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Don’t think about how many times over the years that he’s shown up at random family events, where he would inevitably smile at me and listen after he asks how I’m doing or offer to let me go first in food lines at picnics or pick me for his dodgeball team even if I’m the world’s worst player.
Now, I hope he goes into the kitchen and tries a cookie and decides it’s the most delicious thing he’s had in his entire life, and that it makes his shoulder not hurt and his grumpies go away and then that he sits down next to me, casually loops an arm around my shoulders—his good arm, I mean—and asks if I want to go get a Christmas tree.
Shut up, Meg’s brain.
That doesn’t work.
Also, Trevor’s not going into the kitchen.
He stands there in the arched doorway, the glow of the neighbor’s Christmas lights coming in through the window and giving him a green tint, his body turned in my direction.
And then he sighs.
I don’t hear it so much as I see the rise and fall of his shoulders and the shift in his strong jaw.
Yes, I’m watching, and yes, it’s starting to hurt to keep staring at him with my eyes off to the side like that.
“Sorry I was an ass,” he says.
I think.
My headphones cancel out a lot, but I have unfortunately always been tuned in to anything that Trevor Stafford says when he’s in my vicinity.
Usually it was no big deal, because I’ve traveled the States trying to find my dream job while he’s been here in Copper Valley, Virginia, or other baseball towns that I’ve never been to.
But now—now, I think I’ve found where I fit, and even after I move out, Trevor and I will be living in the same town and I don’t know how I’m going to handle that long-term.
I drop the baby blanket, pause the movie, and push my headphones off my ears. “There are extra cookies on the counter, but if you don’t want sweets in the house, I can—”
“They’re fine. Thanks.”
“The rest of the kitchen—”
“I don’t like Christmas.”
“—is clean.” I blink as I finish my sentence. “I mean, okay. Not everybody does. You don’t have to.”
I huddle deeper into the couch.
Probablyshouldbe looking for an apartment instead of watching a movie. Or making some new friends outside of work and the Bergers. I’m sure Zeus and Joey would let me crash at their place—oh my holy Santa Claus, I haveneverseen a house decorated so much, which really shouldn’t surprise me after getting to know Zeus—but much as I love them and the babies, I’d constantly feel like I was at work, and living at my job doesn’t really jive with my personality.
I’d neverstopworking, and then I’d get fired for trying to be a parent instead of a nanny, and I really don’t want to be fired.
I love this job more than I’ve loved any job in my life.
Maybe I should ask them if they have friends who know anything about the apartment market right now.
Not that I expect they’d have friends who know anything about the apartment market in my price range. Zeus is a retired professional hockey player and Joey co-owns one of the most successful flight adventure-slash-zero gravity research companies in the world.
“You like the holidays,” Trevor says.
He noticed!teenage me squeals in my head.
You literally barfed the whole holiday all over his kitchen, replies the part of me that likes to remind me I’m supposed to be an adult.
“I…might have an unhealthy obsession with twinkly lights and Christmas cookies.”
He makes one of those weirdly endearing grunts that work on absolutely no other man in the entire world.
