A Valenti Christmas Carol

By Karen

Kyle Valenti lifted his chin and sniffed the air.  Beneath the smell of bacon and coffee, the scent of pine filled his nose, an odd odor for a desert climate and he knew immediately that Christmas was upon him.  One glance at the alien statue by the door of the Crashdown was all he needed in terms of confirmation – the little guy was now sporting a bright red Santa hat.

With a sigh, Kyle frowned and felt an overwhelming sense of emptiness deep in his gut.  It was that time again.  That time of year when he spent his hours searching for the true meaning of Christmas, and ultimately felt like he hadn’t found it.

Almost as if on cue, the epitome of Christmas cheer herself slid into the booth across from him.  Isabel.  The Christmas Nazi.  Kyle had hoped that marriage would take the edge off Isabel’s holiday frenzy, but one look at her told him it was not to be. 

Isabel Evans-Ramirez looked perfect in every way – perfect hair, perfect make up, perfect outfit.  And amidst the perfection was the dreaded planner, clutched to her chest then dumped unceremoniously on the table as she checked the appointments for the day.

Kyle had witnessed Isabel in her Christmas Nazi mode before, frantically engineering a “perfect” Christmas for everyone.  He didn’t like the person she became.  She definitely wasn’t his Isabel during that time.  She was someone else and he hated the pressure she put on herself to make everything perfect.  What was so important about one day that it warranted such ulcers?

Head dipped to the book, she rattled off the day’s events.  “I have to be at the old age home by eleven, then off to the park for the pageant at one, then the food bank by four, and then caroling at seven.  I guess I’ll have to fit in getting a new tree between the food bank and caroling.  Good morning, Kyle.”

Coffee cup perched at his lips, Kyle almost missed his greeting.  “Morning,” he answered quietly, took a sip of the hot liquid.  He wondered silently if there was an entry scribbled “Kyle – breakfast” in the nine thirty slot in her planner.  “Why do you have to get a new tree?  I saw Max buying one yesterday.”

Isabel let out an exaggerated sigh and looked up at him for the first time.  “You’d think after all of the years of living with that guy I’d stop trusting him in any means to get the right tree.”

“What happened this year?”

“He bought an Austrian Pine, Kyle,” she answered, as if he would know what that meant.

Kyle blinked.

“It’s huge!”

He shrugged.  “You like big trees.”

She rolled her dark eyes.  “You don’t get it.  Austrian Pines aren’t pliable, Kyle.  They don’t bend.  We couldn’t get the damn thing through the front door of the apartment.  It was like trying to pull an arrow out backward.”

“What did you do with it?”

“It’s on the front lawn.  Eighty dollars worth of tree sitting on the front lawn.”

Kyle hid his frown behind another sip from his coffee cup and silently wondered why Jesse hadn’t gone to get a tree.  With Isabel being married, why was it still her brother’s responsibility to try to satisfy her unbelievable Christmas tree standards?

Isabel didn’t see Kyle’s gloom.  She was back to the planner.  Suddenly she jerked her cuff back and checked her watch – a gold-faced piece with a glimmering green tree in the middle.  “Dammit!”  She looked up to her friend, her perfect face wrought with guilt.  “Kyle, I double-booked myself.”

He put the cup down slowly.  She hadn’t even been there long enough to get her own cup.  They hadn’t even ordered breakfast yet.  And he was hungry.  “Double-booked yourself?”

She bit the corner of her mouth and nodded her head.  “I am so sorry.  I forgot that I have to be over to the costumer’s at ten.”

“Costumer’s?”

“Yeah.  A lady from the community hall.  She’s making some new costumes for the pageant this year.  Some of them were old and ratty and we just couldn’t have that.  Turns out there was some problem with the tin soldiers and she had to redo something and I need to go over there and get them before the show at one.”  Isabel fell still for a moment, her frenetic energy dissipating for a moment and Kyle thought maybe she did regret booking herself so tightly.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said softly, fingering his silverware, rearranging it just to give his hand something to do.  “You gotta do what you gotta do.  And Christmas only comes once a year, right?”

She smiled sadly at him, then reached across the table and took his hand.  “Are you okay?” she asked sincerely.

“Yeah, fine,” he said, meeting her gaze and attempting a smile.

