Chapter 19 Merry Little Christmas #2
It’s Christmas Eve, and her chosen tradition is watching Jim Carrey’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
It’s her and Noah’s favorite. They’ve watched it every single Christmas Eve since it came out, and there’s something about the “Holidayhoobiehwhattie” of it all that makes Sage giddy.
It’s extra and overkill and she and Noah love to quote it, even when Christmas is, say, nine long months away.
It always made them feel … close.
And while she’d been overcome by a wave of bittersweet nostalgia and longing when the opening credits had played, that sting of sadness has faded slightly as the movie continues on.
Perhaps it’s because she’d swallowed her pride and texted Noah a picture of the title as it scrawled across the screen.
A bit passive of her, really, but it counted for something, because he’d replied with a GIF of their favorite scene and the quote beneath it, and it’s silly, but it felt like the beginning of an olive branch.
An olive twig, she supposes.
“I did know that,” Theo murmurs, drawing her attention from the screen. His tongue pokes through his teeth as he draws scalloped frosting lining the roof of the gingerbread house.
This, obviously, had been his chosen tradition. Except it wasn’t really a tradition at all, because when she’d asked what the story was behind it, he’d simply shrugged and said, I’ve just always enjoyed making them, but I haven’t done it since primary school.
So they’d made pizza (an actual Sharpe family tradition) and uncorked a bottle of wine and settled in front of the TV with a gingerbread house kit and Jim Carrey, and Sage can’t remember the last time she felt this content.
“He also had to undergo CIA training to endure the makeup process,” she remarks. She reaches for another piece of gingerbread, and Theo smacks her hand.
“Oi! Knock it off. You’re ruining the house!”
“It’s supposed to be eaten!” she argues as Cindy Lou Who holds up a flashlight the size of her head and begins to sing. It distracts Sage from the gingerbread long enough to say, “She was on Gossip Girl.”
Theo laughs. “Is this what it’s been like watching movies with me these last few weeks?” he asks lightly, his eyes bright with mirth.
“Worse.” She sniffs, going back in for the piece she’d abandoned. She’s too quick for him, and she hums in victory as she snatches it and pops it into her mouth before he can stop her. “You’re far more pretentious.”
Theo smears frosting on her cheek, and Sage throws a gumdrop at him in retaliation, and Cindy Lou sings on as Theo lunges for her. Sage is only slightly embarrassed by the squeal that bursts from her as he wrestles her to the ground.
“Hey!” She laughs, her fingers reaching for the gingerbread house. She swipes them through the frosting and drags her fingers across Theo’s jaw in retribution.
“You’re a nightmare.” Theo chuckles, his hands pinning her wrists to the floor by her head.
Sage’s heart stutters in her chest as she looks up at him.
He’s all messy blond hair and flushed cheeks and bright eyes, the frosting on his jaw doing absolutely nothing to hide how effortlessly handsome he is.
And just like that, Sage forgets about the movie and the gingerbread house and anything that isn’t getting her lips on Theo immediately.
He clocks the shift in her demeanor, giving her a sly smile before ducking his head to kiss her.
He stops just before her lips, and Sage bites back an aggravated sound.
“Maybe we should wait,” Theo taunts, kissing the corner of her mouth. “We shouldn’t make more of a mess.” He moves to her cheek, his tongue laving up the frosting there.
Sage tilts her head to give him better access, her hips pushing up against his. “You started it,” she breathes, but the teasing lilt of her voice is lost to a gasp as he rolls his hips down. Theo finishes licking the frosting from her cheek, his grin smug as he stares down at her.
It takes only a second more before he breaks.
He tastes like vanilla and sugar and red wine when he kisses her, and Sage chases that combination as she licks into his mouth, her hands weaving into his hair and mussing it up further.
They kiss until she’s dizzy with it, until they have to pull away to catch their breath and shed their clothes. Even with the cold lingering outside, Sage feels like her skin is on fire as Theo runs his hands over wherever he can reach as he starts to take her apart right there on the floor.
He pins her wrists again as he slides into her, like he knows she wants to be completely consumed by him. And with the way he keeps himself pressed close, his spine rolling like gentle waves as he moves his hips, he does.
He consumes her entirely.
Sage comes with Theo’s name on her lips and her fingers gripped tightly in his, her body trembling in the wake of her pleasure.
