We know every word to every song by heart now.
We go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong
I look around the room at my Pink Ladies dancing in my Pink Lady.
We do go together.
The third weekend of December, after Desiree’s event and our staff party, the “girls” join me at my house for our Christmas party.
Our annual holiday sleepover never changes. I make snowman pancakes to kick off the morning; Holly makes mimosas; Leah bakes her family’s beloved cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting; Noah bakes his mom’s cranberry-orange muffins and then goes on our latte run.
We gorge and start watching the following movies, always in this order and always in our pajamas: Elf, Christmas Vacation and Miracle on 34th Street. Then we shower, Holly and Noah do our makeup, we get dressed up as our Grease characters, we order pizza, drink wine, exchange our Secret Santa gifts and then we watch Grease—singing and dancing our particular numbers.
As we do every year, we buy each other books for our Secret Santa.
Yes, as bookstore folk, we read constantly. But, as bookstore folk, we always read within the genre we buy for, and usually only books months in advance of their publication. As a result, I only read fiction, Noah only reads nonfiction, Leah only reads children’s books, and Holly only reads the summaries we send her so she can post our recommendations and bookseller picks on social media and our website.
“I wonder what it is?” Noah asks with a laugh, shaking the package.
He opens it.
“No!” he says. “An autographed copy of The Lost Library. How’d you get this?”
“A publishing friend owed me a favor,” I say, thinking of Kathleen.
“What’s it about?” Holly asks.
“It’s a novel about a lonely boy in the future, where books no longer exist, and he discovers a hidden library.” Noah looks at me. “It sold for a million dollars, and it’s not coming out for a year. It’s a heavily guarded secret.” Noah looks at me. “Susan. Thank you.”
Noah gifts Holly a coffee table book that is a tutorial on the hottest new makeup trends, and Holly gifts Leah travel books about Greece, Spain and Italy, the three places she wants most to visit before sixty.
I look around and hold out my hands. “Gee, thanks for the love.”
The three of them look sheepishly at me and then began nodding and pecking the air at one another like The Drinking Bird I had on my desk when I was little.
“Spill it,” I say.
Holly stands and pulls out a wrapped present from underneath the cushion.
“What is going on?”
She holds it out. The package is quite large, almost the size and thickness of the scrapbooks my grandma has stacked on her wooden coffee table.
I unwrap it, tossing paper this way and that, like an excited child.
“What in the world?” I ask.
It is, indeed, a scrapbook. Embossed on the black leather cover in bright red lettering are the words The Single Kringle.
I open the scrapbook.
A copy of my fourth grade poem—in my childish cursive—is enclosed in a plastic sleeve.
“What in the world?” is the only thing I can manage to repeat like a crazed parrot.
I turn the page.
There is the photo Holly took with me and the hot Santa surrounded by stickers of hearts and falling snow, a reindeer-led sleigh flying over a city that looks like Chicago.
“You all really seem like scrapbookers,” I say.
I turn the page to a printout of what looks to be a Facebook page profile of a handsome man wearing a Santa costume.
I turn the page.
There is another, and another, another. In fact, there is an entire scrapbook filled with mysterious men all in holiday attire.
My eyes bulge. “Someone’s been busy,” I say, glaring at Holly.
“We’ve all been busy,” Leah says.
“Let me explain, please,” Holly says. She walks over to the rocker I’m sitting in. She slides in next to me, and the chair rocks wildly back and forth, just like my mind is doing. “I had mentioned that I might do a little research...”
“A little research? This is like CSI: North Pole!” I say.
“Actually, we all did a little research,” Noah adds. “Holly gave us the names of all the men who fit the criteria of the guy who hit on you at the Santa Run. Age range, lives in Chicago, works out or is a runner.”
“And I received a ton of emails from followers who thought they might know who this guy is based on appearance and the fact that they knew someone who ran the race in a Santa costume. We spent a lot of time narrowing the list down,” Holly says. “A lot!”
“Really?” I ask. “You know this is insane, right? I mean, you all are aware you’re off your...” I push back, and Holly and I go swinging “...rockers.”
“We do,” Holly says. “And we weren’t even going to give this to you, but after having dinner with your grandparents...”
“I knew I smelled a Christmas rat,” I say.
“...they said if we didn’t push you, they were worried—after your last disaster—that you might never take a chance again,” she continues.
“But they just told me my perfect guy might not be dressed as Santa!” I say.
“He has to be!” Noah yelps. “I just know it has to be! That’s your happy ending!”
“Look at me, Susan,” Holly says.
My mind whirs back to Desiree, who uttered the same words.
I look at Holly.
“I’m worried you might never take a chance again, too, now that you’ve hit forty. I know you, better than I know myself. You can say you’re fine on your own, you can say you’re happy, but I can feel in my soul that you had a connection with this mystery man. I know this is Crazy Christmas with capital Ks, but I also know that I don’t want you to look back on your life in twenty years and be filled with a single regret.”
“Why do we watch Miracle on 34th Street every single year?” Noah asks.
