Ophelia added a set of seasonal buffalo plaid throw pillows to the haul with a matching blanket, a multi-use garland, red and gold ribbon in various patterns and sizes, and two boxes of candy canes. When I finally thought she was done, the woman arrived at the wall of string lights and compared a few before sweeping an entire shelf full into the cart with her forearm.
“Woah! What’s with all the lights? I’m no expert, but a box or two of those should do the trick for one tree.”
“You need lights for the tree, and then you need lights for the house,” she explained as another outdoor decoration nearby grabbed her attention and got added to the growing pile.
“The house?” I complained. “I have a bad back.”
“Aw, old man has no mobility?” She teased me with a pouty lip and a rub between my shoulders. “That’s okay. Mateo seems very nimble.”
I scoffed and threw an extra box of lights in the cart. If my physical therapist knew I was offering to climb ladders he’d put me on the bad kind of stretcher, but I was always more competitive than cautious. “Oh I’m plenty nimble, sweetheart. You’re trying to instigate me into climbing a ladder so you can check out my ass all day.”
“What ass?”
Something inside me twitched. This fucking girl.
Right when I felt ten steps ahead of her in whatever game we were playing, she always knew how to give it right back. I let out a menacing laugh. “You’re asking for it, Trouble.”
She tried to hide her smirk. “I would love to continue talking about this, but I need to go sniff every candle in aisle eight.”
“We don’t need any candles,” I argued. “I can tell that you like the smell of me just fine by the way I caught you sniffing my blanket like blow last night.”
Ophelia left me behind with the cart as she pranced away. “Now I know you’re hearing and seeing things!”
It shouldn’t have taken as many hours as it did to decorate the house. The smaller stuff was easy; Ophelia and Tally had the living room and bathroom done up to the nines with ornamental snowmen and festive hand soaps before Mateo and I even got the tree over the threshold.
Of course he complained the entire time about the mess the needles were making as we shoved the branches through the front door jamb. I was the only one keeping my cool until I tripped over the coffee table attempting to maneuver the damn thing to the perfect spot under the girls’ opposing directions. I might have toned it down over the past few years, but I could still let a string of colorful words fly like you’ve never heard before.
It turned out that Mateo was right, which he flaunted, and the tree was just a tad too tall for the ceiling. That set in motion a much longer chain of events, including finding a suitable handsaw, which we didn’t own, to hack off the tip of the tree after I tried and failed to strong man the stump with my bare hands.
Mr. Barry came in clutch, lending his own to Cap over the backyard fence and also offering us a word of advice about keeping a live tree healthy and how often we should water it. I thought a tree was more of a decoration and less of a fucking hassle. Like a spiky green toddler that Mateo informed me, I, alone, would be feeding and cleaning up after, because it wasn’t his brilliant idea.
When all was said and done, we still hadn’t cut enough off the top of the fir to more than clear the ceiling by an inch, thus leaving absolutely no room for the expensive star Ophelia had picked out to top it. She stood there for a moment, tapping her chin before she climbed on the arm of the couch, stretching those long, tan legs, and improvising by tying the sparkler to the point with tinsel.
Thankfully we did own a staple gun. And a few long orange extension cords that came in handy as I reluctantly climbed a ladder to the tallest point of the house while Mateo coached me across the gutters from below.
The women made a show of pulling a couple lawn chairs out of the garage and setting up camp in the driveway, watching the shitshow unfold. Me, sweating like a greased pig and focusing on not putting a staple through my fingers, and Mateo, getting more frustrated by the minute trying to un-fuck the tangled lights and feed them up to me.
By some godly entity they were in place by the time the daylight decided to start creeping below the horizon—leaving just enough time for Ophelia to add some finishing touches while Cap and I sulked inside to clean up for dinner.
“We’re the only house on the block with this many lights up. We’re running more electricity than the casino,” Mateo mused around a slice of pizza as he ate it over the box.
“But it looks amazing,” Tally complimented. “It’s so homey and warm in here now. Doesn’t it make you so much more excited for Christmas?”
Music played idly and a cranberry-orange candle burned in the middle of the coffee table.
It did look amazing.
Our house was nice on its own, but with these classy touches of festive decor it really felt like a place where we could relax and enjoy the season. The sun had long set on the day, and from outside, the hue of bright lights poured in through the windows and circled the wreath on the door.
“Let’s see how the lights look in the dark,” Ophelia suggested. “I have a surprise for you guys.”
Tally pulled Mateo by his arm out the front door while Cap’s grumbling voice complained the entire way. I hung out in the little arch between the kitchen and the foyer waiting for Ophelia to dry the last of the sink water from her hands on the usable kitchen towels before she joined me.
“The house looks great, O.”
Her cheeks flushed. She had to know it looked good, because I wasn’t being facetious at all. I’d genuinely forgotten the magic of the holidays until that very moment, staring out at my candle-lit living room under the golden blanket of light. It wasn’t like Mateo and I didn’t celebrate, but we weren’t the types to decorate on our own. Up until a few years ago most of our Christmases were spent on a deployment somewhere, and it had always been secondary on account of it. But this… This was nice.
“Thank you.” She smiled up at me. Her eyes were crystal blue, but that close I found yellow in them. Sunshine in the sky.
There was a singular part of me that knew I was fucked at that very moment. Comparing a woman’s eyes to the goddamn sky. Most of me, though, was in complete denial. All I knew was that I wanted to kiss her. Which was a very normal, healthy, biological reaction to a beautiful girl looking up at you like an innocent little doe. Wasn’t it?
Fuck, I was going to kiss her.
I had to know if I was reading things wrong.
Just a kiss. If she rejected me, then that was that. We could have a very friendly, PG Christmas, and I could move on to the next dead-end dating app that Mateo found to haggle me about.
It was like the fat man himself was rooting for me when I glanced up and to find a mistletoe hanging from the archway. Surely Ophelia didn’t intentionally meet me underneath it.
“How’d that get there?” I pointed toward the hanging leaves.
Her attention flitted upward, eyes narrowing. Another creeping flood of blush pinkened her fair skin, but she didn’t react negatively. In fact, that bright gaze drifted down to my mouth after a moment before leveling with me again. I still saw the ample curiosity in it, no matter how fleeting the moment.