23. The Magic Of Christmas
THE MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS
K andi
All I wanted to do was go to sleep after we had sex in the shower.
Unfortunately, Kayn was not going for that.
When we left the shower, he lovingly dried me off and oiled my body.
I lay on the bed while he took care of his grooming habits, but I fell asleep.
He woke me up once he was done and reminded me that I needed to get ready too.
What I had not known was that while Kayn was out earlier for his business meeting, he stopped at a boutique on his way back to the hotel and picked up an early Christmas gift for me.
It was an emerald green, fitted, crushed velvet dress with a plunging, V-shaped neckline.
It stopped just below my knees, and he purchased a pair of deep green red-bottom shoes with it.
He paired the dress with emerald earrings and an emerald necklace. He made a corny joke about every woman being green with envy when they saw me. And though everything was green, it was tastefully done and elegant.
“What do you recommend?” I asked, looking at the menu.
We were at Table One, an upscale seafood restaurant in the hotel.
“Would you like me to order for you?”
We had gotten so deep in conversation about our families that we had forgotten to look at the menu. He had already ordered the seafood paella for himself while I was reviewing the menu for the third time.
“Yes, please,” I replied sweetly to him.
“She’ll have the lobster thermidor, roasted potatoes, and steamed asparagus.”
When the waiter took our menus and left, Kayn smiled at me over candlelight.
“You really didn’t have to do this. I’m surprised that they’re open since it’s Christmas Eve.”
“Why wouldn’t they be? The hotel is open, and despite your positive, happy holiday spirit, everyone doesn’t celebrate the holiday, Kandi.”
“Well, they should. The world would be a much better place,” I mused as I stared at the singer who leaned one hip against the piano as she smiled at the pianist.
She was singing “Last Christmas,” and her voice was beautiful.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he reasoned.
“I would have been just as happy in the hotel eating from the room service menu,” I pointed out as I fingered one of the leaves of the poinsettia sitting in the vase at our table.
The restaurant had gone all out to highlight the Christmas holiday, if not for their patrons, then definitely for their staff.
Poinsettias were all over the restaurant along with chrysanthemums. Tall, green foliage in gold, foil-wrapped planters were decorated with tiny white lights.
Each table held a white iridescent tablecloth with red candle votives in glass candleholders.
The candle holders were tied with green ribbons.
Next to the candles was a vase of poinsettias.
“You do realize that staff would still be working to provide you that meal, right? Even if it were room service, people are working to create that. Besides, I didn’t want you in the hotel eating from the room service menu.
You deserve so much more, and I feel like a dirty ass nigga for not knowing that it was your birthday. ”
I giggled. “That’s a bit much. Anyway, you wouldn’t have known, Kayn.
I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you and that I gave you hell about it.
Unless you check the records of your employees, how else would you have known?
It’s not something I disclose to everyone, so nobody at work knew other than Portia and maybe someone in HR. ”
“Then let me do for you tonight all the things that I would like to do.”
I smiled at him because he had a beautiful heart.
Kayn randomly spent money like it was no big deal to him.
I needed him to know that I didn’t care if he was broke.
I would still care deeply for him. It was too soon to let him know that I loved him.
Everything else was already moving super fast. I didn’t want to rock the boat just yet.
“How many relationships have you been in?” he asked.
“I’ve only had two real relationships. In high school, I had a boyfriend from my sophomore through senior years.
In college, I dated casually because I was too busy living my life to be settled down with anyone.
Then I met a guy who I was in a relationship with for three years from twenty-four to twenty-seven.
I thought that he was the one, you know,” I explained, twisting the linen napkin between my fingers as I thought back on that time of my life.
I prayed that I wasn’t wrong about Kayn the way I had been about Jamil.
“What happened?”
“He just wasn’t ready to mature, and he couldn’t hold a job for long. That was already a struggle area for me. I didn’t need someone going through the same struggle. I needed one of us to be secure. What about you?”
“Well, I’d just had that girl Dominique that I told you about. Other than that, I haven’t had any real involvement. It’s just been a handful of ladies that were there when I needed them to be.”
He had chatted a lot on the ride up to see his mother, but I knew that he was nervous, so I let him do just that.
“Friends with benefits?” I asked with a smirk.
He chuckled and reached out and grabbed my fingers to still them. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Why you keep twisting the napkin like that, sweet baby?”
“I don’t know. I’m nervous, I guess.”
