Jesse insists on building a gingerbread house together that year.
Something about, 'It'll be fun!' and 'We've never built one before!' and a bunch of other stuff she doesn't remember hearing but she relents nonetheless and agrees to his sugary decorating festivities.
He buys what has to be the biggest gingerbread house building kit from the store. Not that she's surprised, her boyfriend was over the top with just about everything he did. It comes filled with the cookies for the actual house and just about every candy you can possibly imagine. She's about to start tearing into the box when his hand flies to the top of the box and prevents her from doing so.
"First, I have to lay out a couple ground rules."
She pushes herself against the back of the chair. "Ground rules? For making a gingerbread house?"
"You are not, under any circumstances," he pauses, for dramatic effect she figures, "to eat any of this candy."
Her eyes meet his and she realizes that, oh, he's serious about that rule. "Fine. What's the second rule?"
"Don't eat any of the candy."
"You said that already."
"Yeah, but I thought, maybe if I say it twice, it'll actually sink in."
She only shoots him a deadpanned glare in response.
:::
"That's weird," he says scouring their dining room table full of candies and frosting.
"Dude, what?"
"The box said it came with two bags of marshmallows."
She's quick with her response. "They must have ripped you off."
"And the candy canes," he complains, ruffling through the piles of candy on their dining room table once more. "It says it came with four, but there's only three here."
"I think you picked out a defective box, Jess."
:::
"Where are the gumdrops?"
She looks up at that, watches as her boyfriend look up and down and left and right for the bag of gumdrops on his mind. "Hmm?"
"The gumdrops," he mutters quietly. "I need them for the rooftop."
"I don't know." She shrugs from her seat across the table. "They're not in the box?"
"No."
She starts searching through the remaining candy bags with him. "They must have forgotten to put a bag in our box. I told you the box was defective."
"Bec." His hand comes to rest on top of hers.
She stops searching through the mess on the table at his touch and looks up at him. "What?"
"I know you've been eating the candy," he says softly.
"What? I have not. It's against the rules to do that."
"Bec."
"What?"
"You have candy cane pieces stuck in your teeth."
We have reached the half-way point!