O Come, Let Us Adore Him

Chapter 1-2

Wouldn’t you know Joaquin was a registered nurse? He fussed over my face in the villa’s glamorous kitchen, clucking as he dabbed gently at my nose while Colin whipped tequila, limes, and Triple Sec into hair-singeing margaritas.

“It’s not broken,” he announced.

“I know,” I said. “I’m fine. Really. Listen, could someone at least hand me my shorts? Any shorts?”

Doing me a favor, if not the one I’d requested, Colin handed me a margarita, then plopped his round butt on the tiled counter. “What happened to your face, Dickie?” he asked, eyes wide. As if Joaquin and I hadn’t each already taken it in his turn to describe the accident in detail.

I took a gulp of blended tequila. Coughed half of it back into my glass because Colin’s margaritas taste like turpentine, then hobbled into the living room and got my own dang shorts. “I hit the back of the seat,” I explained again as I buttoned them up.

“How come?”

“I don’t know what happened, exactly. I wasn’t paying attention, we just all of a sudden slammed into the car in front of us. Then this guy got out of it.” I flailed an arm in Joaquin’s general direction. “Speaking of whom, not to be rude, what is he doing here?”

Colin shrugged. “He’s here for Christmas. Same as you.”

“Yeah, but…” I glanced at Joaquin, standing guilelessly in the middle of the kitchen. He neither excused himself nor seemed especially interested in my objection to his presence. He just sipped at his margarita and looked on. I stepped closer to Colin and lowered my voice. “What is he doing here? I thought, you know…you and me…?” I put a hand on Colin’s sun-kissed thigh. Kneaded it gently, and not down by the knee. “Like, it’s Christmas? With your family?”

“Exactly,” Colin said, rolling his eyes. “Can you imagine anything more boring than being cooped up in this little grass shack with my family over Christmas?” Never mind that the “shack” was a six-thousand-square-foot seaside mansion with two pools, or that spending Christmas cooped up in it with his family was the very thing he’d invited me to do like a day and a half ago. “Now at least we can have some fun! We have this whole wing to ourselves, just the three of us, our own kitchen, and everything. We don’t even have to see my family until it’s time for presents.”

Immediately putting the lie to this assertion, a middle-aged frosted blonde I took for one of Colin’s sisters clacked into the kitchen on flowery flip-flops. “Hello, boys!” she trumpeted. “Don’t mind me: we’re just having margaritas down by the pool, and as you know, when you run out of tequila, my nephew here is the first place you look for more.” She gave Colin’s cheek a squeeze. She was wearing a green bathing suit decorated with multi-colored fabric light bulbs and tinsel to look like a Christmas tree. Her eyes roving the kitchen rather than meeting anyone’s in particular, she said, “So you’re Collie’s friend from home?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Joaquin and I said in unison. I threw him a dirty look.

“I’m pretty sure she was talking to me,” I informed Joaquin.

“Because I’m not from Winnipeg?”

Colin cleared his throat and stepped in. “This is my aunt Cha-Cha,” he told us. “Auntie, meet Dickie and Quinoa.”

“You can also call me ‘Charlene,’” said Colin’s aunt. We traded handshakes and pleasantries before she turned her attention to Colin.

“I thought you were having, you know…a special friend,” she stage-whispered.

“He is,” Joaquin and I said, again in one voice.

“Stop that!” I cried. Joaquin shrugged, bugged out his eyes in an innocent me face.

Charlene considered our little diorama for a moment before making a point of never-minding. She wasn’t just meeting Colin for the first time, after all—surely by now his family carried grains of salt around by the bucketful. “Well, I’m sure we’re delighted to have you both here. The more the merrier, as they say. Especially around Christmas, ha ha. This is our first Christmas in Cancun without my husband,” she explained.

“My Uncle Mac,” Colin elaborated. “He died in February.”

“I’m sorry,” we said. This duet I tactfully let slide.

“We were on a cruise,” she said. “He died at a chocolate buffet. We should all be so lucky. This is our house. Well, it was. It’s my house now, I suppose. Anyway, we’re always glad to have it full of fun folks, especially this year. You’re most welcome.”

She spied the bottle of tequila on the counter and snatched it up, then kissed Colin on the cheek and sailed from the room.

“Found it!” she cried to an unseen relative as she crossed the patio, waving the tequila above her head as proof. A muffled voice made a query we were too far away to hear, which Charlene answered with an exaggerated shrug. “There’s two of them,” she said. “He’s obviously nuts about—oh, s**t!” She stumbled over a patio paver and skipped from our view. Nuts about who? I willed her to finish her thought, preferably loudly. “Here, take this before I drop it,” we heard her say instead, then she was gone.

“See?” Colin said. “Fun!”

“Yeah, but…I don’t want to have any more fun with Joaquin. We’ve had our little car accident, I was kind of hoping to leave it at that.”

“Well, then, good news,” Colin said. “He’s not here for you.”

“But is he here for you? That would not be good news.”

“You’re both here for me!” Colin exclaimed. “That’s the fun part. See, the other night? Me and my mom were watching the Bachelorette, and I got this idea.”

Oh, hell no.

“Colin…” Joaquin took another gulp from his margarita and approached. Colin took Joaquin’s hand. He reached for mine, but I stepped back. Hell no.

“Dickie.” Colin took care to pull his poutiest face, his lower lip unfurled almost to his nose. He opened and closed his free hand with a skin-on-skin slapping sound until I took it in mine just to still it.

“I’m mad about both of you,” he said. “And don’t act like you’re not both fallin’ for Colin.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But here’s your chance to prove it. Like a contest! We can have challenges, you can each take me on your most romantic date—it’ll be just like the show! I even scoped out a little jewelry boutique in town. You can buy me a ring and propose, and I’ll pick a winner!”

This time I said it out loud. “Oh, hell no.”

He brushed me off. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you which rings I like.” He clutched at his chest and quaffed his drink. “I feel just like a princess!”

“Like a princess?” I asked. “Or like a pea? As in—brain? Colin, there’s no way.”

“Dickie, you mustn’t give up,” Colin said, giving my hand a squeeze. “I could totally pick you. There’s a lot to be said for personality.”

“Personality?” I would’ve been the handsomest man in the room if it wasn’t for Joaquin and those f*****g cheekbones. I could’ve been a model! Well, you know…in like a car insurance ad, or maybe a ketchup commercial. I had good skin, is what I’m getting at. And reasonably straight teeth. And a full head of hair, if you didn’t shoot me from behind. I’d show him personality…

“And what exactly is lacking in my personality?” I’d been wondering when Joaquin was going to pipe up.

“I don’t know.” Colin shrugged. “What do you care? You don’t need a personality,” he told Joaquin. “Look at you.”

“Colin, this is crazy.”

“I know, right? Crazy fun!”

“Which room is mine?” I asked him.

“Why? So you can go get ready for the first challenge? I’m thinking you can each rub one of my feet for an hour—”

I cut him off. “So I can have some privacy while I call the airline and change my ticket home. I thought this decision had already been made. I came here to be with you, not to compete for you like some reality-show reject.”

“Well,” he harrumphed. Him and that last word. “With that attitude, it won’t be much of a competition.”