She held his gaze for a moment, then retracted her hand.  “Okay.”  She started to gather her things.  “I really am sorry, Kyle.  Can we try this again some time?”

Kyle eyed her planner and doubted that she had any other morning free between now and New Years.  “Sure.”

Isabel slid out of the booth, then leaned over and kissed his cheek.  “You’re a peach.  I’ll see you at the pageant, right?”

“Yeah.  Sure.”

Then he watched her leave in a whirl of holiday cheer and felt more depressed than he had when she’d first appeared.

“Good morning, Kyle!” came the overly-chipper voice of Liz Parker.  She’d appeared at the end of his table, a Santa hat perched at an odd angle on her head.

“Morning, Liz.”

“Isn’t Isabel staying?”

Kyle shook his head.  “No, she had to be somewhere.”  He picked up the menu and glanced over the breakfast selection.  “I think I’ll take some pancakes and a side of –“

Liz’s shrill shriek cut off Kyle’s words.  Jerking his head up, he saw that Max Evans had grabbed the petite waitress around the waist and had hoisted her off the floor.  Liz giggled and Max had a devilish grin on his face.  Kyle watched them numbly.

Max laid a kiss on Liz’s neck, then started moving for the kitchen door.  “Be right back, Kyle,” he called over his shoulder.  “We have to say good morning properly.”

Kyle watched them disappear into the kitchen, then stared straight ahead in disbelief.  Was he invisible?  Had he not been waiting a good ten minutes to order his breakfast?  And now, on top of it all, he had visions of just how Max and Liz were greeting each other in the back room.

Appetite successfully squelched, Kyle downed the last of his lukewarm coffee, tossed a dollar on the table to pay for it, and decided to leave.  He didn’t need this.  He didn’t need to be on everyone’s back burner.

On the street, a balmy breeze drifted past his face and he sighed.  Like anyone could get in the Christmas spirit when it was sixty and sunny out.  He walked the sidewalk with his head down, watching the toes of his boots.  Maybe he’d go over to the sheriff’s station and see his dad.  Things were usually slow at the office this time of year.  Maybe Jim would be happy for the company.

But this year was different.  Kyle stood in amazement as deputies swirled around him, scurrying like so many rats in a cage.  He spotted his father being trailed by a couple of deputies and a man in a suit – FBI perhaps? – into his office.  Kyle walked over to the door and peered in.  The sheriff was rattling off something about a chemical spill and evacuations and casualties.  EPA then, not FBI.

Jim glanced up and Kyle knew immediately from the look in his eyes that plans had changed.  “Kyle, son, about our afternoon plans…”

Kyle held up his hand.  “I understand.”  He backed away without another word and moved for the sheriff’s station door.  How many times had he done this?  How many times had he and his father had plans that were squelched due to some unanticipated problem.  In the days before Max Evans revealed his secret, the unanticipated had involved little green men and flying saucers.  Kyle had always taken the backseat to them.  Now there were no aliens and no UFOs, but the situation hadn’t changed much.

Kyle walked around Roswell for awhile, window-shopping, watching couples shop for one another.  It astounded him that there were so many last-minute shoppers.  He stopped by the park at one and watched Isabel’s meticulously engineered pageant.  It was indeed beautiful and entertaining.  He had to hand it to her – she was a natural.  But she didn’t even notice he was there.  Not that he’d expected her to, not with all of the responsibilities she was juggling.

Sitting in the crowd, Kyle noticed Maria Deluca and Michael Guerin sitting rather close to one another on a bench nearby.  Maria had that ridiculously happy smile on her face and Kyle guessed that the on-again/off-again relationship between the two of them was back on again.  Either that or Michael hadn’t messed up the gift-giving this year.

After the pageant, Kyle found himself walking over to the cemetery and sitting on the bench that faced Alex Whitman’s grave.  It seemed the appropriate thing to do – Kyle was depressed and there was no place more depressing than a cemetery.

Some things were just painfully clear – all of the others had found someone, people they would probably spend their lives with.  Granted, Isabel was lying like the proverbial rug to her new spouse about her origins, but that hadn’t stopped her from being happy.  Kyle, on the other hand, was never going to be happy.  He was alone on this earth; even his own father didn’t have ten minutes to help him make some last-minute Christmas Eve plans.

