Three Christmas Wishes - Krista Wolf Page 0,9

lifted the tree into place. It went up like a skyscraper, falling in reverse. For a split second I worried it would actually scrape the ceiling, but then it stopped, leaving me a good foot and half to put my grandmother’s star.

“Oh my GOD that looks amazing!” I cried.

“Sure does,” Brock smiled, wiping his hands together. “But just wait till’ she’s done.”

To my surprise they filed through the doorway, leaving only the noise of their boots on the stairs. They returned about two minutes later, carrying all manner of colorful boxes and three giant spools of lights.

“You brought me ornaments?” I gasped.

“Well didn’t you say yours were gone?” asked Valerio.

“Yes, but—”

“Then problem solved,” said Kade, setting down a stack of blue-and-white bulbs that were frosted with glitter. I saw red ones and green ones, all shiny and beautiful. Acrylic ornaments shaped like snowflakes and icicles, meant to hang off the tips of the branches, too.

“But… you guys didn’t have to…”

My sentence died at the lump in my throat. I was all choked up. They’d gone above and beyond, even upgrading my tree-stand with a heavier duty model that was already fixed to the trunk when they dragged it inside.

“We can decorate it after dinner,” said Brock. “If you’re up for it, that is.”

I blinked back at him, totally in shock. But the smile on my face said everything.

“Really? I— I’d love that.”

“Great,” he grinned back, sweeping an errant blond lock away from his eyes. “Only two things left to do then.”

He looked even more incredible than earlier, dressed impeccably in tight black jeans and black leather boots. Up top his outfit accentuated every muscle, every curve, from the twin bulbs of his broad shoulders to the biceps and triceps yearning to break free of his too-tight shirt.

“And what would that be?” I asked.

“Tell us where we can wash up, and let’s eat!”

Eight

SLOANE

Dinner was almost disappointingly simple: chicken Parmesan with Italian bread. It was something everybody in the world loved to eat, and as far as I was concerned you really couldn’t screw it up too badly.

Hunched over my kitchen table, the guys devoured it so ravenously I couldn’t even tell whether they liked it or not. They ate my food and drank the beer I’d provided, all while laughing and chiding each other and marveling over the size of my apartment. But it wasn’t until we’d finished and I finally showed them my studio, that they really went crazy.

“You’re an artist?” Valerio asked, his voice full of awe.

“A sculptor mostly,” I replied. “But yes.”

They wandered carefully through my organized chaos, stepping around half-finished pieces in various stages of production. I had plaster molds stacked in one corner, boxes of investment and raw materials in another. There were whole shelves of carved wax figurines that I still needed to melt out, and bigger clay models on work benches and turnstile pedestals. My big octagonal kiln took up another space, surrounded by my vacuum chamber, my centrifuge, and a giant barrel of dirty water I used to quench everything straight after the pour.

“This is crazy,” said Kade. “This is…”

“A lot?” I chuckled.

“Yeah. That.”

Brock nearly tripped over one of the cords I’d taped to the floor, but had been coming up lately. He caught himself just in time, his elbow knocking into a stack of crucibles that rattled in their porcelain settings.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly.

“No worries,” I told him. “Honestly, I really need to straighten this stuff out. I can barely get through here myself.”

I had little doubt they knew what any of these tools or objects were about, other than they created some of the bronze statues and non-abstract pieces I was gathering together for my upcoming show. They were drawn to these of course, because they were polished. Finished. Even beautiful.

“So this is what you do for a living?” asked Valerio.

“Yes and no,” I answered. “I’m trying to do this for a living, but I haven’t actually ‘made it’ yet. I do have an exhibit coming up on New Year’s Eve, though. That’s why this place is such a mess — I’ve been working overtime to get everything done by then.”

I paused, thinking about how much work I still had to do.

“None of this pays the bills though,” I chuckled. “In fact, these are the bills. For now at least, I work at a foundry just beyond the edge of town. We do casting and prototyping for various companies, making high-end steel and aluminum parts.”

“So you pour big vats of molten