Chapter Fourteen #2
“Well, if I know Marg, not a fucking thing here is from a box,” he said as he took the tops off some of the bowls and platters.
“And the turkey is big enough to feed ten people. I hope you like it because we will be eating it for a week,” he told me, piling his plate as I moved in behind him to do the same.
He placed his food on his spot, and moved back to grab his laptop.
Hocus Pocus turned off, and he placed it on the counter as I sat down, watching as the parade suddenly came on the screen.
He had truly put a lot of effort into the whole thing.
Even if Marg had cooked, he asked her to.
He found the parade and he had gotten pumpkins and carving kits.
He found a tree and ornaments, despite it being way too early for the stores to have them stocked.
Then he bought me presents. Presents. I was more than a little excited to know what he had found that he thought I would enjoy.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been so excited for Christmas presents since I still believed in Santa.
It was making my insides jumpy and my skin electric.
“You’re quiet,” he declared a long time later as we each ate and watched his laptop as various performers sang, kids danced, and floats moved down the street.
I looked over, gave him a somewhat giddy smile, and told him the truth. “I’m really excited about Christmas.”
He smiled back at me, warm, warmer than I had ever seen him smile before, and my insides maybe went a little melty at seeing it. “Well, you’re just going to have to contain your excitement because we have to trim the tree, write letters to Santa, and eat cookies before you can open your presents.”
“Write letters to Santa?” I asked, smiling big.
“Yep. We’ll see if you made the nice list.”
I resisted the urge to quip something about him being naughty and said instead, my voice a little small, “I didn’t get you anything…”
He looked back at me, brows drawn together. “This isn’t about me,” he declared, then looked back to his food.
We ate until I swore I couldn’t take anymore. And then he served me pumpkin pie and, well, you didn’t turn down pumpkin pie, no matter how full you were.
“Okay, here you go. You get into this, and I will make the hot chocolate,” he declared, holding out a bag to me.
I looked at it skeptically. “This isn’t some see-through Christmas lingerie, is it?”
“I wish I had thought of that,” he told me, eyes dancing. I took the bag and moved toward the bathroom.
When I pulled it out, I didn’t find lingerie.
Oh no.
I found a one-piece candy cane-printed pajama set.
Yes, one piece.
With feeties.
I laughed at it for a second, looking up into the mirror and seeing something in my face that I hadn’t seen there since before I found out Michael was a cheating bastard.
Happiness.
I looked so freaking happy.
And I had Sawyer to thank for that.
So I stripped out of my clothes and climbed into the onesie, pulling up the front zipper and turning to make sure there weren’t any cheesy buttons on the ass or anything.
Finding there weren’t, I moved back out to find Sawyer waiting for me in the living room.
Two cups of hot chocolate were steaming in their mugs on the table, pens, paper, and envelopes were beside each cup.
“Come on, tell Santa what you want for Christmas,” he declared, and, even though I felt silly at the very idea of writing a Christmas list, I walked over, smiling when I heard Christmas music playing.
I sat down cross-legged on the floor and stared at the paper for a long time, realizing there was only one thing I wanted. So, knowing it was going in an envelope, I went ahead and wrote it:
Sawyer.
There was no more denying it, no more pretending it was just a crutch or some kind of post-traumatic attraction to the first person who was nice to me.
It wasn’t that.
I liked him. I liked him more than what was probably healthy because I knew he wasn’t that settling-down kind of guy.
I found that all the things I found that hard to take at first—the bluntness, the gruffness, the occasional rudeness, and the coolness—became some of the things I appreciated most about him.
He said what he felt; he didn’t sugarcoat things; he didn’t even think about doing something like tempering his opinions to not offend me; and he kept a level head.
Those were admirable qualities. They were strong and self-assured qualities.
But on top of those things, I had also learned that he was other things as well.
He was observant. He was a good listener. He gave a shit about people, even people he pretended to have a love/hate relationship with, like his brother.
And, as this night proved, he was so incredibly thoughtful that he put every other man I knew or had even heard of to shame. Who else would think to give you memories of a year you lost? Who would think of every small little detail from the parade to hot chocolate?
