Page 7 of Wrecked for the Holidays

“I wish you would.” Jakob huffed and blew the curls off his forehead. “Wait, that sounded pushy, and I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Nah, it didn’t sound that way at all. Okay, let’s get some food in you before it gets cold because cold grilled cheese is…” I paused and waited for him to fill in the blank I left him.

“Yucky!” he shouted.

“Exactly right, love. No one likes cold grilled cheese.”

For the next few minutes, I fed Jakob small bites of his sandwich or apples and spoon-fed him sips of soup. In between his bites, I’d take one off my plate. We chatted about our favorite foods and which ones we hated. Surprisingly, our lists were similar.

While we chatted, I noticed Jakob struggled with his glass of milk. If he was a little—more wishful thinking—he might be close to regressing with the day’s stress. “Jakob, you’re pretty shaky using your left hand. I have a sippy cup. Would you like to use it?”

I held my breath when I made the offer. There were any number of perfectly acceptable reasons for me to have a sippy cup in my kitchen. And one glaring reason that wasn’t innocent at all. Jakob’s eyes flared with understanding.

“Yes, Reed, I’d very much like to use the sippy cup. Thank you.”

#

“Thanks for helping me with dinner. Next time, I’ll be less messy.”

“I was happy to help.”

It wasn’t an exaggeration. The sippy cup had been a wishful-thinking purchase but hadn’t been used. Jakob was the first to use it, which made me feel some kind of way. I liked that this house held no memories of another little. Sitting across from each other on the couch in the living room while the fire roared and the rain softly fell outside was an otherworldly feel. We might be the only ones left in our corner of the world. That thought didn’t make me sad at all. Jakob had burst into my life and home, but I was hard-pressed to find any bit I wanted to change. I liked him here.

“When we were packing up your stuff, you had a Christmas list. May I look at it?”

“If you want, sure. I know it’s silly, but I’ve been curating that list for a fewyears.”

With his permission, I jumped off the couch to fetch his Christmas wish book and to-do list. Since going through his bag seemed a little presumptuous, I brought the whole thing back to the room.

“Okay,” I said as I sat back down, “my usual schedule alternates. My last shift was today before starting my time off, so you picked a good day to rear-end me.”

Jakob giggled and shook his head. “There is no good day to get into a car accident, silly. Oh shoot, what about insurance? Did you get my information?”

He started to get flustered, and I didn’t like it. It was entirely too late for him to worry about this tonight.

“It’s fine. The lot where your car was towed is on your paperwork, and you might not remember, but you did give the officer your insurance information. We can deal with all of it on Monday if you’re okay with that?”

Jakob nodded and sat back against the couch. “Honestly, I’d rather not deal with it at all, but I guess I’ll have to. Adulting is not fun.”

“Well, dealing with insurance isn’t the most fun part of adulting, but there are a few benefits.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Like you can choose the life you want and things you experience.” I paused to pick up his to-do list. “And that’s why I want to look at your list with you. We can check off a few things.”

Jakob’s eyes went wide and his lips pursed in a surprisedoh.“You’d do that for me?”

“I like Christmas. It’s been a while since I’ve had a reason to get excited about it. Not being in a relationship or having kids of my own, there hasn’t been motivation to put in the effort. What sort of things are on your list?”

“Oh, there are so many things. I wouldn’t ask you to do all of them because that’s too much to ask, but I’d love it if you wanted to do a couple with me.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Well, there was pick out a Christmas tree, but I’m going to have to uncheck that one since it never made it home. And decorate it with ornaments that I helped make or picked out. Umm, let’s see, there was hot chocolate with sprinkles. Oh! Oh! Have a stocking and wait for Santa Claus. Bake cookies. Wrap presents with pretty ribbons. Watch holiday movies. Sing Christmas carols and go ice skating.”

“Oh wow, that’s quite a list, but I think we can check off some of those easily. The ice skating will have to wait a while until you’re better though. You don’twant to re-injure your fingers and cause serious damage.” Jakob didn’t argue but instead took a drink from his sippy cup. He tried to smother his yawn, but he couldn’t quite keep it hidden. “Are you ready to get some sleep?”

Jakob looked down at his phone that had been in his bag and grimaced. “It’s so early. If I go to sleep now, I’ll be wide awake at three in the morning.”

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