“Because faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to,” the three of them say in unison.
“You’ve taught us too well,” Leah says with a wink.
“Maybe it’s silly to believe in these movies any longer. Maybe it’s silly to watch Hallmark and read books with happy endings,” I say.
“We all deserve love,” Noah says.
“We all deserve a happy ending,” Leah adds.
“What do you want, Susan?” Holly asks.
“More wine?”
“Be honest,” she presses.
I glance at the pictures of my parents and grandparents.
“I don’t know if I need anybody—” I start.
Everyone groans.
“But, if I did find someone, I’d want our relationship to be like my parents’ and grandparents’. It’s not perfect, it’s not always easy, but a relationship where someone supports my dreams like my grandparents did with each other when they made a leap of faith to open Sleigh By the Bay. I want a relationship where someone finishes my sentences like my parents did, or to look in his eyes and know exactly what he’s thinking and feeling. I want someone who’s my best friend, like my grandparents are to each other.” I look at my Pink Ladies. “What do you want?”
“Danny Zuko,” the three say with a laugh.
I look at them and then flip through the pages of the scrapbook. Man after man in Santa caps, beards and red velvet coats look back at me.
I want to believe, I do, but I don’t know if I can handle another bad date, another cheesy line, another awkward conversation.
I shut the scrapbook. Be honest, Susan, I think to myself. You actually don’t know if you can handle any more hurt in your life. Another loss. What if you fell in love and...
“Can’t we just watch Grease?” I ask. “We’ve gone off script.”
Leah fills our glasses with wine.
When each of our characters has a big number, we must stand and sing. The wine flows, especially for me, since I have so many numbers as Sandy.
When Noah sings “Look at Me, I’m Sandra Dee,” we all gather around him on the floor as if he were Rizzo. Although we are just mimicking make-believe characters in a movie, my heart drops when he sings:
Watch it, hey, I’m Doris Day, I was not brought up that way
I watch Noah place a blond wig on his head, pretending to be Sandy.
How was I brought up?
To believe in Santa, as Susan does in Miracle on 34th Street.
To believe in love and herself, as Sandy does in Grease.
To believe, as Noah just said, in things when common sense tells you not to.
When the song finishes, I return to my rocker and can picture myself in twenty years—long after my grandparents are gone, perhaps even when my friends have moved on in their lives and we no longer share traditions like this—rocking alone.
I awake with a start, my neck cramping and head thumping.
My mouth feels like the Sahara. My eyelashes are clumped with too much mascara.
The tree lights are still plugged in, and I glance around the room. My Pink Ladies now resemble an old oil painting of women in repose. Wigs and wineglasses are scattered everywhere, and I reconsider my thought: the room resembles Moulin Rouge.
My phone continues to vibrate somewhere on my body. It’s the reason I’m awake.
I feel the constant trill, and I fish around until I find my phone stuffed in an empty bag of holiday Hershey’s Kisses underneath my rump. My lap is filled with tiny bits of foil.
I squint at my cell.
1,343 notifications.
I sit up too quickly, and the rocker catapults me back and forth, making my stomach lurch.
I click on my Facebook account.
My last personal post was a few days ago, a photo of me at Chandler’s with Desiree, Luka and Leah.
I scroll. There are so many new posts in which I’m tagged, my previous photo doesn’t even appear no matter how quickly my finger scrolls. I go to Instagram. My IG is flooded with comments. Twitter is atwitter, both on my personal and professional feed. I click back to Facebook.
I begin to read the posts.
Is this you?
I’m the hot Santa!
I’m your Miracle on 34th Street!
I click on the link accompanying each post. A photo of me and the hot Santa appears along with this:
COULD YOU BE THIS
WOMAN’S SINGLE KRINGLE?
On December 2, Susan Norcross—a Michigan bookstore owner and avid runner—participated in Chicago’s famed Santa Run...dressed as Mrs. Claus! At the start of the race, the man pictured in this Santa Claus costume (with very nice reindeer legs!) yelled a corny pickup line at Susan, before approaching her and discussing something very specific. When the race began, the two drifted apart like the snowflakes that cold day. As Santa disappeared, he yelled for Susan to meet him at a specific bar. But Santa never showed. Susan’s friends and family believe it was fate the two were destined to meet. Why? Susan’s mother and grandmother both met their future husbands at the holidays when the men were dressed—you guessed it!—as Santa. Please help us find him! If you feel you are the missing Santa—or know who it is—you must include the pickup line you used, what the two of you discussed, and the bar where you were supposed to meet. What happened to you, Santa? Where did you run after the Santa Run?
X’s & O’s & Ho-Ho-Ho’s!
When I stop reading, I realize my mouth hasn’t just fallen open, my entire jaw has come unhinged. My phone—and mind–continue to trill.
I also realize my Christmas scrapbook was just a ruse. The Pink Ladies had already hatched their plot to set me up.
“Wake up!” I yell.
The three, likely still a little drunk, jerk upright with a start.
I hold up my cell.
“What have you naughty, naughty elves been up to?”