My Christmas Star

A dream within a dream, right?

And ... it was my fault that it didn't come true. Yeah.

So I watched them make my food like a hawk. If I saw anything at all funny happen I called the store manager -- a person who might also think I was the cause of their own dream not coming true, but responsible to the franchise owner -- and have the manager make me a new sandwich, or whatever it was I was ordering.

That was how I made my way through the first weeks of December. Being seen and being watching.

Doing normal things.

But get this, all that watching, began to show me some things I hadn't been seeing till then.

The local merchants, normally as capricious as a nest full of poison adders, were suddenly as reluctant to fleece the people around them with the normal Christmas sales. A seller that was reluctant to sell?

Then I saw the for sale signs start to appear.

Not one, not two, but a dozen new ones a day.

Everyone was wanting to leave this small town. It had been the cradle that they had been so comfortable to them for all of their lives but suddenly they were ready to run from it because they had been hurt by something from outside? That puzzled me. Did they expect the rest of the world outside of our little community to treat them better than the schemers had?

Why?

If anything the rest of the world was lubing up the pipe, getting ready to fuck these yokels all the harder. Everybody with a scam that had seen the Miami News had been laughing their asses off over us being so gullible. And I knew that soon, like a shark smelling blood, they would come circling. Hell, I didn't doubt that they were investing in whole new sex toys to fuck these stupid, scam-gullible, local town's people with.

I didn't like that.

Everyone here needed moron tattooed on their foreheads, true, but did they deserve that? No on top of everything else.

But what could I do? I could hardly buy a hamburger here without having someone spit in it. They hadn't listened to me before, and sure as hell wouldn't do it now.

Then a more personal shoe dropped.

Victoria had been planning a Christmas Eve party for several months. All her invited guests had begun sending her "sorry we can't come to the party" messages.

Now if this was a one-time thing I could understand, but this was a party Victoria held every year. Some of these people had been to dozens of them. What the fuck, huh?

Nana had to point out that it was because of me.

I think that stung me worse than anything they had done so far. This town can spit on me all they want, I mean I know I was right and that they were fools. That knowledge alone is an armor they can't breach. But to attack Victoria? And it wasn't like she had done anything to these people. Hell, I hadn't even done anything to these people, but I get it, they needed a scapegoat to make it seem to them that they hadn't "fucked-the-poodle-when-drunk" as hard as they had. I get it. It sucks, but I get it. So I'm the town's whipping boy, okay that's fine, fuck you and all that.

But Victoria?

No.

Seeing her in tears when those rejections started rolling in -- more and more the closer it got to Christmas -- well, that was enough of this silly crap for me.

Which was why I was driving through town, here on an early Tuesday morning, about to confront people that I had only ever met a few times before, but that apparently thought me to be so vile a human being they couldn't be in my presence at a Christmas party.

First on the list?

Mr. Oliver Temple and his wife Tonya.

They were high school friend of not only Victoria but also of my mom and Dad. Now people become estranged over time, even in a small town like this. Small arguments, simple issues that blow up into socially awkward embarrassments and such. Well, that had happened between them and my parents. Somewhere about the time that my brother Tyler was born, the Temples stopped coming over to our house. The argument was nothing huge and dramatic, as I understand it, but it was never settled and after that point, they simply stopped coming over as often, till not often became less and less often, till it became never.

However, they had still been friends with Victoria.

Up until right after Thanksgiving.

Now Oliver runs a small landscaping company. He basically does the whole Forest Gump thing for the town only he gets paid. His wife works as an Organizer. Tonya helps hoarders get their lives back in order. She had also been working at the local motel as a once a week assistant maid. Seems all those out of town construction workers had taken a lot of cleaning up after apparently.

Well, the people that normally pay Oliver are all in jail. The town funds are either gone or they are frozen at the moment, so even if the Town Council wasn't in jail they couldn't pay Oliver for his landscaping.

And the local motel was a ghost town.

Admittedly there were a lot of people in town going through their crammed-tight closets looking to sell stuff, but those people had no extra money to pay a Hoarding Consultant to help.

So yeah, here it was a few weeks before Christmas and the Temple's were both drawing unemployment. And their house had one of those ~For Sale~ signs out front.

