Ugly Sweater Weather

By Jessica Gadziala

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
twelve days to prove to her that we weren't just best friends, that it was more than our dogs who were madly in love.
When her mom bailed on their plans, she found herself stuck in the city with nothing to do.
Well, I was going to give her something to do.
Fall as in love with me as I was with her...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jessica Gadziala
• Release date: Sep 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215967423

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Ugly Sweater Weather

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Jessica Gadziala

Copyright © 2020 Jessica Gadziala

All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Cover image design: Jessica Gadziala

DEDICATION

Christmas stories go out to my mom. Always.

CHAPTER ONE

1

Dea

Christmas was officially ruined.

I was not generally known as a dramatic person, so that declaration was really saying something.

It was ruined.

Mom, I already made all the plans! I insisted, trying not to whine, but also make it clear that canceling last minute was inconvenient at best. At worst, it—as I said—ruined the entire holiday.

Deavienne, my mother scolded in that voice that was not her real voice, rather a made-up imitation of Katherine Hepburn’s already made-up Transatlantic accent—not actually native to anywhere in particular, but just pretentious enough to make you sound more important than you really were. Don’t you think you are perhaps being a little selfish? Of course, I would need to be with my husband on Christmas. Of all days.

One would think a mother needed to be with their only child on Christmas. Of all days.

But this was my mother we were talking about here. She had about all the maternal instincts of a harp seal—very dedicated to the task for the span of twelve days before abandoning the baby that is not yet capable of caring for itself to go and find a new mate.

Yep.

That was my mother.

The eternal mate-chaser.

Five husbands down.

And, to be perfectly candid, I didn’t think this was the one that was going to stick, either.

When your husband’s original plan was to abandon you entirely and go spend the holiday with his buddies up in Aspen, yeah, you kinda knew exactly how (un)important you were to him in the grand scheme of things.

In my mother’s defense, she was raised by a woman much like herself—perpetually seeking external validation in the form of a man’s appreciation of her outward attributes as well as her willingness to hop into bed quickly.

My grandmother had been the one to sign the waiver to allow my mother to marry off to a much older man at the age of sixteen. Likely, I would think, so she herself could hit the dating pool once again without a young, pretty daughter around reminding the men what other kind of options there were out there.

That marriage had lasted all of eight months, leaving my mother on the market again at seventeen.

I was a product of a fling between her first and second husbands. I comforted myself sometimes with the knowledge that at least my mother had actually liked my father, even for the span of just a long weekend, rather than simply attached herself to him as a meal ticket and source of compliments to feed her very fragile ego.

Being the unplanned baby at the ripe old age of eighteen meant that I was simply in her way a lot of the time. And, of course, in the way of every man in her life as well.

What was less sexy than a screaming crying kid when you were trying to snag a new lover?

My childhood saving grace came in the form of an elderly neighbor my mother had when she’d first brought me home. Utterly clueless and having not a stitch of maternal instincts, she found herself strapped with a colicky newborn who did nothing but test out her lungs, something that eventually drew the pitying attention of the neighbor who had birthed nine children of her own, all long grown and gone.

Tilly was soft in all ways that word can be used. Kind-hearted, even-tempered, patient, and the owner of this reassuringly squishy midsection that made the hugs all the more satisfying.

Even as my mom moved from place to place—and man to man—Tilly was an ever-present part of my childhood. Picking me up from school. Coming to my talent shows. Helping me with homework. Consoling me on hard days with baked goods. Which never ceased to drive my very image-conscious mother insane. You’re going to make her fat, Tilly. How is she ever going to get anywhere in life if she’s always stuffing her face?

Luckily, I inherited my mother’s quick metabolism but also Tilly’s love of comfort food, making me perfectly average. Not supermodel thin, no, but able to buy a bathing suit without weeping.

Unluckily, I lost Tilly when I was twelve.

Which, in retrospect, with her age and constant issues with diabetes and blood pressure, it really was a miracle I got to have her that long. A part of me liked to think that she held on so long because she loved me just as much as I loved her, and she didn’t want to leave me—for all intents and purposes—alone in the world.

Alone is exactly what I was, too.

