17. Holiday Campaign
Chapter seventeen
Holiday Campaign
Micah
There are five people living in this house, and apparently none of us owns a normal amount of Christmas decorations.
I discover this when Griffin comes down from the attic with the fourth plastic tote balanced against his chest.
“Jesus Christ,” I mutter.
His head appears around the side of it. “What?”
“Nothing.”
I step backward to let him pass, watching him maneuver the giant red and green monstrosity through the hallway without taking out either the wall or Cami, who is sitting cross-legged on the floor surrounded by enough tangled strands of lights to restrain a small army.
“Is there more?” I ask.
Griffin sets the tote down with a heavy thud. “Two.”
“Two more?”
Across the room, Dex stops halfway through hanging what appears to be a tiny crocheted penis wearing a Santa hat on the tree.
Griffin notices it at the same time I do. His eyes move from Dex to the ornament dangling between his fingers, then slowly back to Dex’s face.
“That is NOT going on the tree.”
Dex looks down at it. “It’s festive.”
“It’s a dick.”
“It is a dick,” Cami agrees from the floor, tugging another knot of lights apart.
Dex points at her with his free hand. “Thank you.”
“That was not meant to be supportive,” she counters.
“It felt supportive.”
Ronan walks in from the kitchen carrying two mugs and stops beside me. His gaze finds the ornament almost immediately, and he stares at it for a beat before looking at Dex.
“Where did you get that?”
Dex’s face twists with exaggerated offense. “Why does everyone keep asking questions instead of appreciating the art?”
Ronan looks back down at the ornament. “Because I’m trying to determine whether you purchased it specifically for this occasion or whether you already owned a Christmas penis.”
Cami dissolves into laughter, and I bite the inside of my cheek as Dex looks between all of us, still holding the thing by its little yarn loop.
“I don’t appreciate the judgment in my own home.”
Griffin reaches over and plucks the ornament from his fingers.
“Hey,” Dex protests.
“No dicks on the main tree,” Griffin says like he is talking about the weather.
“The main tree?” I repeat.
Cami’s head snaps up so fast that Griffin freezes, realizing his mistake.
Wrong fucking phrase.
Her eyes widen. “There can be another tree?”
“Oh, fuck,” Dex whispers.
Griffin closes his eyes while Ronan takes a slow drink of coffee beside me, doing an impressive job of pretending he isn’t entertained.
Cami, meanwhile, lights up brighter than the four hundred feet of Christmas lights currently trying to strangle her. “There can be another tree.”
“No.” Griffin points at her as she scrambles to her feet. “No,” he repeats.
“We have plenty of room.”
“Cami.”
“We have that whole front window.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Griffin.” Her bottom lip protrudes as she pouts at him.
Something about it all makes Ronan turn his face away to hide a smile.
I don’t bother.
Griffin catches my expression. “Don’t encourage her.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re smiling. You’re encouraging her.”
“That is not my fault.”
By then, Cami has already stepped over a box of ornaments and wrapped both arms around Griffin’s waist.
“I have never had two Christmas trees.”
Griffin stares down at her.
I watch the moment it happens.
I see the “fuck” cross his face.
There it is.
Not the pout. Not the arms around him. Not even the fact that she’s looking up at him like a second Christmas tree is the only thing standing between her and eternal happiness.
It’s the seven-word sentence.
His whole face changes, the argument draining out of him before he even opens his mouth.
Dex sees it too.
“Dude,” he begins quietly. “You’re fucked.”
Griffin sighs and wraps an arm around her and sighs. “I know.”
Two hours later, we have two Christmas Trees.
The second one is smaller, which was apparently Griffin’s compromise.
Cami calls it a victory.
Dex calls it a Dickmas Tree, because Griffin’s prohibition against inappropriate ornaments apparently only applied to the main tree, and Dex treats loopholes like divine intervention.
“Festive genitals are historically underrepresented,” he announces.
There is now a crocheted penis hanging prominently in the front window, and I’m pretty sure Griffin regrets every decision he has made since noon.
The rest of the house, though?
Standing near the bottom of the stairs with a strand of garland in my hands, I take in what they have managed to do to the place in just a couple of hours. Warm white lights run across the mantle. Greenery wraps around the railing.
Cami put little battery-operated candles in the windows, and Ronan somehow arranged the decorations on the bookshelves so they look intentional instead of like Christmas threw up on them.
The big tree fills one corner of the living room, and it’s not coordinated. Not even close.
Griffin’s ornaments are mostly old—things from his childhood, a few EMS ones, some his mom has apparently given him every year since he moved out.
