Christmas. It Ends With Sixty Nine.

I have the nicest dreams these days. They only turn sad when I wake up and realize she’s not lying there beside me.

Will I ever stop thinking about her? The girl I only talked to for a handful of hours? She stole my memories of every moment with her before that. And maybe all those memories were nothing but pain, betrayal and disappointment, but…

No. I sense that isn’t true.

But regardless, I need to at least try to move on and focus on my future. Maybe I’ll just give in and join a dating app like Liam.

Yes, mom finally relaxed her psychotic house arrest of my brothers (mostly thanks to dad’s prompting) and she has given the terror teens their very own cell phones. It doesn’t make much of a difference to Aiden. He’s still a total introvert who just wants to be a witch-hunter and keep the farm running with dad in his spare time during the days. Liam by contrast is enjoying life to its fullest, and he does have some serious game with the ladies, I will give him that. He has way more confidence than I ever had. But also less integrity, so he is probably going to wind up punched in the face again at some point.

Felix has moved in with Grace and gone back to work in construction, whereas I am still living at the farm, working on getting my high-school GED online so I can eventually go to veterinary school, just like my dad.

Nick’s given up on being a vet apparently, now that his father’s no longer around to bully him into it.

I was horrified to find out what happened to the Carsons. I visited Nick every day in the hospital, all through November, until he was fully recovered from what the authorities think is an animal attack but Nick shakily explained to me was actually his own father, losing his mind and wolfing out after drinking infected lycanthrope blood.

I’m still worried about him, and we make time to hang out most days, whenever he needs to talk or distract himself with something other than getting high.

I’ve been using the equipment salvaged/stolen from his father’s lab, and my dad’s been helping with that research, studying blood samples with me. He supports my theory that our blood is now a fairly safe consumable, still loaded with healing factor, because even though we still turn into wolves a couple nights a month, all the rage hormones and demonic traces of sulfur are gone from our blood.

That means I can make sure Nick won’t have to suffer from that same degenerative nerve disease his father was afflicted with. I know he’s scared to take these samples, but I can quiet those worries with proven research, I just know I can. Then I’ll give him as much blood as he needs, until he’s cured.

For now though, I need to focus on Christmas shopping. We’re here at Liam’s new favorite place in the world, the downtown mall, and I need last minute gifts for everyone from my parents to my brothers and Nick. I was honestly too busy with school, and research, and other worries to even remember the date or that Christmas was fast approaching. Now it’s the twenty first of December already, and I need to find some great, personal gifts for my family so we can celebrate getting through the absolute worst year of our lives and winding up finally, mostly at peace.

Mom and dad are happily married, together once again. Felix and Grace will get that same happy ending, and as for me…

I still feel empty, like all my insides have been carved away.

But whatever, I’ll get over it eventually.

I’m sure I will get over her.

For the moment, I’m nothing but stressed though, most thoroughly done with this crushing sea of holiday crowds. Aiden started a fist fight with someone who shoved him in line and got hauled outside by security already, so now it’s just me browsing through this overflowing department store trying to find out where the wedding registry is.

Felix and Grace are getting married this January, so I’m picking up the gift before I lose track of time again and forget. It’s going to be a pretty rushed ceremony, but Grace’s dad apparently made a whole deal about the two of them living in sin by sharing a house without a formal marriage contract between them. He was already raging out at Grace for spending an entire two weeks at our farm this October, and I don’t think showing him Kathy’s surveillance equipment constantly monitoring his daughter all that time would have calmed the old man down any.

He likes Felix well enough though. Respectful, blue-collar, charity volunteering son in law that he is, it’s kind of impossible not to like Felix (now that his temper’s gone). I’m sure Grace and he will have a more than happy future together, though I am also pretty sure they skipped the birth control and we’ll be having a new addition to the Galanis clan eight months from now.

That is definitely the main reason they’re rushing to get hitched.

I find my way to one of the couple’s requested gifts: a bright yellow Keurig machine, and wait my eternity in the check out line, studying the all-too convenient contraption and thinking on how I could really use a cup of coffee now myself. Double espresso to calm my anxiety.

I really do love the color of this thing though – that bright, sunny yellow. It really just lights up a room.

Yellow was her favorite color.

Now why would I remember that? I’m not supposed to remember. She didn’t want me to.

I get them to wrap the coffee maker to hide that distracting, bright paint job from my sight, then I drop it off in my car before heading toward the book store and its adjoining cafe.

That lovely smell of fresh brewed roast is already clearing my head, and I’m willing to wait in this particular line as long as it takes.

