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

smoke. Maddy walked up the bottom three steps to the landing.
    “It’s not going to work, you know,” Janice said. Maddy paused, her hand on the banister, her foot on the step. Her heart lodged somewhere between her heart and her throat. “The shirt, the tie, some fancy dinner at your parents’ place. You’re not going to change him.”
    “I don’t want to change him,” she said. And she didn’t. She loved Billy just the way he was.
    “Really?” Janice laughed until she coughed. “The guy is barely housebroken.”
    Maddy stomped toward the coach. Janice pushed up onto her fists, and Maddy remembered the last fight she’d gotten into with Billy’s sister. Janice had torn out a chunk of Maddy’s hair before Billy had finally pulled them apart.
    It’s not that she wasn’t scared of Janice—she was, the girl was vicious—but someone had to stand up for Billy.
    “I’ve known Billy most of my life,” she said, getting so close to Janice that she could see each individual pore on her nose. “I love him. Him. The way he is. And whatwould be awesome, Janice, is if you, his sister, would shut up and support him. For once.”
    Janice blinked, her faded green eyes the color of resignation. Of hope turning to despair. For just a moment, they revealed the truth—her complicated heart, and the bitterness that covered a whole lot of sadness. But then those eyes narrowed and Janice went right back on the attack. “Who do you think will be there for him when this marriage of yours falls apart?” she asked. “When you realize it’s fun to fuck a guy like Billy, but not so nice being married to him.”
    “Don’t wait, Janice,” she said. “Don’t hold your breath waiting for your cash cow to come back and save you from this place.”
    “Cash cow, listen to you. Just because he got drafted doesn’t mean he’s going to the NHL. It’s been, what, six months and he’s still playing in the minors. You guys are going to be living in a shitty apartment in Rochester. Probably for the rest of your life.”
    Man. Once again, Maddy was reminded of how brave Billy was to dream, to hope in this house, where every single person, where the walls themselves seemed dead set on crushing anything that even resembled happiness. At the end of June, Billy had been a second-round draft pick for the NHL, second-freaking-round, and Janice was still finding a way to make it sound like a failure. Janice, who spent her days on that couch with Alex Trebek and her nights under Aaron Schultz.
    Billy had been planted in some seriously poisonous soil, but he’d managed to bloom, anyway. And things were only going to get better for him. Once she got him out of this house. Once they made their own family, then he’d see what it was like to be there for someone and have someone be there for him.
    Because his sisters sure as hell never had.
    Maddy turned away, aware, as she always had been but always seemed to forget, that getting into it with Janice was never worth it. Like eating Pringles.
    Satisfying for the moment, disappointing in the long run.
    She took the stairs two by two and got to the second floor just as the shower was turned off in the bathroom. The pipes thunked behind the faded flower-print wallpaper. God, it was cold in the hallway.
    “Billy?”
    “Hey, babe,” he yelled back, from behind the bathroom door. “Out in a second.”
    She checked her watch and bit back a comment about being late already. Billy was still playing in the Junior A’s up in Rochester, and he’d driven into Pittsburgh earlier that day after a late practice. She knew how stressed out he must be, and she didn’t want to make it worse.
    Billy’s room was opposite the bathroom and she pushed open the door, greeted by a nice wave of heat thanks to the space heater in the corner. She quickly shut the door so it didn’t escape.
    The room was a time capsule. Nearly untouched in all the years she’d known him, from when he was fifteen, until now, at age