Expelling a sigh, Kyle looked to Alex’s gravestone.  Last year Alex was still with them.  This was the first year without him and no one had even mentioned it.  But there was a wreath on his grave and Kyle tried to imagine who would have put it there – his parents?  Isabel?  Liz and Maria?

“It was Isabel.”

Kyle turned and was surprised to see Alex sitting beside him.  He drew in a breath, quickly looked away then back again as if that would make the spirit beside him disappear.  “Jesus Christ!”

Alex laughed.  “She found time in her schedule a few days ago to bring it buy and put it there.  Then she sat for awhile and talked to me.”

Kyle’s brow furrowed.  “What the f-“

Alex raised a finger.  “Now, now, Kyle.  You’re on holy ground and swearing is frowned upon here.”

Kyle held his head in his hand.  “I’m going crazy.  Crap – I knew it would come to this!”

Alex laughed.  “You aren’t crazy.”

“Did you talk to Isabel, too?” Kyle asked, lifting his head.

Alex shook his head.  “Nah.  She doesn’t need me to talk to her.  You, on the other hand, do.”

“Huh?”

“I know what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling.  It’s natural this time of year.  I just wanted to let you know that a few people will be stopping by to help you out.”

“A few people?  Are they going to be alive?”  Kyle closed his eyes and shook his head.  When he reopened them, Alex was gone.  Kyle looked at the gravestone, still new in comparison to the ones around it, and swallowed hard.  “I am going crazy.  Dammit.”

At home, Kyle watched the house grow darker, then completely dark as he waited for this father to return from the office.  It was Christmas Eve and he was alone with no sign of company in sight.  Sighing, he went to the bathroom and took a shower, then went to bed.  As he drifted off, he listened for the sound of his father’s SUV pulling into the drive, but it never came.

A very loud noise and a bright flash jerked Kyle from his sleep.  Heart pounding from the fright, he recoiled so that his back was against the wall.  Before him, there was a cloud of gray fog, which was slowly dissipating to reveal the form of a woman.  When enough of the cloud had faded, Kyle could clearly make out his visitor.

“Maria, what are you doing in my room!”

Maria waved her hand to clear some of the smoke.  “I’m not Maria,” she said, coughing.  “Note to self – not so big an entrance next time.”

Kyle pulled his blanket up to cover his bare chest.  “You sure look like Maria.  And you sound like her, too.”

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling, cocked her head in that typical Maria Deluca fashion.  “I only look like Maria so that you will be unafraid of me.”

“Unafraid?”  Kyle almost laughed.

She nodded.  “I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

Silence fell in the room, a silence in which she stared at him and Kyle stared at her, his mouth open in disbelief.  Then he burst out laughing and fell over on his bed.

Maria the Ghost sighed and shook her head.  “I’m really not kidding, Valenti.”

He struggled to sit up, wiped his eyes.  “Who put you up to this?  Guerin?  Evans?  Because they pulled a really good one this time.”

She stepped into the dim moonlight filtering in from the window and Kyle stopped laughing.  She looked like Maria, but there was something ethereal about her, something not quite of this earth.  It was in her eyes.  Her eyes were paler than Maria’s, and they seemed to hold a strange light within them.  In fact, her whole body seemed to be glowing.  Kyle drew in a breath.  Slowly, she lifted her hand and pointed to his clock.  It had stopped.

“Okay,” Kyle managed.  “So much for being unafraid.”

“Don’t be scared, dude,” she said, sounding somewhat ridiculous now that Kyle knew she wasn’t really Maria. 

“Why are you here?”

“To help you,” she said simply, then sat down next to him uninvited; he fought the urge to recoil.  “I know what you’ve been feeling.”

“You do?”

She nodded.  “And I’m here to restore your faith, Kyle.”  Reaching out, she took his hand.

Within his hand, hers felt like a breath of air, nothing more.  He looked down at her fingers and realized he could see through them.  She had no substance.

“Close your eyes,” she commanded gently, her words a whisper against his ear.  “I want to show you something, take you back in time.”

And suddenly they were in a bathroom, a room that Kyle immediately recognized.  It was in the house his parents owned – before his mother left.  He felt his heart lurch when he saw his mother, young and pretty, putting on makeup before the mirror.  Involuntarily, his eyes wandered over to the bathtub.  There he sat on the edge of the tub, barely six years of age.

