Like silver glitter on a chintzy postcard, tiny prisms of lazy snowfall dazzle outside the train window. Their fat, flaky cousins would make a better job concealing the decaying train station of the listless town. Nothing seems to have changed here in the past ten years – at least not for the better.
Passengers flock off the platform in gloomy patches of black and grey. I never understood why people made the winter blues worse by wearing such boring, depressing colours.
Me, on the other hand, I pat my bright orange Gucci puffer jacket placed carefully beside me on the seat, I bring sunshine wherever I go, I smirk at my own bitter joke as the train is gathering speed and leaves the station with a long double whistle.
The door between the carriages opens with that loud, unnerving pressure-release sound prompting me to murmur a little unreligious prayer for my cabin to remain empty.
Thankfully, it is just the cheerful chap with his trolley service again and he looks at me with his eyes full of hope.
How could he suspect that even the previous bottle of travel size wine is still sitting unopened in my handbag. I had a few on the flight and I’m already quite mellow; if I had one more, I’d probably fall asleep to the monotone clickety-clack of the wheels. I only bought a bottle from him to break a large note and to be courteous. Some twelve-fourteen years ago, I had been working on these very same trains. Not selling wine and coffee, but last-minute hotel rooms to tourists visiting the capital. But he looks at me with his sad puppy eyes and I give in.
“Ok, just one more.”
His eyes light up and his soft pink lips turn into a smile that warms my heart a little.
“You don’t seem to be in a very festive mood,” he says trying to engage in small talk when I hand him the money for the wine.
“Just a long journey,” I lie, emphasising it with a depleted sigh.
The truth is, I don’t want to be here, and as much as I’m looking forward to seeing my family after two years, I’m dreading it just as much. I have always been the black sheep of the family, ‘the daughter gone astray’, a college dropout, who’s more interested in travelling and adventures than building a career or settling down. Whenever I’m home, I feel like the bull’s eye on the dartboard of their disapproval. And now that I foolishly told them that I’m dating someone for almost two years, I’m sure I’m going to get an earful of ‘when are you getting married’ and ‘when are you having babies’.
But there are a few things they don’t know about him.
I hear my phone buzz and I politely say goodbye and Merry Christmas to the train attendant.
How was the flight? The text reads with a grinning devil emoji at the end.
Long but ‘pleasant,’ I reply with the same purple devil.
I take it, you followed my instruction and had both the butt plug and the vibrating balls in.
Yes sir, and and...
I hate it when you tease me with your ‘and and... ‘! Spill it!
I love winding him up, so I send him a grinning cat emoji then tell him, The flight was quiet, so I’ve been even naughtier and played with myself a bit under a blanket.
Naughty girl! I just woke up with a raging hard-on and you just made it so much worse. Something has to be done about it now. Where are you now?
On the train.
Are you alone?
Yes.
I want you to roll your nipples between your fingers and send me a pic or a vid.
I don’t know which turns me on more, imagining him stroking his morning erection under his thick warm duvet or his instructions for me. I follow his order without a second thought and turning towards the window and pulling up my t-shirt, I perk up my nipples between my fingertips. When they’re nice and hard, I send him a video of pinching and pulling them roughly, the way he loves torturing them, while purring into the camera, telling him how much I miss him.
He replies, that he ‘misses me too, especially my warm mouth that is so good at morning blowies’. Then he tells me ‘he wants more, he wants to see my moist pussy.’
I can’t do that in here, I’m wearing jeans.
All I want is a picture of your sweet little pussy with your fingers inside.
His way with words to phrase his instructions always arouses me beyond sanity. Trying to ignore my concerns, I find myself activating the camera on my phone and sliding my jeans onto my knees along with my knickers.
I make a short video of parting my nether lips, coating them with the sticky mess that this little game brought on. Then just for show, I finger myself nice and deep and lick my fingers teasingly.
Are you happy now? I finish the video with a smirk right into the camera.
Good girl.
I settle back into my seat and decide to pop one of the wines open while awaiting my prize, which is a two-minute video of him stroking himself to a cum-squirting-everywhere orgasm.
So, erm, yeah, this is my ‘boyfriend.’ Not really family Christmas dinner material.
Dad picks me up from the station. He hugs me so tightly and so long that I become slightly light-headed. “It’s so great to see you again after all this Covid madness,” he tells me when he finally lets go of me.
