Chapter Six
Archie’s eyes spark with unhinged joy as he grins at Basil, who responds by grabbing him by the neck and lifting the smaller man a foot off the ground.
Archie doesn’t struggle.
He dangles, grin growing larger for every new shade of red his face attains. His skin is on the verge of purple when he brings his hands up to grip Baz’s forearms, but he doesn’t do anything more than clutch onto them while his eyelids lower until he’s seeing through only slits.
I eye the pair, then the snow, then the men again.
Ugh.
I’m going to have to step in. Literally .
I groan and walk out into the snow.
“You two are so annoying, you know that?” I complain, reaching them right as Archie’s hands lose their hold on Baz’s arms.
“Baz, let him go. You know he’s enjoying this. Pick a better punishment.”
Baz grunts, annoyed, then releases his hold on Archie’s throat and watches as he drops to the ground, sputtering for air. Baz crosses his arms while Archie stretches out on his back in the snow, still gasping for breath. His eyes twinkle up at us, and a slow smile spreads across his face even as he struggles to inhale the oxygen his body so desperately needs.
He opens his mouth to speak, and I kick the closest appendage to me – a leg.
“Don’t talk, stupid. You can’t afford to waste the air right now.”
He wheezes a laugh, and I scowl. Baz chuffs beside me.
“And what do you think is so funny?” I ask, turning on him. “You’re stupid too if you honestly thought that was a good idea. He’s a lunatic, Bazzy! He gets off on that kind of stuff! That wasn’t about punishing him at all. It was about making yourself feel good. And what’s he going to learn from it? Nothing! Absolutely nothing! He’s having fun .”
Warm steam puffs in front of my face as I scold him, and a raspy laugh comes from below.
“And you!” I look down my nose at Archie. “I don’t know what you’re doing or why–” Though I do have my suspicions. “–but you’re going to stop it right this instant! Get off the ground, fix our lights, and then scurry back to your own home like the little rodent you are. Got it?”
I glare at him.
He beams, nods his head yes, then shakes it no. Shrugs. Moves his arms and legs to make a snow angel on the ground.
“Archie!” I screech. He laughs, an awful sound coated in pain.
“Can’t fix it,” he croaks. My eyes narrow, and I cock my leg back for another kick. He grimaces.
“Not tonight,” he continues. “I can fix it tomorrow. I have to install a new breaker box.”
My foot lands on his knee this time.
“ What did you do ?” I yell, kicking him again.
Baz’s arms wrap around me from behind, then lift me up and away from the prone man.
“No, Bazzy, no! It’s cold , and we’re supposed to go all night without electricity? Set me down. I’m going to kick him until his kneecaps crunch under my freezing cold feet!”
Baz, who is holding me just out of reach of Archie, turns at this, marching us straight up our porch and through our flower-covered door. He pauses just inside the house, twisting to look over his shoulder at Archie, who is still on his back in the road.
“Tomorrow,” he calls out, and I start, unaware he had the capability of producing a noise that loud.
He leaves Archie with that, shutting the door behind us and heading toward the stairs in the dark without setting me down. I settle in for the ride, grateful that I will soon be in the vicinity of my sock drawer. The possibility of my toes falling off increases every moment they’re not encased in thick, Christmas-green fuzz after the shock of icy cold they were subjected to outside.
Stupid Archie.
We crest the top of the stairs, and I breathe a sigh of relief at the sight of the moonlight coming through the hallway window and falling over my beautiful, wonderful, daisy-covered door. There are socks beyond that door. Warm, wonderful socks.
I squawk as we walk past it.
“Basil! I need socks!”
He ignores me, shouldering open the door to his own room. He walks six feet in the darkness to what I know is his unmade bed and drops me onto it. I don’t hear so much as sense him leaving the bedside as I sweep my arms out in search of his blankets. I find them rumpled at the bottom of the mattress and throw them over me.
Ahh. Sweet, sweet warmth.
Silver light, blocked only by the outline of Baz’s body, fills the bedroom as he flicks open curtains on the other side of the room. He hesitates by the window, his head aimed down toward the road.
“Leave him,” I say. “He’ll be fine.”
Archie is always fine.
Baz grunts. Doesn’t move. Sighs.
I sigh too.
He comes back to the bed, tucks me in, kisses my forehead, then glides out of the room on silent feet.
I shake my head. What a softie.
