubenstein,” Dezzie says.
“Seth Rubenstein?” my mother repeats, like she’s said something ghastly. “Well there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Whatever became of him?”
She never warmed up to Seth. We dated during the worst years after her divorce, and she thought we were too serious too young. That he would either get me pregnant or break my heart.
She was relieved when I broke up with him before he got the chance to do either.
“He lives in Chicago,” Dezzie says. “Molls didn’t mention we saw him at the reunion?”
