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“Because you know how hard it is to open up like that.”
“I do. I’m glad you are to me.”
“I know you really like Christmas and haven’t said anything about the holiday on Monday.”
“I wasn’t sure what your plans were. You know we are having it at Morgan’s house. That my parents are coming this weekend.”
“Yes, and you haven’t asked me.”
Her jaw dropped. “I haven’t?”
“No. You just said what was going on and then never asked if I wanted to go too. Or if we were spending the night together or not.”
“You’re right. I just assumed. Maybe I was afraid to ask.”
“Because I might say no. I get it. I wouldn’t. I’d like to spend the night with you on Christmas Eve. Wake up with you. You know, I might have said I was Scrooge, but I got you a gift.”
She smiled. “I got you one too.”
“Then we’ll stay at your place so we can wake up and open gifts under your tree,” he said.
“We can,” she said.
“I’m not that bad, am I?”
“No. I didn’t think so. But you didn’t talk at all to me about the anniversary of your parents’ deaths. I would have been there for you, but you just went about your day like it was nothing.”
“I spent it with my grandfather,” he said. “Doesn’t mean you couldn’t have too. But he cooks me the same dinner for both nights each year and we throw back shots that they each liked. We don’t even talk about it.”
It was too painful still. He wondered if his grandfather wanted to talk and wouldn’t and would have to figure that out in time too.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. “What do you eat or drink?”
“Simple questions. My grandfather makes tacos for my mother’s dinner. We do shots of tequila each.”
She laughed. “That’s cute.”
“There is a story behind it. It’s not like I’ve ever seen my mother do a shot, but the first anniversary of her death, my father cooked that and we did a shot.”
“You were a teen,” she said.
“Get the shocked look off your face,” he said.
“Sorry. I drank before I was twenty-one too, but not doing shots at eighteen with my parents.”
“I bet you were doing them with your sister at parties,” he said.
“You’d be right,” she said. “So why did your father pick that dinner?”
“Because he met my mother at a bar one night when he was out with friends. She was eating tacos and doing shots with her best friend and they were hating on men. My mother’s best friend had just split with her boyfriend. My mother ended up drunk and puking outside on the sidewalk. My father brought her out napkins and water.”
“Okay, that’s grossly sweet,” she said.
“Yep. My mother said any man that saw her at her worst deserved a chance to see her at her best.”
He still loved that story. Maybe that was why he felt something with Mia so early.
She opened up and showed a vulnerable side early on and was embarrassed about it.