“Do you remember this Christmas Eve?” Maria the Ghost asked him.

“Yeah,” Kyle answered, a lump forming in his throat.  “It was right before she left.”  He watched his mother’s motions with her mascara wand, watched her lashes darken with each stroke.

“She did leave you,” Maria the Ghost agreed gently.  “But wasn’t there someone else there, too?”

Kyle’s attention was drawn to the door by a familiar voice.  “Michelle, when will you be back?”  He looked up and saw his father waiting anxiously in the hallway, his deputy’s Stetson in his hand.  Of course.  His father.

His mother shrugged.  “I don’t know, Jim.  If I’m not back by dawn you’ll know the little green men got me.”

Kyle’s eyes shifted to the little boy sitting on the tub and he felt everything he’d been feeling in that moment – he didn’t want his mother to go out, he didn’t want her to say mean things to his father, he wanted to be enough to keep her home.  Then he looked back to his father and saw the exact same emotions on the older man’s face.  For the first time, Kyle saw that his father wasn’t really so different than Kyle was.

“He was always there, every Christmas afterward,” Maria the Ghost said against his ear as his mother tossed her makeup into her purse and headed for the door without so much as a sideways glance at her tiny son.

“He was,” Kyle agreed.  “But Christmas was never the same after she left.”

“Probably not.  But what would Christmas have been if he’d left also?”

Kyle looked at his visitor, the thought never having crossed his mind.

The ghost smiled at him.  “Come on, let’s go see another Christmas, many years later.”

Suddenly they were in the Valenti kitchen, watching an older version of Kyle and Tess Harding gather things for dinner.  The present-day Kyle recoiled.

“Oh, God,” he croaked.  “Tess.”

The ghost only smiled.  “Yes, it’s Tess.”

He swallowed.  “She betrayed us and –“

“Did it matter on that day?  Did anything she was going to do matter on that particular day?”  Maria the Ghost looked toward the dining room where Jim and Amy Deluca were laughing over a glass of wine.  “Do you remember the conversation you had with Tess?”

Kyle watched his father and Maria’s mother and remained silent.

“You thanked her.  For making a memorable Christmas for you and your father.  For making him laugh.  In that moment, that was all that mattered.”

Kyle looked at his bare feet.  “I should have seen what she was.  I didn’t.  At one time I thought I was in love with her.  What does it say about me that I could love someone like her?”

The ghost’s smile was gentle.  “It doesn’t matter who you love, Kyle, only that you love.”

“Why did you bring me here?”

“To show you that even bad people can have good qualities.  And I think that is why you may have loved Tess.  When you think of her, don’t forget the bad she did for we all learn from our mistakes, but also remember the good she did.”

A roar of laughter erupted in the dining room and Kyle looked back to the four of them eating dinner.  Suddenly he remembered that night like he was living it all over again.  He could feel the happiness, the closeness with Tess and his father bursting from within.  And for just one moment he felt the holiday spirit.

“My time is short,” the ghost announced.  “We have to go back to your room or the next ghost will kick my ass.”

Kyle’s head whipped in her direction.  “Next ghost?”

“Oh, come on – you’ve read the book.  You know there’ll be three of us.”

He remained silent.

She looked at him incredulously.  “You have read the book?”

“Well, I saw the Mr. Magoo version –“

She shook her head and took his hand.  “You’re hopeless, Valenti.”

Suddenly Kyle was back on his bed, alone.  He searched the room with his eyes, looking for his visitor and found no one.  Maybe he’d imagined it.  He looked at his clock, which was functioning again.  With a small laugh, he lay back down on his bed and pulled his covers to his chin, relieved that his dream was over.

But he’d barely drifted back to sleep when he was awakened by a very white, very bright light in his room.  Startled, he sat up straight and saw that he was yet again in the presence of an other-worldly being.  Quite literally this time.

This visage looked like Isabel Ramirez, only more radiant – a thing Kyle hadn’t thought possible.  Her golden hair was twisted into a smooth braid that circled her head like a wreath and within the braid were sprigs of delicate holiday flowers.  Her skin seemed to glow in its smoothness and beauty.  A smile spread her lips and revealed her perfectly straight, white teeth.

