Grotto Love

In this lusty tale by Andy N., Marc didn't set out to be a store Santa. But life doesn't always go as planned, including working with his old flame, Melissa, a girl so nice she's naughty.

“Don’t forget your beard.” Melissa kissed him on the cheek slowly putting it back onto his face. “You won’t look like Father Christmas much if you don’t put your bloody beard back on.”

Marc sighed and pulled out his small mirror, adjusting the beard. He hardly recognised the reflection staring back at him and he dreaded to think what he would say if he saw anybody he knew when they opened up that grotto door.

Staring at himself, he remembered how Bobby had hired him two weeks before and likely saw the desperation in his face as soon as he walked through the door of his office on the other side of the mall. Bobby was a small, stocky bald man, maybe a few years older than him, who offered him a cigarette as soon as he walked into the office.

“I gave up smoking last year,” he answered, shaking his head politely.

“Whiskey?” Bobby pulled out a bottle from his desk drawer along with two plastic cups.

Shocked, Marc shook his head knowing if he started he probably wouldn’t stop, politely adding, “I don’t drink nowadays.”

“You’ll probably be back on after this job.” Bobby laughed, pouring himself a glass of whiskey and then lit up a cigarette. “So,” he carried on, “how long have you been out of work?”

“Three months.” Marc looked down at the floor embarrassed to answer him.

“You were a call centre manager?” Bobby slouched backwards in his chair and carried on puffing into his cigarette upwards.

“Yeah, it closed.” He didn’t know what else to say. “They decided to move it to India.”

“And what made you want to apply for this job? It’s a bit of a change in career direction, isn’t it?”

He was right, too, Marc reflected to himself.

He didn’t want to do this job, but his Universal Credit benefits advisor, Anita, suggested it to him a few days before. Why didn’t he apply for it? You could have a laugh doing it, he remembered her saying but all he could think of was the poor sod who did it outside his local supermarket the year before, and how he got completely overrun by children within moments the grotto opening.

“Poor sod,” he remembered laughing with Jackie, his then wife, driving back home “You would never, ever see me doing this.”

He liked kids, even loved both of his children he had had by Jackie, but dealing with dozens of them every day? He wasn’t convinced in the slightest and was surprised when Bobby rang him up two days after the interview offering him the job and then took to his grotto two days before it opened and introduced him to his Elf, Melissa.

She didn’t say anything, and only spoke shocked after Bobby had left them both alone. “Marc?" she began.

"Melissa?" He didn't know what else to say to her in response. It had been five years since they had last seen each other at her mum’s funeral.

“How are you?” he eventually said.

“Well, I’m here.” She laughed with the spark blazing in her eyes that he remembered all too well. “And you?”

“The same, my job went.”

“I read about that in the papers.” She laughed. “And Jackie?”

“We got divorced last year.”

“Well, her loss is my gain.” She laughed again, throwing his hat at him.

“True, true.” He smiled.

***

“For god’s sake hurry up!” Melissa carried on rooting around for his hat, snapping him back to the present. “They are already queuing up halfway around the block. Bobby will be back here shortly making sure we are open”

“Not my fault you wanted to get reacquainted fifteen minutes before we—” He stopped. That certainly wasn’t planned, nor was the fact she told him she had been married to Bobby for two years as she pulled up her skirt afterwards, telling him how Bobby had been ignoring her for the last six months with, her words, ‘that slut in the jewelers.’

Marc breathed deeply and paused for a few seconds, listening to the noise outside. “You’d better let the first of them in.”

It was going to be a long five weeks, but as he looked at Melissa’s bum wiggling at him as she left, he decided it wasn’t going to be without its perks.

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