Chapter 19 Merry Little Christmas #3
Sage smiles and takes the coffee he offers before immediately setting it aside and occupying herself with Theo’s mouth instead.
It’s nearly as effective as caffeine in bringing her to life.
The timer for the cinnamon rolls goes off some time later, when Theo has her seated on the counter and is kissing her deeply, and she has half a mind to tell him to forget breakfast and drag him back to bed instead, especially when he pulls away with red, swollen lips that slide into a lazy, sated grin.
The self-control she exhibits when she lets him step back and tend to the cinnamon rolls could win medals.
It’s worth it in the end. The pastries are delicious.
They eat an unreasonable number, and Sage makes Bellinis in an unintended homage to her sister-in-law, who sends her a text at 6 AM Chicago time to wish her a merry Christmas, and they sprawl out on the couch and watch Polar Express and play an old, dusty Candy Land Theo’s mom brought from the States that Theo unearths from the sideboard.
Theo makes lunch—turkey, because he’s stubborn and insists that they can’t have a proper Christmas Day without it—and they field awkward FaceTime calls from their families as they wait for it to cook.
Sage takes hers in front of a nondescript wall in the hopes her eagle-eyed mother won’t notice she’s not in the Airbnb she’d previously FaceTimed her from, but it ends up being completely unnecessary.
They’re barely on the call long enough for her mom to notice much at all, including the fact that Sage is wearing an English football shirt.
Noah makes an appearance, and there’s an awkward tension the entire time, a sort of we all know that we’re fighting but are going to pretend for the sake of a Hallmark holiday that we’re not, and Sage knows this is going to be a Thing for a while but decides as she hangs up that it’s a Future Sage problem.
They eat too much food—again—and end up in front of the wood burner with one too many open bottles of wine afterward. They’re readying to indulge in them anyway on the couch when Sage’s phone buzzes with a FaceTime from Emerson.
“Merry Christmas!!” Emerson screeches as the call connects. Margot’s square fills the bottom of the screen, and she cranes her neck as if she can see past where Sage holds the phone.
“How did the salad turn out?” she asks in lieu of a greeting.
“We didn’t make it,” Theo answers as he ducks into view with an apologetic smile. “Thanks for the recipe, though.”
“Theo. Looking dashing as ever.” Emerson grins.
“Likewise.” His shoulder rests against Sage’s as he settles next to her on the couch. “Happy Christmas.”
“What have y’all been up to today?” Emerson asks. She gives them a pointed look. “And keep it PG, would you? There are little ears around.”
A pillow comes careening into view, smacking Emerson upside the head. “My ears are not that small!” someone snaps from just off camera. Someone that sounds a lot like …
“Taylor?!” Sage exclaims. Taylor peeks in over Emerson’s shoulder, a resigned look on her face.
“Merry Christmas, Sage,” she sighs. Her eyes drag to Theo, giving him a curt nod.
“Sage’s famous friend.” She glances down at Emerson, who’s lying on her stomach on her bed, her ankles crossed in the air behind her.
“I’m going to go get started on the cake for later,” she murmurs.
She hesitates for a brief moment before she drops a kiss on Emerson’s head and exits the frame, leaving Sage gaping at the camera.
“Did you know about this?!” she demands, looking at Margot.
“We all knew about this,” Margot says with a shrug. “Well, sort of.”
Before Sage can ask what that means, Theo gives Emerson an appreciative nod. “Took my advice, did you?” he says with a grin.
“Wait a fucking minute,” Sage interrupts, whipping her head to Theo. “You knew?”
“I knew Emerson might have opened a door with her drunk texts a few weeks ago, and I may have advised on how she could … walk through it. I hadn’t heard how it went, though,” he says lightly, as if he hasn’t been embroiled in a dating scheme with two of Sage’s best friends without her even knowing.
“Theo had some great advice,” Emerson confirms. “It worked.” She pauses, a strange look crossing over her face before she gives her head a small shake. It’s gone in a blink, replaced by Em’s usual bravado.
