AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why do I have so many drawers?” Jamal yelled.
“Why don’t you know where anything is?!” Cassie replied.
“Found ‘em!” JJ called, holding a set of oven mitts in her hands.
Jamal grabbed them out of his daughter’s hands, flung the oven door open, grabbed the pan of stuffing and tossed it on top of the stove. The smoke detector, well,detected, the smoke billowing from the blackened stuffing and began its loud shrieking.
“Oh em gee! That. Is.Loud!” JJ yelled over the ridiculous noise.
Jamal jumped on top of his kitchen counter and pressed the button on the smoke detector, but the ringing still continued sounding off between his ears.
“You know what I think we should do?” Cassie yelled, her ears still covered by her hands.
“What?!” JJ yelled.
“Order pizza! It’s what Bobby Flay would do.”
Jamal laughed. He couldn’t argue with that.
-------------------------
When the pizza arrived, the trio sat together on the couch, JJ in the middle, holding a box of Domino’s pizza and parmesan bread bites.
“Nowthisis what I call Christmas dinner!” JJ said enthusiastically.
Jamal laughed. “Sorry we ruined Irma’s food for you, Cass. I really wanted to try and make you something special.”
“Good thing Iloveparmesan bread bites,” Cassie said, popping one of the bites in her mouth. “We just won’t let Irma and Melvin go on vacation during Christmas break next year.”
“That sounds like a good plan,” Jamal agreed. He couldn’t believe how sweet Cassie was being about everything. Actually, he wasn’t that surprised when he really thought about it. Cassie was one of the sweetest, most genuine women he’d ever met. “Now, let’s get to watching the best Christmas movieever.”
“What?! Have you never seen Home Alone?!” Cassie asked. “That’sthe best Christmas movie ever.”
“That’s because you’ve never seen the pink bunny onesie pj’s,” JJ said. “Just you wait, Cass. It’s epic.”
An hour and a half later, Cassie, who had curled up into Jamal’s arm about halfway through the film, look up at Jamal with a smile.
“So?” he said with a smile. “Pretty good, huh?”
“Pretty good,” she agreed. “But I still really like Home Alone, too.”
“Fair enough,” he said. “I guess that just means we’ll have to watchbothof them next year.”
“There’s going to be a next year?” she asked softly.
“How about a hundred years?” he whispered in her ear, loving the way her eyes widened and a beautiful blush crept up her neck.
“Can we open presents now?” JJ asked from her perch on the floor where she had settled after the pizza had been eaten.
“I’m ok with it if you are,” Jamal said. “Whaddya think, Cass?”
“Who am I to say a girl can’t open her presents?” she shrugged. “Let’s get to unwrapping!”
“Yes!” JJ exclaimed, jumping up and grabbing the presents out from under the tree and passing them out.
“So how are we doing this? Do we all open at once? Or one at a time?” Cassie asked.
“We’ve always done one person at a time, but if you want to do it differently, that’s fine with us,” Jamal said.