“Kyle,” she said, her voice like music to his ears.  “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present.”

Kyle frowned.  “Dammit.”

The ghost’s smile faded away momentarily and she waited for his explanation.

“I hoped you’d be my future.”

She laughed lightly and reached for his hand.  “I’m not anyone’s future.  I take this form –“

Kyle held up his hand.  “Yeah, yeah.  I know the story.  You don’t want me to be afraid or something like that.  And let me guess – we’re going to visit people here in the present, right?”

She nodded and wrapped her fingers around his.  “Close your eyes.”

He obeyed and the next time he opened them they were standing in Michael Guerin’s apartment.  The lights were off, the only light coming from the small Christmas tree in the corner.  But it was bright enough for Kyle to see Max Evans and Liz Parker twisted together like a pretzel on the couch. 

One corner of Kyle’s mouth lifted upward and he turned a disgusted face to his visitor.  “Uh, Isabel, Ghost of Today or whoever you are, this is not something I want to see.”

She only smiled back at him.  “I don’t want you to see.  I want you to hear.”  She guided him to the end of the couch.

Kyle watched his friends kissing, wondered if he looked so ridiculous when he did it.  When they finally parted, Max wrapped his arms around Liz and pulled her close to him.  A period of silence ensued in which Kyle thought maybe they’d fallen asleep.

But then Liz spoke and her words shocked Kyle to the core.  “I wish Kyle was happy.”

Even more surprising was Max’s reply.  Kyle expected something sarcastic or condescending, but that isn’t what he got.  “Me too, Liz.”

Liz pulled back and looked her lover in the eyes.  “He’s so miserable, Max.  It’s unfair.  It’s unfair that Kyle is stuck being alone.  It’s my fault.”

Kyle’s brow furrowed in confusion.

Max reached up and touched Liz’s hair.  “It isn’t your fault.  You didn’t ask to be shot.  Kyle is a victim of circumstance, Liz.  If you hadn’t been shot, I wouldn’t have healed you, Kyle wouldn’t have found out I’m an alien.  There’d be no secret to keep and he’d be free to do whatever he wanted.  But because of me, because of what I am, he will forever be a part of this.  If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s mine.”

They looked at each other for a long time, then Liz asked, “What do we do?”

Max shook his head.  “I don’t know, Liz.  But I’ll think of something to set things right.  Even if it takes me the rest of my life.”

Kyle turned and looked at Isabel the Ghost.

“Do you see?” she asked.  “Look how much they care about you.”

He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Max is a much better man than I am.  If Liz had brought up an ex after I’d just been making out with her, her bony ass would have been on the floor.”  But his thoughts weren’t on his flippant comeback.  His thoughts were on what his friends had said.  Truly, he thought he was just a chapter in Liz’s past, just a constant thorn in Max’s side.  He never thought he’d meant much to either of them.

Isabel the Ghost seemed to be able to read his thoughts because she was smiling knowingly at him.  “Come on,” she said, taking his hand again.  “Let’s visit someone else.”

For a moment Kyle thought there’d been a glitch in his visitor’s powers because he seemed to be back home.  Not seemed – he was.  He recognized the plaid couch, the worn recliner his father often fell asleep in while watching television.  They were standing in the dining area, and Kyle could see Jim sitting on the couch, flipping channels, wearing that cowboy housecoat that even Kyle thought was a little unattractive.

The man glanced at the clock and Kyle followed his gaze – it was just past midnight.  A smile curved the older Valenti’s lips and he flipped off the TV and headed down the hallway.  Kyle and Isabel the Ghost followed in his footsteps.  At Kyle’s door, Jim stopped and quietly turned the handle.  Silently, he regarded his sleeping son and the smile return.

“Merry Christmas, Kyle,” he said softly, then closed the door again before retreating to his own room.

Kyle stood in the hallway, speechless.  He’d seen the pride, the love in his father’s eyes as he’d watched his only child sleeping.

“He does that every year,” the ghost explained softly.

Kyle turned his gaze to her.  “He does?”

“Without fail.  He did it first the night your mother left, just to see if you were okay.  Then he put the presents under the tree for you, so you’d think Santa had come.  The time for you to believe in Santa has long passed, but he’s still looked in on you every year since.”

