Sorry it's taken me so long to update, I've had some mental health issues, among other things, over the past month, and just haven't felt much like writing.

Either way, thank you for the feedback, I really appreciate it.

The next morning, I woke up with a severe hangover.

I sat up and looked around. James was gone, save for his pajamas piled on the floor next to the nightstand. The door to his bathroom was wide open, signaling he wasn't in the shower. The door to the bedroom was cracked, allowing me a slight view of the plush carpeted floors beyond the bedroom. I forced myself out of bed, deciding it would be best to go find myself an advil and some water before inevitably passing back out again.

I headed downstairs, slipping past Brooke's office, where I heard some shouted business talk through the closed door. Once I reached the kitchen, I checked the time on the microwave, I'd somehow managed to sleep in until one-thirty in the afternoon.

James had left me an unopened bottle of orange juice and a slice of cold pizza from Wednesday on a plate on the island, along with a note.

Sorry, some family stuff came up and I had to leave this morning. Go ahead and just go back to bed, Mom's going to bed working all day, plus you probably have a hangover. Good luck with that, btw (:

I rolled my eyes at his "humor" and kept reading.

I should be back sometime before 2-3 pm, see you then. -James

I crumpled up the note and shoved it into my pocket, before carrying my food back up to James's room. I dug around in his bathroom until I found a bottle of advil, which I quickly dumped a dose out of and downed them dry.

After crawling back into bed, I finished off the pizza and drank a few sips of juice before I felt to shitty to even keep my eyes open. I then fell into that weird limbo where you're asleep but you're not; then you start having, like, seven dreams at once, and they all just melt into a hot, uncomfortable sea of confusion.

James shook me awake sometime later, yelling my name in my ear.

"What? What?" I moaned, rolling over.

"Don't you want to hear about my day?" James teased, painfully aware of my hangover. "Slide over, I feel like crap, too."

I scootched over to one side of the bed and allowed James room to lay down on top of the duvet. "What were you doing?" I asked into the pillow.

I felt James shrug. "My dad showed up demanding he see me."

"Oh." I rolled over, looking at the side of his head. James kept his eyes locked on the ceiling.

"Yeah, he... Um, decided that he was an inadequate father who needed a more 'potent' role in my life but..." James trailed off.

"But..?" I echoed.

"I... He wants me to stay with him for Christmas." James blurted.

"But I thought you were staying with us?" I asked, confused.

"I am, and I told him I had plans, but..." James fell silent again.

"...You want to spend time with him, don't you?" I finished.

"Yeah, kinda, but I also want to spend Christmas with you... but since Minnesota's so far off and plane tickets are expensive, there's no real way for me to do both..." James sighed, sitting up and hugging his knees.

"James..." I said softly. I wanted to understand him, but honestly, I felt kind of pissed. Unrightfully so, granted, but still pissed nontheless. Was Christmas with my family not important to both of us? "What did you tell him?" I finally said.

"...I told him I'd let him know what I was doing Sunday." James said. "I... I need to think about this, Kendall. Imagine, if your dad came back to life and wanted to spend Christmas with you..."

"That would be totally different and you know it." I said. I still tryed to cling to sympathy, but honestly, I was getting really heated now.

"Is it really, Kendall? My dad's been basically dead to me since the moment he walked out on me and my mom. Now he's willing to try again. Maybe it's too late for me to have a father throughout childhood, but it's not too late for me to fix things with my dad." James looked me dead in the eyes.

I didn't know what to say. My blood was still boiling, but I was beginning to see how he felt. "Fine, think about it. I don't want to be mad at you while we're on break." I finally said, rolling over and facing away from James.

"Okay." James said, laying down above the covers and facing away from me.

We managed to make it through the rest of the weekend without starting up an argument, although I could tell James was having a lot of inner turmoil on the subject. On Saturday, he actually decided to take me around the neighborhood he grew up in, and out to his old high school. We made a lot of small talk, discussing empty nothings that wouldn't bring up anything too conflicting or challenging while we were trying to have an enjoyable break.

We drove around like that for a couple of hours before we headed down to the pier and hung out there for a while before heading back to his place for dinner. It was kind of nice, really. It didn't feel like we were forcing anything, just treading very lightly on our usual fair.

Sunday went smoothly as well, as did Monday on our drive back to school. I hadn't heard James say anything about his dad or their arrangements for Christmas break, so I figured he'd just gone ahead with what we'd already planned. I was feeling pretty pleased with how everything turned out until-

"I told my dad I was staying with him for Christmas."

Yeah, sorry this was short, but hey, at least we've got shit going on now.

I'll update sooner, I promise. I've just had a lot going on right now. But, the holidays are coming up, which means break, so I'll have time off to write then.