Later, Theo gapes at the frosting in his hair, and Sage finds a piece of candy cane in hers, and they both lament the mess until it drives them under the warm spray of the shower, where they lose themselves in each other all over again.
And when they finally crawl under the covers of Theo’s bed, Sage wonders if this—pizza and wine and broken gingerbread houses and unfinished movies—is her favorite tradition yet.
Sage wakes up to the smell of cinnamon rolls.
She buries her face further into the pillow, inhaling deeply as Theo’s scent wraps around her fully, and lets herself breathe in the peace of Christmas morning, the kind that comes with knowing there’s a long day of slow indulgence stretching ahead.
It’s tinged with a hollowness in her chest, followed by a sinking sensation as she thinks of her family.
In a few hours, they’ll be up and crowded together in the kitchen, an open tin of Garrett’s popcorn on the counter that they’ll snack from as Noah makes an egg casserole.
Their parents will go about their morning routine of sipping coffee and doing the crossword.
Cecelia will join them, much to their chagrin, but she’ll be so damn nice about it that they won’t tell her that her hovering and shouting out incorrect answers bothers them.
She’ll grow bored and make Bellinis, and Noah will shoot his wife soft and unguarded smiles that used to make Sage think someone had hijacked her brother’s body.
And Sage …
Sage will be 3,551 miles away, wondering if her absence is really felt at all.
“Morning,” Theo says from where he’s leaning against the door-frame. A pair of blue-and-black-checkered pajama pants sits low on his hips, a plain white undershirt stretching across his chest and highlighting the slight cut of his biceps where it cups his arms.
“Hi,” Sage greets. “It smells good.”
He makes his way to the bed and perches on the edge of the mattress, his hand warm where it settles on her bare back. “They’ll be ready in a bit. Can I entice you with coffee?”
“You can always entice me with caffeine—you know this.”
Theo’s fingers trace shapes on her spine as he lets out a quiet laugh.
“That I do.” His expression goes impossibly softer, his chin jutting to her prone form.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Something warm unfurls in her chest at the simple question and what it reveals about him—about them.
About her, maybe, too. Sage loves to be seen but hates to be perceived.
But she doesn’t feel that way with Theo. Not anymore. Maybe not ever. Not truly.
“I was just thinking about my family,” she murmurs. She slides her hand along the sheets until it finds his free one and tangles their fingers together. “It’s strange, not being with them today. I don’t regret not going, but it’s still … achy?”
Theo makes a soft sound of understanding, his thumb brushing across the edge of her own.
“I was thinking about what they’ll be doing in a few hours,” she continues, “and I realized I don’t really have a role in it. I’m just sort of there, and this year I’m not, and it just made me feel like … I don’t know … maybe they won’t miss me at all.”
Which isn’t even the point. Sage isn’t staying away to punish them or prove something with her absence. She’s doing it for herself, because she needs the space. They both need the space—her and her parents. But the thought intrudes anyway, and it makes the inner corners of her eyes sting a bit.
Theo brushes a kiss to the back of her hand. He’s quiet for a long moment, reflective in his own way, and when he finally speaks, it’s not a long soliloquy of reassurance, but something simple and pointed, like he knows that’s all she can take.
“You, Collins, are entirely missable.”
Sage bites back a smile, her teeth digging into her bottom lip. “As romantic as that was, that word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”
“Who’s insufferable now?” he mumbles as he ducks down and presses his mouth to hers in a kiss that is entirely too short.
“Now come on,” he urges, tugging on her hand.
“Up you get.” His eyes glint mischievously, his brows furrowing as he dons an eerily perfect Jim Carrey mocking Sean Connery while playing the Grinch accent.
“There will be no sad faces on Christmas.”
“Please stop immediately. That was so creepy. I hated every second.”
“I’m an actor, darling,” he says as he heads toward the kitchen, grinning over his shoulder. “Comes with the territory.”
Sage gives herself thirty whole seconds to deal with the way her face burns with that new term of endearment before she finally shucks off the covers, throws on a pair of sweats and one of Theo’s T-shirts—white, with three navy lions on the top right corner—and joins him in the kitchen.
He’s busy pouring coffee into mugs, but when he turns around, he stills, his eyes raking over her slowly. The corner of his mouth pulls tight as he shakes his head.
“I don’t consider myself a possessive man,” he remarks, his voice like a rumble of distant thunder. “But seeing you in that shirt might be the thing to prove otherwise.”