Now while I'll be the first to admit that not really a situation that would put me in the frame of mind to want to go to a party, but see that wasn't their excuse. Nope, not even close to how they had phrased their refusal.

"We're not coming because you're dating a criminal like Randal Scotts."

Yeah, that's closer to it.

When I pulled up in front of their house, I had to suppress a shiver. It didn't look natural. It had that "too-perfect" look that bad CGI has. Given that this was a real house and not some computer generated image it just made my body react in violent ways.

The grass looked like green micro-pile carpet. If there was a single blade that hadn't been trimmed to an exactly measured height, I would have bet my college fund on it. And the shrubbery and flower planters were the same. The Palm trees looked manicured. And I mean that in the whole sculpted and polished to a shine kind of way.

The window drapery all hung exactly the same way. The urge to take out a tape measure and check them was powerful, but I was sure someone already had done that. The house had a fresh coat of paint. The driveway had just been pressure washed, like this morning. The whole of it was still wet and I saw Oliver putting away the washer when I pulled up.

I parked on the street, seemed the polite thing to do.

Oliver Temple was surprised to see me. Leastways, that what I normally associate with someone standing there looking at me ... blinking like a camera shutter. The whole, mouth agape thing, is also a good sign.

"Mr. Temple." I stepped forward to him and offered him my hand.

For a moment he looked at the outstretched palm in confusion, then hesitation, and then, with a notable reluctance, Oliver reached out and shook my hand.

"Randal ... um, what can I do for you?"

I released his hand and placed my thumbs in the pockets of my jeans. "Oh, nothing. I just came by to make sure you were home. See I've got two guys, Vinny and Big Louie, coming by in a few minutes to break your knees and steal your wife's diamonds."

"Wh ... what?"

I gave him a smile. "Well, from the message you sent Victoria, that seems to be the type of person you think I am. Although... " I took out a hand and kind of gestured at myself " ... exactly how you gathered that, from this, I don't understand. My dad's name was Wendel not Don Vito and Scotts hardly sounds like Corleone to me." I gave him my best boyish grin. "Capisce?"

For a second he looked at me stunned, then a slightly embarrassed look passed his face.

"Ah, yeah ... well, about that..."

"Oh, no I get it." I held out a hand waving off his pitiful excuse. "That whole guilty by association thing? Yeah, that sucks, huh?" That I was talking about Victoria had to be hitting him like a frying pan, that was what I was going for anyway. I shrugged. "If this town feels they need someone to blame for being stupid -- and aren't willing to own up to their own mistakes -- then yeah, sure. I guess I can shoulder the crap they are wanting me to carry for pointing out to them that the Emperor has no clothes."

I glanced over when I saw Tonya standing at the door into the kitchen from the garage. I gave her a nod, but then ignored her.

"But Victoria? No." I felt my hands curl up at my side. "See, that Christmas party invite went out to people she thought of as friends. People she cared for. And I just wanted to stop by and thank you personally ... for helping me to show her the type of people that live in this town." I looked at his perfect front yard. "Nice grass; Zoysia, right? We had that at Mom and Dad's when I was growing up."

He stuttered out an automatic reply. "Uh, yeah I put it in over there, back--"

I had turned my back on him mid-sentence and walked back to my grandfather's truck. Without a backward glance, I drove away.

There were a lot more people on that list I had to go visit, and the day wasn't getting any longer.

** ** ** ** ** ** **

I can't say I managed some kind of miraculous social upheaval in our little town, but I did guilt-trip about thirty depressed people -- that hate me -- in to come to a Christmas party.

Depressed?

Really?

You lost a fucking tourist trap and got scammed out of some money, for Christ sake. It's fucking Christmas, people, cheer the fuck up already. I mean it's not like their parents were burned alive this year.

Sheesh!

Honestly, I wished I could leave. This place held nothing but bitterness for me now. Well, except for Victoria. She and I were together at least a few hours every day and, more and more often, I seemed to be sleeping next to her. She needed the comforting in her life.

Her daughter had moved out.

Admittedly, Jennifer is my age. Getting her lazy tits out of her Mom's house was something she needed to be doing. But it was the way she did it that was wrong.

