My Favorite Holidate: A Standalone Holiday Romance

Wilder

It’s like an icy dose of reality but that’s for the best. What was I thinking, picking this restaurant? Treating this necessary component of a temporary partnership like a romantic date?

I could very well have scheduled a meeting at the office to prep. Or a lunch appointment, for fuck’s sake. Instead, I picked a Saturday night at a cozy bistro, with fine wine, soft lighting, and romantic holiday music.

Real smart.

But I can’t let this vibe get to me. I may not read romance novels, but I know plenty of fake dates turn into something more, and I won’t let that happen. No matter how easy Fable is to talk to, how beautiful she is with her lush copper waves, her honey-hazel eyes, and her glossy lips, nothing more will ever come of this—because you can’t trust love. I learned that growing up.

Saw that in front of me with my father. He promised us so much—lavish Christmas trips with the family, New Year’s celebrations along the California coast, most of all, time spent together, one-on-one—but it ended up being a lie. He gambled everything we had thanks to his addiction.

Nothing good can come from a lie.

Best to focus on the purpose of this meeting. Getting to know Fable over a meal so we can pull off this holiday faux-mance.

We review the menu and when she’s done, I ask politely, “Did you find something you like?”

“The mushroom bolognese made with zucchini noodles,” she says, then stage whispers, “Mostly, I want to see how the zucchini holds up.”

“Against wheat?”

“Exactly. Is it a pale imitation or a brand-new taste sensation?” she asks, like she wants to get to the bottom of a great mystery, and I should not think it’s adorable that she’s adventuresome in ordering. So I won’t. I just won’t.

“And you?” she asks.

“The eggplant parmigiano with asiago and goat cheese. But I’ll get two. Mac just entered her leftover phase.”

“I’ve never left mine.”

“I haven’t either. Leftovers are the unsung heroes of the food world.”

“Because the flavors have had time to hang out together,” she adds, and I’ve got to keep things in check. I’m not going to let this tidbit work its way into my heart. It’s just an agreement over leftovers.

When the server arrives, I’m grateful for the interruption. After we order, it’s time to get down to business. “For us to be the best fake daters, we should be sure we know a few key things about each other,” I say, and her ex’s name is bitter on my tongue, but it’s a necessary reminder of what this arrangement with Fable is about, and what it’s not about. It’s not about romance. It’s about mutually beneficial help.

She lifts her glass, giving me a thoughtful look. “You don’t know me after working with me for the last couple years?”

Fair question. I give her an honest answer. “I know you’re a hard worker. You’re talented. I know your favorite flavor of ice cream, that you beat everyone in the office’s fantasy football league last year, and that there’s no sequin shape you can’t master,” I say with a smile. “But I don’t know the personal stuff.”

“Like which side of the bed do I sleep on?”

The side with me.

And I shouldn’t go there. Focus, man.

“Let’s stick to food. Any allergies or likes and dislikes?”

Fable shoots me a c’mon look. “You want to talk about allergies? Should we discuss favorite mutual funds too?”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” I fire back.

“Fine, fine,” she says, then puts a little purr in her voice as she adds, “ROI, net revenue, exponential growth.”

“Now you’re talking,” I say, then take a beat. “But seriously. I don’t want us to make a rookie mistake at the wedding or in the Christmas games leading up to it. Everyone will know our relationship is new, but for them to buy that it’s serious and not a ruse, frankly, we need to show we know each other.”

She nods crisply in understanding. “We’re on the same page.”

And since we are, I do something I rarely do in business—speak first in a negotiation. “Here you go. I don’t have any food allergies, but you should know I can’t stand mayonnaise. I love spicy food, ideally as hot as inhumanly possible. I drink coffee, a lot of it, probably too much. But my dirty little secret is I prefer hot chocolate, only I never order it when I’m out. I make my daughter do chores and clean up after herself, but admittedly I do spoil her at the holidays, and I justify it because she’s such a good kid and I’m so damn lucky she is. Also, she wants a secret door for Christmas, but I think that’s mostly because she’s been reading books with secret doors in them. Speaking of reading, I often stay up late reading, and I wake up early every day to exercise since cardio’s not only good for the body but for the brain too. I speak Mandarin and learned it in college. I think ice cream is proof of the existence of a higher being, I never sleep with socks on, I don’t walk around in my house with shoes on, and I’m an Aries.”

She smiles. The endless kind. “I can’t quite believe it.”

“That I told you all that?” I suppose I can’t quite believe it either. I don’t usually share so much info.

