Page 31 of Run, Run, Roommates
“Now you know.” He laughs and walks away, leaving me red-faced and standing over the “light and creamy” pile of butter and sugar.
Which I now realize looks like spunk.
I get to work cleaning the floor and Marco changes clothes and then runs to the store again. This batch of batter goes much smoother and soon Marco’s joining me in the living room to wrap presents.
He slumps down next to me on the ground and sighs. “Okay, two hours on the clock for the dough to chill in the fridge.” He checks his watch. “We might be pushing it to get them out of the oven and decorated by the time we have to leave for ice-skating.”
“We’ll do our best,” I tell him.
Marco digs into wrapping presents beside me and we work in silence for a while.
At least, I thought we were working in silence, until I realize I’m humming “Carol of the Bells.”
I stop immediately. Marco’s probably already tired of all this holiday shit. But a few minutes later, I catch myself humming again.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“We can put on music,” Marco suggests.
“Sure!” I pick up my phone. “Taylor Swift okay?”
He doesn’t look up. “You can put on Christmas music if you want.”
I stare at him for a second and then switch to my holiday playlist before he changes his mind.
Most mornings when I wake up I have the house to myself, so it’s nice to be able to play whatever music I want. Since Thanksgiving, my preferred playlist has been my holiday one.
It’s a mix of pop and orchestral pieces, so the mood goes up and down. I try to tone down my singing and dancing along but it’s hard.
And then when Marco’s socked toe starts wriggling in time to the music, I can’t help myself anymore.
16
Marco
Brin starts belting out lyrics, and I don’t really mind her badly tuned singing. It does make the time pass faster as we wrap present after present.
She’s facing away from the window, so she can’t see the swirls of snow falling in the glass behind her. It’s been snowing ever since I went on the second grocery run, the clouds from this morning’s sunrise having fully moved in.
With the snow in the window, the flicker of Brin’s candle, and the holiday music, it feels cozy inside. It makes me nostalgic, not for my childhood Christmases, but for the last Christmas I celebrated, the one where my brother was still alive and we were living with his best friend, celebrating with our friends instead of our family.
There are about thirty minutes left of chill time on the cookie and Brin is (badly) duetting with Mariah Carey when both of our phones ding.
@everyone: The city has been blessed with fresh snow this morning. It should clear up soon, so we suggest you get out there and build a snow sculpture. Send a selfie with your creation within the next hour and earn three points!
Brin and I glance at each other and then scramble up from the floor. We’ve got thirty minutes till the cookies need to go in the oven, half the time other teams get to build a sculpture and be as creative as possible.
We get to the park closest to us, and talk while we work to build a base. “A snowman—or woman—would be pretty straightforward. What if we dress it up as a memorable character? Like, Buddy the Elf?” Brin suggests.
“We don’t have the time to get clothes together for that,” I point out. “What do we have at home that we can use?”
“Umm . . . I don’t know how we would get pants on it.” Brin taps her chin. “What about a sundress? Oh! We could go with a full-on summer theme: sundress, sunhat, sunglasses.”
“That’ll work. Go grab whatever you can spare and I’ll keep piling snow.”
Brin runs off and returns a few minutes later when I’ve just started looking for branches and rocks to make the arms and face. We wrestle the dress onto the human-shaped snow, having to stop a few times to make the snow person thinner since Brin’s so small.
I remember this sundress, though. It’s got huge flowers on it, with capped sleeves and a skirt that flairs from the waist. Brin wears it in the summer when she takes the neighbor’s kid to the park and it’s sweltering.