While I wait for him to return from his foray into altruism, I find the fluffiest pillow he owns and snuggle down with it. I inhale deeply, ginger and nutmeg filling my lungs. I smile, digging my face into the pillow.
When I can no longer breathe, I unearth my face and glance at the door.
I should probably go to my room if I’m creepily sniffing the bedding, but we so rarely have unplanned sleepovers that I can’t quite bring myself to do the responsible and respectful thing this time. My selfishness is rearing her ugly head, and I’m letting her. Just for tonight, when it’s dark and scary and there’s the possibility of sleepover goodness ahead.
The last time we had a sleepover was Bazzy’s birthday in April. We brought a picnic basket full of birthday yummies up here that Rosie had made him and nibbled on them in bed while we did face masks and read our favorite rom-coms. It was the same thing we had done a month earlier for my birthday, and the same thing we’ve done every birthday for the last three years.
Birthdays are magical – better than Christmas magic, even. After the food and the masks and the books, we cuddle, and Baz talks. And I mean, he talks .
I don’t know why he does it. The first time, I was so shocked I didn’t respond at all, and to be honest, I still don’t respond much, preferring the beauty of listening to his words find their way into the world.
He talks about everything, and nothing, and everything again. He tells me how much he loves his mom, how much he respects Stryker, how much he’d like to strangle Archie – a dream come true tonight.
And he talks about how much he loves me.
In detail.
In friendly detail.
It is a torture so lovely I can hardly bear it. And yet…
You’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever known, he says.
The way you laugh could cure depression worldwide, he says.
I love the way you talk – how you go and go and even if you say something embarrassing, you don’t stop; you just laugh and keep on. It’s special, Dee, what you have – that sunshine in you. It’s rare and it’s special. Don’t ever think it’s not, he says.
It’s enough to keep a girl going for, oh, say, eleven months until it happens again. Not that I would mind a little Christmastime sleepover treat.
My musings and rememberings are interrupted when Baz shows back up, moving first to his dresser, pulling clothes out of drawers, then to me. He offers me one of his giant t-shirts – a blue, short-sleeved one I bought him last summer – and nothing else. I accept it. Considering it will come down to nearly my knees, I’m not too torn up about not being offered any bottoms.
He turns around when I slide out from under the covers to stand by the bed, and I change quickly while his back is to me, tossing my clothes in the general direction of his hamper, then give him my back so that he can change as well.
His movements shuffle behind me for maybe a minute, then his hand is on my shoulder, giving me the all clear. I twirl around and see that he’s put on an identical blue shirt to the one he gave me and a pair of loose athletic shorts. Shame. Birthday Bazzy goes shirtless.
“My feet probably got your blanket gross after being in the snow,” I say. “And by probably, I mean definitely. They were wet and covered in dirty slush when you dropped me in here.”
He hums, considering, then shrugs and starts stripping the bed. I help, and we have the bedding in a heap on the floor at the end of the bed in no time.
Baz leaves me to retrieve fresh sheets and his extra comforter from the hallway closet, though how he plans to locate the correct linens in the dark, I do not know. The Christmas magic that lives in his veins must give him night vision too, I can only assume.
Confirming this theory, he returns with the correct bedding, and we make quick work of getting the sheets on the bed. Before I can even think about spreading the comforter out over them, Baz pushes me onto the fresh cotton covering the mattress.
I squawk in surprise. It is a loud, supremely unattractive sound.
It’s a very good thing we’re just friends, so I do not have to be embarrassed about the awful noise that just came out of my mouth. Imagine how embarrassing that would be in front of a potential romantic partner? Talk about yikes. Thankfully it’s just Baz, so I am definitely not even a little bit embarrassed.
Thankfully, Baz ignores my impression of a dying bird and simply climbs into the bed, crawling over me and dragging the blanket behind him. He drops down beside me, close, and flicks the blanket over us, then tucks us in side by side. I catch his eye and smile big. He gives me a tired eye crinkle.
I close the half-inch gap between us to hug him.
“Sleepover!” I exclaim into his chest. It rumbles against my face, and one of his hands lands on the back of my head. His other hand slips under me, causing me to giggle when it tickles my ribcage as it slides through, and then his arm is around my waist, clasping me to him.
“Yeah, baby,” he mutters. “Sleepover.”
The bugs in my stomach are back and more chaotic than ever. He cannot keep calling me that. It’s bad for my health.
