All You Want for the Holidays (Home for the Holidays)

2. Inari

Chapter 2

Inari

W ith my bags packed away, a glass of water nearby, and my laptop set up, it’s time to start my newest project: writing an entire novel in one week.

This residency provides the perfect time, perfect location, and perfect everything for it. It’s designed for artists to immerse themselves, to network with fellow guests, and to leave with significant progress on our chosen projects.

But this once-off experience is more than that, too.

It’s an opportunity for me to truly do something for myself . Not just to please someone else, not just for an assignment or for work. This was my choice and my getaway from the constant need to mask and work hard under another person’s terms.

There is comfort in not knowing the resident on their way. How easy would it be to tweak my personality to something that felt more like me, to express myself in new ways I never got to try at home, to show myself how good life could get when I move out next year and set out to make something of myself?

In the big wide world, I’m a young grasshopper that could be squished at any moment by the realities of life and society. But here, in this villa, I am sculpting my adulthood and my practice. I am rounding out the completion of my studies. I have left behind the dramas of family Christmas get-togethers that require far too much socialising.

I take a deep breath, ready for a fiery start to this manuscript. It will be a testament to my next chapter.

Then my phone screen flashes and a message stares back at me.

Sunlit Roommate

See you soon! I’m Perrin (she/her) btw :)

Everything freezes—time, birdsong, the AC blowing somewhere behind me—and I have to double check that I’m still breathing.

I’ve only ever known one other Perrin, and she was an artist too. Throughout all of high school she claimed cameras as her expression, the only way she knew to show others how she understood… anything. The last I saw her was some time after high school graduation a few years ago, but with so many young artists gunning for a spot at Sunlit Creative Space, there was no way this would be the same girl.

I flip my phone face down and take a deep breath. Before this Perrin arrives, I need to clear my mind of the old Perrin. Considering it was just the two of us, it’d be unfair to project any expectations of my ex-friend onto this person who seemed really excited about this residency.

Only about five minutes pass, during which I’ve just set up some files for each chapter and re-read my outline, when I hear a call from downstairs.

“Hello? It’s me, Perrin!”

My fingers stop over the keyboard. Recognition cracks through me like a lightning bolt. A voice I used to know every day and a voice that carried both comfort and regret, melding the years together from a time before I was Inari to a time difficult to remember in detail through teary eyes and the constant stress of missing classes.

I get out of my chair and sneak over to the staircase. I crouch down on the landing and look through the staircase bannisters. Her suitcases are just out of view as she moves towards the kitchen.

I hear her opening the fridge and squealing. I almost laugh at the obscenity of the situation. We’re in this wonderful villa, provided for without a worry in the world except for our chosen projects, chasing a perfect summer holiday experience, but all with the girl I swore I’d never see again when we finished our formal schooling together.

Then she heads back this way and checks out the other rooms, and it’ll be a matter of time before she comes upstairs. We’re the only two in this place until the end of the week and even with the town a few minutes away, it’s not like I can escape without causing a fuss.

Her suitcases are rolling this way, so I spin around and fix up the wooden screen partition before throwing myself back in my seat, as if delaying the inevitable reveal would help anyone.

I stare at my blank document. I click to my outline file. I go back to the blank one. Words aren’t coming to mind at all.

I text my childhood friend instead, through the laptop so then it feels like I’m doing something.

Girl help

Leila Chen

Yesssssss…………..?

is the other resident super hot or something?

It’s worse than that.

Leila Chen

SUPER HOT AND TAKEN?

It’s Perrin.

Leila Chen

What?

Perrin Pavlou is my Sunlit roommate.

Leila Chen

you’re lying

otherwise that would be SOO FUNNY!!!!!

Well.

What am I supposed to do? She’s about to come upstairs