Page 35 of Holiday Unscripted
“Oh, I’m fully aware that you are not kidding with me, Elizabeth.” I swear every single time he says my name, my stomach gets butterflies.
“Where is she now?” I ask him, thinking she still lives around here and there is a chance I’ll come face-to-face with her.
“Moved away closer to the city, shortly after I bought this house. She thought for some reason I would regret it.”
“Did you?” I ask him, and I feel like I’m holding my breath. “Do you?”
“No.” He shakes his head, taking another pull of his beer. “Not even a little bit. Besides, she got married a year after she left and now has a two-month-old baby.”
“Girl or boy?” I ask him.
“No clue.” He puts his bottle of beer down by his pizza box.
“That means you really don’t care”—I grab my own beer bottle and take a pull—“because if you did, you would know every single detail about the other person.”
“You didn’t know I was with Britt?” He looks straight into my eyes when he asks me the question.
“I did not,” I reply and he just nods his head, “but it’s because?—”
“It’s fine,” he says, tossing down his pizza crust. “I’m going to go and get the totes.”
He starts to walk out of the room, and my chest is getting so tight it’s getting hard to even swallow. “Nate.” His name comes out shaky.
“It’s fine, Elizabeth.” He looks back and I can see something in his eyes I’ve never seen before. The look haunts me and leaves me speechless. “I’ll be back.”
Whiskey walks with him to the garage and then comes back with him as he carries a blue Rubbermaid tote. “How many are there?” I ask him as he puts the first one down.
“Seven.” My mouth opens in shock. “My mother really loved Christmas,” he says, looking down at Whiskey, who pushes into his leg to get pet, as he avoids looking at me.
It takes him about thirty minutes to bring all the totes in, and I clean up the mess of the pizza boxes, putting it on the stove. “Do you have something to play music on?” I ask him once he places the last tote down and wipes his forehead with the back of his arm.
“Grab my phone.” He motions with his chin toward the counter. “Open the music app, it’s hooked up to the system.”
I grab his phone and swipe up, it says face ID and then quickly asks me for the code once it sees I’m not him. “Is it your birthday?” I ask him and he shakes his head.
“I’ll put it in,” he offers, taking his phone from me and putting in his password. “There you go.” He hands me the phone and I pull up the music app and the sound of bells starts filling the house. “Are you putting Christmas songs on?”
“I mean, we’re doing a Christmas tree, might as well vomit Christmas all over the place.” I smile at him as I grab the scissors as Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” starts to blare through the speakers. I raise my hands in the air as I sing the song, cutting the cords, and then seeing the tree come out. Every single time it flies open, I think a hundred pine needles fall from the tree.
“You need to put water in the holder,” Nate shouts from behind me.
“What? Why?” I ask him.
“Elizabeth, it’s a tree.” He points to the tree. “It’s like getting flowers, you have to add water to them or it’ll turn brown or catch fire with the lights. I really like my house and I would like not to set it on fire.”
He starts opening the totes as I walk over and grab the biggest glass he has and filling it with water. “How much water?” I ask him as I walk back and have to get on my knees to pour it into the stand.
“Until the top, I guess,” he answers as he finds the lights and then comes over with the string of lights. “I’m going to need a stepladder.” He puts the lights on the couch where Whiskey is now lying down, watching us. He walks out of the room and then Baby Cat comes into the room, gingerly looking around at the totes. He steps on a couple of pine needles and then flips his paw to get them off.
Nate comes back with a small white stepladder and goes to the tree. “Can you get the lights for me?” he asks and I walk over to the lights and then go back to give them to him. “We are going to have to move the tree away from the wall so I can get back there with the lights,” he says as he gets down.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” I watch him grab a hold of the tree in the middle as he moves it slowly toward us. “Fucking needles,” he complains as we hear them falling. “I’ll be sending you pictures in March, and I’ll still be finding them all around my house.”
I can’t help but laugh, but then something else starts to creep in and I push it back. I’ve been home for maybe four days, and every day is one day closer to me leaving. Usually, I’m okay with it and I start feeling like this on the day that I leave. The dread starts to creep in, knowing that I’ll be so far away again. “You okay?” he asks me, and I clear my throat, the lump was growing bigger and bigger as I think of heading back to the other side of the world.
“Yeah,” I assure, shaking my head and fighting away the stinging of my eyes and the pinch in my nose. “I’m just... It’s, you know, strange being home.”
“Well, you don’t do it often enough,” he mentions as he walks around the tree with the lights. “Your parents miss you.”