“Obviously,” she adds with a sly grin.
Margot’s brows flick up, but Sage is still too busy reeling to unpack whatever that was. She looks between Theo and her friends, her lips parted in disbelief.
“I thought this was a joke!”
Emerson sniffs. “Shouldn’t have muted the group chat.”
“I checked the group chat,” Sage insists.
“We moved it to the other group chat, babe,” Margot explains as Emerson bobs her head in agreement.
And that’s …
Well, that’s just …
Sage doesn’t really have the words for what that is.
Emerson launches into some update about how, exactly, Taylor ended up with her for Christmas, which Sage is only half following because apparently, so much of what she thought was a joke and a way to get on her nerves was real and she’s trying rapidly to fill in the gaps.
But Theo sits beside her with a soft smile as he listens to her best friend ramble, nodding along and interjecting at the perfect places, slotting himself right into her life as if he just … fits.
He catches Sage looking at him, his brow lifting in a subtle what as Emerson wraps up her monologue.
“I want in,” Sage pouts.
“See!” Emerson yelps. “I told you she’d cave if we created enough FOMO!”
“I despise all three of you,” Sage grumbles, her brow furrowing as she sinks into the cushion. Theo drapes a reassuring arm over her shoulder while Margot tuts through the screen.
“That’s very bah humbug of you.”
“Dreadful Christmas spirit,” he agrees with a smirk. He winks down at her, then takes the phone so she can rest her arm.
“Is this what the group chat is going to be like? Because if so, I take it back, I want nothing to do with it.”
“Too late.” Emerson’s voice is muffled, the crown of her head—which is the only thing visible on the screen—eclipsed by a notification as it flashes across the top of Sage’s phone.
Emerson added you to the Instagram group chat: Theo & the Chickmonks.
“I didn’t choose the name,” Theo vows, wide-eyed and sincere.
“Mm,” Margot hums. “But you didn’t change it, either.”
It’s ridiculous—all of it—and it makes Sage feel a ridiculous amount, too. Warm and full and aching in a different way than she did this morning, so damn far from casual, which she’s known for longer than she’s cared to admit.
But now it’s staring her in the face and making her think ridiculous things, because when they end the call and Theo kisses her on the couch beneath the lights of the Christmas tree until she’s dizzy and wanting and desperate, she thinks there isn’t much she wouldn’t trade for this.
There isn’t much that would keep her from wanting to do this for longer than four weeks plus some unplanned, extra days.
She’s breathless by the time he carries her into his room and lays her down in his bed, but he ignores her pleas for more.
He takes his time.
Like maybe, he’s thinking there’s not much that would keep him from her, too.
Reality has always had a way of rushing in for Sage. Of making itself known, especially in the height of her bliss. She’s a dreamer being constantly shaken awake, desperate for the next time she drifts off so she can lose herself again.
Theo’s side of the bed is cold the next morning, but Sage lingers in the warmth of the sheets as her thoughts stir, hazy and crawling toward the front of her mind like morning mist.
The twenty-sixth has always been a time when that frenetic energy she somehow manages to trade for a day of ease and slowness retakes its place in her brain, front and center.
So she expects the barrage of thoughts. But it’s worse, because the list isn’t just filled with the typical angst she gets when another year has passed and there’s still so much she wants to do.
No, this time it’s topped with a sublist, titled FIGURE IT OUT, and all of the bullets are written like questions.
Five thousand miles?
Fans?
Mistake?
Her brain crosses out that last one as soon as it appears.
She finds Theo sitting at the kitchen table, hands wrapped around an empty mug, gaze fixed on the snow-dusted hills that stretch on farther than they can see.
He offers a soft, closed-lip smile when she approaches, his arm sliding around her waist and tugging her down into his lap, and she can tell by the way his eyes find the window again that he’s turning over the points on his own list. She lets her cheek rest against his temple.
