Read Online The Stocking Was Hung by Tara Sivec - Free Book Online Page A

having the house where the movie was filmed only an hour away from where we grew up was always a big deal. Ever since they opened the house to tours eleven years ago, it’s been a tradition for our family to come here together and then go home and watch the movie. It only reminds me all over again that Sam doesn’t have a family. Never had a family and something like this is completely foreign to him.
    While my dad buys everyone’s tickets right inside the front door, I push up on my toes and kiss Sam’s cheek, the scratch of his day-old stubble tickling my lips. When I pull back so we can walk inside the house, Sam looks down at me and smiles.
    “What was that for?”
    I shrug. “Just because.”
    “Well, feel free to just because me anytime and anywhere you’d like,” he encourages with a wink.
    I laugh, giving him a light smack on his arm as we walk through the doorway and enter the living room of the greatest Christmas movie ever made, my thoughts scrambled with visions of Ralphie and Randy opening presents and my mouth on Sam’s package. We pass by workers in each room of the house, all of them wishing us a Merry Christmas and each time, Sam just gives them an uncomfortable smile and a nod. I know he’s not a big fan of the holidays, but his refusal to reply to anyone who gives him the standard Christmas greeting makes me wonder.
    As we all tour the house, I explain scenes from the movie to Sam in all the different rooms—the kitchen where the Bumpus’ herd of smelly hounds ate the turkey, the stairs where Ralphie stood in his pink bunny costume, and of course, the front window where the great Leg Lamp stands, tall and proud instead of broken and buried in the backyard. In between rooms, Nicholas takes the opportunity to grill Sam about his life, and I have to say, I’m pretty proud he only has to cough once trying to remember all the things about Logan I’d quickly thrown at him yesterday in our cab ride from the airport. And that one cough is justified since Nicholas asks him when he’s going to make an honest woman out of me and propose. Although the cough is more of a laugh/choke instead of a “Help me out here,” which earns him a very mean side-eye from me.
    Poor Sam is grilled like a hamburger on a BBQ pit in the summer, Nicholas rapid-firing questions at him throughout the entire tour of the house, everything from where he went to college to how many woman he’s slept with. Sam answers all the questions with ease, making up the ones he doesn’t know, which only makes him look even hotter than he already does in my mind. This man—this Marine —who just finished an eighteen month tour overseas, has been thrown into this craziness and within a day already acts like he fits in perfectly. Did I ever picture Logan like this in the year we were together? I mean, I always thought about the first time he would come home and meet my family, planned it out in my head and stuff, but did I ever see it going this smoothly? This perfectly?
    The answer comes immediately: no.
    Logan is from a very wealthy, upper class family. Their idea of Christmas is flying everyone to St. Thomas for the week to be waited on hand and foot while sunbathing on the beach, not touring a house from a Christmas movie set in the eighties or putting up with a cross-dressing uncle/aunt with wandering hands. This is why it took me an entire year to even get up the nerve to ask Logan to come home with me. I knew he would spend five minutes with my family and look at me differently. I’d no longer be the strong, independent woman who moved across the country to have a life of my own. I’d be the middle class, crazy girl with a loud, inappropriate family to match. My family embarrassed me when I was with Logan. Looking at them now with Sam’s hand in mine, joking with each other, quoting lines from the movie and just happy to be together, I’m not embarrassed to have Sam here by my side witnessing all of it. I’m happy for the