Page 10 of A Candy Cane Christmas
“I’m kind of a fast-savorer,” I joked.
He let out a laugh. “Yeah, I kind of get the feeling you’re more of a whirlwind.”
Hazel perked up from where she was nibbling her cookie. “I’m the same,” she told me seriously. “Daddy always says I manage to turn the world upside down. But Grandma Linda says it’s a good thing.”
“It is,” I said, grinning at the little girl. “Otherwise, the world would be a boring place, and we can’t have that. Can we?”
She shook her head and gave me a wide smile. Oh, how innocent kids this age managed to look. “No, I make the world fun and exciting for Daddy.”
I didn’t have even a shred of doubt about that one.
Theo did seem the quiet type. Thoughtful. A lot more mature than I’d expect a twenty-one-year-old guy to be, but I guessed that came with the whole teen-dad thing. Hell, Theo definitely screamed more mature than me. Then again, if Gabe or my parents were to believe, that was not hard. At all.
So, if Hazel bringing excitement to his life was a good thing, then maybe my bringing a bit of chaos into his life was a good thing, too.
We’d see.
For now, I really enjoyed this. Drinking coffee and hot chocolate with a cute guy and his equally cute daughter.
Chapter 4
Theo
For some reason, standing in front of Luci’s door wasn’t any less daunting the second time around. Quite the contrary. Now that I knew him and had talked to him, the prospect of being turned down was even more daunting.
I thought the hot chocolate date had gone really well. Even though it definitely hadn’t been a date because no matter how much I wanted it to be one, I also kinda wanted the first date of my life not to include my daughter. But at the end of the day, we hadn’t exchanged numbers and had gone our separate ways—and that had been the end of it.
And now, five days later, without so much as a peep from Luci, I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d been dead wrong. Maybe I’d misread the signs. Maybe his not asking for my number or saying anything about Christmas should’ve been my clue to forget about him. But I didn’t know for sure. After all, I hadn’t asked for his number either. In fact, I’d completely forgotten about it at the time. And I also hadn’t tried contacting him any other way in the past five days because, well, I’d been busy overthinking our last meetup, working, and taking care of Hazel.
But today was my evening off. Hazel was with Linda and Charles and would stay there overnight.
“Are you gonna keep staring at the door or do you, you know, want to try knocking?” said a voice behind me with alaugh. “Though I doubt anyone will open. And if they did, you should probably run, because I’m the sole resident.”
Turning around, I came face to face with Luci, dressed up in his elf costume, grinning widely at me. “Hi, neighbor.”
“Uhm… hi,” I said, raising my hand to wave at him. My cheeks burned as I lowered my hand again. Okay, here he was. And he was smiling at me, so it couldn’t be all bad, could it?
“Do you want to come in?” Luci asked. “I’d like to keep chatting with you, but I really, really need to get out of these fucking tights. You remember the itchy-balls thing? Yeah, wait until I start telling you all about the seam disappearing into my ass crack.”
My eyes strayed down south just like last time, and fridge, I was gonna go up in flames from embarrassment because, just like last time, Luci caught me looking. Walking past me, he gently nudged me out of the way, accidentally rubbing his hip against my cock. I flinched away, but my traitorous dick immediately perked up while heat pooled in my gut.
“Sorry,” Luci said, giving me a quick glance over his shoulder. He didn’t look sorry at all. In fact, he looked really satisfied with himself. “Do you want to come in or not? And please don’t be shocked, but my apartment is a bit chaotic.”
I was the sole parent of a relatively small child, so I knew a thing or two about chaos. That was the last thought that went through my mind before I closed Luci’s apartment door behind me and turned around.
I immediately realized he didn’t mean chaotic as in messy. He meant chaotic in a whole different way. My mouth stood wide open as I stared at the artwork that adorned his hallway. Paintings, one more colorful than the other, photos, and woven rugs. It was an onslaught of the whole color spectrum begging for my attention at once. There was a bright turquoise dresserwith hints of white peeking at me through worn edges. A purple and orange rug made of what appeared to be old strips of fabric created a weirdly coherent piece that reminded me of a sunset.
A blown-up photo of a forest, ferns covering the forest floor, luscious moss covering the trees, with a single ray of sunshine illuminating the center of the picture and the person standing in the middle of the clearing. He looked like he’d been picked right out of some fairytale and dumped into our world. A true elf with pointy ears, his long hair twisted into a myriad of complicated braids. Green tattoos covered his temples like leaves creeping in and… holy shirt! “That’s you!” I exclaimed as the face I was staring at registered with me.
Luci, who’d already disappeared into the living room, stuck his head back in the hallway. “What? Oh yeah. I was doing a friend a favor. Well, actually, I was doing two friends two different favors. It looks cool, right?”
Cool wasn’t the word I’d use. Cool didn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling.
“It’s… amazing,” I said. The words felt inadequate, but I had no idea what else to say.
“Meh. It’s a couple of years old. We’ve done cooler shoots since, but it was the first one and kind of the beginning of my modeling career.”
“You’re a model?” It cost me a lot of effort, but I finally managed to rip my eyes away from the photo, only because I needed to look at him to make sure he wasn’t playing jokes on me. He hadn’t done so in the past, but who knew?