He is the only one who loves me for who I am without being judgemental. None of my sisters ‘I’m leading my life better than you’ smugness or the ‘where is your life going’ and ‘you bring disgrace to the family’ preaching of my grandmother.
And now there is a new member of the family, whom I have to try to please: my dad’s new wife. She seems friendly and I’m happy my dad found love after my mum’s death, but let’s just say, Wilma likes to do things her way and her way only.
As it turns out, she is the last person, I have to worry about. Her son, Tommy, on the other hand, is a real pain in the backside. The first two days, just leading up to Christmas, I fail to see him without his favourite beer glued to his hand. I cannot tell if he’s an alcoholic or it is just holiday over-drinking, but he’s loud and really annoying with flat jokes and boring anecdotes from his pathetic life.
Apparently, we went to the same high school, which isn’t surprising, as our town has only one, but I just don’t remember him at all. He was one year my junior and now he talks non-stop about assumed scenes and parties we both attended.
Then he chooses no other occasion but the all-family Christmas dinner to remind me of the monster of all parties back in my senior year, which started as a NYE party and went on for three (or possibly four) days. Well, yeah, I remember that one. One of my best and definitely the most memorable house party, ever.
And the little fucker seems to know why.
He tosses the name of my then boyfriend and another few friends up in the air, spinning it, like a spider spinning a web around its victim, while wearing a smug, know-it-all grin, waiting for my reaction.
Well, yeah that party kinda turned into a bit of an orgy, so what?
When he starts saying how all of those friends allegedly slept in the same room, I stop him mid-sentence. “I think your memories are a bit blurred, you’ve had one too many drinks, haven’t you?” I strike back. “Or, like ten too many.”
“I heard very interesting things about that night...”
“Oh, did you? Fascinating. Maybe tell me later,” Or never! I grimace and gesture for him to follow me into the kitchen where I interrogate him.
“What are you playing at? It’s a damn Christmas dinner.”
“There’s no Christmas dinner without some gossip and mischief,” he grins with rows of perfect pearly whites. Under other circumstances, I’d say he’s quite handsome. Maybe. In a Ted Bundy sort of way.
“I don’t wish to be the centrepiece of entertainment. You’re just jealous, you have one girlfriend and you can’t even satisfy her,” I hiss into his arrogant face. It is just a stab in the dark based on information crumbs from my dad. Apparently, they have been on and off for the last three years.
Tom tries to come up with something to say, but I walk away, declaring the conversation to be over.
Luckily, no one of our families had been paying attention to our bickering. They are all busy trying to entertain my sister’s two hyperactive rascals, who are no doubt high on candy and kiddie punch and are wrecking the table, smearing chocolate cake everywhere to Wilma’s utter dismay. I take delight in the knowledge, that as perfect as my sister is, at least her kids are absolute little devils.
I nick a ciggie from my aunt’s handbag like I have been doing at family gatherings for the last twenty years. Sometimes she offers one and we sneak out together for a much-needed girl talk but she’s busy in the kitchen now and I really need some space. I’m a bit of an introvert and I’m not used to all this chaos.
The little front garden is covered with thick snow now and the narrow path that’s been shovelled clean takes me to the street. This is the first time I’m staying at Wilma’s house, dad only moved here about a year ago, so nothing is familiar around her house, but the streets are. We used to ride our bikes on these quiet streets when we were kids and mum and dad used to pull us on the sledge on these empty roads in wintertime. As much as I feel like I don’t belong here anymore, I have to admit I had an amazing childhood in this small quiet town.
I check my phone for messages and there’s one from Dan from over an hour ago.
How is the family dinner? Have you been up to anything naughty?
Instead of typing up all that happened, I decide to call him.
“Food was lovely and it’s nice to see my family, but the son of my dad’s new wife is a proper nuisance,” I tell him.
“You mean your stepbrother?”
“Oh, I didn’t... I didn’t even think of him like that. Thanks, you just made it so much worse. I’d rather have a warthog for a brother than him.”
“Just what has he done?” he chuckles.
I tell him about our little clash while he hmmms at the end of each sentence and laughs a little when I get to the orgy part.
“Baby, just ignore him. I hate to break it to you but he probably has the hots for you.”
“What? No, you’re just making everything so much worse, Dan. Argh, just stop talking.”
“I can prove it to you.”
“I don’t want to know!”
“Listen, just leave your knickers somewhere for him to find and see if he’ll touch ‘em.”