Lets the gray morning settle over them. Lets silence reign.
“I have to be back in London for New Year’s Eve,” Theo murmurs sometime later, the words rumbling against where they’re pressed together. Sage lifts her head and finds his gaze.
She knows. They’ve talked about it. Theo has an event—some sort of brand-hosted New Year’s Eve party he has to show his face at. Sage has her own flight out on the thirtieth, back to LA.
They’d bought themselves an extra week. That had always been the plan.
But Theo is looking up at her, his stare vulnerable and unwavering as he says, “Come with me?”
Sage lets out a laugh of surprise, or maybe disbelief. “What?”
But Theo doesn’t laugh. He just wets his lips and looks at her with those impossibly blue eyes and says again, “Come with me,” like it’s simple and easy and there aren’t a million and one things they need to figure out, their New Year’s Eve plans the absolute least of them.
Sage’s hands slide from where they’re resting on his shoulders, settling on his chest, and she can feel the steady beat of his heart beneath her palm, strong and certain.
“There’s a red carpet of sorts that I’ll have to do, but I can meet you inside after,” Theo says as if he’s planned this.
“I’ve already been assured there won’t be any photos inside, and this time, I mean it.
It’s all very strict. There are plenty of people who will be in attendance who don’t want their privacy invaded.
I talked to my publicist, Jan, and my dad, and—”
“You have planned this,” Sage interrupts on an exhale.
He talked to his dad—before he’d canceled his trip? After?
Theo’s throat bobs. “Yeah. Yes. I figured it was better to be prepared before I asked you.” His hands flex where they rest on her hips, as if she’s a known flight risk.
Maybe she is. Because when he presses on, he does it in a way that’s clear that he’s thought about this, and not just thought about it, but prepared his argument thoroughly.
“It won’t be like it was at Comic Con. I … I can make sure we’re left alone. That you’re left alone. People do it all the time. They keep entire families out of the spotlight—”
“I’m supposed to be in LA,” Sage breathes.
It’s a quiet fact, but it takes a wrecking ball to Theo’s rehearsed logic.
For a moment, he simply blinks at her. Because he knows—he knows she’s not just talking about her flight on the thirtieth, or the date she has with her couch and a pint of ice cream on the thirty-first, but all of the days after that, too.
Because he’s talking about the very same.
He’s not preparing for a single night at a single party, but days and weeks and months of separating the public and private parts of his life.
But she’s in LA. Her life is there. Her apartment and her friends and her routines, no matter how much she loves to break them. She loves LA. It’s her place. Her home.
She’s in LA and he’s in London, and reality is rushing in, bulldozing over weeks of ignorant bliss, constructing arguments against the things she wants but isn’t sure it’s possible to have.
“Don’t do that,” Theo says. “Don’t pretend like this isn’t … like we aren’t …”
There’s a knot pulling tight in Sage’s chest, insistent beneath his earnest gaze and the way he searches for the threads of an argument she’s already tugged apart.
She shifts on his lap, but he grips her tighter, holding her in place. “Don’t.”
“Theo,” she tries. “It’s not that I don’t … You know that I …”
Words have never failed her so thoroughly, but she can’t seem to get them past the boulder that’s lodged itself in her throat. Because while Sage has been staring her bullets down, Theo has gone through his own, has addressed every single one.
He cups her face, tilting her head down so she can’t look away.
“Come with me,” he whispers. “Come with me so I can kiss you at a ridiculous party at a ridiculous hour, and we’ll … we’ll figure out the rest as it comes. For now, just … just come with me.”
If Sage has learned anything about herself in the last thirty years, it’s that she likes to be prepared. In control. One step ahead.
Unless.
Unless there’s something she wants, and it’s right in front of her willing to be taken. Then …
Well, then she flings herself off a cliff before she checks to see if she’s packed a parachute.
Nights. Skye. Theo.
She sucks in a steadying breath.
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” Theo whispers.
“Okay.”