"With a corn cob pipe and a button nose…" Lizzie flipped off the car radio. She was excited about Christmas (this was the first time she had celebrated it with anyone in seven years) but carols were a little much.

"What song was that?" Rose asked. Lizzie glanced into her rear-view mirror at the girl. Though Lizzie had only met Kat once at the wedding, she could tell that Rose was a spitting image of her mother, other than the fact that she had Gordo's stunning blue eyes. Lizzie looked to the other seat, now, at Scott. His shape was actually a lot like Lizzie's, which Lizzie of course found disturbing. He had blonde hair. Where he gotten it from, no one knew; Kat had black hair and Gordo has brown. Realizing that Lizzie that she had been lost in thought for so long, Lizzie finally answered Rose's question.

"'Frosty the Snowman'." Lizzie said, turning a corner and parking the car. She went around back and helped Rose out of her booster seat and down to the ground; she had realized early on that the child was too short to get out of the car herself. "You guys ready to pick out a tree?"

"Yeah!" Rose yelled enthusiastically. Both girls looked to Scott. Lizzie urged him with her eyes to say something helpful.

"Yeah!" Scott agreed, smiling at Lizzie. She patted him on the back.

"You're a good man," she whispered to him as Rose ran off ahead.

"I know," Scott joked, and ran off after his sister. By the time Lizzie caught up, the kids had already eyeballed all the trees. "We like this one." Rose nodded her agreement. Lizzie looked the tree over. Good nooks and crannies. Nice, sturdy branches. She grabbed ahold of the price tag and glanced at it. $200.00. $200.00? Lizzie had to look twice. She looked back down at the kids. They smiled. They had clearly seen the price, and were trying to butter Lizzie up. Lizzie sighed.

"Sir!" she called to the salesman, "We'll take this one." The kids cheered as Lizzie winced. $200.00 was an outrageous price for a tree. She looked down at their happy faces. Their beaming smiles were payment enough. The salesman came walking over.

"Great! I'll tie it up to your car for you."

"Oh, great. It's the silver Honda Civic over there." The man called to his friend for some help, and they got the tree to the top of the car.

Lizzie pulled into her driveway and looked down the street to the other townhouses. Garrett was standing in his driveway, washing his car. Lizzie smiled, got out and waved to Garrett. Garrett was a nice guy, about 28 years old, and was roommates with his older brother Derek. "Garrett!" Lizzie called. "What the hell are you doing? You'll freeze!" Garrett laughed.

"Can't afford to go to the carwash," he called back.

"You and your brother want to make a quick twenty bucks each?" Garrett shrugged.

"Sure! Let me go get him!" A moment later, Garrett and Derek came over. Garrett glanced at Scott and Rose. "Heya. Miss McGuire, whose kids are these?"

"Jeez, Garrett you make me feel ancient! I'm only two years older than you; please call me Lizzie. And this is Rose and Scott. They're Gordo's kids."

"Gordo…isn't that the guy who—''

"Great, so the whole neighborhood knows about my love life? Fabulous."

"Just repeating what I heard. It's probably a little farfetched."

"You'll have to tell me what you heard later. Can you guys get this tree into the living room for us?"

"Sure."

"Well…" Lizzie stammered, staring at the tree. "It's...certainly tall." The top of the tree was bent against her ceiling.

"There's no room for a star," Scott commented.

"Nope. No star this year."

"Can we decorate it now, Lizzie?" Rose asked, jumping up and down and clutching her stuffed rabbit.

"Um, let's do that later. I have some laundry to do, and then I was thinking we could go do something very fun and holiday-ish." Lizzie replied, peeling her coat off and laying it on her kitchen table.

"Like what?" Scott asked, following Lizzie down the hall to her laundry room.

"You guys ever been ice skating?"

"I have, but Rose hasn't."

"Rose, you've never been ice skating?" Rose shook her head. "Oh, we've got to do that!" She tossed some sweaters into the washer. "We can go while they're spinning out. Get in the car, you two."

"Here, Rose, you'll need one off these since it's your first time." Lizzie handed Rose the ice-cane, a metal fixture with legs to help children balance on the ice. "You just hold onto it and push off. Want some help, Scott?"

"Yeah," Scott said. Lizzie knelt down in front of him and finished lacing his skates.