There is a small apartment block on the edge of town -- which had, up till a few weeks ago, been packed full of a ton of grungy-smelling, hard-hat-wearing, beer-guzzling, construction workers -- that was suddenly offering year leases at ridiculously low rates. So Jennifer grabbed one, but, she was depending on some of her boyfriend's income to help her pay that rent. So she had Thomas as a roommate half the time, which would be fine and all, but he came with a bunch of equally crappy losers, as friends, that also would always hang around him. Even I could see the multiple possibilities for disasters in the budding.

Before she left, however, Jennifer decided to give her mother a piece of her mind about me.

And I had to clean up the emotional wreckage she left behind.

Yeah, my ex can go fuck herself.

Victoria and I have been technically dating for less than a month and I'm already having to deal with crap that some relationships don't have to juggle till the seventh year of a marriage. There were times when I had to ask myself why the hell I was doing this? I mean I was a young man, I had money. I had a sailboat that could take me away from all of this. Yeah, admittedly, I had not a single chance of ever getting a hotter woman in my bed than Victoria. But maybe the second hottest woman I could have in my bed might not come with all of this drama, right?

But then I would see Vicky smile at something I said ... and I realized I could never leave.

I joked once when she said I was too-young-for-her, by saying that I was getting a year older for every day I was dating her. She hadn't thought it a funny joke, but as the Christmas holiday got closer and closer and more and more things like Jennifer leaving just seemed to pop up, the more I really did feel older.

My Nana pointed out to me I was using the wrong word.

Not older ... but more mature.

It's often hard to feel like a mature person when you're with a woman that knows so much more than you do. I found myself struggling to not be a kid-like-presence around Victoria. I wanted a hot and naughty girlfriend, after all, not a substitute mother. When she tried to do things that made me feel like I was being mothered I would often step back and make her stop. She would not always take it well. Victoria was trying to help me, after all.

I had never realized just how complex people and relationships were. Not till I found myself in the middle of one, anyway. A relationship had always been just someone to call and go see a movie with. Someone to share a few kisses and the odd grope. Someone to talk into doing something even naughtier with.

Yeah, maturity ... it kind of sucks.

And it's also wonderful.

Christmas Eve morning I woke up next to Victoria, in her queen-size bed, snuggled together in her apartment. We were naked, burrowed together under her thousand thread count sheets ... sheets that reeked of sex ... and we were both deliciously warm and content.

Lying next to her, looking down at her face I realized something profound. I was coming to more and more think of her being my age. This was not my ex-girlfriend's mother, but the woman I'm in love with. This is not so much a woman my mother's age, as a woman, I was sharing a bed with. And as all of these thought flowed past, that growing maturity which my grandmother had seen in me and spoken of, became even more self-evident. I realized that Victoria was, part and parcel, a part of this town. She had grown up here, same as I had, same as my parents. This was still her home.

And I knew that till she was willing to leave, I could and would not leave.

Her eyes fluttered open. She saw me looking at her and smiled.

"Happy not yet Christmas," I said in a soft sing-song. Leaning in, I kissed her. A soft butterfly wing touch of a kiss.

She chuckled. "Happy not yet Christmas to you too."

"I need your help with something."

Victoria snuggled into my side. "Would that 'something' be what is poking me in the hip?" Her hand curled around my half-hard cock. "I've been helping you with this all of last night."

With a grin, I kissed her again. "Thanks, but that's not it."

"Oh?" Her fingers stilled but didn't move away.

"Yeah." Sitting up, I draped the sheet over my shoulders to ward off the slight chill. "I need your help to put things to right."

Victoria pulled herself up on the pillows and covered her breasts with the blanket. "What do you mean?"

"The town." I rubbed my hand on my bare leg to chase off the goose-bumped flesh. "The Mayor is on the run, the Town Council is in jail, we may be looking at a bankruptcy next year, and everyone is ready to jump ship ... it can't continue this way around here. This place will become a ghost town like Kerr or Stiltsville."

"Okay, yeah I can see that, but what do you think I can do about that?" She pulled the blanket higher. "I can't even get my daughter to listen to me."

"Would you say that the people coming to the party tonight are as good a collection of the local people as could be found?'

