Hey, Pest! Don't give me a hard time for updating on Sunday! I gave you a story on Christmas, so I decided to hold off posting this chapter until Sunday. One word and I'll be forced to distract you with cute pictures of Kismet!

Chapter Fourteen

It was ten days between Thanksgiving and Mox's birthday. And while Mox would have been happy to just get those apple glazed, baked, stuffed, pork chops for dinner, his birthday turned out to be a whole lot more.

It started with breakfast, and even though it was Friday, in honor of Mox's birthday, Jen made cinnamon rolls. Mox was one of the later ones to the table, because he had let Roman use the bathroom first, but because it was his birthday, he still got two. And unlike the first morning he'd tried them, he ate all of both of them. Along with scrambled eggs and sausage and wonder of wonders, two cups of coffee! He had almost forgotten about the "No coffee until you're sixteen," rule, and started thinking it was a "no coffee at all" rule, But, as he sat at his seat, he saw something new at his place setting, a heavy black mug with the words Samoan Pride Wrestling Academy on one side in white letters and on the other side, the word "MOX" all written out in caps in red letters on the other. He picked it up and looked at it, then put it down slowly. Jen came over and filled it with coffee. "Happy Birthday, Jon," she said.

"That's a staff mug," Sefa explained. "And since you work here, and you're old enough to drink coffee, you might as well have a staff mug to drink it in."

"Just try not to get too carried away with the coffee drinking," Jen said, her voice wavering, clearly not wanting to rain on the parade, but still feeling the need to be his mother. "I know you used to drink a lot of coffee… before, but you haven't been drinking it since you came here, and it's probably best not to get to a ten cup a day habit."

"I'll do my best to keep it under control, Mom," Mox promised as he brought the cup up to his nose, enjoying the dark, fragrant, aroma. Coffee was an amazing beverage. It smelled completely different than it tasted, but both smell and taste were delicious. Taste took a little longer to appreciate than scent, but once you did, the scent became even better as your mouth anticipated the taste. And there was something wonderful about being able to drink it openly at the table. In truth, there were more times when he missed drinking coffee openly, then he missed being able to drink beer or do other drugs.

If that wasn't enough, after breakfast was finished, but before Roman and Lance had to leave for school, Jen went into the dining room and returned with a thin, rectangular box wrapped in some slick, shiny paper, mostly black, but with drawings of very brightly colored balloons. "Happy Birthday, Jon!" she said, handing it to him

Mox took the box, staring at it, wondering what this was about. He looked around the table where Sefa, Marc, Roman, Lance, and Jen were beaming at him, as if they were the ones getting a gift from him. "Why?" He asked, then wanted to hit himself knowing how ungrateful he must sound, and he didn't mean it, he just wasn't sure why they would give him a present. He knew birthday gifts were traditional in some families, but the Reigns had done so much for him, to give him gifts was really amazing. "Never mind, that was stupid," he said, trying to hastily back step, "Pretend I didn't say that. Th-thank you." He held the gift, just staring at it and added, th-this is the first birthday gift I've ever gotten."

"Uh, they're usually better if you open them," Lance suggested. "You know, see what's inside and all."

Mox shot Lance a look, then opened the package slowly, not sure he wanted to ruin that perfect paper, with it's shiny black surface and colorful balloons. But, he knew that Roman and Lance would both never stop teasing him, if he expressed sentimentality over wrapping paper, so he didn't bother to peel the tape away, just pulled off the bright, red, bow and then tore off the wrapping paper.

It was a laptop, a Gateway to be specific at least that's what the box was telling him, and the box was sealed shut with packing tape, which told Mox it was brand new. Lance had a desktop in his room, and a laptop he carried around, but Lance was heavy into this whole computer and internet experience. Roman had a laptop for his school work. He did some gaming on it too, but he preferred to game on his PlayStation 2. Mox always used the family computer for his school work, not minding at all that it was in Sefa's office. He didn't think Sefa minded either, seeing that he was hardly ever in his own office. Rarely was there a time when it wasn't free when Mox wanted to use it, but maybe he'd used it more than he realized. Maybe there were a few times Jen had wanted to use it, and been unable because Mox was doing his school work. "I-I'm sorry," he found himself saying before he could stop himself.

"Sorry for what?" Jen asked, looking puzzled and a little hurt.

