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“Are you going to let me ravage those lips? A Christmas present for me?”
“I want you to walk away today knowing you don’t owe me anything. Ten weeks is a long time where anything can happen. You’re a good-looking guy. And for the record, Jensen and I are only friends. I broke my rules letting you in, and I am not sorry I did, but life will return to how it was before I met you. And because you asked nicely, I might let you unwrap me a little bit.”
I thought I had made myself clear, but I had no more time to waste repeating myself. I know Ophelia is only protecting her heart. I get that much about her. Without a moment to lose, my mouth slams into hers, and we throw ourselves into our “check-you-later.”
I guess actions are going to have to be worth more than words.
PART 2
Forty-Four
MINIATURE SURPRISES
Ophelia
Christmas Day
My best friend is sitting next to me in the firepit area. Gwen is contentedly watching the landscape, her wine glass in her hand while swaying and singing softly to Boney M’s “Mary’s Boy Child” piping through the outdoor speakers.
The Christmas tree lights are rhythmically twinkling as though dancing to the music.
The weather is sunny. It’s a perfect day to sit outside, but we have the fire: snap, crackle, and popping, to stave off the afternoon air as it gradually drops temperature as the day wears on.
I’m so used to hot Christmas Days in Australia it is nice to be comfortable for once instead of sweating your arse off. Australian summers are brutal. Depending on where you live, it can be worse than brutal.
I take a sip of the white wine poured from a quarter-sized sample bottle Gwen selected for our lunch.
Angus and Wiley MacDougall visited us the following day after Tucker left for Alaska with cheeky smiles and beautifully presented wine sample kits in wooden mini crates for us to place in each tiny house as a welcome gift. Each little box has a straw bed with six quarter-sized mini bottles of reds and whites and a MacDougall winery information brochure. I have since added sample packets of cheese and biscuits local businesses have donated in exchange for me putting their wares and business cards in the tiny houses.
The MacDougall brothers didn’t just come over being neighborly bearing free wine sample kits; they had a business proposition. Gwen and I were given the same sample kits to taste-test during the week. Provided we liked the wine, the brothers hoped we would consider adding their winery to the Fainting Goat Ranch growing list of recommended local businesses to visit during the guests’ stay here in wine country.
I can confidently back the various reds and whites Gwen and I have sampled with our meal each night. I am not a big drinker unless it is a special occasion (except Tucker’s house for brunch). The quarter-sized mini bottle was perfect for tasting.
I can see how their family winery has been successful for over twenty years. They produce good wine.
Today hasn’t been as depressing as I thought it would be. I am mostly winning, convincing myself I’m still on a high from yesterday when Gwen and I drove to Hermosa Beach to spend half the day with my cousin and his family and Pixy, who was enjoying his goat limelight dressed in a Santa coat outfit.
Gwen and I may have gone overboard with some presents for CJ and Pixy. Not that there is anything wrong with spoiling the two little guys, even if one is a fainting goat. Whatever brings you joy, I say.
I discovered Chance sure loves decorating Christmas trees. He went a little nutty overboard around their home with numerous trees, much to CJ and Aubrey’s delight.
Aubrey, and my other cousin, Chance’s sister, Adele, cooked the best turkey with all the trimmings for lunch. We laughed, we cried, we swapped Christmas gifts. Most were happy tears.
I received a handmade voucher (CJ’s creative crayon skills were evident in the colorful background artistry) from Chance for a year’s worth of monthly landscaping upkeep.
Aubrey told me it is an excuse for Chance to come up monthly to claim a night in a Hobbit house and for CJ to play with the animals.
See,I knew my cousin loved my tiny houses.
Since that devastating accident, it’s my first Christmas without my parents,and I don’t want to fall down the rabbit hole of sadness today. I’ve had a little cry, but then I pulled up my big granny pants, and Gwen took the reins. She’s the sister-from-another-mister who knows how to keep me smiling.
Gwen brought some Aussie familiarity to our Christmas morning. We spoke with her adoptive dads—via the magic of FaceTime on her laptop—who are as full of life as she is while opening the gifts we got each other.
Her parents got legally married in California, the moment the laws changed and more recently recognized as a same-sex married couple in Australia. But Australia is their home. Jonah is a sixty-four-year-old African American professor, and Caleb, the Australian, is a fifty-seven-year-old veterinarian. Caleb’s wife died when Gwen was only two-years-old. His close-knit family rallied to support him as a single father, his sister moving in to assist with caring for the toddler. Then nine years later, he met Jonah in a Melbourne bar, and he allowed himself to be free of what he tried to suppress.
Everyone has the right to love who they want and not get openly judged by others and laws. It meant the world to Gwen that they could get married.
I’m so thankful Gwen took me up on the offer to be my wingwoman for six months. I made sure to send a Christmas wish up above that she might stay on longer because I don’t think I want to go another Christmas without her, although that would be terribly selfish of me, considering I am taking her away from her family this Christmas.