Ronan’s are less traditional. Books. Dice. A tiny dragon curled around a candy cane. Things that look chosen one at a time over years instead of bought in a matching set.
Unsurprisingly, Dex has contributed chaos.
Obviously.
Cami bought ornaments last week because she didn’t have any.
That part sits wrong inside me.
There’s nothing particularly sad about buying Christmas ornaments for yourself. People do it every year. But hers all came in the same cardboard box.
No kindergarten handprint with chipped paint. No ugly ornament from an aunt that she has to hang because someone will notice if she doesn’t. No stupid souvenir from a vacation ten years ago. Nothing that comes with a story everyone in the room has already heard fifteen times.
Now she’s standing on the arm of the couch while Griffin tells her for the third time she’s going to fall, stretching to hang a glittery d20 near the top of the tree.
Maybe stories have to start somewhere.
“Micah?”
Dex’s voice pulls me out of my head, and I look over to find him holding the other end of the garland.
“Uh, you gonna help me with this?” he asks. “Or stare dramatically into the middle distance?”
“I wasn’t being dramatic.”
“Your face was doing a thing.”
“My face doesn’t do things.”
Dex gives the garland a tug, pulling me toward him, and grins. “Your face does a lot of things.”
I let him reel me in, and his hand settles at my waist when I reach him, fingers hooking briefly through my belt loop.
“Decorate outside next?”
A glance toward the windows tells me it’s already getting dark. “Tomorrow.”
“Coward.”
“It’s twenty-eight degrees.”
“Coward with weather facts.”
I lean in and kiss him, which shuts him up for approximately three seconds.
“I still think we need inflatable dragons,” he says as soon as I pull away.
I shake my head.
“You didn’t even consider it.”
Taking a step back from him, I shake my head again.
Dex sighs like loving me is an incredible burden, and I kiss his temple before moving further away.
“Okay,” Cami says from behind us. “We need to talk about actual Christmas.”
I think we all go still and hold our breath.
She looks around the room, blinking. “Why did that sound like I just said we need to talk about our relationship?”
“Because figuring out these logistics and keeping us and all of our families happy might nearly require a congressional subcommittee,” Dex says.
We all laugh.
Ronan looks at us over the rim of his coffee mug. “It shouldn’t be that difficult.”
Griffin pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’m working Christmas Eve.”
Cami’s face falls immediately, and Griffin reaches for her.
“Not Christmas,” he adds.
“When do you get off?”
“Seven Christmas morning.”
The disappointment disappears almost as quickly as it came. “Okay. That’s not terrible.”
“Assuming nobody decides to wrap their car around a tree at six forty-five.”
Cami swats him and shakes her head. “Don’t put that into the universe.”
Griffin catches her hand and kisses the top of her head.
I pull out my own phone and open the calendar.
Christmas used to be easy.
Christmas Eve with my family. Dinner. Same food we’ve eaten since I was a kid, same arguments, same people sitting in mostly the same places. Then back again Christmas Day for dinner.
Routine masquerading as tradition.
This year, I want it.
Maybe more than I ever have.
The realization catches somewhere behind my ribs because there’s a chance this is the last year I get to have it without explaining myself.
Without telling them Dex isn’t just my roommate, or that Cami isn’t just Griffin’s wife.
Without explaining that the life they think I’m living stopped existing a while ago.
I’m not ashamed.
That’s the fucked-up part.
If I were ashamed, maybe this would be easier to understand. Instead, I’m standing in a house with two Christmas trees, surrounded by people I love, knowing exactly what the truth could cost me.
I just don’t want to pay that bill before Christmas.
“My family’s Christmas Eve,” I say finally. “And Christmas dinner.”
Dex looks at me for only a second.
No judgment. No question. Just a tiny shift in his expression that tells me he knows enough to understand what I’m not saying.
“Okay.” Cami taps something into her phone. “So Micah is gone Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day.”
“I’ll be back in between.”
Dex’s fingers brush mine.
Tiny. Private. There and gone before anyone else would likely notice.
“Mom wants us over Christmas afternoon,” Griffin says. “She specifically requested Cami.”
“Just Cami?” Dex asks.
Griffin scratches his jaw. “She knows there is more. There is…something.”
A laugh slips out of me. “That is reassuringly specific.”
“You all know that at Thanksgiving I basically told my family that we were all wrapped up together, without getting very specific,” Griffin explains.
“How much do you think your mom really knows?” Cami asks.
“I don’t know.” Griffin gives her a conciliatory look. “She didn’t exactly ask for a diagram.”
Dex raises his hand. “I can make one.”
“No,” all four of us say together.