Chapter 17 #2
“Daddy, Daddy, you gotta wake up.” The cheery voice cut straight through the fog in my head. The bed shook as Casey bounced on it like a kid who’d had too much sugar. Déjà vu hit hard, but I refused to mess this up again or say anything that would make him pull away.
“Good morning, bub,” I rasped. I cracked one eye open to see if the sun was even awake yet. Weak light slipped around the closed shade. Too early for anything sane. I rolled toward him. “Why are you up so early? Are we going back to the gym?”
“No, silly. We gotta fix our house. It’s kind of sad, Daddy.”
Our house. He said our house. That woke me up faster than any alarm.
“You’re right,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “It does look a little sad. What do you think we should do to fix it?”
“I made a list, Daddy.” Casey pulled out a piece of paper from behind his back like a magician doing a trick badly on purpose. It was a numbered list in messy crayon handwriting.
“First,” he announced, “gotta finish lights on the tree. We can’t do nothing ’til the tree is pretty ’cause a pretty tree is a happy tree.”
“I didn’t know trees had feelings,” I said, pretending to think about it. “Makes sense. What’s next?”
“Gotta make cookies ’cause it’s not Christmas if we don’t have cookies.”
“Totally reasonable. Next?”
“Gotta watch a Christmas movie and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows.”
“We are in complete agreement.”
“You don’t mind, Daddy? Oh no.” His eyes widened like something terrible had hit him. “Do you have to go to work today?”
“The nice thing about owning your own business is sometimes you can set your own hours,” I said. “So no. I don’t need to go to work today. Do you need to go to work today?”
“Silly, Daddy, I don’t have a job.” He said it with a mischievous grin and a wink.
I reached up and bopped his nose. “Good. You don’t need to think about that today. You’re right about what we need to do. We gotta get our house looking like Christmas.”
Casey ripped the duvet off me and nudged me not too gently until I rolled out of bed.
“I’m gonna fix breakfast, and you’re gonna take a shower.”
“You’re an awfully bossy boy,” I said, giving him a pretend stern look.
“Silly Daddy, you like it. Cause you get a yummy breakfast today.”
“Oh yeah? And what am I having?”
“French toast,” Casey said hopefully.
I blinked. “How did you know that was my favorite?”
“Mostly just hoping ’cause it’s my favoritest too.” With that solved, he skipped out. I showered fast and headed to the kitchen.
He’d been busy. French toast sat assembled on a baking sheet, and the counters were covered in cookie stations.
“Uh, sweetheart, what’s going on in here?”
“Baking.” He shrugged, like that explained the universe.
“But why?”
“’Cause it’s Christmas, Daddy, and you gotta bake cookies, or Santa won’t come. You didn’t have any. So I’m helping.”
“Can you bake as well as you cook?”
“Yeppers.” Not a hint of doubt.
“Then bring on the cookies.” He giggled and added the finishing touches to the French toast. “How did I sleep through all this?”
“I dunno, Daddy, but…” He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “You was snoring.”
“What? No. I don’t do that. Do I?”
“You do, but I still like you.”
“A little bit or a lot bit?”
“A lot bit. A super-duper lot bit.”
“I’ll take it.” I kissed his cheek.
He settled back against me so I could hold his weight. It felt right. Simple. Warm. Nothing dramatic. Just us being domestic. I didn’t want anything more.
After breakfast, we got busy. Casey let me help organize the next steps of his cookie plan, which mostly meant him telling me what to do and me doing my best. Once the dough that needed chilling was in the fridge, Casey announced it was time for the tree.
“I started with colors, but I’m pretty sure I have white lights too. Which do you want?” I asked.
“Oh, lights with colors, Daddy. They’s the prettiest. I like rainbows.” He bounced and clapped like he might launch into space. While he untangled the next strand, I dug out ornaments. We worked in tandem, singing along with Christmas carols.
When I found a gingerbread house ornament, I started thinking about Casey’s living situation.
He told me he’d already given notice on his sublet and someone else was moving in.
His stuff had to be out by the first. We had a few days, but not many, not with the holidays.
He’d need a new place. I’d help him move.
That part was easy. Finding a place was not.
And when he said our house this morning, I had been too stunned to ask more.
My heart had taken it one way. I wanted him with me, even if it meant the spare room.
I held up the ornament. “Hey, bub. I know you travel light, but do you think your stuff will fit in this gingerbread house?”
“I wish, Daddy, but maybe I can fit a thing or two in there,” he answered with mock seriousness, head tilted, brown eyes shining in the lights.
“Do you remember how you called it our house?”
“Yeah, Daddy. I do.”
“I don’t know if you meant it the way I wanted to take it. But I’d really like it if you moved in with me. You don’t have to move into my bedroom. You can take the spare room. We can be roommates and boyfriends. I want you here.”
“Okay,” he said with an easy shrug.
“Well, hell. If I’d known it was gonna be that easy, I’d have said something sooner.”
Casey giggled, the kind that built in his chest until it burst out in a full guffaw. The sound shook his whole body and set off my laugh.
“Bub, you gotta tell me the joke.”
“Unless someone stole it, my whole life is on the porch.”
My mouth fell open. Nice neighborhood or not, that was pushing our luck. I hurried to the front door with him close behind.
Piled behind one of the porch chairs was a tidy stack of bags.
He’d sold his car for scrap since he didn’t think it would make the trip, so everything he owned had to fit in what he could carry.
Clothes, essentials. He’d cried last night when he said he couldn’t take the toys we bought together.
He’d talked about maybe sending money to ship them, but I’d brushed it off.
If he wanted them, I wasn’t taking his money.
More than that, I’d hoped it was a string keeping him tied to me.
“The elves must have been keeping an eye on it,” I said as I lifted the first bag.
There were three, packed to the gills. By the time I got them inside, I was panting. Casey hadn’t said whether he wanted them in my room or the guest room. Until he decided, I’d give him space.
“Daddy, can I put…?” He was about to tell me where he planned to stay when his phone buzzed.
“Hold on a sec, Daddy, please.” He hurried off to grab it, wandered back, then answered on speaker. A chorus of greetings blasted through.
“Hey, boys, what’s going on?”
“We wanted to say one last time how much we’re gonna miss you,” Rory said. “And you gotta stay in the group chat because you’re one of us now, and Anders is already researching how we can visit the resort so it’s like you’re not even gone.”
“As soon as you’re ready for visitors, let us know, and we’ll be on the next flight,” Owen said.
Nico snorted. “Well, maybe not the next flight because we need an itinerary, but a flight. Soon.”
“Nico, no one’s gonna make you hike even if you don’t plan an itinerary that says you’re not allowed to go,” Jakob scolded.
“We want to come visit you on your new adventure. You can’t disappear on us.
You’re in the group chat. Nobody ever leaves the group chat.
” His voice dropped so deep it was almost menacing.
“No one leaves the group chat.” Then he ruined it by giggling.
“Jakob, are you trying to scare me?” Casey laughed. “You did a good job. I’m super scared.”
“You mean it? For real?”
“Cross my heart, hope to die.”
“I am scary. That is awesome,” Jakob crowed.
“What time is your flight?” Anders asked. “We decided to come to Stone and Vine since that’s where we met you. We wanted a toast when your plane took off for good luck.”
Casey moved across the room, grabbed my hand, pulled me to the couch, and pushed me down so he could curl up with his legs over mine and tuck himself under my arm. He hit the button for FaceTime. The boys cheered.
“No need for a toast,” Casey said. “I decided to stay home after all.”