She nodded. "Well, yeah, minus a few like your grandmother, Pastor Mitchel and maybe Mrs. Spock the librarian." Victoria tilted her head and gave me a look. "What's in your head?"

How to explain what I'm thinking when I'm making it up as I go along? "Well, I think we could form an interim town council. At least till we can get some elections together. Everyone that is coming tonight meets the requirements to hold the post. I'm pretty sure they do anyway, there aren't many requirements to hold the post."

Slowly she nodded. "I would have to look it up, but I think a decade in residence and a permanent address is the only real requirement." Victoria chuckled. "Hell, even your boat and this apartment qualify, if you get technical."

"That's good, because I intend you and I to both be on it," I said, then smiled at her reaction.

"What!"

"Everyone around here wants to make this whole mess to somehow be my fault. Or my dad's fault. Well, goddammit, if I'm going to get the blame for shit going bad around here, then I'll be damn if I'm not going to have a hand in fucking the place up. If this place going to go into the shitter, well, I might as well get to do the flushing."

Victoria laughed. "You going to run for Mayor? You're really going to do it?"

I laughed remembering her mentioning that weeks ago.

"Well, the job does seem to involve travel and the possibility of a government paid retirement home. Those are pretty good perks, I do have to say."

Smiling, she reached out and pulled me to her. "Come here Mr. Mayor. I want to have a meeting in my chambers."

Slipping between her warm thighs, I smiled as she guided me into her with a grin. "Is this an emergency session?" I asked.

"Oh, hell yes."

With a low moan, she engulfed me into her warmth.

Her hands pulled me down on top of her, draping her body with my weight. Victoria kissed the side of my neck. "Gently, please. I'm a bit sore."

I pushed into her completely and held myself still. "Me too."

"Umm, not too sore to please your lady, are you?" she asked.

"No."

"Oh, goody," she purred. Her hands caressed my bare back. Reaching down, Victoria pulled the silky cool sheet up over us. "You realize, with a party tonight, I have all kinds of things I need to be doing?"

I paused. "You want me to stop?"

"Oh, no. I'm just pointing out it's all your fault I'm not getting any of them done." She wiggled her hips under me making me moan as her body clamped onto my cock and tugged along my length.

When I could speak again, I pulled back to just the edge of her nether lips and then surged forward making her cry out in pleasure. "How do you figure that it's my fault?"

"Well ... if you weren't so tempting to me, and ... so wickedly good at this, I might devote myself to things ... like my party." Biting her lip, Victoria hugged me tighter and shivered. I watched her face as she quivered. I loved getting to see her like this. "You're like candy and sin. Too tempting to turn down, but you're just ... too much when taken in ... large quantities."

"So you do what me to stop?"

"No, goddammit! Fuck me harder," she demanded. Gripping my hips with her legs, Victoria clawed at my hips, driving me back inside.

The pleasure of pleasing this older woman had long ago taken over any simple act of willpower on my part. Victoria was now my drug of choice. And, like any addict when offered unlimited amounts of their drug, I drove myself to excess. I was happy to OD on this woman. Deliriously so. I was more than willing to accept her commands at this point. Had she desired any perversion of me, I would have given her naughtiest wishes my instant sinful compliance. That I had given so much of myself into her hands only became really apparent to me at the moments before I was about to orgasm.

At that second I was her slave. She was my leash-holding master. For her, I would have killed. For her, I would have died.

For Victoria ... I would stay in a town I hate. I would ... I would ....

"Yes, come for me, Randal. Come for me."

Lost to her and to the pleasure I was feeling, I poured my lust and passion-tribute into the warmth of her sex, making it all the wetter. When she felt my body lock ridged, Victoria was equally taken. Her orgasm differed from mine only in the tenor and pitch of her cries of ecstasy. Our bodies were so closely joined we shared the pleasure of each other's emotional highs and the almost painful wracking of muscular twitching spasms.

Sweaty, the cool air of the room rushing in to caress my skin with chills, I started to move, but obeyed her unspoken command to not remove myself from on top of her. She held me, her thighs shaking in small trembling quakes and when she nuzzled at my neck, making small purring mummers, I buried my face in her red hair.