“That you dropped your zodiac sign into casual convo,” she says, then adds, “and of course you’re an Aries.”

“My mother’s into signs. She has strong Libra energy, she’s always said. I learned it from her.”

“And you have strong Aries energy,” she says, with an approving look and tone, and it feels a lot like a compliment I shouldn’t let myself like too much. “Also, mayonnaise solidarity. It’s disgusting. But I disagree about morning. Mornings should be annexed onto the night, and days should start in the afternoon. I often stay up late to work on new jewelry designs, reading with my earholes. I listen to audiobooks,” she adds, but I’d guessed that was what she meant. “I’m allergic to shellfish, but that’s okay because I don’t eat fish or anything with a face for that matter. Mac sounds like a very lucky girl, and I, too, would enjoy a secret door. I sleep with very fuzzy socks on because I love fuzzy socks, and all socks should be fuzzy. Also, I wear shoes everywhere in my apartment, because shoes are proof of the existence of a higher being.” She pauses, her lips curving before she says, “But ice cream, especially mint, is a close second on the proof scale. Also, I intend to destroy the office this year, too, in the fantasy football league, partly because my mid-season trades were absolutely elite,” she says, and yep, it’s white hot, her confidence about all things gridiron. “I don’t know any other languages, unfortunately, but I can say one very useful thing in French.” Then she rolls her lips together, pops them, and adds, “And I’m a Leo.”

“Yes, you definitely are,” I say. No sign has ever suited someone more. I file away those details in the Fable file without lingering on them like I want to. “What can you say in French?”

I expect the same French line everyone knows, courtesy of “Lady Marmalade.” But instead, she says, “Je voudrais pomme frites s’il vous plait.” A request for fries.

Chuckling, I shake my head at my assumption. “I stand corrected.”

“Were you expecting voulez vous couchez avec moi ce soir?”

Do you want to sleep with me tonight?

Expecting it. Wanting it.

That’s a dangerous place to linger, so I admit that was, indeed, my assumption. “Though, for the sake of accuracy, I should point out that you know two French phrases, Fable.”

She concedes with a laugh. “You got me there. I guess it is a good thing you like mutual funds more than I do.”

“I don’t actually like them,” I correct. “I like hedge funds.”

She rolls her eyes playfully, happy to take me down a peg. “Yes, yes. Of course. But what I’m most interested in is this food convo. Why don’t you order hot chocolate when you’re out?”

My nose wrinkles. “It would look…”

“Weak? Silly? Childish?”

I hesitate, not sure I want to admit how important pretenses can be in my world. But she’s nailed it. “All of the above,” I say, answering honestly.

“I figured as much. But don’t worry—I’ll keep your hot cocoa secret,” she says, then lifts a finger. “If…”

One eyebrow raises in question. “If? This is a secret-keeping negotiation?”

“Obviously.” She tilts her chin like she’s staking her ground. “A secret for a secret.”

“You’ll tell me one of your secrets in exchange for me confessing my hot chocolate love?” I grin. “That’s an interesting bargaining strategy, Fable.”

“No.” Her chin climbs higher. “I’ll keep this secret in exchange for another.”

A laugh bursts from me. “You just basically want me to give up more secrets?”

“It’s not that hard for you to serve them, evidently,” she counters. “I already know what you sleep in.”

I sip my wine, set it down, and meet her curious gaze. “But do you, Fable?”

“Yes, I do,” she says, digging her heels in.

“I only said no socks,” I remind her.

She taps her temple. “I put two and two together.”

I’m playing with fire. I know that. But I toss some more kindling onto the flames. “Go on. Tell me what I wear to bed.”

Like she’s the clever detective assembling clues as she paces through a well-appointed drawing room, she says, “If you don’t like having socks on in bed, it means you get hot in bed. Which means you don’t wear much. Which would usually mean boxer briefs.”

Damn. She is very, very good.

But so am I.

I don’t move a muscle. I don’t let on that she’s heading down the right path using her own smarts. I wait patiently.

“Except, you have a kid, so propriety dictates you probably don’t just wear boxer briefs,” she adds, then taps her chin. “You probably wear gym shorts to bed. And you do it every night even when Mac’s not there, since you like routine,” she says, and my lips threaten to twitch in a dead giveaway, but I tamp down the impulse. “So I say workout shorts. And when you get up—first, before anyone else in the house—you pull on a T-shirt.” Her eyebrows dance. Her irises twinkle. “Am I right or am I right?”

