Page 3 of Merrily You

After saying goodbye to my coworkers, I drove back to my apartment with dread in my stomach. Holiday and I were driving together back to our hometown first thing tomorrow morning. It seemed silly to take two cars, but we always did, just in case.

As usual, I already had everything packed and in the trunk. If I knew Holiday, and I did, she would be throwing things into the backseat tomorrow morning and no doubt I’d get a panicked call ten minutes into the trip that she’d forgotten something and had to go back and she’d meet me at the breakfast place we always hit. Every year was the same, and I didn’t hate it.

There was a consistency to Holiday’s chaos that I’d adjusted to after so many years of knowing and living with her.

Holiday was trying to cook dinner and pack when I walked in, and I had to tell her to focus on dinner and I’d grab what she needed. I was better at getting everything into her suitcase in an organized fashion anyway.

Holiday yelled at me to grab what she wanted to bring, and I folded everything and made a quick trip to pull some things out of the dryer.

“You should wear that new velvet dress you got,” I called to her.

“You think? It’s not too much?” she yelled back.

“No, it brings out your eyes.” Holiday had eyes that were the prettiest shade of blue that looked like an ocean right before a storm. The dress was a darker blue, but it was gorgeous on her and made her eyes glow underneath her bangs.

“I like that. Give me more compliments,” she yelled back, and I laughed.

“I give you plenty of compliments,” I said as I gently folded the dress and added it to her suitcase.

“You can never have too many compliments.” Her voice made me jump. I’d been so busy putting the dress away that I hadn’t heard her come up behind me.

“Jesus, Holiday. You almost gave me a heart attack.” I shoved her gently as she frowned.

“That’s not a compliment. I was asking about compliments.”

I glared at her.

“Don’t scare me and I might consider it.”

She huffed and rolled her eyes. “You’re really not getting this compliment thing at all.”

I glanced back into the suitcase, wondering what I was forgetting.

“Why am I the one who has to give compliments? Shouldn’t there be some sort of give and take?”

“But we were talking about me,” she said with a pout. I knew that face. She was determined and I wasn’t getting out of this without giving her what she wanted.

“You are an excellent cook, an incredible best friend, and your eyebrows are perfect without even trying.” She’d heard me say all those things before. Well, maybe not the eyebrow thing. That was something I’d always thought but had never voiced. My own eyebrows required far too much maintenance and upkeep so they didn’t look like overgrown caterpillars on my face.

Holiday’s smile was brilliant. “You think I have perfect eyebrows?”

“Yes, H. You have perfect eyebrows.” Now I was never going to hear the end of it.

“What’s that? Oh, sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my eyebrows being perfect.”

I sighed. “I’ve created a monster.”

Holiday winked. “A monster with amazing eyebrows.”

“Did I say amazing? I did not say amazing.”

She opened her mouth to throw a retort at me, but then her eyes went wide. “Shit, the chicken!”

Holiday dashed to the kitchen to save our dinner and I finished packing up her suitcase, zipping it with way too much satisfaction.

That nightwe had our own Christmas tradition of watching all of our favorite heartwarming romantic holiday movies. If we didn’t have to go home to see our families, my idea of a perfect Christmas would be spent inside with Holiday on the couch eating too much food and watching as many movies as we could before we completely passed out in a food coma. We’d go outside at some point and drive around the suburbs and look at all the decorations on the houses before going back home and convincing Holiday to make three different kinds of cookies that I would then devour.

We could do all of those things at another time, but the idea of a quiet Christmas really appealed to me. It would be so…peaceful.

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