He was so freaking good.
I wanted him. And not just sexually, though that was definitely part of it. I wanted him because he was just all-around amazing.
“Alright, seal it up,” he demanded, and I did, putting the freaking address label to the North Pole on it and everything.
“So,” he declared as I picked up my hot chocolate, smiling because it had mini marshmallows and whipped cream as he got onto his feet.
“What do you like, white or colored lights?”
“Um, anyone who doesn’t use colored lights on their Christmas tree is just sucking all of the spirit out of the holiday.”
“Alright then,” he said, reaching for some of the boxes. “What are your feelings on blinking?”
“Some solid, some blinking. I like twinkling, but not something that will inspire an epileptic fit.”
“Okay, can do. I think the light thing is typical man-work, right? Then the women put the decorations on.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed, kicking back and watching as he strung the lights together and put them on the tree, taking direction about bald spots until the entire tree was lit up perfectly, some twinkling but mostly solid so it was comforting, not anxiety-causing.
“Alright, you’re up, babe,” he declared, taking his hot chocolate and kicking back on the couch to watch me decorate.
His phone slipped out of his pocket, and as I hung the first ornament, a pretty little wreath with last year’s date on it, I heard the shutter of his camera. All during decorating, I would occasionally hear it go off.
“What did your family usually do for Christmas?” he asked as I smiled down at a little ornament of Max from The Grinch.
“On Christmas Eve, we went to the live animal manger and put presents under the tree at the church for the underprivileged. Then, because I was always too excited to sleep so Santa could come, they would take me driving to look at Christmas lights until I passed out. I woke up Christmas morning to find them snuggled on the couch drinking coffee and waiting for me. Then we would all open presents. After that, my mom started cooking a big dinner that we would eat. After that, we would pick a Christmas movie and watch it until we all passed out.”
“What movies did you usually watch?”
“All of the best ones,” I said, smiling with nostalgia as I continued loading up the tree. “White Christmas, The Santa Clause, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation…”
“A Christmas Story?”
“No. That one plays for twenty-four hours on Christmas Eve night. So we were usually sick of it by Christmas Day.”
“Do you still do those same traditions now?” he asked, giving me his full attention.
“For the most part, yeah. But I don’t watch those movies anymore. I find them a little painful.”
“What do you watch now then?”
“The newer ones: Christmas With The Kranks, Elf, Love Actually, I’ll Be Home For Christmas, While You Were Sleeping, The Family Stone…”
He let me lose myself in my memories for a moment. “Looks good, babe,” he said, and I felt my belly wobble. It felt right. It felt right that he handled the lights and talked to me while I did the bulbs. “So, are you an angel or a star kind of girl?”
“Stars all the way,” I said with finality. I still had mine from my parents’ tree. It had been broken and wouldn’t light up for years, but I still topped my tree with it every December.
“Alright,” he said, folding up and fetching a box, then pulling out a star for me.
I connected it to the lights, and it lit up with half a dozen colors and I went up on my tiptoes to try to top it.
“Here,” he said after my third try, almost toppling the tree over in the process.
His body came up behind me, his arm folding over my belly and holding me to him as his hand took the star and placed it on the tree.
“Perfect,” he said when it was settled. I craned my neck up, making the back of my head hit his shoulder.
He was right. It was perfect.
His head ducked and turned in, planting a sweet kiss on the column of my neck that sent a shiver through my body.
“Presents, baby,” he murmured, his voice heavy, matching the moment.
“Okay,” I agreed, going to move away, but his hand tightened, his arm rose again, but with his phone, not the star. And I watched our faces on the screen. Literally picture-perfect.
The shutter went off; the screen froze for a second.
And then he released me and moved away.
I had to hold back from letting out a genuine whine as I followed him to sit down on the floor in front of the tree.
“Open,” he demanded, and I felt a rush of self-consciousness as I reached for the closest box, an unmistakable short, rectangular one that years of childhood investigation told me was absolutely some form of clothing.
I looked at the paper for a second—big fluffy Santa hats. None of the gifts seemed to match, each having either bright and modern cartoonish paper or classic, vintage-looking paper.