AN: Listen, sometimes you see a screenshot of a Tumblr post on Pinterest of Christmas-themed writing prompts and inspiration just hits you in the face. It's officially after Thanksgiving now so I feel like I can safely post a Christmas one-shot, right? Oh, and fair warning: I don't write Jily often so if this sucks completely and is totally out of how we're all pretty sure their characters should be, I apologize, but I had fun writing it and I'm pretty proud of it and I want to post it anyway.
The effects of the giant mug of tea she drank earlier were starting to wear off. Standing alone in an aisle near the back of the corner 24-hour dollar store just before midnight with one fluorescent tube light flickering overhead, the red and silver and blue and white and gold and green patterns started to blur together in front of Lily's eyes. Before she yawned for the third time since coming to stand in that exact spot four minutes ago, she reached out and grabbed the first roll of shrink-wrapped paper she touched. She didn't even bother looking at it as she trudged to the front of the store; Lily had been staring at them all long enough already. The lights inside the store were so much brighter than the sodium street lamps out in the parking lot that the reflection of the whole store's interior was clearly visible on the glass panels that made up the front of the store. Lily caught sight of herself between the promotional posters, seeing but not quite registering that she was wearing pajamas in public under her charcoal peacoat.
Only one register was open. Some guy with scruffy black hair, glasses, and dead eyes was working it. Digging in her purse for her wallet, Lily approached the register. She stood there, searching for her elusive wallet, for a solid minute before looking up. To her shock and bewilderment, the dead-eyed dude had been replaced with a still scruffy, still bespectacled, but much livelier dude.
"Sorry," she said, dropping the wrapping paper roll on the counter with a resonant thunk.
"No problem."
She could feel his eyes on her as she continued to rake sundry items around in her purse, the absence of her wallet beginning to dawn on her. It just didn't seem to be there. Her stomach dropped. She opened one of the side pockets. Had she seriously gone out in the cold only to forget her wallet?
The guy cleared his throat, prompting Lily to look up. "If you're looking for your wallet, uh, it looks like you've got it on your lanyard," he said.
Lily looked down. Her lanyard hung around the elbow of the hand currently still stuck in her purse. She kept a lot of stuff on her lanyard: her car key, her house key, various little customer rewards cards, a little deer plushie keychain...and her wallet. Oh. Lily looked up. She found, as she smiled sheepishly up at the guy and grabbed for the little Vera Bradley wallet, that behind his plain, wire-framed glasses was a pair of rather beautiful hazel eyes.
"I'm so sorry, you must think I'm an idiot..."
"Don't worry about it, really." He lifted one hand to idly ruffle his terrible hair. "It's late—" and he yawned— "and we're all tired." He turned to find the barcode on the roll. "Nice wrapping paper," he commented, smiling.
Lily almost dropped her debit card and gave herself whiplash to look up and see why he sounded like he was trying not to laugh at her wrapping paper. It took a moment to really understand what was so wrong with it until she realized she had grabbed a blue paper with a vintage motif of rosy-cheeked astronaut toddlers carrying pine trees and gift boxes across a starry sky on miniature rockets. She snorted.
"You still want this paper?" he asked. He was smirking gently at her, laser scanner held aloft, waiting. "I mean, it's…unique, that's for sure."
Lily considered for a moment, or really, she stood with her brain stalling for a moment. Was it her exhaustion wiping her thoughts blank or was it his face? "Uh…yeah, you know what, I'll take it. Gotta change things up a little every once in a while, you know?" she laughed. While he rang up her sole purchase, Lily's jaws split in a great yawn, probably the one that she had avoided in the wrapping paper aisle.
Politely, he waited until she had recovered. "That'll be a dollar-six." As she stuck her card into the chip reader and jabbed her finger at the keypad to put in her PIN, he asked, "Do you need a bag for this?"
"I don't think it would fit in a bag. Do I hit enter?"
"Yeah, enter, and then cancel if you don't want cash back. So what has you buying wrapping paper at a dollar store in the middle of the night?"
Lily carefully stuffed her card back into her wallet. "Last-minute gift wrapping. I realized I don't own a single roll of wrapping paper."
"At midnight?" His smirk was back. It was cute, she decided.
"Yeah. At midnight. What are you doing here at midnight?" she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. "Working." His cute smirk took on a gently teasing sort of tilt. Or maybe the smirk didn't change, but his eyes did? "I thought that would've been kind of obvious."
Lily snorted again and shook her head. "You know what I mean. What are you doing here on Christmas Eve?"
"Someone's gotta work tonight," he said, shrugging.
Lily looked up at his hazel eyes again, and she's not sure how long they just looked at each other like that. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation talking, but she could've sworn they actually looked into each other. She felt like she could trust him, like she could confidently pinpoint his favorite color, like she had known him longer than however long it had been since she walked up to the register. His eyes were stealing her breath away.
"I'm James, by the way," he whispered at last, breaking the silence.
"Lily," she breathed. "Are you free sometime later this week?"
Wait, okay, pause. What was she doing? She needed to go home, wrap all her gifts, and go to sleep. She knew waiting until her housemates were in bed to wrap their gifts was a terrible idea; she just knew it.
"Uh, yeah. Coffee?"
"I'd like that." Lily broke their trance to produce a pen from her purse and scribble down her phone number on her receipt. "Text me about it."
"O-okay."
Lily looked back up at his gorgeous hazel eyes and winked. "Merry Christmas, James."
"Merry Christmas, Lily."
In her car, Lily dropped her forehead against the steering wheel and questioned her entire life. What was she doing? Going on a date with some guy who rang up her Christmas wrapping paper? Apparently. She pulled out of the parking lot and onto the street, orange light from the sodium lamps lighting the road ahead of her. There was something so nostalgic about sodium lamps. It was like she was a kid in the backseat again, trying to read by the intermittent orange beams from the street lights. Maybe it was just a sentimental time of year, Lily thought. Yes, that was it. She always was sentimental around Christmastime. Surely it was just sentimentalism that made her ask out the guy she just met. She couldn't help but feel like this was meant to happen, regardless.
When Lily got home, she shut the front door behind her as quietly as she could and struggled with the curling wrapping paper as quietly as she could and deposited her gifts under the little Christmas tree as quietly as she could and finally went to sleep as quietly as she could. She dreamed of smirks and hazel eyes and astronaut toddlers carrying Christmas presents on miniature rockets.