I looked up from my laptop. “Place for what?” I asked, feeling study-drunk woozy.

“For you to take the next step. Barrington Academy.” She tapped the cover and smiled, but I saw her blue eyes flash with a steely determination that meant business.

See, for Mom, school was business. She was the executive assistant to the president of Utica Junior College, which was located about twenty minutes outside of Christmas, hence the blessedly secular name. That meant she had insider access and she utilized each and every bit for my benefit.

I was aware there was a fair bit of projection at work.

Had I not come along and blown up her plans, Mom would have studied her way all the way through the school system and become an astronaut or journalist sitting opposite the president, or maybe the CEO of her own company. Whatever that may have been, whatever she wanted to be.

But I had come along and she never pursued the education she’d viewed as her Get Out of Jail Free card.

I asked her once why she didn’t take classes herself, but she smiled and shook her head and said, “What for? I’m not going anywhere.”

Which might have been the saddest thing I’d ever heard her say.

Her parents—Nonna and Big Pa, no longer with us—were not the type who encouraged further education for their daughters, at least not like they did for Uncle Lonnie, who was a pediatrician and lived somewhere in east Florida with his wife, Carole, and their three kids, none of whom I could pick out of a four-person lineup. So when Mom lost her momentum for leaving town, it stayed lost.

She only regained it through me. And through Barrington, which was her ideal of what a good education offered. And as I thumbed through the catalog for the first time, I had felt sure she was right. This was where I was supposed to be. This would be my ticket to a life outside of Christmas.

Yeah. Hindsight, huh?

My phone in my back pocket buzzed with an incoming text. I almost didn’t check it but the Pavlovian reflexes were too hard to resist.

hey

Brody.

I felt my body tighten up with a combination of surprise, habitual pleasure, dread, and finally anger. About forty potential responses zip-zoomed around but I settled on the easiest: nothing.

I put the phone back and resumed my dish cleaning and tried not to think about him or how it felt when I saw him kissing Mia.

But that was impossible.

Because the truth was, Brody Tuck was my first love. I hoped to have more in my life, but, like it or not, the first person who got your heart would always hold a special place, and for me that was Brody.