Ariana Grande's Santa Tell Me drifted quietly through the living room air as Ivan walked out of the adjoining kitchen with a warm plate of freshly baked Russian spice cakes (pryaniki) and two mugs of tea to greet his girlfriend who thanked him profusely before grabbing her mug and a few cookies. He set the plate on the coffee table before joining her on the floor where she was digging ornaments out of the boxes they stored them in.
"Have you found it yet?" He asked, taking a bite out of one of the cookies.
She turned to face him, "No, I haven't. I know it's here somewhere! I remember putting it next to the weird teddy bear."
"The teddy bear isn't weird." He frowned. "It's cute."
"Yeah, sure." She rolled her eyes a little, holding it up. "It's looking at me."
"That's because it has eyes." He chuckled, taking a sip of tea and opening a box with candy cane stripes on it. "Are you sure you didn't put it in another box?"
Every year, Ivan and Amelia had a tradition where the first ornament they would put up had to be this very old, vintage ornament they got together on their first Christmas at a vintage store in St. Petersburg when Amelia had come to visit him. It was silver, with red, white, and blue stripes, the color of their respective flags.
"I found it!" Amelia exclaimed, pulling it out of a box decorated with snowflakes. "It was in here all along!"
Ivan couldn't help but to smile at her enthusiasm as he stood up, pulling Amelia to her feet. "Where should we put it?"
She looked up and down the tree, trying to find the perfect location before making a small "aha!" sound and reaching up on her tiptoes to put in on a branch about ⅔ of the way up the tree. She turned to Ivan, grinning, before grabbing a box of ornaments off the floor to begin decorating the tree.
A few hours later, when they had finished decorating the tree and had sat down together on the couch to drink hot chocolate and finish off the rest of the Russian spice cakes, Amelia was looking at the tree and feeling that there was something wrong with it. All the ornaments had been put up, along with a healthy amount of silvery tinsel, and soft white light spilled out of the Christmas lights they had previously strung up. But something still didn't feel right. Her gaze raked up and down the tree, before she realized that they hadn't put up the star.
"Ivan." He turned. "Ivan, where's the star? We haven't put it up yet."
He looked around the living room, a slight frown pulling on his lips. "We cleared out all the Christmas boxes earlier. There was nothing left."
Amelia stood, poking around the room and into the kitchen before coming back to the couch and staring into Ivan's eyes.
"I want to be the star."
Ivan choked a on the bite of cookie in his mouth giving her an incredulous look as he took a long sip of hot chocolate and hoping he heard her incorrectly. "You want to be the what?"
"I want to be the star!" She have a blinding grin and jumped up off the couch. "It'd be fun!"
"Amelia… don't." He scrubbed his hand over his face, and when he pulled it back down, he could see that she had begun climbing up the staircase. "Shit– Amelia, oh no, you're serious."
Jumping off the couch and darting up the stairs, which the tree was conveniently placed next too, he wrestled her away from the the banister before she could climb on the top of the tree.
"Ivan, stop!"
He had started tickling her in an attempt to distract from wanting to jump on the tree. She laughed and stomped on his foot, causing him to hiss but hold on to her still.
Ivan dragged her back to the couch and further distracted her with cookies and hot chocolate before she could think of climbing up the tree again.
"You're evil, you know that?" She mumbled around a bite of cookie.
He scoffed sarcastically and messed up her hair. "Me? Evil?" Cue the puppy dog eyes he was so good at, "What are you talking about?"
"Well, we need a star on top of the tree!" She feigned a hurt look. "And I'm a star!"
"No way, you're the angel."
"Ew, gross. I'm the star."
He smiled and kissed her cheek in response.
A year later, during next years tree decorating, Ivan went back to the basement and lo and behold, there was the star. He signed, looking off into the distance, thinking about how all that craziness could've been avoided.
Amelia then yelled at him for taking forever and he went back into the house.