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“Yay!” Charlie says. “This is the best Christmas ever!”
“Wait,” Catharine says, then smiles at me. “Daddy hasn’t opened his gift from us yet.”
“Oh yeah!” Charlie covers his mouth with his hand and giggles. “I almost forgot.”
“Silly,” Catharine says, handing me the gift. “After all that time we spent on it.”
“I know; I just want to go skiing and make snow angels!” he responds.
I open the box to find a digital photo frame with a lot of pictures of Charlie in it. And there’s a wooden box with handprints on it.
“That’s for your office,” Charlie says. “I wanted you to always have a picture of me!”
“And the handprints are his,” Catharine says, as she points to the box. “You can keep that at home or work but it’s a nice little box to put your things in and we made it based on a YouTube video I watched about how to do moldings of handprints in wood.”
“Wow, look who’s becoming crafty!” I exclaim.
“I know, right? I never thought I was the domestic type, but the next thing you know, I’ll be making dinner for… for whoever needs to eat dinner.”
She hurries to finish her sentence a different way than she started it. I like that she wants to make us dinner, even though she doesn’t have to. I can imagine coming home to my little family of her, Charlie and me every night for a home-cooked meal.
Maybe there’d even be a little brother or sister for Charlie down the road; a cute little girl who looks like the female version of Charlie, or, more accurately, half me, half Catharine – now that would be cute.
Stop thinking like this, I scold myself.
Just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean I have to get all emo. But this is really one of the best holidays I’ve ever had. I become more and more convinced that it’s time to ask Catharine to be my official girlfriend.
And not just because of our hot sex or even because she just essentially said she’d cook for me. But because I always love to be around her and I can’t imagine my life without her in it.
I’m pretty Charlie can’t imagine that, either, so even though we’ve been trying to protect him by taking it slow, I’m starting to think we should provide him with some security by cluing him in on the fact that Catharine and I are an official couple – just as soon as I ask her to be that with me.
Chapter 12
Catharine
The day after Christmas is always a good time to ski. Most people are still at home with their families, vegging in front of the TV or suffering a bellyache or laziness from too much turkey the day before. Or people are traveling and still celebrating the holiday with different family members.
North Pine is always more crowded than the resort I had worked at but it’s not too bad today. And it was worth it to me to come here instead, although I didn’t tell Daniel why. I never told him I was fired from my job, because it’s so fucking embarrassing, and also because I don’t want him to feel bad, since it involved the incident that happened when he was there, although it certainly wasn’t his fault.
We drove separately, because I’m meeting up with some of my friends tonight – Sally, Gia, Amanda, Maya and others, to do our own Christmas present exchange – and I don’t want to cut Charlie’s and Daniel’s time on the mountain short because of it. But as soon as I got here I was so happy to see my two favorite guys.
As we’re waiting in line for the ski lift that takes us all the way up the front of the mountain and to the black diamond slope on the back – Charlie being loudly happy about being able to go there this time instead of having to be slowed down by his friends who can’t ski – I see someone familiar manning the boarding area.
“Catharine!” Matt says, waving at me.
It’s my former co-worker, who had helped carry out and set up Charlie’s cake.
“Matt!” I say, surprised. “You work here now?”
Charlie is butting his way forward, and trying to get ahead of another kid in line, so luckily, Daniel is kind of wrestling him back and telling him to wait his turn, and doesn’t hear what Matt and I are talking about.
“Yeah, I just couldn’t keep working over there after everything they did to you and Michelle, and all of that drama,” he says.
“Yeah, that sucked,” I agree. “So, Michelle was fired, too?”
He nods as if I should know this. “Well, yeah, I mean, now she…”
Suddenly Daniel and Charlie are beside me and it’s our turn to get on the lift. Just in the nick of time, because I don’t want to be talking about this in front of them.