As Mox looked around the room he saw everyone had that puzzled, hurt, expression and he realized yet again, he'd blown it. He should have been happy, and said "Oh wow!" It was too late now though, he'd said it, so he attempted to explain, "I-I haven't been using the main computer too much, have I?"

Jen's brow furrowed and then she smiled, and shook her head. "No, not at all, Jon! We just thought you might like to have your own computer, something portable, so you can do your school work when and where you want."

"Really?" Mox smiled and it was genuine, as he thought about how nice it would be to be able to sit on his bed and work, or in the den, or anywhere else in the house, not to always have to sit in the office, where the desk chair was fine for the first 20 minutes or so, then made his butt hurt. "That's great, thank you!"

He said the right thing, because everyone went from looking anxious to grinning again.

The laptop turned out to be only one of the gifts he got that day, which was another surprise. It was the only gift he got in the morning, as Roman and Lance had to get to school, but that night after the apple glazed, baked, stuffed, pork chops were eaten, and dessert finished, (another delicious cake, this one saying "Happy Birthday Mox" in bright red letters and decorated with sixteen small candles and one sparkler in the middle) other gifts were given to him, most of them themed around the laptop. Marc gave him a case to carry it in, made of heavy canvas and a steel frame to help protect it. It also had various pockets inside to put other things, like pens and notebooks.

Lance gave him some blank CDs so he could save things from his computer. Exactly what he was supposed to save, Mox wasn't sure. His school work was done on the computer, and then submitted to whoever graded them and sent it back, but Mox still thanked Lance and figured now that he had the discs, he would probably figure out a use for them.

Roman gave him a computer game, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, and Lance offered to help him install it if needed. "It shouldn't be an issue," Lance said, "But you never know. Sometimes a game barely comes out and you need to download a patch for it."

Besides things to go with his laptop, Mox also got some socks, underwear, and two new pairs of jeans. He was very grateful for the jeans and the underwear, because the pants and underwear he was using were getting a little bit tight around the waist and maybe even just a tiny bit too short.

Shortly after his birthday, Roman, Marc and Lance introduced Mox to the concept of Christmas Shopping. Mox had gone grocery and general shopping several times with Jen, and while at first it was overwhelming, not being used to this huge, outside world, it wasn't long before he first did get used to it then even got fairly comfortable with it, then moved right into boredom with the whole experience. He was surprised to find out that Christmas Shopping was considered to be in a league of its own.

"What makes it different?" He asked Roman, after Roman had asked him if he wanted to go with them the next day, which was Saturday.

"You know how sometimes when you go shopping it can be busy or slow?" Roman asked. When Mox nodded, Roman continued with, "Imagine the busiest day you've ever been shopping, multiply it by thirty and you have Christmas shopping. Well, no, actually, since we're going on Saturday, multiply it by fifty instead. Everyone goes Christmas shopping on Saturday. On top of that, the mall, where we'll be going, is full of all these decorations and the same songs playing over and over again, Christmas Carols." Roman's brow furrowed for a moment, then he shrugged, "The Christmas Carols may not bother you as much, seeing that you probably weren't over exposed to them growing up."

Mox had money. Sefa paid him for the work he did around the camp. When Mox had tried to protest, saying that his getting lessons was enough, Sefa had disagreed, telling him that wrestling lessons was a benefit of working for the school. When Mox tried to argue that the Reigns were feeding and clothing him, Sefa reminded him that the state gave them money to help care for Mox.

"I'm also not paying you minimum wage," Sefa said. "Because I can get away with that. This is a family business and you're family. So, take the money I give you, say thank you, and enjoy it."

"Thank you," Mox said, and added, "What do I spend it on?"

"Whatever you want," Sefa said, shrugging. "You can also save it until you need it."

Mox hardly spent any of the money. He had bought Jen and himself coffee at Starbucks once, right after his sixteenth birthday. He had also bought a couple of sodas and some beef Jerky when Marc had taken him to a doctors appointment, and they had stopped at a gas station, but that was about it. He had a little over 500 dollars saved up. He remembered "Timmy's" stash that he had left behind. At first he had really regretted not having it, but now he was almost glad. He would have felt strange spending that money. This was different. This was his money, earned all by himself, none of it was stolen. He wondered how much he should take for Christmas shopping, realizing he had little concept of what things cost. A CD of music cost about ten bucks, which seemed like a lot of money, but people were always complaining about the price of food being so expensive and yet you could buy a can of tuna fish for less than a dollar. It seemed to him that ten dollars worth of tuna fish would be a better thing to have than one music CD, especially since you could listen to all the free music you wanted on the radio. He tried explaining this to Roman one day, but hadn't done very well. Roman had said Mox only valued the tuna fish more than the music because he had been kept half starved for so long, Mox could see his point, but it didn't help him decide how much money he should spend on Christmas gifts, it just suggested that giving someone ten dollars worth of tuna would probably not make a good gift.

