My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(62)

“This cannot be happening,” Wren said, laughing, still in her bra and panties, one hand on her hip, looking like she’d stepped out of a forties pinup postcard. “It’s just too good.”

But it was happening. And we were drunk enough to go along with it. Even with the implications of Roth having an ass head buzzing in the back of my mind, like how if magic was real, then Joachim’s goat legs were probably not part of any costume, and when I’d left out milk for the faeries, I probably should have made sure to wash the bowl every time, I was focused on propping up the broken table. I couldn’t stand around freaking out forever. Some people helped me mop the spilled punch. I rinsed off the cheese and scraped off the top layer of hummus. It turned out I still had some chips left in the bags out in the kitchen, so I refilled the bowls. Most bottles of booze hadn’t gotten broken. Some of the food couldn’t be salvaged, but in the face of magic being real and magical creatures in attendance, I was ready to declare the party a success anyway.

Isidore poured shots from his bottle into aperitif glasses set up on Grandma’s kitchen counter. The liquor tasted like thyme and caraway seeds and burned all the way down my throat. Griselda taught us a drinking song. We screamed the words as we danced around the room, spinning madly and jumping on the furniture.

Someone found an apple for Roth to eat.

Near midnight, we turned the television to MTV, where they showed the ball dropping in Times Square. We counted down with everyone else.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.

We went crazy shrieking and blowing paper horns and kissing one another. People yelled out the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne,” Isidore singing lines I didn’t know. We two have run about the slopes and picked the daisies fine. And we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne. And then I found myself in the hall, kissing Joachim, a boy I barely knew, a boy with a pretend name and who might be a demon or a faerie or a disturbing hallucination.

My head was swimming. My hands were tangled in his hair, and I pushed him against the wall. His breath caught as I tugged his mouth to mine. I had no idea what I was doing.

Then Ahmet changed playlists to some louder, madder, midnight stuff, and we were dancing again. We danced and drank, drank and danced until the mix ran out and Ahmet fell asleep under the table, his arm thrown over Griselda.

At five in the morning, I found myself bundled up in a moth-eaten fur coat from Grandma’s closet, slumped in a chair at the plastic table as the sun began to burn the frozen horizon. I had a coupe glass full of cinnamon schnapps the color of Rudolf’s nose.

Joachim was smoking a cigarette of meadow grass and comfrey. He’d found a bottle of bubble solution and held up the wand, exhaling smoke into each delicate shimmering globe, grinning up at them as they got carried up into the dawn.

He was the kind of beautiful that got under your skin. Before, my crushes had been on normal-looking boys—pudgy boys and beanpole skinny ones, boys with bad haircuts and boys with shadowy mustaches they were trying to grow, boys with crooked teeth and spotty skin. No one would probably believe me, but Joachim’s ridiculous hotness made me uncomfortable. He was like a painting you wanted to burn so you could finally stop staring at it. Copper gold hair and copper gold eyes. Looping curls. He looked like something you were allowed to look at, but never touch.

I remembered the warm slide of his lips.

“Why Joachim?” I asked him.

He looked over at me, a little bit drunk and clearly baffled. It made me happy to know that whatever he was, however he looked, he still could get wasted on New Year’s.

“The name,” I said.

He laughed, throwing his head back and glancing up at the stars. “You bargained with the universe, remember?”

The words sent a shiver down my spine. I didn’t even remember exactly what I’d said or promised, but I knew I’d done it. “And the universe heard me?”

“Nah.” Above his head, a bubble burst, releasing a supernova of smoke before it was blown shapeless by the wind. “But I did. Lots of things hear when you make rash offers like that.”

“So you want—?” I was rigid with alarm, trying to think through the fog of alcohol.

He shook his head, throwing me an easy smile. “Not a thing. I just remembered the name when I saw you at the Krampuslauf. We don’t have names, not like you do. Isidore and Griselda have been called many things before and will be called many things again. Names, they just don’t stick to us. But I like Joachim, and I knew you liked it as well.”

I tried to imagine a name sliding off of me, as though not quite attached. It felt wrong, like losing one’s shadow. I’d always been Hanna, and I couldn’t imagine not being her. “Why were you even at that thing?”

“The Krampuslauf?” He had a rich throaty laugh. “I wanted to be among people without any disguise. It’s a great prank, don’t you think?”

“Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” I took a swig from my cup. It tasted like someone had melted those cinnamon hearts into a thick syrup. I wondered who’d brought it. I wondered why I’d decided to drink it and then took another swig.

“I owe you a gift,” he said, into the silence. “Griselda brought something and Isidore brought something. Now it’s my turn. Only name your desire, and I will do my best to give you its pale approximation.”