17. Holiday Campaign #3
He dances backward before she can grab him, holding the phone out of reach as he reads. “Christmas morning—home. All five. Do not schedule shit.”
Griffin laughs. “Accurate.”
“Beautiful. Concise. Emotionally resonant.” Dex hands the phone back to her. “No notes.”
“We also need a gift rule,” Ronan says.
Dex’s face falls. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Rules ruin Christmas.”
“Rules prevent you from spending six hundred dollars on something insane.”
Dex’s hand flies to his chest. “I would never.”
I look at him.
Dex catches my expression and sighs. “Okay, but in my defense, sometimes people deserve to have things.”
Cami curls into Griffin’s side. “What about a limit?”
“Per person?” Griffin asks.
“Yeah.”
I do math automatically.
Four people. Four gifts. Four very different relationships.
Except gift-giving isn’t really direction math.
Cami will overthink everyone. Griffin will buy practical things and then one thing that hits so hard it breaks somebody emotionally. Ronan will remember something you mentioned seven months ago and somehow find the exact version of it you wanted.
Dex will absolutely break the spending limit.
And I’ll probably spend three days staring at websites because buying something for someone you love feels more intimate than it should.
“How much?” I ask.
“A hundred?” Cami offers.
Dex makes a strangled sound.
“Per person,” she adds.
“Oh.” He relaxes. “Fine.”
Ronan points at him. “Hard limit.”
Dex narrows his eyes. “Does hard limit mean something different in this context, Dungeon Daddy?”
“It means one hundred dollars,” Ronan responds, not biting at the innuendo.
“But what if—”
“No,” Ronan counters.
“What if it’s on sale?”
“The amount you spend, not what it’s worth,” I clarify.
“What if I already own it?”
Griffin groans and drags a hand down his face. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
I laugh, and Dex looks entirely too please with himself.
From there, the conversation keeps going.
Stockings. Food. Whether Griffin is going to sleep at all Christmas morning or power through on caffeine and spite. Whether Cami is allowed to make cinnamon rolls or whether we’re ordering them from somewhere that knows what they’re doing.
Outdoor lights tomorrow.
A second extension cord.
No inflatable dragons.
Maybe one inflatable dragon.
Absolutely no inflatable dragons on the roof.
Somewhere in the middle of Griffin explaining why putting an inflatable anything on the roof is a terrible idea, Dex drops onto the couch beside me and puts his feet in my lap.
I rest a hand around his ankle.
Nobody asks about my family.
They don’t ask why they get Christmas Eve dinner while Dex and the others get the spaces between. They don’t point out that I’m planning my holiday around people who don’t actually know me or who any of them are to me.
Dex looks at me.
“You’re for sure home Christmas morning, right?” he asks quietly enough that the others can’t hear.
“Yeah.”
“Good.” His foot shifts beneath my hand.
He sits up and lets his head fall against my shoulder.
A stupid little ache opens in my chest.
Across the room, Cami is trying to convince Griffin that the bushes need multicolored lights because white lights alone are, according to her, “emotionally restrained.”
Ronan is explaining that before anyone buys more lights, we need to know how many strands she intends to connect so she doesn’t create a fire hazard.
Griffin is already looking up outdoor extension cords.
And the Dickmas Tree glows obscenely in the front window.
None of this is simple.
Five adults with five families, different work schedules, old traditions, new boundaries, people who know and people who don’t. People we’re afraid to tell. People we’re apparently going to have to disappoint.
For a long time, I thought building a life with someone meant fitting them into the empty spaces of the one you already had.
Looking around this room, I’m starting to think that’s bullshit.
Sometimes you have to move things around. An old tradition gets a little smaller because something new needs to exist. You tell someone no because saying yes would mean taking something away from someone else.
Maybe sometimes you look at the calendar and realize there isn’t a single empty space left, and instead of feeling trapped by it, you realize your life isn’t too crowded.
It’s full.
Dex’s fingers find mine where my hand rests beside us.
Across the room, Ronan looks at me.
It’s brief—barely more than a glance—but I feel the pull of it anyway, something warm and confusing settling low in my chest as my brain supplies the memory of his palm against my back and his fingers moving through my hair.
Cami shrieks because Griffin has apparently agreed to the multicolored lights.
The moment snaps.
Dex bolts upright beside me. “Wait. Does that mean I get my roof dragon?”
“No,” Griffin says without looking up from his phone.
“THIS HOUSE IS A DICTATORSHIP.”
I laugh and catch Dex around the waist before he can launch himself off the couch to continue his campaign.
Christmas morning is ours.
And everything else?
We’ll figure out.