Try as I might to stay all business, she makes it impossible. I drop the stony face, letting a smile form. “Almost, Fable. Almost.”

She huffs, all over-the-top playful. “Fine. What did I get wrong?”

I lean forward, elbows on the table. “I don’t like routine.” I take a beat, reading her body language, the way she shifts subtly closer, her head tilted, then I add, “I love it.”

Fable doesn’t have a comeback for several seconds. Then she says in a softer voice, almost a little husky, “That tracks.”

I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I’m not sure I want to know, so I leave it alone.

She sits up straighter. “My turn.”

“But that seemed like your turn,” I say.

She points at me. “You started this whole thing with asking me about food allergies. So I can either take my turn, or you can ask me, I don’t know, something about health insurance. Or my favorite columns in a spreadsheet.”

“That last one’s easy. It’s always ROI,” I toss back.

“You and your ROI.” Then she leans closer and taps the minimalist vine tattoo knuckle on my right forefinger. A current rushes through me. “That ought to be your next tattoo.”

No one, not a single soul, has ever kept me on my toes like this woman. We may have only shared monthly meetings in the past, but now I’m cursing myself for not making them biweekly. No, weekly. “Me and my ROI, or just ROI?”

“ROI, Wilder. ROI.”

“I think that’s the first time you’ve called me by my name.” Or touched my hand, but who’s counting?

She hums, like she’s rolling the tape, checking the files of our conversations. “I guess it is…sugar plum.” Then her brow knits, and a flash of worry crosses her eyes. “Is that okay? Calling you Wilder?”

“Yes.” I nearly add hardly anyone does and I like it when you do.

I’m grateful—mostly—when the server swings by with our entrees, setting them down, then offering pepper and grated cheese. We say yes to both and when he leaves, Fable lifts a fork, then says, “Okay, then, Wilder. It’s definitely my turn. And I am going to threaten you with a good time,” she says, then takes a bite of her zucchini noodles as the music shifts to the upbeat “Sleigh Ride.”

“Have at it,” I say, then dig in as well.

After she chews, she tips her forehead to the speaker, perched near a trellis with garlands snaking up it, curling around white icicle lights. “And this is really important for your Christmas girlfriend to know,” she says, and my skin warms hearing those words. “What is your favorite Christmas song?”

“‘Let It Snow.’”

“You just threw that down with zero hesitation,” she says.

I hold her gaze, not looking away for a few risky seconds before I say, “I know what I like.”

Her cheeks pinken, and she swallows. It’s hard to look away from her neck. Long, pale, elegant, and adorned with a simple chain and two delicate silver bells over the hollow of her throat. But perhaps I stare a little too long, giving away the corollary to my last statement.

I tear my gaze back to my meal, take another bite, at a loss for words for the first time tonight.

She takes a bite too, and when she’s done, she asks, “And why do you like it? The song?”

“Because I like snow. It’s soft, it’s quiet, it’s peaceful. Snow makes everything beautiful. You can have the busiest day, a million things going on, but when the snow falls, it calms the whole world down.”

Snow is also thoroughly romantic, so I keep that to myself. But then again, maybe I shouldn’t. This is a make-believe romance for the next few weeks. It can’t hurt to lean into that. “And it’s romantic,” I add. “When you look out the window and you see the flakes falling and everything goes hush, it makes you want to spend the day, and the night, with…that special someone.”

“It hardly snows in San Francisco.” She sounds wistful, but I can solve that.

“It usually snows at my cabins in Evergreen Falls,” I offer as the tune ends and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” begins.

“They’re hardly cabins,” she says, teasing me once again on that front.

“The snow doesn’t care about that.”

She’s quiet for a beat, clearly thinking. “Are we sharing one? You mentioned the other day that I’d have my own room, but I know your cabins”—she stops to sketch air quotes—“usually have living rooms and a couple bedrooms.”

Reasonable question. “We’ll have to for appearance’s sake. I’ll make sure we’re in a two-bedroom one. You’ll have your own space. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

“I won’t be.”

“I’ll make sure you get the bedroom with the best view of the mountains. And the snow,” I say.

She looks away from me for a few seconds, toward the windows that give a view to the inside of the bistro, maybe even to the reflection in the glass of the lights. She turns back to me. “I hope it snows then.”

“Do you like snow? Or are you a summer girl?”

“I like all seasons.” Faintly, almost imperceptibly, she lifts her face, like she’s drawing an inhale, then says, “But I find I’m liking winter.”

