"Jesus Christ, mother, I can't stand to see you and daddy act so pathetic!" screamed Heather's voice, echoing in the Sinclair mansion. "Times are tough, I'm sure, but Sinclairs are supposed to fight! Sinclairs never just roll over and give up!"

Sighing, Holly J reached across the dining room table and grabbed the open bottle of merlot. It was Christmas Eve, Heather was home for the holidays, and everyone had sat down for a darling, intimate family dinner. Once everyone was two or three drinks in, though, the tension and resentment over the Sinclair's ever-dwindling finances grew hard to mask. Layers of red wine peeled away layers of inhibition until only brutal honesty came pouring out. Heather, as usual, was the most verbal one of the family.

"How can you have told me my whole life to be a fighter, and now try to tell me you aren't going to keep fighting so that I can stay in University? What about Holly J? How is she supposed to pay for college?"

Holly J felt her insides churn. She hadn't even let her imagination run free enough to think that far into the matter. Suddenly, shiny dreams of sorority life at Banting were darkened in her mind. Even if she risked her entire credit line future and was some how able to get enough loans to pay Banting's outrageous private school tuition, there was no way she'd be let into a sorority. The entire image she had of her future was based on networking with the elite; being one of the elite. Living the shiny life that only money could buy.

Money. It wasn't until recently that she'd really understood the weight of it. It defined her. Everything about Holly J's personality, her confidence and ambition, was all shaped by her family, and her family was shaped by affluence. She didn't want to believe that money was so important, but all around her, the life and home she knew was changing. It made her stomach churn. She took deeper sips of the wine, while Heather's voice continued barking.

Suddenly, she thought of Jay. She thought of the brief glimpse she'd had of his apartment; bare walls, sparse furniture, cheap lighting. Jay's life was so different from hers. It had never made her feel particularly uncomfortable, but she knew somewhere deep down that there was a chasm between them. Jay had even said once to her, on the afternoon he'd hurt her so badly, "We're not even on the same planet."

She didn't want to believe in that chasm; that money put people in different worlds. That money tore people apart. But the louder her sister and parents screamed, and the more she thought of Jay's life on the other side of the tracks, the more complicated the issue became.

-o-o-o-o-

In the other world, on the other side of the tracks, Jay's Christmas Eve had him in little better spirits than Holly J. Where the Sinclairs had smoked ham on a mahogany dining table, young Hogart had homemade nachos on a coffee table; where they had a well-aged merlot, Jay had a pint of off-brand tequila mixed with Mountain Dew. Where they had each other, Jay had no one.

With a heavy sigh, he stared at the glowing screen of his phone in the dark. Gently, he circled his fingers over the tiny plastic buttons, dancing across them but never quite finding the courage to press them. He read and reread the words on the screen, taunting and torturing his already broken heart. He took another hard, seven-second gulp of Dewquila, and read the words again:

Hey you.

By the grace of some twisted, sadistic Christmas miracle, Jay had received a text from his ex-girlfriend. Out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, Manny Santos had reached out to him on the loneliest of Christmas Eves. The girl who had destroyed him and rejected him a thousand times over was suddenly just a drunken text message away.

Whatever could a man of Jay Hogart's caliber be expected to do in such a scenario? He reached for the blasphemous Dewquila, pounded another gulp, took a deep breath, and frantically worked the keys of his cell phone. After serious contemplation, he typed back:

Hey.

Tequila whirring in his mind, he waited nervously for four seconds that felt like four hours for Manny's response. She texted back:

Whatcha up to?

To which Jay responded thusly:

Not much. Just hanging out.

These sort of tedious niceties continued on for awhile, beating around the bush in the most painful ways, until finally Manny tossed out the bait Jay was meant to take:

Been sneaking punch so I can deal with all these relatives lol. Soooooo bored. Just wanna get out of the house.

Jay held his breath. He knew he should take a moment and assess the situation with objectivity and maturity. He knew that Manny was obviously drunk, and was only hitting him up because their former intimacy made it convenient, and because she knew he was powerless to say no to her. In laymen's terms, one would call this a drunken booty call. Objectively, and with maturity, he should not set himself up to possibly be hurt again.

But alone on Christmas Eve, drunk on cheap tequila… fuck maturity.

Shit you should just come over here, he texted.

And so she did.