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CHRISTMAS CREPT UP on Nino this year.
He hadn’t quite missed it yet. The world had an exact two weeks to the day. But in the Philippines where he lived, holiday cheer started sprouting out in places once September rolled in. Tempered by the somberness of All Saints’ and Souls’ days, sure, but rolling back with the vengeance of glitter and party platters immediately after.
Out of nowhere, garlands and wreaths hung from banisters and doorjambs. Trees stood proud and twinkly in the center of lobbies and living rooms. Gift suggestions and Christmas baskets littered shopping aisles, demanding attention. And the one true clue: ‘Christmas in Our Hearts’, the token national song of the season, blared out of speakers in every public space, displacing all other sound including thoughts in Nino’s head.
All these were present this year as they were in the years before, but the details didn’t register much with him. He must not have been paying attention. He must have been distracted.
This week in December had Santana’s shift at 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.—never her favorite schedule. It set up the perfect time though for Nino to pick her up after post-gig debriefing so he could take her to have her breakfast of choice. They had Spam days, miki bihon days, champorado-and-danggit days. Always bacon days. On his non-working nights, Nino would stay in, tucked in bed, waiting patiently for her in his sleep, waking up to streaming sunlight and Santana curled up beside him.
He couldn’t choose which kind of day he favored over the other. They were all the best. Christmas cheer paled in comparison.
His holiday reminder came in the form of a text, and was due to a peripheral event.
Do we still think it’s a good idea for you to perform a Christmas song at our wedding?
It was a message from Jasper, his friend, the groom. One of many texts.
Can I listen to it?
It’s not that I don’t trust you with this.
I’m super nervous.
Two weeks and it’s Christmas and the wedding is before that what were we thinking??
Half the guests are going to cancel, aren’t they? Filthy ingrates.
I’m getting married dear god.
Maybe I don’t trust you with this.
I mean we’re friends, sure.
Can you do that popular Twilight OST song instead? The one with the many years?
Nino’s groaning and swearing woke Santana up. She’d rolled him over to face her so she could peek at his phone, the source of the commotion. She’d been wearing his shirt, only his oversized t-shirt, and the welcome softness of her against his chest and his early morning proof of virility had his arms curling around her, springing to action.
“Good morning,” he said, lifting her shirt and planting a kiss on her stomach. “Hello there, ladies.” He’d stripped the shirt off her completely and was met with her nipples perked up, defiantly so, like the arch in Santana’s eyebrows as he shifted her beneath him and started his morning worship.
Her gaze had traces of sleep but she was losing them quite quickly, if he could take her hastening breaths as any indication. Nino’s tongue swirled, hiked up and around the soft mound of her breast. His hand palmed down to pry her thigh open so he could hold her where she was surely, steadfastly growing wet.
“I like sleeping over,” Santana said through breathy gulps of air as he worked. Fingers inside her, palm bothering her clit, leading her to gift him with the most delicious moan of his name.
“Let’s just do this all day.” Nino crawled downwards, leaving kisses and shivers on her skin in his wake.
“You can’t distract me. I saw those texts.”
“Excuse me,” he said with a huff, his tongue replacing his palm in its occupation, as he kissed her there deeply, relishing the hot taste of her. “I’m doing a very good job of distracting you.”
Her hips bucked and she laughed, fingers gripping his hair. “Only because I am allowing it.”
And so he ran with it, this permission he was given. Sucking at her clit slowly, like he had all the time in the world. Palming her thighs wider apart so his fingers could help, caressing her, then sliding inside her. Santana moaned and writhed, laughed in sighs, and then he’d gone fast, too fast but just enough. Exactly what she needed. He lifted his head and flicked up his eyes to catch her grab a pillow so she could bite it and muffle her scream of release.
Nino could have done this all day. It had happened before. Alas, Santana had other, non-carnal plans.
“You didn’t have to come shopping with me.”
Santana had been arguing against his tagging along when she announced that today was the day she was getting a wedding-guest-appropriate dress. She said it again now as they were in the mall, inside her chosen store, the two of them standing among racks of chiffon and satin.
“But I do,” Nino insisted. “I love shopping.”
“Guys usually hate it. More spite when they’re just tagging along.”
“What are you talking about? I get to watch someone spend money on a nice, brand new thing at no cost to myself. How is that not the complete experience?”
Santana stopped fingering a length of tulle. She faced him with brilliant, brown eyes, mouth parted in a small gasp. “Dear god. We have something in common.”
“Do you feel that? It’s a shift in the universe.”
She laughed, one of many sounds tattooed in Nino’s mind, a collection of colors of his favorite voice.
Santana prowled along more rows of shawls and dresses, an ample selection of minis, cocktail dresses, and floor-length numbers. The wedding invite said holiday formal, which Nino thought was subject to such varied interpretation it was bound to be hilarious. She found where the store kept the sparkly, short dresses, which led to an animated discussion on what amount of gold and sequin was too Christmas-tree-topping and what was perfect for a wedding guest dress. Nino’s vote was always pro-shorter, pro-sparkle.
Ten minutes of that and Santana had her three picks, which Nino hauled for her to the dressing rooms.
He waited outside by the mirrors, a picture of the perfect boyfriend.
She came out in Dress Number 1. They looked at her in it in the mirror together and after tilting their heads this way and that, unanimously declared the dress sexy but too Oscar-statue-gold lamé.
“I thought Alice’s closet is open for your plunder?” Nino called through the fitting room door as she tried the second dress on.
“It is,” she called back. “But I don’t go to weddings a lot.”
Nino coughed.