"You almost had them. Come on, guys." All three of them went out on the ice, and soon Rose didn't even need the cane. They all held hands and played a mild version of crack the whip. Later, Lizzie gave the kids tokens for the arcade, and sat in the café with a warm mug of coffee. She had brought some papers she needed to review for work. She was an editor for a small book publishing company. She broke out a red pen and began to scan through the short story. She sighed and rubbed her temples. Never in her life had she seen such bad writing. "Oh well," she whispered to herself, and marked it "FORWARD TO DANA." Dana was the head editor, who read stories after another editor had given it a run through. She made all the decisions about what writing was to get published, and the company was running short on decent writing. She had told Lizzie to forward her everything, no matter the quality of the content; maybe they could turn crap into something decent enough to publish.

Lizzie stared off into space. She remembered the time that Gordo had brought her here on a date. He knew how much she loved ice skating at Christmas time. It had been a great night. Gordo had been so sweet, and he had even given her flowers like on their first date. What had happened to that Gordo? Lizzie missed him. She remembered another night that they had gone ice skating, a year after the first time. He had taken her out to dinner before that, and had treated the night like something extraordinarily special. Lizzie had thought that he was going to propose. But, no. He just said that the night had been an early Christmas present. Little did he know that the only present Lizzie wanted was him.

"Lizzie!" Scott yelled, running over to Lizzie's table. His face was flushed, and he was smiling big.

"What?" Lizzie asked, taking off her reading glasses and looking at the boy.

"Look what I won!" He held up a small stuffed bear.

"Aww, cute!" Scott blushed and held it out to her. "For me?"

"For you."

"Thank you! But…are you sure you don't want to give it to your sister?"

"I'm sure. I already won her something."

"Well then, thank you! It's really cute, Scott!" Scott smiled and pushed his little body into Lizzie's in an impromptu hug. It took a minute for Lizzie's mind to process this, and she wrapped her arms around him.

"Thank you."

"For what?" Scott pulled away.

"For taking care of us. And…Rose is really excited about Christmas. So am I."

"I'm glad. Now go play." Lizzie smiled as the child ran off. She hated to admit it, but she was actually starting to enjoy having them around.

Gordo called that night while Lizzie was on her Facebook. She hit accept and said, "Gordo! I wasn't expecting you to call tonight!"

"I know. A buddy of mine didn't need to use his call time. I figured I'd give you a call."

"Oh!"

"How are you and the kids?"

"We're all great. I took them ice skating today! Rose said she had never been, and she had a great time. And we got a Christmas tree. The kids are really excited."

"Oh…you went ice skating." Gordo smiled, but looked down.

"What's wrong? Was I not supposed to take them?"

"No, it's not that. I wish that I could have been there with you guys…for Rose's first time."

"I'm sure it would've meant a lot to her. But there'll be other firsts."

"Yeah. Lizzie, I'm not going to make it home as soon as expected."

"Is everything okay over there?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah. They just need some troops to stay over here for longer. They chose me to stay."

"How did they pick?"

"I don't know. Someone told me that it's pretty much equivalent to drawing names out of a hat, though."

"Oh…the kids won't be happy about that." Much to Lizzie's dismay, she felt tears sting her eyes. They fell out and trickled down onto her cheeks.

"Liz…Liz, honey, why are you crying?" Honey? That word barely processed in Lizzie's mind as she searched for comfort.

"I don't know, Gordo, it's just…every second that you're over there you're in danger. I-I can't stand to lose you. You've been too big a part of my life for too long. I wish you had never joined the army." She looked back at the screen. Gordo stared back at her with sad eyes.

"I'm not going anywhere. Please don't cry." She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Gordo…what happened to us?" Lizzie asked, acting like she didn't remember.

"Us?"

"Our…relationship."

"Oh…that us. We broke up." Lizzie didn't push it any further. She knew he didn't want to dig up his old mistakes.

"Oh. I'm going to go to bed. Goodnight, Gordo."

"Night, Lizzie." She hung up. For a moment, Gordo sat there with his head in his hands.

"Gordon!" His friend Jason called, walking up to Gordo. "They need us out there." Seeing Gordo's sad state, he asked, "What's wrong?"

"God." Was all Gordo could say at first. "There's this girl…" he explained the situation to Jason. Jason himself was married. No kids yet, though.

"Sounds like one of two things," Jason said, kneeling down on the ground next to Gordo's chair. "One: She might want to get back together." Gordo laughed.

"No way, man. It's been seven years. I've been married and had two kids. She has absolutely no feelings left for me."

"Maybe, maybe not. Option two: She wants closure."

"Closure. Yeah, that's more likely. I'll talk to her when I get back." Jason patted Gordo on the back. "Let's get out there."

A/N: Okay, this is the first new chapter of this. Another one'll be up soon. I'm going to update Prom Night in a little while…it'll either be tonight or tomorrow morning. :)