Chapter 9
Amber
Daniel’s words make me pause. We have almost all the tinsel untangled, and it took far less time than what I was thinking it would. I’m cautiously optimistic that this is not going to be the abject and absolute failure that I had thought an hour ago.
But it seems so sad that he has no roots.
“So I know you’re not from Christmas Tree. Are you from Baltimore?” I ask, gently probing but not wanting him to share more than he’s comfortable with. I’m dying of curiosity though. I really want to know everything there is about him. It’s really odd, I don’t usually have this driving need to find out about a complete stranger, but today, with Daniel, I do. He’s different. Different in a good way, and I like that.
“My dad was in the military. I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times. We moved around everywhere. Maybe...ten or twelve times during my childhood? I think I went to at least twelve different schools, yeah.”
“Wow. That’s almost one every year.”
“Sometimes I went to two. That’s just the way it went for him. Not everyone has quite that much disruption. In a way, I liked it. Moving always felt fun and exciting. But in another way, I wouldn’t mind having roots.”
“I can see how it would be fun. A new place, new friends, new experiences.”
“My mom was awesome. She made it all seem like an adventure. It had to have been hard for her, but I never saw her complain, and I never saw her down. Not that I remember anyway. I’m sure she had to have had bad days.”
“I think we all do. But I think it’s really wise of your mother to make sure that you guys found it fun. After all, if she hated it, it would be a million times as hard if everyone else was hating it too.”
“I never thought about it that way, but yeah. She made her life easier by looking on the bright side all the time and making sure we did too.”
“Is that where you get your easygoing, relaxed personality?” I ask, thinking about how he came in and just offered to help. Like he wasn’t worried about any of the other things that needed to be done. Like there wasn’t going to be a huge party here tomorrow, and like he had all the time in the world.
“I guess. My brother’s the opposite though.”
“He’s mean?” I ask, thinking Daniel’s probably one of the nicest men I’ve met. He just doesn’t seem to need to brag or talk himself up. And he’s been untangling tinsel for almost an hour, and he’s not impatient or upset or flustered in any way.
He laughs, kind of as I meant, but then he shakes his head. “No. He’s a great guy. He really is, he’s just a lot more serious than I am. I suppose older siblings have a tendency to be controlling and sometimes driven, and he’s definitely the stereotypical oldest, type A personality. But he’s a great guy, like you said.”
He sets his tinsel down almost at the same time I do, and then I put my hands on my hips. “Well, stage one of the process is finished.”
He laughs. “It’s that big of a job? We have stages?”
“We sure do. It was a little overwhelming to do it any other way.”
For the next few minutes, I show him what I think the trick was for last year. We’re going to be hanging the tinsel from the almost invisible wire that’s on the ceiling around the large chandelier, and it’s going to go to every spot in the room, with the extra hanging down the walls, and that’s what will create the illusion of being in a room that is entirely made of tinsel.
“I’ll be the one to do the outside of the room, unless you think that I can’t?”
“I think that’s going to be the harder job, and I was going to take it,” I say as I walk beside him, over to the side of the room where the two large ladders are.
“That’s why I volunteered for it. Whoever is on the outside of the room will have to move their ladder a lot more, and I hope you don’t get offended by this, but God made me with the type of body that’s better at moving ladders than what you have.”
It seems a little personal that he’s talking about our bodies, but it’s in a general way and not offensive at all. Plus, he’s right.
“You’re not going to offend me over that. I walked the perimeter of the room, and there are small hooks along the outside right below the ceiling. They’re white and they blend in with the wall, but I think that’s where the tinsel gets hooked.”
“Oh. I see. That should be easy then.”
“It should be, except there’s so many of them. And I guess we’ll see how well they stay on the hooks. There might be more to trip us up than what we think.”
I set my ladder down in the middle of the room, and he stops beside me. “Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
His eyes shine down into mine, and my mouth opens, but no words come out. I hate it when it does that, but I love this. This feeling of the two of us working together, on a job that he doesn’t have to have any responsibility for at all. He’s...making me feel like he truly is the kind of person who cares and making a warmth spread from my heart out my arms and legs, and I feel my fingers and toes tingle.
“Thank you,” I manage to say. I want to say something witty, something impressive, but that’s all I can get out of my mouth.
He grins, a lopsided grin that makes my heart do a flip, and part of me wishes that it wouldn’t, since I’m already having so much trouble.
“I’m glad I stopped in. I...didn’t know decorating could be so much fun,” he murmurs in a low tone that doesn’t do anything to stop the flipping of my heart or the tingling of my appendages.
“I do it for a living, but this is definitely the best time I’ve ever had. I...think it’s the company.”
That seems like a rather bold statement, but it’s the truth. I’ve never worked with anyone who has been so much fun, so considerate, so sweet, and that makes me feel like I need to pull away, even more.
“I guess I could say the same,” he says.