He stared at the stack of bills, sitting in his dresser drawer, debating what he should take. Yes, he had a dresser now. It had been in storage in one of the outbuildings, but brought into the house, cleaned up and now held his clothes and other things.

"Hey, Mox!" he heard Marc shouting from downstairs. "Are you coming or not?"

Better to have too much and bring some home, than not to have enough in the first place, Mox decided as he gathered up the entire pile and put it in his pocket. "Coming!" he called out as he hurried from the room.

Roman's warning about Christmas shopping barely scratched the surface of the actual experience. Before they got into the mall, Mox was convinced Roman been laying it on way too thick. Yeah, the parking lot was almost full to the max and the mall had only been open about half an hour, so they ended up having to park in a sub lot, about as far away from the mall as you could get, but walking wasn't a big deal he walked all the time. And yes, the outside of the mall was decorated with a lot of red and gold shiny things, and a song Mox was starting to recognized, Jingle Bells, was playing on the outdoor speakers, but that wasn't too bad. It was almost… nice in a way. Bright and festive.

They walked through the first set of double doors, and there was an almost whooshing noise, as a blast of warm air hit them. Mox didn't understand why the heat was on, it was just under 60℉ outside, but people who lived in Florida seemed weirdly obsessed with being warm. The heat wasn't bad though, it felt almost cozy. Then, they walked through the second set of doors. Mox had been listening to Lance, who was discussing how they should handle this whole mall experience, where to go and how to split themselves up so they could shop for each other, and at first, barely noticed the inside, then Lance finished speaking, so Mox looked around.

And almost fell down on his ass.

First, were the people. Mox had gotten used to running with campers in the morning sometimes, so he thought he could handle crowds, but that was nothing compared to the hundreds, no, thousands of people who seemed to be in this mall. Tall people, short people, average people, men, women, children. Asian people, Black people, brown people, white people. Men in business suits, women in dresses, teenagers dressed in all black clothing with white makeup on their faces and dark makeup on their lips and around their eyes. Young children dressed in overly bright clothing. Groups of people, probably families, wearing similar outfits. So many damned people. Mox knew there were a lot of people in this world, he wasn't that ignorant, but it was one thing to know about a lot of people, or even to see a crowd of them on TV or in a movie, it was another thing to be part of the crowd, even on the very edge.

Then there was the mall itself. He had never been to the mall, and he thought it would be sort of like someone grouped together a whole bunch of Walmart's, but it wasn't. It was huge inside, and the floor was a white stone, polished so brightly that the overhead lights reflected off of them as if they were mirrors. The walls were white too, but so much of the walls were decorated, not just with the storefronts, but all the wall space around the storefronts. They had come in through an entrance that was right by the "Meet Santa" area, so there were at least a dozen evergreen trees, covered with fluffy white stuff, that he would later realize was supposed to be fake snow, and hundreds of bright, shiny, balls and bells, Christmas ornaments. "Santa's" place was on a raise platform with a fence around it, except for two sets of stairs, one for children to enter and one for them to exit. Women, dressed up in velvet dresses of green and red were guiding children either towards Santa, whose suit was so red and white, and the black belt so shiny it seemed to glitter, or guiding them to their waiting parents. And along the walls of the mall were storefronts, each trying to outdo the other with colorful, striking, displays, trying to demand all of your visual attention. And there was something about that Santa Suit that put Mox's teeth on edge.

So much shiny brightness that it made Mox feel as if his pupils were overly dilated, like they used to be all the time when he first moved in with the Reigns, his vision was not used to sunlight. He had worn a pair of polarizing sunglasses for awhile, and he wished he had those glasses now, even though he knew that they might take away some of the shine, but not diminish it completely.

He remembered when he was living with Richard and Sam, how he would steal bits of aluminum foil when he could, just because it was shiny and unless they had the bright lights going, the basements he stayed in were usually dark. He would horde this foil, just to hold it up to the dim light of the one low watt burning bulb he would be left with most of the time, admiring the shine. One tiny bit of foil, shining. But this was as if someone took every bit of foil in the world and were beaming bright lights off of it.

