Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
The Blue Moon Gypsies—all of them—were playing an apartment complex Holiday Extravaganza.
This was insane.
It was also insanely beautiful.
Man, Stella totally was the shit.
We all wandered closer to them as if pulled by an invisible rope.
As for Raye, Alexis, Shanti and me, we were swaying, dancing and singing with them.
Tex sat on top of one of the outdoor tables, a bottle of beer in his hand held up high swinging back and forth, his head bowed, his torso moving with his hand. Linda was clapping with the beat. Bill and Zach were whirling around with arms hooked at the fast parts, and swaying side to side in each other’s arms on the slow parts.
When the song ended, Hugo went to the keyboards, Stella got up from the piano, grabbed her guitar and moved to an unused mic.
“This one is for Kai,” she said to someone offstage.
I looked that way to see Mace standing close to the bar, arms crossed, shaking his head but smiling, his eyes locked on his wife.
This happened before the band dropped right into Stevie Wonder’s “What Christmas Means to Me.”
That did it.
I handed my drink to Eric, and Raye, Shanti, Alexis and I gave up on the swaying and went into straight up dancing.
Within seconds Luna and Harlow had joined us.
So had Martha, Linda, Rhea, Patsy, Bill, Zach, Jenn, half the other Oasis residents and Tallulah and Walsh, Stella and Mace’s two kids.
And just to say, Walsh was barely out of toddlerhood, but the kid could cut a rug.
“Angels get up here,” Stella ordered after “What Christmas Means to Me” was over.
We all glanced at each other before we headed up.
I mean, when Stella Gunn, multi-platinum artist and Rock Chick, tells you to get onstage, you do it.
Right?
While we did, things got concerning as Tex handed each of us a microphone, and Tito moved to the front of the stage with his iPad facing out in front of him.
We barely got there before the Gypsies jumped into The Waitresses’ “Christmas Wrapping,” and I got a bad feeling that was confirmed when the karaoke words to the song scrolled on Tito’s iPad.
I hated karaoke.
I mean, seriously.
The worst.
But it was Christmas.
So…
What the hell?
Right?
Wrong.
I’ll tell you, if there’s a karaoke song to cut your teeth on, this wasn’t it.
We were a disaster.
Catastrophic.
But we went for it, everyone was laughing with us, dancing in front of us, and the best, Mace had joined Eric, Cap and Jacob, Javi and Jeff did too, Knox reappeared, and Brady, Gabe and Liam joined the crew, and they were all smiling at us.
Fortunately, Hugo could play a damn fine horn, and everyone out in our audience was screaming the words with us (or trying, seriously, that song was hard), both mostly drowning us out.
Topping that, Tito’s Santa-hat-topped head was bouncing to the beat, his beard sometimes obscuring the words on the screen. Tex was stomping around the pool deck dance floor in some bizarre version of dancing. Tallulah had joined us girls in singing onstage, while Walsh seemed to be attempting to break dance by his mom where she was playing the guitar, and that was hysterical.
And I was up there with my girls, doing stupid shit, my stomach hurting because I had to sing and couldn’t do what I needed to do: bust a gut laughing. My chicks all looked gorgeous. They looked happy. And it was nearly Christmas.
So I was oh so very wrong.
It wasn’t a total disaster.
With Eric standing with his phone in front of him, videoing this mess, a huge smile on his happy, handsome face, his gaze on me, watching me make a massive fool of myself with my chicks, what it was, was one of the best memories I’d made in my entire life.
And spoiler alert.
It always would be.
By the way: I got Jacob’s name to be his Secret Santa. He was totally jazzed by the bottle of McCallan 12 I gave him.
See?
I had this shit down.
Martha was mine. She gave me a box filled with a dozen different colors of edible glitter.
Some mixologists might set those aside for sole use in their cocktails.
I might use some of it in cocktails eventually.
But when Eric and I got back to my place after the Holiday Extravaganza, we had other ideas.
“Right, it’s officially not Christmas anymore, so I’m out,” Jeff stated as he pushed himself up from the recliner angled beside the one Eric and I were cuddled in.
We were in Eric’s man cave, and it was now seventeen minutes after midnight, the day after Christmas.
Somewhere along the line, Eric had strung multi-colored Christmas lights around the edges of the ceiling, and that was our only illumination.
The room smelled of movie theater popcorn, and we’d just finished Violent Night.
This was after our movie marathon that started with Lethal Weapon then moved into Die Hard and finished with Santa kicking ass and taking names.