“God, will you just shut up?! At this point, I’m not sure which one of you is more perverted.”
I hear his cocky laughter at the other end of the line.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Talk to you later,” he tells me confidently, still laughing his head off.
I’m completely weirded out. Could it be true? I’m staring at my feet sinking into the fresh snow, when I get another message.
I’m not suggesting you do anything about it if I’m right, babes. But if he continues to be a cunt, at least you’ll have something to hold against him.
He is right. And thinking about our morning routine for the past few days - Tom banging on the bathroom door while I was brushing my teeth... It could be done so easily. Dan is right, I should just find out.
Trying to erase those troubling thoughts from my mind, I regress back to the carefree child in me and roll a few snowballs and carry them inside the house hidden in my hands. I sneak up to my sister and drop one of them into the neck of her ugly green Christmas jumper.
“Oh, you little shit!” she screams forgetting her perfect manners, shocking just about everyone in the room. She darts after me through the door, grabbing her coat on the way. Once outside she tries to overpower me and roll me into the fresh snow, like when we were kids.
I’m faster than her but not in the knee-high snow and she corners me into some chain link fence. By this time everyone gets the message that it’s snowball fight time and her two kids rush to become her little helpers, bombarding me with handfuls of powdery snow and even her husband arrives as reinforcement.
As much as I don’t envy my sister’s little domesticated life, I have to admit, her husband is a great catch: sweet, funny, handsome, strong - so damn good at holding me down for the other three members of his family to shovel snow into my face. Of course we’re all giggling and having fun as everyone joins in.
Later, dad makes snow angels with the grandkids and they build a snowman so big that it surely can be seen from space. Instead of a bucket, we have to use a huge washing up bowl for a hat and a big water bottle for the nose - to the kids absolute disapproval. At least painting it orange occupies them for the next hour.
On boxing day, I do my little trick on Tom after my morning shower. When he comes for his scheduled bathroom door banging, I ‘forget’ a pile of laundry on the top of the laundry basket with my knickers seemingly scrunched up, but covertly placed in a certain way.
Sure enough, when I go to retrieve them later they aren’t in the position I’ve left them. It shocks me and I feel a little sick. I absolutely hate it that Dan was right – again.
I don’t know what I will do with this sickening information now, but for the meantime I’m trying to avoid my step brother.
There’s so much food left from last night’s dinner, it would feed an army, yet Wilma still insists to do at least one or two fresh dishes. I’m trying to help her with things she is willing to loosen her grip over, which isn’t much. I end up peeling potatoes – if I could just hold the peeler the ‘correct way’, and loading glasses into the dishwasher – ‘into the correct basket, onto the correct side’...
Just before dinner, Tom’s girlfriend, Ari shows up. I don’t know what Ari is short for but it’s really cute. Just like the girl herself. More than cute actually. The chick has some killer curves and knows how to flaunt them.
She remind me of Marilyn Monroe, minus the curls and the beauty spot. Her smile could melt Mont Blanc. I stupidly try to introduce myself to her, only to be told by her cute sing-song tone, that we have met three years ago at Wilma’s birthday.
We engage in a bit of small talk about my journey and work but then she spends the rest of the evening entertaining or should I say babysitting tiddly Tom.
The days between the holidays are quiet, I decide to visit some old friends. One of them is Tilly, a girl I used to fool around with, just before college. She’s married to a Spanish guy and moved to Spain years ago and had a baby with him recently, so I’m a bit surprised when she suggests that the two of us go out partying on NYE.
“You can’t imagine how much I need to let my hair down,” she woos.
“Couldn’t agree more,” joins in her dark-skinned, Mediterranean-god husband rolling his eyes. “Please take her out, she’s been chewing my ears off.”
“But I can’t guarantee we will behave...” Tilly looks at me first, then the husband, grinning. I wonder, how much does he know about our past. Knowing Tilly, probably everything, yet he tells her “Just have fun, baby.”
I can’t wait for NYE and when it comes, we make an appearance at Albas, the best club in town (not that there are too many). We drink ourselves silly and dance till our stupidly high-heeled feet can’t take any more. Then we retire to one of the quieter bar sections at the front and just reminisce about the old days, while trying to keep our balance on wobbly bar stools, that are somehow getting closer and closer to one another. Now my knees are between Tilly’s thighs and I can smell the sweet liquor on her lips. It reminds me of the first time she kissed me, when we were ice skating on the lake and drank mulled wine from thermos flasks.