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Before: Christmas in Terminal A... Part Two


Ashley

Once Nick had devoured the rest of my fries, thrown away his sala, broken down and bought his own Whopper and fries (which he reluctantly shared with me), and spent a good deal of time and energy worshipping junkfood before regressing low enough to buy a cheap knock off of a Twinkie at a kiosk, which he then spent even more time and energy bitching about the closing of the Hostess factory and how much time he'd wasted not eating Twinkies while they were still open... well, there wasn't much else to do. I mean, it's an airport, which is crappy enough to spend a couple hours in during a layover, but thanks to Nick's family we now had almost a whole day and Nick was persistent that we'd get in on a standby and didn't want to just get a hotel room. He insisted that he could get us onto a flight by pulling a few famous people strings.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked a poor airline employee, who looked bewildered and exhausted at the same time.

"Nick, c'mon, nobody gives a shit who you are," I said.

"Dude, I'm a Backstreet-fuckin'-Boy!" he said.

"Nobody cares," I answered. The employee looked grateful that I was trying to tame the beast.

Nick fumed.

"Look, Diva Delicious," I said once I'd gotten him away, "Stop being an asshole."

"I'm not an asshole," he said, pouty like a five year old.

"You're acting like one."

A couple ran by, the girl had blonde hair and the guy, whose skin was fairly dark, had wavy red hair. Nick turned, glowering at them as they approached and the airline employee waved them through. "DID YOU SEE THAT?" he yelped.

"See what exactly?" I asked.

He squwaked and squealed for the next two hours, insisting that the couple had been Taylor Swift and Harry Styles from One Direction. They definitely weren't, but despite the fact that I said this repeatedly and gave him some damn good reasons why they weren't Haylor, Nick still insisted and complained.

"They got ushered right by us," he muttered, "Sonsabitches."

By this point, we'd meandered around while Nick bitched and complained and come to rest on the chairs by the terminal that our flight would eventually be departing from, Nick having finally given up and admitted we were never gonna get on a plane, and it being more hassle than it was worth now to go to a hotel as we were already past security. Nick was laying on his back across five seats and I was on my back across three, my knees bent as I did a crossword puzzle from an abandoned newspaper. The seats were only slightly padded and I could feel my neck stiffening as I laid there. The hub bub and craziness had died down and soon the only sound was the drone of the walkways, the quiet audio track of 24-hours of Christmas Story on TBS, and the distant sounds of a frenzy for the last flight to New York City somewhere across the airport.

Nick sighed, long and low. "Holidays are bitches," he said.

"Yup," I said.

Nick continued on like I hadn't agreed with him, like he had a point to prove, "They're depressing as hell. Like all holidays in general." He listed, "Thanksgiving... Easter... Valentine's... Birthdays..." Pause. Then, "Well Halloween and Saint Paddy's are okay, but other than that Holidays really suck ass. Huh, Dogface?" he looked over at me, craning his neck back to see me, which forced his face into a squint.

I put my crossword puzzle down. "Ayyyye, I hate'em," I grumbled in a pirate voice.

Nick laughed. "Arrr," he agreed. He rolled onto his stomach. "Make'em walk the plank, the scoundrals."

"Aye," I said, nodding, "And cut off their hands!"

Nick snorted, "They ain't got hands."

"That's because I cut'em off."

Nick flipped back onto his back again and grinned up at the ceiling, his hands tucked together on his chest. I lifted my crossword back up again. "You're so ridiculous," he said, a laugh in his voice.

"You are, too," I replied.

Nick turned his head again. "I never in a billion years thought I'd spend Christmas with you like this," he laughed.

"I never thought I'd have a whopper for Christmas dinner."

"Hot damn it was good, though," he said appreciatevely.

"Your lack of having had any junkfood enhanced the taste a lot," I replied. "You haven't eaten anything but rabbit food in so long it could've been garnished with toejam and you would've liked it."

Nick chuckled, "True."

"You probably like toejam," I accused jokingly.

Nick grinned, "Put it on my toast every morning." He licked his lips.

"You're gross," I said, laughing.

Nick pointed up at the TV, "It's the best part."

I looked up just in time to see Flick get his tongue stuck to the flagpole. Nick laughed. "If we was in this movie," he said, "Which one would we be?"

"I'd be Flick," I replied, watching Ralphie run off because the bell rang.




Nick

The airport got quiet. I got quiet. Dogface got quiet. The lights dimmed as the airport tried to conserve energy. The few people left in the airport were employees and the few pathetic hopefuls like myself and Dogface. I stared up out the window, long after Dogface had fallen asleep watching Christmas Story on the postage stamp sized TV set, and stared up at the stars in the midnight blue sky. I was exhausted, but my mind wouldn't shut off, the way minds don't shut off on the night before Christmas.

It was at that moment that I realized it.

I'd spent the last two weeks leading up to Christmas trying to think of something to get for Dogface. She's not easy to buy stuff for, so it'd been a challenge and I'd finally thought of something: a copy of Tom Petty's song Free Fallin' on vinyl. She loved the song, it was her favorite in the whole world. I'd spent a week locating a copy of it on eBay, autographed by Tom Petty, and another week eagerly awaiting for it to arrive. Then I'd spent like three hours wrapping the damn thing and now, sitting at an airport well after midnight on Christmas Even, I realized I'd left it in the basement at my mother's house when I'd left in such a hurry.

I glanced at Dogface, sleeping so peacefully across from me. Something sorta like guilt crawled around in my stomach, and I wondered how the hell I'd managed to forget her present after all the crap I'd gone through to find it. The one time I'd actually spent some time thinking about something and investing time in it and I fuck it up. Incredible.

For a moment, I was tempted to just roll over and go back to sleep and let her laugh it off with me the next day. And for a moment, I even let myself think that this was acceptable. She probably wasn't expecting anything anyways, I told myself, and I turned onto my side so that I was facing the back of the chairs and closed my eyes. But then I imagined Dogface the next morning, pulling a big present out of her bags for me and me being all sorry no gift because I'm a dumbass and I realized I couldn't do this.

I rolled, Ninja-style, out of my seat and sat on the floor, staring at Dogface for a long moment, making sure I hadn't worken her up by moving abruptly. When I was certain she hadn't woken up, I crawled down the length of the rows of chairs before standing up and rushing off into the quiet airport toward the little gift shops that we'd woven through earlier when I'd got my so-called Twinkie. I had no idea what the hell one gets for a girl in the airport on Christmas Eve, but there was no way in hell I could just not have anything for her.

Unfortunately the Godiva Chocolate kiosk was closed, but I ducked into the magazine store and poked around at all the stuff that said Miami on it. Plastic snow globes with flamingos in them, hats shaped like flamingos, cards with pictures of beaches, and chocolate bars shaped like crocodiles fileld the shelves.

I spent way too long, and, considering what I ended up with, way too much money. And I didn't even get any wrapping paper of any kind, so when I got back to the chairs, I hijacked the crossward puzzle she'd been doing and used the paper to makeshift wrap the gift I'd managed to find for her. It looked like crap. I frowned at it and tore the bag to make a really lame ass bow. I sighed.

At least I had something for her. But I knew she deserved better.