“I don’t go to weddings ever. Fine.” He laughed, hearing her eye roll from his seat on this tattered, ottoman. Followed by a clatter of shoe and shuffle of fabric. “Not if I could help it,” Santana went on. “And this is the first time with you, and it’s important to you. I want to buy my own dress. I want to look the cutest.”
Santana had stepped out. There were many things in that moment that sent Nino’s heart in a wayward spiral.
Her smile, pure and big, eyes fixed at him and sparkling. That soft gaze she reserved only for him. The dress, a vintage-y, gold lace little number. Its spaghetti-straps were but flimsy threads, leaving her shoulders looking bare. Its softness melted around her, folding and tapering like it was made for the exact shape of her.
The words she said, proclaiming that going to this affair was a thing she wanted to do for him, with him. That they were doing this together.
It was important to him, she said. It had been. It once was. She’d asked him before what was the point in going to something he was obviously not comfortable with. When he needed a crutch to get there. And he’d said he wasn’t sure yet.
It was a wedding of his friends and he wanted to be there. He liked weddings enough, always game for a party among people he liked.
His ex was coming and he wanted to not be alone when he saw her again.
It mattered then that he could do it. That he could be in the same space with someone who was a significant part of his past. That he could look at her, not even talk to her, just be around her and not be consumed with the hurt they’d shared before. Pain that he’d caused. Receipts of things they’d gone through because of him.
But now he was back to Santana’s months’ old question, one that he should have made better effort to explore and answer earlier on.
What is the point?
Why bother now? Why tread that slippery slope when he could stay where he was? He liked it here. Here with Santana he was moving forward. Here he had room to breathe. There was no guilt, no asinine mistakes, nothing to make amends for. None to forgive.
Here he was happy.
Nino came up behind Santana, palms enveloping her shoulders, pressing down at the cords of muscle, both soft and strong. Her exposed skin was cool from the air-conditioning blasting around them, warming at his touch.
He rested his chin at the top of her head, speaking to their reflection in the mirrors. “How about we skip it?”
She frowned up at him. “What do you mean?”
“Skip the wedding. Not go.” Nino’s hands travelled the length of her arms and back up again. The careful friction was slow in sparking warmth in his chest. “Diss it altogether.”
Santana kept staring back at him, as if figuring him out. “But I want to buy this dress,” she said instead. “I never get to own this kind of dresses.”
“We can still get it and take it somewhere else. Or take it off,” Nino rushed out, each brand new idea sounding better as it came to him. “We can take you in it somewhere else and then take it off. We’ll make a day of it.”
The furrow in her brow was sinking deeper and deeper. His hands gripped her tighter.
“You RSVPed,” she pressed, still trying to make sense of him. “You promised your attendance. That means something. And you’re gifting the couple with ‘All I Want for Christmas is You.’ You’re part of the fricking program.”
Nino shifted his feet. The struggle to match her leveling, inquisitive gaze was real. His palms stopped to cup the tops of her arms, fingers wrapping around her triceps.
“If you think about it, really, really think about it,” he began on a quick breath. “My only, truly close people in life are my bandmates and you. College friends, bah. What does that even mean? A few years of being groupmates and passing out drunk in school fairs. We have since adulted and gone our separate ways. What does my attendance matter? They don’t need me on their special day.”
Santana was silent for a while, watching. Waiting for something Nino thought only god knew what. She took hold of his hands, her fingers cool against his balmy palms. Temperate and calm. She spun to face him, and Nino wished she hadn’t.
“What’s happening here, Nino?”
He wished she hadn’t said the words so gently too. Didn’t say his name like so. Like it was the only way to do it because otherwise something might break.
“Nothing.” He grunted, eyes down on their hands, focused on how nicely they were joined. How he wanted nothing else but have them together like this. “I just realized we’d have a better time spending the day to ourselves. We can go to the pool again. You’d serve me my ass racing laps and I’d enjoy it. Or we can hang out in your plant. You promised me a picnic facing the dam. Or we can stay in, because horrid holiday traffic. We also get to save on wedding presents, by the way, which from what I heard of the registry, doesn’t allow for cheap.”
He always loved when she looked at him, but now he’d rather she looked the other way.
Santana stepped back and tipped her gaze higher, letting go of his grasp so she could lift his chin with her knuckles and have him look back at her. “I know what this is but I’m going to need you to tell me.”
“It’s nothing.” His voice felt small, like a child he couldn’t help being. “I don’t want to go anymore.”
He heard it. It didn’t sound very mature-adult, didn’t sound like the explanation she was asking for. But he was sticking to it. He had nothing else.
He didn’t have to go. He’d send a present over as a compromise, fine. He’d send a video of him performing his tribute to Mariah. That would be funnier. From the sound of Jasper’s anxious texts, his wedding might be better off with exactly that. He was about to say so when Santana twirled back to face the mirrors again.
“Is it my place to say it? You know what. It is. I accept,” she said, staring back at him with something fierce. “I really think you should go.”
She truly looked resplendent in that dress. Hair lush, curves hugged by the delicate lace in perfect places. All beautiful and unfair. He felt a chip come off of his resolve. Felt that solid thing inside him that strived to always give her what she wanted poking his side.
“On your own,” she added, before he could open his mouth.
Nino blinked. Stood still for a long second. “Like alone?”
“Like alone alone.”
Her gaze reflected on the mirror didn’t let him go. Her back pressed against his chest, a familiar and welcome nest. Her hand came around to catch his and squeezed his fingers like a pledge.
Then she let go, pivoted, making her way back up to the fitting rooms.
“We’re doing well, aren’t we?” she said, turning to him. “What we have right here, Nino. It’s really, really good. But I can’t trust you to move forward with me when you can’t reconcile with what’s gone.”