Kyle looked to his father’s door, filled with a new-found respect for the man.

“I have one more thing to show you,” she said and waved her hand in a very alien-Isabel kind of way.

The sound of hushed voices and soft music filled Kyle’s ears and he suddenly felt very humbled, though he did not know why.  When his vision cleared, he saw that they were sitting in the back pew of a church, a church he’d only been in a few times in his life.  Before him were dozens of parishioners, some of them kneeling in prayer.  There was an odd sense of reverence in the crowd, a calmness and serenity that bordered on holiness.

“These people believe, Kyle,” the ghost whispered, leaning in close to his ear.  She knew they couldn’t hear her, but their silent reflection was not lost on even her and she did not want to disturb them.  “The woman in the front row, the one with the red scarf.”  Kyle’s eyes shifted to the woman.  “She lost her only child last week, right before Christmas.  The man over there with the black hat.  His family discovered he’d been leading a secret life due to his sexual preference and disowned him six years ago, on this very day.  The man and woman in the third row, with the three children.  When the bank opens on Monday, they will foreclose on that family’s home.”

Kyle turned anguished eyes to his visitor.  “Why are you showing me this?”

“Because even though this time of year has brought bad things to their lives, they still believe.  They believe that under all of it, people are good.  They believe there is a reason for everything that happens.”  She glanced at them in turn.  “The loss of a loved one, intolerance in another’s way of life, a family about to lose its home – if they can believe, Kyle, then why can’t you?”

He looked at her silently.  His gaze returned to the family who was about to be homeless and saw that they weren’t at the church to ask God for mercy.  They looked happy, smiling even though their circumstances were dire.  He didn’t know what to say to his ghost so he said nothing.

Her angelic smile returned and she laid a hand on his arm.  “You have another visitor to see before this night is over.”

In his room, Kyle looked out of his window into the backyard.  The moon was full and it cast the landscape in a bluish light.  The moon on the crest of the new-fallen snow gave a luster of mid-day to objects below.  He smiled as he heard his father reading that line out of The Night Before Christmas when Kyle was five and the boy not understanding what it meant.  Jim had patiently explained that the moon was so bright that it appeared to be daytime.  Just like this night.

As he looked at the wavering shadows, Kyle thought of his last visitor’s words, of the people he had met on this very bizarre night and he started to feel a little guilty within.  It was unlike Kyle to wallow in self-pity, but that’s exactly what he’d been doing.  If the unfortunate could be happy, then why couldn’t he?

Before he could answer the question, a light shown behind him and he turned to see an apparition that looked an awful lot like Liz Parker.  She was dressed all in black, although not the Grim-Reaper garb of the Dickens novel.  Wearing a black turtleneck, a pair of black jeans, black boots and a black leather jacket, she was the hippest ghost he’d ever seen.  He noted that her glow was not as bright as the others’ and that her form seemed to shift, almost to blur and then become more defined again.

“Why does that happen to you?” he asked curiously.

“Because the future is always changing, constantly moving,” she explained.  “I am the Ghost of Christmas Future.”

“I had no idea you’d be my future.”

“I’m not.  Not really.  I take this form –“

“I know.”  He sighed and stood up.  “Where are you going to take me?  Are you going to show me what my life is going to be like if I don’t change my evil ways?”

To his surprise, she shook her head, her long dark hair swaying.  “I can’t see your future.”

Kyle felt panicked suddenly.  “Why?  Don’t I have one?”

She laughed lightly, her laugh unlike Liz Parker’s.  “Of course you do.  But I come only to give you a message.”

He blinked.  “Okay.”

“And that message is that you have ultimate control over your future, Kyle Valenti.  You can be whomever or whatever you desire.”  She approached him and brushed his hair from his forehead, laid a whisper of a kiss there.  “Isabel and Liz and the others will always be a part of your life.  But only you can make yourself happy.”  Then she smiled and disappeared before his very eyes.

The smell of coffee brewing awoke Kyle from his slumber.  He sat up quickly, checking to see if he was alone, then realized it was daylight.  Pushing his blankets from his body, he hurried out to the kitchen, where his father was pouring a cup of coffee.  The older Valenti was not lounging in his pajamas like he usually did on Christmas morning.  Instead, he was showered and fully dressed.

