Cheat With My Boyfriend Best Friend

Why Not Breakup?

Christmas was coming, whether I wanted it or not.

Mariah Carey was playing in on every speaker, and each of the small shops along the street were decorated with red and green ribbons. Starbucks was serving their annually seasonal drinks (btw, they all tastes the same), and the sweet smell of baked gingerbread wafted around every corner.

Everyone was welcoming the Christmas spirit, except me.

And it wasn’t just my work that was getting me down.

I knew trying to yield any results before Christmas would be hopeless. It would take a miracle to make that kind of progress in a week, and it was a little too late to ask Santa.

I swallowed a mouthful of my pumpkin spice latte as I worried: Where on earth was I going to spend Christmas?

For most people, it’s a no-brainer. They were going to go see their families. All in all, Christmas was the festival for families.

But my family was just a headache to deal with every year.

Last night I found a dirty package in my mailbox from my parents. It came with a postcard that said, “Sweetie, we’re sorry we won’t be able to spend Christmas with you this year either. We’ve reached a critical stage of our research, but we still made sure to get you a gift.”

I wasn’t surprised when I opened the package.

It was a stuffed penguin.

being unreliable around the holidays, but

was 27 years old! They’ve been sending me a stuffed penguin for Christmas for the past decade! I wasn’t

biologists. More specifically, they studied penguins. They fell in love on an icebreaker headed to Antarctica for research. Most researchers would get sick of

only time their marriage was in jeopardy was when they left Antarctica for my education. After they came to New York, they were lucky they found a boarding school that would accept someone as young as three months old. If they were stuck in the city, they would’ve divorced for sure. Fortunately,

them is a Christmas card attached to a stuffed

hard for me. No one wanted to be

opposite problem. Instead of being left alone, I was

people.

to his parents’ house. He was from a big family with religious parents. Ever since I was first invited to one

was hard to say how much of my “love” for Vincent

invited me to his family party again, but I definitely

go to

was there because of a scholarship opportunity while she was there because her father made huge donations to the school’s library. Before Vincent, I spent all of my Christmases

was in the double digits, and that’s not even counting the illegitimate ones. Her entire family got together for Christmas, and it was always a

planning on taking a cruise! The ship was set to depart from Greece and sail along the Mediterranean Sea. Nick was such a romantic

there was Aaron’s

actually invited me to spend Christmas

out. He acted like he’d mentioned it on a whim, which made me wonder if it was another one of his

heart, even though they didn’t want to get married at all. All they wanted was to play

Like Vincent.

we were coming over.” Vincent asked. “She said she had an extra gift for you since we just got engaged. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably my great- grandma’s wedding ring. It’s a