I always had a room and food, but that was about all there was. No more hugs. No one to pick me up after school. No comfort on hard days.

Despite all of this, which must say a hell of a lot about parent-child innate bonds based on nothing but blood, I loved my mother.

Even after escaping at eighteen and moving clear across the country to get away from the ever-present, oppressive weight of crippling image-focused people in Los Angeles, settling down in the slightly more internally-focused New York City, I loved her from a distance.

Adulthood made me capable of seeing her through a different lens, one that showed me that she was a product of her upbringing, that her inability to love me as I wanted to be loved was because no one had loved her like she needed to be loved.

It was a revelation that made me determined to love her that way.

Unfortunately, she had proven time and time again that the only way she could accept that love was when it came from a man.

Still, I tried.

I tried whenever I could.

Thanks to Tilly, and then a solid friend-network, great co-workers, and a really fantastic therapist, I was full inside.

My mother, you could say that her internal well was empty.

Whenever it didn’t cost me to do so, I tried to help fill her up.

Like when she called me wine-drunk and sobbing to tell me about her newest husband—someone she insisted I refer to as my father and call Dad despite only meeting him a handful of times—was abandoning her for the holiday, I went into overdrive. I invited her to the city. I bought a ton of decorations to completely overhaul my apartment. I bought her presents. I planned meals. I bought tickets to various events all around the city.

I was going to give her the best Christmas she’d ever had.

Except, of course, now I couldn’t do that.

As it turned out, my stepfather’s buddy broke his leg playing racquetball, and had to bow out of Aspen, meaning my stepfather was going to stay home after all.

Which meant my mother had to bail on me.

For yet another man.

I tried to take a deep breath, to push down the unmistakable hurt that welled up.

Even after ten deep breaths, though, it was still there.

On the eleventh breath, I decided to try one last time.

Well, you could always bring Donald too, I offered, trying to force some enthusiasm into my voice even though Donald was a self-centered, childish, leering creep who I made sure never to be caught alone in a room with.

Oh, Deavienne, please, she scoffed, and in my mind I could see her raking a hand through her honey-blonde hair with perfectly rounded light pink gel nails, her pear-shaped diamond ring glittering in the light. Donald would have no interest in staying in that shoebox you insist on calling an apartment.

Admittedly, my apartment was not really meant to hold three people. But for the holidays, I was willing to brush shoulders if it meant I didn’t have to be alone.

I was alone in the willingness to sacrifice.

I wasn’t surprised by this turn of events.

But that didn’t mean I felt great about it either.

Blinking back a few useless tears, I took a deep breath, trying to find my happy voice, knowing my mother tended to hang up on my sad one or my—as she called it—needy one.

Well, I hope the two of you have a Merry Christmas, Mom, I told her, genuinely hoping that it didn’t involve Donald drinking too much, passing out, and leaving her utterly alone with nothing else to do herself but drink too much wine and fall asleep on the couch looking at the Christmas tree the maid likely decorated.

We will, honey. Talk to you soon.

Soon would be after the New Year, most likely.

I was just going to have to be okay with that.

Bye, Mom.

But she was already gone.

A long sigh escaped me as I placed my phone down on the two-seater half-circle table I dared call my dining space, despite it barely being able to hold two full-sized dinner plates at once. I’d bought two buffalo plaid salad plates to use instead for my mother’s visit. She wouldn’t eat more than a salad plate portion anyway. In fact, she had a whole stack of salad plates for that very reason, in a gray color since she read once that gray turns people off to the idea of food.

A shuffling of claws on hardwood followed by the thump of a tail on the floor dragged my attention downward.

And there he was.

The ugliest dog in the whole wide world.

A six-year-old multi-colored pittie mix—supposedly part bulldog, but I mostly saw pittie when I looked at him—with a wandering eye and a severe underbite that made him look like he was perpetually scowling, Lockjaw—clearly named by a previous owner—was my sweetest little monster boy.

I’d come across him from following a local shelter online that I had once helped do a toy drive with for Christmas. He’d come in a year and a half before, sitting alone in his doggy cell with his back to the door when people came in, utterly defeated, sure he would never know love or home or the comfort of a squishy memory