“About what?”
“This is my first real date with you.” I smiled shyly at him as my heart thumped rapidly in my chest.
He reached across the table and grabbed my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “And yet, it feels like we were born for this. You’re sitting over there looking just as beautiful as always, and I couldn’t be prouder to have you on my arm. Don’t overthink anything. Just enjoy the night, baby.”
And I did. We enjoyed a sumptuous, delicious meal before he led me outside.
We were bundled up, but before long, we were sitting in a horse-drawn carriage, making our way through Central Park.
The coachman provided us with disposable hand warmers and a couple of thermal blankets.
It also helped that I was able to cuddle up against Kayn.
A light snow began to fall, and a few flakes coated my eyelashes as I turned my face up, opened my mouth, and tried to catch some with my tongue. Kayn turned to me, moved in, and sucked my outstretched tongue. I slowly melted into him as he kissed me sweetly.
“This is Christmas magic in the making, Kayn,” I declared when our kiss ended.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.
“How you feeling overall though, baby?”
“Like I’m in a fairy tale.”
I looked up at him, and he smiled, looking down at me, and softly brushed his lips against mine. He whispered against my lips, “We get to write our ending.”
“I like that,” I replied.
He pushed into my lips again, and I opened my mouth to him. This kiss was slower and more passionate, and it spoke volumes about the feelings that we held for one another. When we finally came up for air, it was only because the driver announced, “We’re here, loves.”
“Where’s here?” I asked, pulling back and looking around.
“Here is Wollman Rink. We’re going ice skating.”
I gasped and threw my hands against my mouth. Tears coated my eyelashes, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re really trying to outdo yourself, huh?”
“Either that or make up for what your family would have done.”
“You’ve definitely surpassed them,” I confessed and kissed his lips again before he helped me out of the carriage.
Kayn rented us a pair of skates, and he even went as far as to place mine on my feet and lace them up.
“You know how to skate?”
“A little bit,” I lied.
Within minutes, I was skating circles around him and slowing up so that he could catch up to me.
“A little bit?” he asked, laughing at me.
“Okay, maybe I took lessons when I was a child.” I took his hand in mine, and we continued to skate around the rink but at a much slower pace.
The Christmas magic of the night was that the night seemed to go on forever, and I loved it.
We caught a cab back to the hotel after half an hour of skating.
“Tonight has been the most romantic date that I’ve ever been on,” I professed after we returned to the hotel.
“It’s not over,” Kayn stated and pulled a bag from the closet.
I was seated on his bed with my legs crossed underneath me.
“What’s that?”
“Your birthday is over, but Christmas has just begun,” he stated, nodding at the clock over the fireplace before he handed me the bag.
I removed the ribbon and pulled out a Christmas CD by Chris Perry and Jovi Noelle.
The next gift was a five-hundred-dollar printed certificate to Spa Estime for a day of pampering.
It was the final gift that brought tears to my eyes.
It was a snow globe of Mistletoe Falls with a Black couple inside kissing in the middle of the skating rink.
I had been skating in Mistletoe with the women but not with Kayn, which is why he didn’t know that I could skate.
“One moment.” I popped off his bed and ran to my room. I grabbed the present that I bought him and took it back to his room.
I watched as he opened the gift wrap and then peeled the box open. He chuckled and then pulled out the other package that had been in the box alongside the bottle of Macallan.
Slowly and appreciatively, his fingers stroked the picture frame and then the picture within the frame.
It took a while before he reacted, and his first reaction was to smooth his finger over the glass in the frame to remove the teardrop that had fallen.
When Kayn looked back up at me, I could see the gratitude in his eyes.
“Come here, girl.” His voice was thick and husky with emotion.
When I saw the rare photo of him at eight, and his mother and father on either side of him smiling openly and happily into the camera, I knew that I needed to give this to him. Frances had shown it to me when she was going through a box of old photos. She said that they had forgotten about it.
It was a Christmas picture of the only time his father had shown up and spent the holiday with him.
Even his mom had been on her best behavior that day, not high and operating with a lucid mind.
Frances said that after that day, Kayn refused to celebrate anymore Christmases because he wanted to commemorate that one in his mind.
I crawled from the top of the bed to the bottom where he sat.
“Thank you for giving me Christmas back, sweet baby.”
Kayn cupped the back of my head and kissed me thoroughly, expressing all the emotions where words had failed him.