Chapter 29 See You Like I Do
See You Like I Do
Jamie
“Where are the marshmallows?” Eve shouted.
Jamie rounded the corner from the living room to join her in the kitchen, where he found her inspecting the pantry. “We…don’t have any marshmallows,” he answered gingerly. “Did you tell me to get marshmallows?”
She looked back at him, giggling at his appearance—he was unintentionally dressed in gold, with several strips of shimmering ribbon slung over each shoulder. “ I got marshmallows,” she said. “But they’ve disappeared.”
“Oh, well.” He turned for the living room. “Jack!” he called, then waited to hear his footsteps scampering toward them. Within seconds, the kid appeared in the threshold of the kitchen, covered in glitter from Christmas ornaments.
“Yes?” he asked innocently.
“Do you know where the marshmallows are?”
Jack looked at Eve and then at the floor. “All of them?” he asked.
Jamie and Eve glanced at each other, his conspicuous reply quirking both their eyebrows. “Do you know where any of them are?” Eve asked.
“Some of them…might be in my room,” he revealed. “But not all of them.”
“Why don’t you go get the ‘some’ that are in your room,” Jamie suggested, shaking his head as Jack ran off. “I’m sorry,” he told Eve. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him lately.”
In an uncharacteristically breezy response, Eve just shrugged. “His dad’s got a new woman hanging around, his mom’s got a baby on the way. He probably just wants attention.”
“You planned an entire evening for us with the tree and everything,” Jamie said. “He’s got plenty of attention. He’s just bein’ a little asshole.”
Eve laughed. “Maybe if you weren’t so busy with your girlfriend, you would’ve noticed.”
“Fair point.” He joined her at the stove, wrapping his arm around her waist as he planted a kiss on the back of her neck, her hair in its updo allowing him easy access.
“I don’t even need the hot chocolate,” he whispered, enjoying the taste of her.
He was about to say something more explicit just as Jack returned, forcing them to separate.
They watched him place half a bag of the Kraft Jet-Puffed mini-marshmallows on the counter and then step back.
“I’ll give you credit for not eating them all,” Eve commented, snickering as she picked them up.
“That’s one of your Christmas gifts,” Jamie added.
Jack’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“You got to eat half a bag of marshmallows and you’re not gettin’ in trouble for it. Merry Christmas.”
“But Christmas is still, like, twenty days away.”
“How about…happy Hanukkah?” Eve inserted.
“We’re not Jewish,” he shot back.
“So you want to get in trouble here?” Jamie asked. “I think you have a trip to Dollywood coming up that we can cancel if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“I’ll take Hanukkah,” he said, quickly rescinding his sarcasm.
“And now you have to watch Charlie Brown with me,” Eve said, grinning as she returned to the stove to finish their hot chocolate.
Jack groaned as though Christmas were being stolen from him. “Oh, man.”
“You both should be ashamed that it’s not already a Christmas tradition in your home,” Eve said.
She handed over the full mugs and pointed them toward the living room.
“Back to work, boys.” She followed them, but not before stopping at the sound system to commence the Christmas music, sending Donny Hathaway’s heavenly crooning through the loft’s speakers.
Jamie’s living room was a mess of holiday adornments—white lights, gold ribbons, and iridescent ornaments.
They’d picked out a ten-foot noble fir, which was now sitting in front of the balcony window, waiting to be trimmed, and Eve was more excited about it than Jamie had ever seen her about anything.
He should have seen it coming when she spent the entire afternoon in Target, but he didn’t expect the amount of zeal that came with that truck full of decorations.
He didn’t expect any of this, in fact. Eve had come alive since meeting Jack.
She was a natural with him, instantly; there was such ease to their conversations, because Eve did the opposite of what most adults thought to do—she treated him like an equal.
He didn’t know if cures to grief existed, but if they did, it seemed that Jack might have been hers.
“I told you,” Jamie whispered as Jack ran off to the bathroom.
Eve looked up from her box of decorations, grinning. “Told me what?”
“That you’d love him.”
She only shook her head, clearly unwilling to admit that defeat. “Promise me you’ll take a video of when he finds out he’s going to Paris?”
“I will,” he nodded. He couldn’t keep his gaze off her as she went back to dressing the tree, and she seemed so relaxed. Maybe even content. So unlike the woman who came to dinner at his cabin back in July. “I’m proud of you,” he said.
She looked back up at him, a wide, enchanting smile claiming her gorgeous face, and she nodded back. “I’m proud of me, too.”
“I know he’s good at springing things on you. So if any of this is too much…if a whole day at Dollywood sounds like torture…you really don’t have to. You can stay here, put up your candles…”
“Jamie,” she whispered, shaking her head again. “I’m here. I’m in this.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“And truth be told, I’ve been waiting half my life to go to Dollywood. You’re not gonna be able to scare me out of this.”
Jamie laughed, though he hoped that those feelings applied to more than just Dollywood. “Okay.”