Competing with the shine was the noise. All those people and all of them wanting to talk to each other. Different accents, different languages, Mox felt like he was hearing every single word in existence being spoken around him, so many words, until it all became a constant, buzzing noise that drilled itself into his head. And on top of this was the mall music system blaring out bright music. Music, that Mox was convinced if you could see it, it would be as shiny as the decorations.

Then there were the smells. A million different perfumes and colognes, along with the smells of food. It felt like people were standing, each holding a can of every type of air freshener in existence and were all spraying at the same time.

It was so overwhelming that he found the entire mall beginning to spin in his vision, and his legs turned to rubber. He wasn't aware that Roman, Marc, and Lance had plunged further into the mall, not the least bit bothered. Mox was trying to fight this feeling of sensory overload, trying not to both puke and pass out. He tried to stand as still as possible, even closing his eyes to try to get his bearing, but the voices, smells, and the music seemed to even get louder. He didn't want to, but he could hear himself whimper, like some stupid, helpless, puppy.

Then, he felt Roman grab his upper right arm. "Hey, bro, are you okay?"

"No," he gasped, embarrassed, but unable to lie. "Too much…"

Mox felt more than saw himself being guided somewhere, even though he had opened his eyes, it was as if they just refused to see everything. It had all faded down to a pinprick of very shiny light. They took him to the food court, and guided him to a chair at one of the many tables. Fortunately, it was still early enough that the food court wasn't as crowded as it would become when lunch time came. Lance and Roman sat down at the table with him, while Marc went to one of the food vendors.

I'm sorry," Mox gasped. "Sensory overload."

"I warned you," Roman said, a trace of a chuckle in his voice. "Christmas shopping is the extreme sports of shopping."

The humor in Roman's voice was more assuring the words he was speaking. If Roman could find humor in this situation, Mox was pretty sure he wasn't going to die.

"Focus on the table," Lance suggested, "Just look down at the table and nothing else."

Mox took Lance's advice and stared at the plastic table, designed to look like it was wood of sorts, focusing his entire visual sense on nothing but the table. He didn't even register Marc coming back until Mox felt something placed beside him, something cold and wet that dripped on the table. Seeing the water drip from the condensation forming on the outside, he realized it was a paper cup of liquid and he was really thirsty. Grabbing it, he took a sip, realizing it was either Coke or Pepsi, he didn't know the difference. But it did feel so good going down his throat, that he found himself sucking down over half of it before he could stop himself.

"Should we leave?" Mox heard Marc asking Roman. "He seems pretty stressed."

"Nah," Roman said, his voice still confident, breezy, even. "He'll be fine. We should have realized this would be too much for the guy. Let's just give him a few to look around and get his bearings. Once the place starts to look more familiar and less alien, he'll be fine."

Mox wasn't sure how Roman knew, but he was right. After about twenty minutes and two sodas, his breathing was even, and while he still saw plenty of shiny surrounding him, his eyes adjusted to it. "Sorry," he mumbled.

"Don't be sorry," Marc said. "It's no big deal. This gives us time to organize a strategy anyways."

"Why do you need a strategy to shop?" Mox asked. "Don't you just go into the stores, get what you want and leave?"

"What do you want to get?" Roman asked looking at him. "Do you know what gift you want to buy for Mom? Dad? Lance? Do you know what you might want to get for Nonna? Because she will get you something."

Mox thought for a moment then shook his head.

"That's why we do divide and conquer," Marc said. We'll split into two groups, and that way we can help each other. Or, at least get opinions from each other. If we're lucky, we'll get all our shopping done in one day."

"What about whoever we're with?" Mox asked. "How do you shop for that person?"

"That's why we meet at the food court in a few hours," Lance said. "We switch around for that reason."

"But, with any luck, we will be able to get this all done today," Roman said.

"Mox and I might," Lance said with a roll of his eyes, "But I'll bet you and Marc are going to go Christmas shopping at least a couple more times with some girl or another who just has to pick up a few more things or something dumb like that." He looked at Mox, and in a pretty good imitation of some of the girls that stopped by the house to visit Roman, said, "Oh, Romey! we can walk hand and hand as we look at ugly Christmas sweaters together!"

