“Honey? Where’s the other present your mom sent me? You said there were two.”

“Yours are the ones with the red ribbons.”

I dig in the box. I opened one gift yesterday, so there should be another red ribbon somewhere. Instead, I find an unwrapped set of very cute pajamas.

“Did you open my present?”

“No, why?”

“Cause I don’t think these size small PJs are for you, and they’re opened right here by your t-shirts.”

“I didn’t open anything of mine. What t-shirts?”

I hold up the Life is Good shirts with a cyclist and a football player. E grabs his hair and curses under his breath and I know who did it. It’s the person whose presents aren’t even in that box.

It’s been a stressful two weeks dealing with my boyfriend’s older brother. Bro moved into E’s place this summer after he couldn’t pay his bills anymore. He was fired because he refused to conform to a simple rule, but he wouldn’t let The Man tell him what to do. Nor would he sign up for unemployment, because that’s for losers. Noble. So he took over half of E’s one-bedroom apartment and has been living on a waiter’s tips and a sense of entitlement.

He doesn’t even try.

It’s only gotten worse since he moved in, and these last few weeks we have been DESPERATE to get him out. But it’s a double-edged sword because E is thoroughly convinced that Bro is just going to make a financial mess of himself again and land on the doorstep some night, drunk and stoned, demanding to move back in. And E, with a deep resentment barely overridden by his sense of fraternal obligation, will let him. And they both know it.

But Bro has finally found an apartment and put down a deposit. He’s got the keys. I very kindly (read: pushily) provided him with a dozen of the sturdy boxes we use at The Hospital and told him that if he needed more, I’d hook him up. He packed five of them and has moved exactly one.

In the spirit of Christmas and the love I bear for my boyfriend, GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT.

Quit slacking and mooching off him. Don’t whine to us about how poor you are when we know you blow all your money on your vices, legal and otherwise. Quit leaving a mess everywhere. Open your own damn Christmas presents. Don’t eat the food we bought for ourselves. Stop turning the furnace up to 75 and not contributing to the gas bill. Quit waking us up in the morning because you want to talk about nothing. On that note, quit keeping us up at night because you’re drunk and want to talk and sing Miley Cyrus songs.

E and I sleep at my place a lot now because he just can’t stand being at his own apartment anymore. I love having him over, but that’s just stupid and wrong to feel pushed out of your own place like that. He is so stressed and angry and it hurts my heart to see him like this. It’s not that E hasn’t tried, both nicely and occasionally in anger, to wake Bro up to what he’s doing. But it’s all a joke to him. E wouldn’t REALLY throw him out, right? Ha ha ha!

We are ready to cut him.