12 Days of Mistletoe

18. Elliot

EIGHTEEN

elliot

Bonnie sets Bill’s tea in front of him, gives her dog a pat, adjusts the pirate hat on her head and is off toward the front of the room where the bingo boards and call numbers are piled all before I can set Gran’s tea in front of her.

I feel an overwhelming need to apologize. Though I’m not sure what I did wrong. Did I say something untrue? Or offensive? The girl loves her dog—like, a lot. I don’t see how that’s rude.

Noel isn’t on a leash, and with Bonnie’s ascent to the head of the room, she trots after her. The pup stands next to her owner, her body right next to Bonnie’s leg, always keeping contact.

“Hey, everybody,” Bonnie says into a microphone. It isn’t that big of a room—but then this crowd does seem to have some hearing loss. “Make sure you have your pirate attire on. I’ll pass around the boards in one minute.” She’s cheery and sweet, and yet something is off in her tone. It’s me—I am causing that off-tone. If I can hear it—someone so new to Bonnie—don’t her friends in the room hear it too?

I peer at the table next to me, where a man has just placed a plastic eye patch over his right glass lens—okay, maybe her friends are distracted.

“I better get one with a mermaid this time!” A gentleman holding a hook in his left hand hollers.

“You get what you get, Doug.” She gives him a wink, and I’m pretty sure Doug is getting a mermaid. She’s all talk. She might dress up like a mermaid for pirate bingo if Doug asked her to.

I peer over to Gran, who is sitting two inches closer to Bill and is now wearing a white feather boa. When did she put that on? Gran is not the boa type.

What. Is. Happening?

“For heaven’s sake, Elliot. Manners! Go help Bonnie,” Gran says, nodding me forward.

It’s just the excuse I need. Because I want to help Bonnie. I want to apologize for a perfectly true statement.

I hurry up to the front, where she’s gathered bingo boards and a cardboard treasure chest full of gold coins. The plastic kind.

“Can I help?” I say.

A puff of air exhales from her nostrils. And she shoves the stack of bingo boards into my hands. The laminated boards don’t have the word bingo or any numbers on them. The word pirate is printed across the top and the boxes, six down and six across, each having a pirate-themed picture in them. Instead of a number, there’s a hook or a mermaid or a pirate hat in each box.

Yep. Pirate bingo.

“You go all out. Don’t you?” I say.

Bonnie doesn’t say anything but starts at the closest table to us. There’s a small silver bucket in the center of each table. Bonnie snatches it up and scoops it full of the plastic gold coins before setting it back in the center.

“Give them each a board,” she says to me, her cheery tone turned cross.

Right—I’m apologizing and helping, not just observing.

So I pass out a board to the four senior citizens sitting around this table.

“Hi, Ellen,” Bonnie says when I lay the first board down in front of the gray-haired woman. “How’s Muffin?”

“Doing better. I think she passed that button.”

Ick . I do not ask.

“Hi, Sheldon. Hey, Marg. Good luck, Pres.” Bonnie greets each and every person we see. One by one.

Pres reaches for one of the gold coins in the bucket and sets it on top of his FREE space in the middle of his bingo board.

Aww . I get it. That’s what the coins are for. She really has thought of everything.

There is a chorus of “Hi, Bon Bon” from each person at the table.

“Bon Bon?” I thought that was just a Bill nickname. Clearly not.

“Shush,” she tells me. But her scolding only makes me chuckle. And her word choice makes me think of Gran.

That chuckle earns me a glare, and I remember once again that I came over to apologize.

She fills up the next table’s bucket and smiles sweetly at the patrons at the table, greeting each of them.

“Listen, Bonnie,” I begin once her ‘hellos’ are finished, “I’m?—”

“Can you pass out the boards? This shouldn’t take so long with two of us doing it. ”

“Oh.” I clear my throat. “Right.” I give out two boards and Bonnie doesn’t even look at me. Standing straight, I tug on her elbow. “Hey, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she says, setting one hand on her hip. She holds the treasure box with her opposite hand, tucking it close to her side, and studies me, waiting for an answer.

“Um.” My brows pinch and I think. Hard. “For saying you were into your dog?” It’s a statement that comes out too much like a question. I hadn’t planned to go into details with this apology.

“Who’s this, Bon Bon?” a woman with salt-and-pepper curled hair and red glasses asks. She tips her head back, looking up at me.

Bonnie huffs but grins at the woman. “This is Elliot .” With a bright and extremely false smile— never go into acting, woman —Bonnie says, “My boyfriend .”

“Ooo,” another lady at the table, one I haven’t given a board to yet, croons. “ Boyfriend . That’s exciting.”