After getting his bearings, Mox figured the rest of the Christmas Shopping was about the same for them as it was for anyone else. They went into stores, they looked at stuff, they found what they hoped to be the right stuff for the right person, and they stood in huge lines and bought the stuff. Roman and Mox went together one way for the first part of the day, while Marc and Lance went the other. After having lunch at the food court, they switched around, Mox going with Marc and Roman going with Lance. He ended up buying a lot of CD's as presents, because Marc and Roman could tell him easily what each member of the family liked for music and what CD's they might enjoy. The only exception was Lance because Mox knew Lance liked books, but he had no clue what book or books he might like. He asked Roman if he knew.

"Probably any book that he hasn't read yet," Roman said, snorting.

"How do I know which ones he hasn't read?" Mox asked. "He's got way too many books for me to remember them all. Plus, he uses the library, so he's read books I've never seen."

"Good point," Roman said. They were in Barnes & Noble, which was a gigantic bookstore. "You could go with a gift card."

"What's that?" Mox asked.

"You prepay however much money you want," Roman explained. "And you get this plastic square thing that the store will accept as though it was cash on whatever they want."

That sounded good enough to Mox, so they went to the counter, where Mox was surprised they had more than one type of gift card. He looked at Roman with an expression of bewilderment. "Doe it matter which design I buy?"

"Not really," Roman said. "But, he'd probably appreciate the Lord Of The Rings one. He loves the books and he loved the movie."

Mox bought the Lord Of The Rings card. They even gave him a little box to put it in, so it could be wrapped up. "Is this going to look like I'm giving him jewelry?"

Roman shrugged, "Until he opens it."

By the time they got home it was close to dinner time, and Mox was exhausted. "Is it me?" he asked Roman as they brought their purchases up to their room and hid them.

"Is what you?" Roman asked, as he stored his bags and boxes in the closet.

"Being so tired," Mox said, as he pulled out one of the boxes of wrestling magazines he had under the bed. It had enough room left in it to store most of the gifts he'd bought. He wasn't worried that anyone might try to peek and find out what he'd gotten them, except maybe for Lance, so he removed the actual card from the box and tucked that in his underwear drawer, just leaving the empty box with the other gifts. There was nothing on the box itself to identify it as being designed to hold a gift card. When he finished, he flopped on his bed. "It wasn't like I was lifting weights or something."

"New experiences," Roman said. "I find that surrounding myself with stuff I'm not used to is exhausting, Even if it's stuff I'm pretty familiar with. I think that's why they talk about home field advantage in football games. It's not just the idea that we know the field, know all the rough spots and all such, it's that our eyes are used to seeing one particular field. We barely have to register it. We go to a new place, and it's never quite the same. Our energy is partially being taken by noticing everything that is different from our home field. And, keep in mind, we're not seeing anything we haven't seen before. Playing field, goal posts, locker room, so on and so forth. We know all these things. They're just rearranged differently and that's enough to mess with our senses. In your case, everything you saw was stuff you weren't used to. I mean, did you even have a Christmas tree when you were growing up?"

Mox thought about it and shrugged. "I think so, maybe once or twice, but it wasn't fancy like those ones at the mall." He had vague memories of one time being allowed to color cardboard star and circle shapes with crayons and then putting string through them and hanging them on a tree. He even remembered his father and Sam complimenting him. "You colored those really good, Timmy!" Richard had told him.

He almost smiled, thinking that might actually been one of the few, almost good memories he had of his former life, then another memory crashed down on that one. Someone in a red suit, a Santa suit, just like the guy at the mall was wearing along with a fake beard. It wasn't Sam or Richard, he knew that because Sam and Richard were watching him. "Look, Timmy," he heard Richard say in an abnormally cheerful voice. "It's Santa! and he's got a big surprise for you!"

He sat upright in bed as if someone had jerked him and gasped. "No!"

"No, what?" Roman asked.

Mox looked around the room for a moment, putting everything into place. He was Mox, he was on his bed, in the room he and Roman shared. Roman was his foster brother. He lived in Florida. He was sixteen, he was learning to be a wrestler. Each fact he reminded himself of was as an anchor to this reality. "Nothing," he said. "Just remembering something."

"Let me guess," Roman said, "something pretty crappy about your past?"

Mox knew better than to lie. He nodded. "Don't worry about it though."

"I'm not," Roman said.

Mox knew he was lying. Roman did worry about his memory flashbacks, as did everyone in the family. Jen had even told him that after the Holidays were over, Mox was going to have to start seeing someone called a "Talk Therapist," who sounded to Mox like a person who was paid to listen to you talk about all the bad things that happened in your life and somehow, talking about them would make you "get over" them. Mox had balked at this plan, but Jen had stood firm along with Ms. Clarke and even Sefa, this was not something to be debated, he would go. Mox had no intention of talking to this person about his past. If he had to, Mox would just sit there and stare at this therapist for the entire time, no one would make him talk.

