All I Want for Christmas Is You (Short Story) by Molly O'Keefe Page A

could. Punched him. And then again. Both hands. Wanting topull his heart out through his chest. Wanting to take out his eyes.
    He grabbed her hands, his brown eyes slicing through her skin to the muscle and sinew of her.
    Look at what you’ve become , she thought, horrified by her violence.
    “You said you were leaving.” There was an apology in his voice but there was pride there, too. He was the star athlete who didn’t have to explain his shit to anyone. Not even his wife.
    “And I am, asshole,” she snapped. “Enjoy your whore.”
    “Hey!” the woman cried, but Maddy ignored her, stomping down the hallway. She was sweating under her winter coat and shock and nerves made her sick to her stomach. Her hands shook as she pressed them to her lips.
    What was she going to do? Where would she go? She had nothing outside of what Billy had bought for her. She had no money of her own. No car. No home.
    How did I get here?
    A soundless sob broke out of her throat and she held her fingers to her mouth to push the despair back.
    Think, Maddy. Think.
    Billy grabbed her elbow by the elevator and she jerked herself sideways out of his grasp. Barefoot and shirtless, in his black athletic shorts, he was the tide just before a storm—barely contained.
    “Don’t touch me!” she cried. “You never get to touch me again.”
    “Come on, Maddy. You know these things are nothing.”
    “Do you really believe that?” she asked, searching his face for the boy she’d known because this Billy was a stranger to her right now. “Or are you just hoping I’ll believe that?”
    “You’re overreacting!”
    “Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.”
    “Come on, forget about that.” He threw his arms out, as if he were a magician pulling a screen between them, making the woman in the pink dress and his final betrayal disappear. “You came here to make this work. So let’s do it. We’ll make it work. You … you wanted to go see a counselor. We can do that.”
    He was months too late. And suddenly her anger deflated, leaving her wounded and bleeding. And tired. So damn tired she couldn’t fight anymore. “There’s no fixing this, Billy.”
    “Don’t say that. We—”
    “No. No, we’re broken. All the way.”
    “We made promises—”
    “Promises?” She jabbed her finger down the hallway. “She wasn’t in any promise I made.”
    “You know nothing happened.”
    “I don’t know that, Billy. And I feel like a fool taking your word for it!”
    “You’re not a fool.” He tried to touch her and she smacked away his hand. “You’re my family, Maddy.”
    “And what are you to me?”
    He flinched at her words, but she couldn’t stop them. Couldn’t help hurting him. This is what they’d come to. Every conversation was a fight, a chance to hurt the other. “I can’t keep giving you everything you need and get nothing in return. Nothing.”
    It was unfair, she knew, it’s not like anyone had shown him how to be a family. Without her, he’d probably slide back into the dark hole his sisters lived in.
    Not your problem anymore.
    But it was still hard. They would eat him alive, his sisters.
    “Once the season’s over—”
    “How many times have I heard that? No, Billy.You … you just absorb me. You need me and you suck me in until there’s nothing left for me. You always have. I don’t believe you anymore. I have no more faith in us. I have nothing.”
    “Yeah?” He was getting angry, his default position, all his doors closing. They’d start yelling just like his parents had. It was so ugly, so not the way she’d thought their life would be.
    I will never be in this place again , she promised herself as Billy yelled, “That new house in Ben Avon Heights? The clothes? The car? That’s nothing?”
    “I don’t want things. I don’t want money. Why can’t you see that? I want you and I’ve lost you. I’ve lost me. I can’t do this anymore,” she whispered, dry-eyed and hollow. “This sport is