Jingle All the Mitchell Way: A Holiday Novella by Jennifer Foor Read Free Book Online Page A

going to visit my twin girls on Christmas? I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but ain’t no man in a creepy red velvet suit getting anywhere near my precious girls. I’ll cut off his balls and feed them to his mangy reindeer.”
    I cackled. “Damn. You’d cut off Santa’s balls?”
    “You bet your ass I would. I’m a dad now.”
    “You do know you’re Santa, right? You’re planning on cutting off your own balls and feeding them to magical reindeer? Have you been drinking while I was gone?”
    “It’s highly possible.”
    “Good, because I was beginning to think I lost you for a second. Just so we’re clear, Santa isn’t real.”
    Just as I said it my sister Isabella’s daughter, Sarah stood in front of me looking like I’d just killed her puppy. Her bottom lip came out, and before I could come up with an excuse as to why I’d blubbered the awful truth for her little ears to overhear, I was getting a slap in the back of my head. “Way to go, loser!” My dad exclaimed, while scooping up his granddaughter. “Don’t listen to Uncle Jake. Grandpa happens to know for a fact that Santa is real. Uncle Colt used to work for him. In fact, he’s so old he helped build his sleigh.”
    Uncle Colt, who lets just be honest, wasn’t the most comical of the bunch, shook his head and smiled, figuring on appeasing the small child instead of making a mockery of my dad’s attempt to crack on him.
    Jax shoved me toward the house. “You sure know how to fuck things up, bro.”
    If he was right then our holiday road trip was doomed for failure. All I could hope was that we’d all make it safely back in one piece, including the high dollar motorhome I’d be responsible for paying for, even if it was turned into scrap metal, or burned on the side of the road.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
    Chapter 7
    Jax
     
    “All aboard the Love train, destination North Pole.” I said while waving the family to enter the motorhome. Ever since my brother had come up with the idea, Amber had gone into planning mode, making sure we didn’t leave a single thing we could ever need at home. I swear, if she could have packed the whole damn kitchen sink, it would have been included.
    Between her own clothes, and all the twins things, I was left with a small kitchen drawer for my shit. Did I mention the Santa suit? Yep, you read it right. She packed one of those too, claiming we might miss the opportunity to have the girls get their picture taken, as if we wouldn’t be driving through towns with Malls where some creepy old man sat around all day getting his jollies from little children who waited in line to visit him, hoping for the opportunity to ask him for something his parents would never approve of. Okay, maybe that was a little irrational. Let’s just say I didn’t have fond memories of Santa Claus. To be honest, the whole idea of him creeped me out. People allow their kids to sit on their laps. Do they not consider they could be a pedophile? Half of them probably were, getting stiffies from innocent victims while their parents took pictures of the whole ordeal. Some could be scarred for life, perhaps even doing everything in their power to prevent their own children from being subdued to such blasphemy.
    Jake says I’m crazy. He thinks all kids need to experience Christmas. With Amber on his side, I’d never gotten a chance to convince either otherwise.
    So back to the Santa suit. Even though the idea was preposterous, I was going to have to suffer through it so my girls could add some pictures to the growing memory book my wife was building.
    It was a good thing the motorized home came equipped with a washer and dryer, since I’d packed a total of three full outfits, one coat, and two pair of shoes, which happened to be stored under the bathroom sink, with the twenty-four pack of biodegradable toilet paper the girls insisted they’d need.
    Amber wouldn’t be around during the day to wash the clothes, and I was