Then I see her.

I didn’t smell her over the potent coffee fumes at first. But maybe that’s not true, and my subconscious led me right here on purpose, like a magnet pulled helplessly to its overpoweringly attractive other half.

I catch her eye, and she shoots me a smile, before jerking her gaze right back to her work, perfecting someone’s latte art. Such a glowing smile from someone pretending not to recognize me. Her friend is hitting her on the arm and whispering as I step up to order, unable to keep my eyes on the barista at the till. I’m too fixated on Cassi, wondering why she’s ignoring me. I can’t help but question if she genuinely lost all her memories before that morning in the woods like I did. If she does remember just that day, then she would definitely still be frightened by me, uneasy with me being here...

“Do you know what you want?” the barista right in front of me repeats, and I jerk my eyes from the blushing ex-witch trying to keep up with her endless line of drink orders.

“I uh, latte. Extra foam.”

“Anything else?”

I look right back toward Cassi. “Uh, no. That’s everything. Thanks.”

“And your name?”

“Jase.”

I wait for Cassi to react to that name. Maybe she really did not recognize me at first.

She still does not recognize me. I can see it now. The way she’s smiling down at her drinks and casting me little glances from beneath lowered lashes, that’s just how a stranger might flirt with me.

“Cassi?”

She blinks, straightening in surprise. Then she looks down at her name tag. It doesn’t read Cas. It says Sam for some reason. “Saw right through my fake name tag, huh? Normally I’d find that alarming, but, uh… Hi. It’s, uh, Jase, right?” She laughs, holding up my name-marked cup.

“I’m Jill,” her friend offers, abandoning her work and stepping right up to the bar with that overeager, leering look in her eyes that always makes me uncomfortable.

“Hello, Jill,” I politely return, sliding down the bar to try to get closer to my mostly forgotten ex. “But Cassi, you… You really don’t remember me?”

“Um...” She turns bright red. “Like… elementary school? Second grade maybe, the kid with the…?”

I shake my head, and she blushes all the redder. This isn’t an act. She’s really forgotten all about me. Again. She wiped her own memory I guess to finally free her of the trauma of our relationship. It must have been traumatic for her. Why else would she have wanted to forget it all in the first place?

I pull away from the bar and head for the exit. “Sorry. My mistake.”

“Wait! Your drink!” She finishes steaming the latte, holding it out to me in desperate apology.

“Oh, right. Thanks.” My hand settles overtop her own, and that smile of hers… I just want to hold her, to stroke her hair and soothe away that nervousness, then that smile would be the most dazzling sight in the world.

She clears her throat. “I, uh…. My number is…” She looks pointedly to the side of the cup and I realize she wrote out her phone number in rushed strokes of sharpie pen. “But I do go on break in like twenty minutes too, if you wanted to just… grab a coffee. Another coffee. And like catch up?”

I shouldn’t say yes. I should just let her go, but instead I’m nodding like an idiot, and her coworkers are all gossiping and shoving each other again.

There’s no way we could be bad for each other. Everything about being with her is just so natural and… easy. It can stay that way too, because she doesn’t need to know where I met her before. I make up some shallow but not untrue excuse of driving her home this one time, and she’s petrified for a second, swearing, “Shit. How drunk was I?”

I flush. “You weren’t--”

“Shit! We slept together, and I don’t even remember it?!”

“No, we didn’t do anything like…” Not that time anyway. “I just drove you home.”

“God that’s embarrassing,” she groans. “And a hell of a missed opportunity on my part.” She seems to mutter that admission without even thinking, hand flying to her mouth right after the fact.

I can’t help but grin, leaning in closer. “I was really glad I met you. And I am really glad, today, meeting you again, like this.”

She hides her face all the deeper in her hands. “You can’t look at me like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to start melting!”

“Melting?”

“Like swooning, fainting, embarrassing myself all the further. I can’t believe I forgot someone like…” She swallows. “God, I must have been untold levels of drunk. Was this back in uni? Because I am not that much of a party girl, not ever, I swear. There was just this one week where… Nevermind. That’s like way oversharing.”

“No, it’s fine. I mean, I want to hear it, if you’re comfortable with… telling.” I want to hear every detail about you.

She seems to want to know everything about me too. We stay talking way past the end of her break, until her manager angrily yells that she’s an hour over her thirty minutes. I tell her I have more shopping to get done today anyway, and I idle around the mall until she’s off work.

Then I take her out to dinner, and we make plans to meet up the next day, and the next week after that.

Love at first date most definitely exists. I don’t care what anyone says.