For a breath-held moment, neither of us says another word. In those seconds, the ions between us seem to spark. Dangerous thoughts. I snuff them. “And you? Your favorite Christmas song?”

She pauses for a second, perhaps reorienting to the shift. “I like so many. ‘The Christmas Song,’ ‘Winter Wonderland,’ this one…” she says, as Judy Garland sings in a tune that’s full of longing, and honestly, a little sad. “But not this version. Nothing against Judy.”

“Which version?” I ask, intrigued. I’m not that up to speed on Christmas covers, but she’ll probably say Sinatra. That’s a reasonable guess at least.

“Have you heard the cover by Tinashe?”

I shake my head. I haven’t even heard of the artist, but I don’t admit that. “No.”

“She’s a pop singer. Kind of R&B,” Fable adds, seeing right through me, but not pointing it out, which I appreciate. “She did a cover that sounds a little like⁠—”

She cuts herself off, like she’s gone too far. But I have to know. “Like what?” I ask, more desperate than I want to let on.

There’s a beat. An internal debate behind those warm eyes. Then a decision as she says softly, “Like a seduction.”

And I’m no longer warm. I’m roasting. “I’ll have to listen to it then.”

“Wilder,” she says a few seconds later, “does this end after Christmas?”

It’s like someone’s opened the front door during a snowstorm—a blast of cold swirls around me. But of course it ends after Christmas. It’s designed to end. That’s the nature of a fake romance. And fake romances can’t hurt you, so I shake off this chill as I say, “That seems ideal. Do you agree?”

With a sad smile, or maybe even a frown, she nods. “Yes. After the wedding, I suppose.”

I hate this discussion, but I didn’t get to where I am today by backing down from difficult conversations. “Late December or even right after the new year would be most believable, and everyone will be busy then anyway, so hopefully they won’t even notice.”

“Exactly! We can figure out the specifics later though?” She asks that question as if planning a breakup is the last thing she wants to do.

Same here. “That sounds like a good plan. Especially since we have doors to decorate and snowballs to throw before then.”

“We do,” she says, then smooths her hands across her lap and exhales. “Now, enough of that. Let’s talk about something fun.”

“Like what?”

“What were you reading when I arrived?”

Ah, this is a much better conversation topic. “A detective novel,” I admit.

“Something juicy and pulpy?” she asks, like she’s eating that up.

“Yes.” I pause. “I don’t usually admit that’s what I read for pleasure.”

She gives me a conspiratorial smile. “I’ll keep your secrets.”

She knows more than most people already. All the more reason to keep the secret of this crush that’s growing stronger by the hour. A crush that’ll be snuffed out after the holidays.

That night, as I’m sliding under the covers in just shorts and trying not to replay that dinner over and over, my phone buzzes. I swipe it open to a message from Fable. She’s sent me…a song. The cover for “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I listen and she’s right.

I need to stop. Truly, I do. I should leave this alone. But then she replies, and it’s impossible to put my phone down.

It’s just a text. There’s no tone of voice. But in my mind, I can hear her warm voice pitch up in hope that I’ll say yes. Like this is a date. Before I reply, she writes again.

Then I set my phone down so I’m not tempted to keep up the volley since it feels too good. Everything does with her. I squeeze my eyes shut.

It’s not a date, man. It’s practice for the town’s winter games and the wedding.

Still, I listen to the song again as I search online for fuzzy socks. With gingerbread men on them. With candy canes. With mistletoe. Then I send her several pairs to arrive tomorrow morning. With another note. Happy holidays to my Leo elf.

There. Just another layer of Fable detail. After all, I’m not simply showing Brady how a woman should be treated. I’m showing her, and she deserves to know how it feels when a man pays attention.

Besides, the more we practice at being a couple, the better we’ll do when the games begin.

That’s what I tell myself as I open my old paperback and try to get lost in the story. But something nags at me and I’m not sure what. Did I forget something? It feels like it, but I’m drawing a blank. I return to the book, but then, as the hero can’t keep his eyes off his heroine as she leaves, it’s obvious.

I was having such a good time, I forgot to cover one very key issue on our date. I put a note on my calendar to handle it at the office first thing.

That’s when I see what’s on the agenda for late Monday morning—Shay’s scheduled time for me to decorate the door. I’m sure he did this per Bibi’s orders, since she wants me participating in all things holiday at the office. I drag a hand through my hair. I like to do things I’m good at. The last thing I want to do is decorate a door.

But then again, it’s an excuse to spend more time with Fable.

Maybe I can learn to like decorating.