“Merry Christmas, Kyle,” he said, smiling and placing the cup before his son.

Kyle stood speechless for a moment.

“You better drink that,” Jim said, pouring his own cup.  “And get dressed, because we’re going to be late.”

Kyle’s eyebrows rose.  “Late for what?”

Jim reached to the counter and picked up a slip of paper.  “This was hanging on the front door when I got home last night.  Didn’t you see it?”

Kyle took the paper from his father and read the neat, precise writing that could only belong to Isabel Ramirez.  Silently, he read the words: “Breakfast at the Crashdown, Christmas morning, 9:00.  See you there!”  He looked up at his father.  “What’s this all about?”

Jim only chuckled and shrugged, then urged his son once again to get dressed.

At the Crashdown, Kyle was surprised to see all of the usual suspects there.  Michael was behind the griddle, flipping pancakes, sausage and eggs.  Maria was helping him, a Santa hat perched on her head.  The rest of the group had pushed together tables in the center of the café and were chatting loudly while Max and Liz poured cups of coffee.

At the Valentis’ arrival, everyone stood to greet them, hugging them and wishing them a Merry Christmas.  When Isabel hugged Kyle, she held on a little longer than the others had and he closed his eyes as he inhaled her sweet perfume.  She pulled away and gave him a little smile.

“Did you do this?” Kyle asked.

She shook her head, blond curls swaying.  “No, not me.  But I felt so bad about running out on you yesterday that I immediately agreed to help out.”

Kyle shook his head.  “It’s okay.  You had things to do.  Important things.”  And he meant that.  Isabel’s life couldn’t revolve around him, no matter how much he wished it could.

“But you’re an important thing, too,” she said sincerely.  “I’m sorry.”

He returned her smile but didn’t have the time to respond to her apology before Jesse Ramirez took his hand and shook it in greeting.  “Merry Christmas, Kyle.  Here – sit with me and Iz.”

As Kyle took his seat, he watched the others around him.  His father was laughing with Amy Deluca and that made Kyle happy to see his father enjoying himself.  Max, in a totally un-Max-like gesture, had strapped on one of the Crashdown’s alien-face aprons as he helped Liz pour the coffee.  In the kitchen, Maria and Michael were arguing amicably over how to pour the perfect pancake, with Michael using the defense that he spent hours behind the griddle and she did not.

Who had arranged this gathering?  They all had places to be, people to see, but they had squeezed out the time on this very busy morning to get together and let the people they loved know that they loved them. 

Kyle stopped short, the events of his very busy night already starting to fade from his memory.  But he’d learned one thing from all of his visitations – he may be without a girlfriend, but he was far from alone.  The eight people sharing breakfast with him were proof of that.  Some of them, his father in particular, had been there with him forever and Kyle suddenly had the faith that they would always be.  And yet others, like Jesse Ramirez, barely knew Kyle and yet he was willing to make the time to be here.  Kyle was indeed blessed.

“Coffee, Mr. Valenti?”

Kyle looked up into Max Evans’s dark eyes and he knew immediately who the engineer of this event had been.  Of course.  Max and Liz.  It took good people to go out of their way for an ex-boyfriend and former rival.  Maybe Kyle was more blessed than he realized.

“Of course,” Kyle said, turning over his cup so Max could fill it.  “And, by the way, love the skirt.  I always thought maybe you liked women’s clothes.”

Max was silent, his face expressionless and Kyle thought maybe he didn’t like the joke.  Then Max reached into his apron, pulled out an order pad, scribbled something on it and laid it face-down in front of Kyle.  “You can take that up when you’re done.”

Kyle burst out laughing as he watched Max prance away, mumbling, “And I expect a tip.”

Michael and Maria served the food and they all sat together, sharing stories of Christmas past.  And Kyle realized that whatever had happened during Christmases past, whether it be his mother leaving or Tess Harding pulling him into her web, didn’t matter anymore.  The future was before him, he was loved, and his destiny was all within his control.

When the story-telling came around to him and he was urged to tell an old Christmas story, he shook his head and said, “Every one before this pales in comparison.”  He lifted his coffee cup in a toast.  “We’re fortunate to have each other.  Because God has already blessed us, every one.”