There Is Also a Dog

by Kayley Loring

In case you’re wondering… The title of this book is from a Tweet I once saw: The plot of every Hallmark movie is about a career woman who is too busy for love but she has to move to a small town where a handsome local bachelor teaches her about the true spirit of the holiday. It starts snowing and they kiss. There is also a dog.

Where is the lie? This might be the best author’s note I’ve seen in awhile.

I mean, obviously, I can’t spend time with family very often because I’m so busy with work—but I’d have a Baby Yoda shipped to my niece on any random Monday in June or September.

and my stressed-out New York lawyer bosses are demons from the toxic, fiery pits of Harvard Law School Alumni Hell.

I love using at least a quarter of the money I earn to buy really nice stationery. Then I buy really nice containers for organizing that stationery. Then I buy cozy outfits to wear when I stay home at night and on weekends to admire all the nice stationery in well-organized

We are the same person!

That’s me living my best life in my happy place, and if you think I’m doing it wrong, then fight me.

Because the only thing dumber than Christmas in general is Christmas lights wrapped around the trunks of palm trees when it’s sunny and warm out. All those happy, healthy, tanned people driving around in convertibles… Blech.

Unless Zac Efron emailed me and was like, Hey, I’ve got this sick environmentally friendly cabin in the Catskills. I was just going to hang out here by myself with my shirt off for a few days, but if you want to join me, I’ll send you the address.

There are framed photos of this incredible four-legged creature all over the cabin and not one image of a human, and that makes me feel uncharacteristically calm and happy.

And good merry riddance to him! May she savor his pre-coffee personality and delight in being vigorously pounded by his slightly curved penis for one or two minutes twice a week for all eternity. Joyful blessings to both of them on their courageous journey to matrimonial bliss.

I am currently working on a to-do list of sex positions in a beautiful new notebook.

My sister’s eyes are now bulging out of their sockets. “Oh my God.” “Don’t say it.” “Oooohhh myyy gaawwwd, this is just like—” “Do not say it’s like a Netflix Christmas movie.” “It’s like a Hallmark Christmas movie!!!”

I should have played harder to get. I’m going to die alone. This is all Christmas’s fault. Shit.

Preferably someone I can Christmas Netflix and Chill with.

She already knows I bake peppermint bark cookies that are so perfectly crisp and chewy they’ll knock her on her ass, spank that ass until it’s candy cane-pink and refreshingly tingly, and then massage those cheeks until she begs Santa to treat her like a naughty, naughty girl again.

My gingerbread men are sensitive alpha male baked boyfriends who’ll ask her how her day was, calmly listen to her throw shade at that b-face her ex married on Christmas Eve, bring her a mug of hot apple-cinnamon cider, and then fuck her eight different ways ‘til Taco Tuesday.

I’m sobbing. I am sobbing in front of the man I was just trying to seduce. This is humiliating. Fuck you, Christmas!

And just like that, he is kissing me as if he’s been longing for me for an eternity.

“So is there a deadline for you to complete that sex position to-do list, or is it more of a lifetime bucket list?”

I think she might be genuinely turned on by my willingness to use nicer writing paper.