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No.
No way.
Meg isnotplaying corrupted Christmas tunes.
I lift a finger in the air. “Is that—”
“‘Penis of the Bells’? Yes. Yes, it is. If you stick around long enough, you’ll hear ‘Penis Bell Rock’ and ‘Joy to the Penis’ too. Also, I have all of the Avengers movies ready to run, so since you don’t have PT today, and I don’t have to be anywhere, we can watch bad guys try to annihilate the world by the light of our wimpy-ass but beautiful pasta tree while I build a fire in your fireplace.”
I rub my ear.
There’s no way I heard all of that right.
“Also, I found your Halloween lights, so I put those on the tree too,” she adds. “It’s a general-purpose festive eyesore.”
I glance into the living room.
Sure enough, there are jack-o-lanterns lit up all over the lopsided tree. And sure enough, the music just switched from “Penis of the Bells” to “Penis the Snowman.”
Or should I call it “Frosty the Penis”?
Theonlyword anyone’s singing ispenis, so it could go either way.
“Meg. You don’t have to ruin your Christmas on my behalf. Look, I was thinking I’d head up to—”
I cut myself off as her lush lips spread in a wide smile, and I swear I go light-headed at the beauty of it.
She literally made me forget how to talk because shesmiled.
I have it bad. I’m pretty sure I always have. I’ve just been very good at denying it until this very minute.
And I don’t know what I’m going to do about this.
“I amnotruining my own Christmas,” she says. “I’m expanding into testing other ways of celebrating.”
“But tradition—”
“Can change. You want a birthday cinnamon roll? They’re best hot. Also, I think I need to take some to your neighbors. Or probably to Joey and Zeus, but Zeus could eat the entire pan himself, and that wouldn’t leave any for the rest of his family, so maybe not?”
“Do you always make cinnamon rolls for the holidays?”
“No, I’m a mood holidayer.”
“What does that mean?”
“Some years it’s cinnamon rolls, and some years it’s chocolate chip cookies for breakfast, and some years it’s honey puff pancakes, and some years it’s waffles, and this one year, Jude got an itch for breakfast soup.” She pauses and bites her lip, then adds in a rush, “But cinnamon rolls are my favorite.”
I swallow.
Hard.
They’re my favorite too.
Leave, I order myself.Do not sit and have cinnamon rolls with this woman who always believes the best of everyone.
But she makes me believe in myself in ways I haven’t in months. Maybe years, my heart whispers back.
Fuck.