The man next to her—the one with a really terrible toupee—grumbles, “Bon Bon, could you tell your boyfriend to hand out the boards, please?”

“Elliot,” she groans as if I’m a misbehaving child. “You have one job.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.” I hand out two more boards and Bonnie is off to the next table.

“Bon Bon!” yells the man who demanded a mermaid earlier. “What’s shakin’ bacon?”

“Hey, Doug,” Bonnie says, though it’s not as bright as before. “Mermaid today, huh?”

“She’s gonna be lucky. I can tell.”

“Bonnie,” I say, because I can’t let it go. “I’m just trying to apologize. ”

Bonnie scoops the bucket into the gold coins and sets them in the center of the table. “But are you actually sorry? You meant what you said, right? We both know I’m into my dog .”

My mouth goes dry. No answer feels like the right answer here. “Well?—”

“The boards, Elliot!” She gives the smallest of eye rolls and I feel like an idiot who can’t get simple instructions down.

I toss three boards onto the table. “Bonnie, I just?—”

“There’s no mermaid on this board,” Doug grumbles. “Don’t you have any mermaids in there?”

Bonnie groans, sets the treasure box on the table, and snatches the boards from my hands.

“Well, geez, Bon Bon,” Doug says, “if it’s that much trouble?—”

Bonnie moves her eyes to the older gentleman. “Sorry, Doug. It’s no trouble. It’s a simple, easy request,” she says, her tone full of sarcasm. “One that my boyfriend can’t seem to understand. Believe me. It isn’t you. It’s him.”

Doug’s lips turn up in a smile—as long as he’s not the one making her grumble, he’s perfectly happy. “There she is!” He points to the stack of boards Bonnie is flipping through.

“Yep. Right here.” She holds the board out to Doug, a mermaid with a gold tail in the left corner square.

Doug scoops a handful of gold coins from the bucket, dropping them onto the table beside him.

Bonnie picks up the treasure chest of coins and shoves it into my hands. “Can you handle this job?”

“I can handle either job. I’m trying to talk to you.”

“And I’m trying to work. It’s fine, Elliot. You said what you said, and you meant it. I am into my dog. This is what you know about me. You’re not even wrong.”

“Then why are you so offended?” I’m more confused than anything. Her mood flipped so fast and I honestly don’t know what I’ve done.

She pauses between tables, one hand on her hip. Her throat bobbing in a swallow. “I’m not offended.” Her eyes flick up to me. “I guess I’m disappointed. I am into my dog, Elliot. Actually, I’m more than into her, I’m dependent on her. Yes, I love her, I’m crazy about her. Noel is literally the best pet in the world. But she is a whole lot more than a pet. I need her. I don’t know why—because boyfriend or not, I hardly know you—but I thought you understood that for a minute. Your statement tells me you do not.” She gives a one-shoulder shrug. “No apology necessary.”

I’m pretty sure a chest of real, actual gold coins falls into the pit of my stomach.

I’m a jerk.

This isn’t some obsession for Bonnie. Although—she may be somewhat obsessed with Noel. But it’s a whole lot more than that. And I do know that.

It’s a minute before I realize that I’m standing alone between tables. An entire sixty seconds—Bonnie is two tables ahead of me now. She’s not waiting anymore.

“Hey, One-thirty,” Bill yells, calling me by my Scrabble score. Yep, that’s a nickname I’m going to love explaining to Gran. “Gold coins, over here.”

I walk to the next table, fill their bucket, then make my way over to Gran and Bill.

“One-thirty? Really, Elliot. You’re a school teacher for goodness’ sake.”

“I teach P.E., Gran, not English. ”

“You are an educator, and as such, you should be better at spelling.”

Bill hums out a chuckle. “What’s up with Bon Bon?”

I swallow. No sense in lying to either of them. I was wrong and I don’t deserve getting out of it. “I hurt her feelings.”

Gran’s brows pull together.

I quickly add, “I didn’t mean to. But I did. And then, I didn’t apologize very well.”

Wrinkles form around the tight O Gran has made with her disapproving mouth. “Well, go try again. Do better this time.”

“I’m not sure how.”

“Are you trying to get out of your kiss today? Because I won’t have it, Elliot James. We made a deal.”

That’s what she’s worried about?

“You know I have plenty of mistletoe back at my place. We could?—”

“No need,” I say, not liking the way Bill White is looking at my grandmother. “Mistletoe isn’t going to fix this, Gran.”

“Then go talk to her. You can’t be as bad at apologizing as you are at Scrabble,” Bill says.

Gran harrumphs one more time. “Elliot, you go make things right with that sweet girl. Right now.”