Wicked Christmas Nights: It Happened One Christmas. Leslie Kelly

Great-Aunt Susie—a ridiculously overpriced coffee table book titled The Private Lives of Garden Gnomes, perhaps—while they waited for their Lite Pomegranate Vanilla Oolang Tea Lattes with whip.

      Christmas had been reduced to expedience, kitsch and trendy drinks. Fortunately for her, she’d dropped out of the holiday a few years ago and had no intention of dropping back in.

      “Face it, girlfriend, revenge just ain’t your style. You’re as violent as a Smurf.” Kate grinned. “Or one of Santa’s elves.”

      “Not funny,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. “So not funny.”

      Her friend knew how much she disliked the silly costume she had to wear for her “internship” with a local photographer. Intern? Ha. She was a ridiculously dressed unpaid Christmas elf wiping the drool off kids’ chins as they sat on Santa’s lap. What could be more sad to someone who dreamed of being a serious photographer? Someone who was leaving to study abroad in Paris next month, and hoped to go back there to live after graduation? Someone who planned to spend the next several years shooting her way across Europe, one still image at a time?

      That girl shouldn’t care about Jude. That girl didn’t care about Jude.

      But at this moment, Lucy didn’t feel like that girl. For all the violent fantasies, what this girl felt right now was hurt.

      “You know, for the life of me, I still can’t figure out why I ever went out with him in the first place.” She swallowed, hard. “I should have known better.”

      Kate’s smirk faded and she reached over to squeeze Lucy’s hand. Kate had been witness to what had been Lucy’s most humiliating moment ever. Said moment being when Lucy had let herself in to her boyfriend Jude’s apartment, to set up his big surprise birthday party that was scheduled for tonight.

       Surprise! Your boyfriend is a lying, cheating asshat!

      Jude had already gotten started on his birthday celebration. Contrary to his claim that he was going to “pop in” on his family for the day, Jude had apparently decided to stay in town and pop in on his neighbor’s vagina.

      At least, that’s who Lucy thought had been kneeling in front of the sofa with Jude’s johnson in her mouth when she and Kate had walked into the apartment. She couldn’t be certain. They only saw the back of the bare-ass naked woman’s head—oh, plus her bare ass and, uh, the rest of her nether regions. Ew, ew, ew. She was still fighting the urge to thrust two coffee stirrers into her eyes to gouge out the image burned onto her retinas. If she’d ever had any doubt she was strictly hetero, her response to that sight would have removed it.

      “Maybe I should ask Teddy to beat him up.”

      Teddy, Kate’s boyfriend, was as broad as a table, and could snap Jude like a twig. There was just one problem. “He’s more of a pacifist than I am,” Lucy said with a smile, knowing Kate had intended to make her laugh. Teddy was the sweetest guy on the planet. “Besides, we both know Jude’s not worth the trouble.”

      “No, he’s not.” Then Kate grinned. “I am glad you got off a couple of good zingers, though. I still can’t believe you asked him if the store was out of birthday candles and that’s why he’d found something else that needed to be blown.”

      That, she had to admit, had been a pretty good line. It was a rare occurrence; the kind of one-liner she usually would have thought of hours later, when reliving the awful experience in her mind. Though, in this instance, since she was now feeling more sad than anything else, she might have been picturing herself asking him why he’d felt the need to be so deceitful.

      If he’d told her it wasn’t working out and he wanted to see other people, would she have been devastated?

      No. A little disappointed, probably, but not crushed.

      But to be cheated on—and to walk in on it? That rankled.

      “Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. I’da been busy ripping the extensions outta that ho’s head,” Kate added.

      “She didn’t cheat on me, Jude did.” Then, curious, she asked, “How do you know they were extensions?”

      “Honey, that carpet so didn’t match those drapes.”

      Though a peal of laughter emerged from her mouth, Lucy also groaned and threw a hand over her eyes, wishing for a bleach eye-wash. “Don’t remind me!”

      Funny that she could actually manage to laugh. Maybe that said a lot about where her feelings for Jude had really been. This girlfriend-gripe session wasn’t so much about Lucy’s broken heart as it was her disappointed expectations.

      She’d really wanted Jude to be a nice guy. A good guy.

      Face it, you just wanted someone in your life.

      Maybe that was true. Seeing the former man-eater Kate so happy was inspiring. But her brother Sam’s recent engagement had also really affected her. Their tiny family unit—made even tinier when they’d been left alone in the world after the deaths of their parents—was going to change. Sam had found someone, he was forming a new family, one she’d always be welcome in but wasn’t actually a major part of.

      She’d wanted something like that, too. Or at least the possibility of something like that, someday. Heck, maybe deep down she also just hadn’t wanted to haul her virginity along with her to Europe, and had been hoping she’d finally found the guy who would truly inspire her to shuck it.

      Yes, that was probably why she’d let down her guard and gotten involved with Jude when she’d known he wasn’t the right one in the long run. Being totally honest, she knew she was more sad at the idea of losing the boyfriend than at losing the actual guy. Not to mention continuing to carry the virgin mantle around her neck.

      “Well, at least you didn’t sleep with him!” said Kate, who’d had more lovers than Lucy had had birthdays.

      “I’ll drink to that,” she said, sipping her coffee, meaning it. Because being stuck with a hymen was better than having let somebody so rotten remove it.

      Something inside her must have recognized that about him, and held her back. Deep down she’d known there was something wrong about the relationship, even though he’d gone out of his way to make it seem so very right.

      Maybe Lucy really was the oldest living virgin in New York—kept that way throughout high school by her badass older brother’s reputation, and throughout college out of her own deep-rooted romantic streak. Whatever the reason, she’d waited this long. So, as much as she wanted to know what all the fuss was about, she hadn’t been about to leap into bed with Jude just because he’d said he liked her photography and opened the door for her when they went out, unlike most other college-aged dudes she knew.

      Good thing. Because it had all been an act. The nice, patient, tender guy didn’t exist. Jude had put on that persona the way somebody else might don a Halloween costume, sliding into it to be the man she wanted, then taking it off—along with the rest of his clothes—when she wasn’t around. He shouldn’t be studying to be an attorney, an actor would be much more appropriate. God, could she have been any more gullible?

      Maybe Sam was right. Maybe she really had no business living on her own in New York or, worse, going off to Europe. Perhaps she was a lamb in the midst of wolves. She should’ve just stayed in the Chicago suburb where they’d grown up, gone to community college, done first-communion portraits at Sears, married a nice local guy and gotten to work on producing cousins for Sam’s future kids. At least then she wouldn’t be sitting here all sad at being cheated on by someone she’d hoped was Prince Charming.

      “More like King Creeper,” she muttered.

      “Huh?”

      “Nothing. Just thinking about Jude.”

      Kate nodded, frowned and muttered, “Why are most men jerks? Other than Teddy, of course.”

      “Your