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Obviously. This is just a fling, and these two have known each other forever.
Nic turns his back on Timothy and wraps an arm around my shoulders, pulling me tight. “Your brother’s a tool.”
“I’ve been aware of this fact my whole life,” I say, sliding my arm between his waist and the couch.
“Blame Nic when I can’t get it up tonight,” Timothy says to Mina. Whatever she whispers in response receives an unintelligible growl from him.
Evie hands Nic a box wrapped in neon Christmas tree paper. It’s one from me, and now that I know there are two more gifts from him under the tree, plus my paints, I wish I’d gotten him more.
He hesitates, fingers already at the seam of the paper. “Anything you want to say before I open this?”
I nestle against his arm. “Nope.”
“It’s not a hand-knitted penis cozy?”
I push against him. “Open the present.”
“I’m too scared.”
“Fine,” I say with a long-suffering sigh. “It’s a handmade scrapbook of shirtless Chris Hemsworth photos.”
He laughs, planting a quick kiss on my lips. “You’re the worst.”
I kiss him back, and apparently, my brain is too dick-addled to work, because I smile at him and say, “That’s why you love me.”
Panic stabs into my chest.
Nic stares back at me. Just stares, and I can’t tell if he’s horrified or shocked.
I don’t know what to do, so I lightly punch his arm like it’s all a joke.
Relief crosses his face, but his eyes look unsettled as he glances down at the gift. “Better open this.” He unwraps it carefully instead of tearing it open, like his mind is a million miles away, probably stuck around my accidental confession of feelings.
Goddammit. Why did I say that? He doesn’t feel the same—it was all over his face.
Finally, he lifts the lid and sees the black knit sweater with copulating polar bears and snowflakes across the front. He smiles, his whole body relaxing.
“You needed a new ugly Christmas sweater,” I say quietly. He outgrew his last one, bulking up for Warwick, and it’s a serious oversight that no one has gotten him a new one.
He pulls me into a kiss. “Thank you,” he says softly, standing. When he puts his arms through, the hem of his shirt rides up and I find myself staring at the inch-wide band of skin on display.
I’m pathetic, falling for a man I can’t keep but will have to continue to see every year.
Opening gifts cheers me up a little. The set of bubble baths from Amanda and Hazel smell divine, and Mom and Dad gave me a set of fancy drink mixers I’ll be drowning my heartbreak in soon. Mina and Timbo’s gift is a set of pajamas in the same Christmas dick print that won Timothy the Best Dressed glitter candy cane dildo award last night.
The Kouame bag from Nic is gorgeous. I spend a good five minutes touching the vegan leather’s wide basket weave. It’s a deep purple, and it’s so beautiful I’m going to have to perform some mental gymnastics to divorce my association of this bag with Nic. It’s too beautiful to die in my Fuck It Closet.
The framed photo of his magazine cover gets some laughs from everyone. Mom casually mentions that I could hang it next to the cologne ad under my hot firefighter calendar. My face flames and I can’t look at Nic because that cologne ad is easily eight years old.
Soon it’s over. Timothy and Dad start cleaning up all the wrapping paper, and because Timothy is Timothy, he sparks a fierce wrapping paper ball fight that draws everyone in and leaves him a bigger mess to pick up when the rest of us head to the kitchen for coffee and cinnamon rolls.
“Hey.” Timothy nails me in the head with a ball of paper. “Come here a sec.”
I grab the wad off the floor and stuff it into the bag he’s holding. He pulls me into a hug.
“I’m ecstatic you two are together.”
If I have to repeat myself for the next week, I’m going to go mad. “It’s a fling, Timothy. With an end date.”