Not giving me any sort of chance to recover – perhaps a moment to slow my heart rate down a couple hundred beats per minute – he rolls onto his back, pulling me as he goes to lie on his chest.
He takes a deep breath, then starts talking in his typical sleepover way. That is, in the way designed to absolutely eviscerate everything within me. It is an abuse of the heart, the things he says to me.
“I love you, Heidi. More than I could ever tell you, though I hope I show it well enough. You’re caring and thoughtful. Kind and sweet. Brave. You don’t let what you view as your flaws stop you from being who you are. You live with them. You twist them into something so charming and adorable that I couldn’t imagine you without them. I wouldn’t even want you without them. I love it when you talk ‘too much’ and when you say the wrong thing and when you tell a joke that doesn’t always land for everyone else, but you laugh anyway. Watching you entertain yourself is the highlight of my life. And I mean that literally. You light up my life – fill it so full of goodness and wonder that I can hardly remember the gloom I was living in before you.
“I don’t want you to ever forget how much you mean to me. More than anyone or anything, you’re on top. My number one forever. My best friend. The woman I love most in the entire world. My baby. My Heidi.”
He stops assaulting me with compliments, and his arms tighten around me to the point of pain – to the point of suffocation – but I don’t make a move to stop him. I wasn’t breathing anyway, not since “brave” came out of his mouth, gravelly and sweet.
After several long seconds, he loosens his hold, and my greedy lungs suck in all the ginger-scented air they can get.
“My flaws aren’t charming and adorable,” I wheeze, ignoring the rest of whatever that was. It’s not even April. I’m not mentally prepared for the aftermath of a sweet Bazzy speech.
He shakes his head, then kisses my temple.
“They are. They’re the most charming and adorable things I’ve ever seen. Name one that isn’t, and I’ll concede to you.”
His eyebrows challenge me, rising high on his forehead.
“I never shut up!” I start. “And I don’t think before I say all the things I’m saying during the times when I am not shutting up. And I say inappropriate things during those times I’m not thinking before I speak, when I am busy not shutting up!”
“You don’t need to shut up. I love hearing your every thought – inappropriate or not – and I love that you don’t filter yourself. You’re real . Honest. ”
I shake my head. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t get it.
“I’m not, though. I’m just a blabbermouth with no off switch,” I tell him.
He shakes me.
“Yeah, that’s the good part.”
I open my big blabbermouth to counter, but he doesn’t give me a chance.
“Baby, that’s the good part. Everyone is always so worried about perfectly selecting their every word and action. It’s pretense after pretense, and underneath it all is pure ugliness. It’s not kindness – like you. It’s not graciousness – like you. It’s not goodness and consideration – like you . People hide vitriol and judgment beneath pretty, curated words that mean nothing. You’re different. You say what’s on your mind, always, and even if it’s rude or inappropriate, it’s never mean – unless you’re talking about Archie, but that could hardly count. He thinks mean words are sonnets in his favor. So even when you’re mean, you’re kind. People aren’t like that. It’s special, Dee. You’re special.”
My head drops to his chest, and tears slide down my nose to wet his shirt. I sniffle.
I feel special.
Baz always makes me feel special.
Special enough that I have to admit that maybe his words have some truth to them. Maybe I actually am special – at least to him.
“Thank you, Bazzy.” It comes out watery, but I don’t have it in me to care. I’m dealing with a lot of emotions right now. I’m allowed to cry a little.
“You don’t need to thank me for telling you a basic fact. I should be thanking you for being the type of woman you are – the breath of fresh air in a world sorely lacking. I’m sorry I don’t tell you enough. We both know words aren’t easy for me, but you deserve all the words in the world if you want them – if you need them. I’ll fill the gaps in between your every utterance with words of your beauty and wonder. I’ll find the voice to tell you every moment of every day how good you are and how much good you deserve.”
My breath shudders out of me, and it’s all I can do not to sob.
He’s just so sweet .
“No, Bazzy. No. You don’t have to change a thing. You’re perfect and wonderful and show me so much love just the way you are.”
“Hush, baby.” His arms tighten three times around me – I love you . “I’ll be whatever you need me to be. Whatever you want me to be.” I love you. “The fact that all you ask for is for me to be exactly who I am just proves how incredible and perfect you are.” I love you.
I sniffle again and squeeze him back one, two, three times as well.
I love you, too , I tell him silently.
And I do. I really, really do.