The Reigns had figure out enough of his past, and he was sure they would tell this "Talk Therapist" what they knew, and that was all that therapist was going to get. There were things that had happened to "Timmy" that Mox would do his best to make sure they never saw the light of day.

Christmas came and went in a flurry of wrapping paper, gifts, and food, and when it was over, Mox was sure he owned more stuff than he had owned in his entire life. Not at one time, but if everything he had every owned before he met the Reigns was added together, he would still now own more stuff than all of that. He got a portable CD player with headphones, several CD's of all different types of music so he could figure out what type of music he liked. He got a cell phone, which he really had no idea what he would need it for. But he was on the "Family Plan" which meant he could call Marc, Roman, Lance, and their parents without occurring any charges. He got wrestling themed T-shirts, videotapes, and books. He even got a duffel bag, so he could bring some of his stuff somewhere else if he needed to.

The amount of stuff was overwhelming. He thought he'd never be able to fit it all into his part of the bedroom, but once he cleared out the clothing he had that no longer fit him, he could put the new clothing in. Sefa and Mox put some shelves up on the wall on his side of the room the day after Christmas which gave Mox a place to store almost everything else. But, at least at Christmas, he didn't get overwhelmed and say anything stupid, he just thanked everyone and smiled a lot.

Things and possessions, were awesome, but they could be a trap if you weren't careful. You got used to things and once you did, it was harder to leave them behind. Mox had been trying since he got here to keep his life as stuff free as possible, so if he ever had to leave, he could do it quickly and easily. Not that he ever wanted to leave the Reigns, but he was realistic enough to know that the future was never set in stone, and each thing he acquired was another thing he'd likely have to leave behind if he had to bug out of here.

The best Christmas present Mox would get was not something he'd ever have to pack or leave behind. Football season for Roman was over, the Crusaders had won the state championship, which was awesome and Mox was happy for Roman, but now that football season was over, that meant Roman worked at the Samoan Pride Wrestling Academy. It meant that instead of doing other sports, like a lot of other football players did, Roman wrestled. He helped train other wrestlers, and he was taught new things himself so he could train better. Yes, he spent a lot of time in the gym, and he claimed that the wrestling was just to keep him in shape for the next football season, but none of that meant much of crap to Mox. The important thing to Mox was that Sefa said that since they were close to the same age, and Roman was more experienced, that Roman should take Mox under his wing and they should come up with a storyline which they would play out on the "Free to the public" shows the school had. They were to do everything as if this was a regular promotion, not just a camp show. Promos, matches, everything. And Sefa left it up to the two of them. "I'm curious to see what the two of you will come up with," Sefa said. "And what people will think about it."

They were at one of the tented rings, Roman and Mox sitting on the ring apron, Sefa standing in front of them. "We don't hold any overnight camping for a bit, we do run regular classes through January. I expect you two to help out with the classes. Roman will be going back to school soon, but he won't be waking up at four in the morning, trying to get to practice, or going to games on the weekends, or practicing after school. The two of you will have plenty of time to figure it out."

"When do we start?" Mox asked eagerly.

"No time like the present," Sefa said, shrugging. "I'll leave the two of you to start working it out."

Author's Notes: So, now as you can see, Rollins Got Run Over by a Reindeer took place within this chapter. It wasn't Christmas when I was writing this, so I didn't realize I might want to have a Christmas story in it.

Now, we have New Years Eve coming fast. Everyone reading this? Stay safe. Have fun, but stay safe. Nobody wants to spend the New Year in the emergency room. And, let's hope 2019 is a better year. 2018 started out with promise, then went to that hot place in the hand basket.

Thanks, as always, to everyone who bothered to read this. Double thanks for anyone who F/F the story. Triple thanks for those who reviewed it. It means a lot to me that you let me know you like the story.

Happy New Years, one and all! And if you have a group of friends who love to party? Offer to be the designated driver, if you can! Most places will give you free non alcoholic drinks if you say you're the DD. Your friends will appreciate it. And, if your friends were like the people I grew up with? You can get some embarrassing pictures/videos of them doing some really out there drunken chit, and use it for leverage the whole year long.

Peace Out
Willow