Ack! So sorry for that insane delay. I hate to say that work is crazy, but work is crazy.
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Christmas Day somehow turns into me hosting a holiday dinner, with Em and Rose and maybe even Edward.
"It's going to be a compromise," he says, staring out his bedroom window, his bare leg flush against mine. Snow is starting to fall, tentative flakes brushing against the window. "My parents usually go to some Christmas Eve party and we spend the next day together, but I told them I made other plans."
"You did?"
He smirks. "Yes. After Thanksgiving...I don't know. You guys are my other family, I want to spend the day with you."
And when he says shit like that, I bite my tongue to keep from saying those three words that are always at the back of my throat.
"So we're having dinner before the party. You're invited of course, but you don't have to come-it's really not a big deal. My mom just wanted me to extend the invitation."
I stare at him, but he won't look at me.
"I think she's trying," he says softly, shrugging. "We're getting take out."
In the end, I go with him, and it's not too bad. We actually go to his place ("neutral territory," he'd said) and he refuses to change out of his jeans and sweatshirt, which makes me feel better about my own casual outfit.
I sit on his living room floor across from his mom, watching her pretend like the food in front of her doesn't completely gross her out. She fidgets with her no-doubt cashmere sweater and for the first time I get the feeling that maybe she's nervous.
She asks me about the shop, if I've got any pictures. I scoot next to her, my shoulder at her waist as she leans down to see my phone. Her tone gets almost professional as she appraises the outdated floor, and she actually sounds impressed when I show her the upstairs.
"I can't take all the credit," I say. "Edward sacrificed so many days-off for the cause."
He ducks his head, shrugging and warmth blooms in my chest at the memory.
His parents look at him, unsure, and it's almost painful to see how hard they're trying. I only hope that it gets easier for them, because when Edward locks eyes with me, all warmth and happiness, I realize that it really doesn't fucking matter.
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The ham won't cook.
It just won't.
Edward keeps attempting to move me out of the way, asking, "can I just look at it?"
Emmett and Rose are chomping potato chips as loudly as they can in response to the fact that this fucking ham was supposed to be at 140 degrees two hours ago.
"This oven just sucks. It doesn't fucking WORK."
He steps past me, inspecting the thermometer before he just cranks up the dial on the oven to like, 500 degrees.
And in the end, the ham is nearly three hours late and the outside is burnt to a fucking crisp, but we're sitting around the table, Christmas music playing softly from the other room and Emmett keeps toasting everyone so that we'll keep drinking, and it's...perfect.
Edward plays with my hair while we lay around, all of us in and out of food comas, and I scribble in my new leather-bound notebook (courtesy of Em). I'm feeling sentimental and my messy words reflect it-
We're sitting 'round the kitchen table
It kinda feels like family but a little more unstable.
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We ring in the New Year with a gig, all of us drunk and dressed way too nice for the dive bar we're in and we cover Alice's favorite song-because it's acoustic and it allow Jasper to call her onto the stage, drop down to one knee, and ask her tearfully to marry him.
Edward holds me tightly as we watch them sway together to the next band's set, Jasper's grandmother's ring shimmering in the blue and red lights. His embrace helps quell the anxiety trying to work its way into my chest. Alice and Jasper are getting married, Shelley is planning her retirement-it feels like we're all growing up so fucking fast.
But Edward rests his chin on my shoulder, his lips pressing lightly to my jaw and that feeling of nervousness is replaced with an anxious sort of readiness.
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We spend February in non-stop motion. Edward's rotation changes and he's trying to play catch up at work, he lets his stubble grow out too much and forgets to eat dinner. Alice is bordering on Bridezilla already, wanting everything to be absolutely perfect by June 6th-the wedding date-because she's impatient and in love and a total pain in the ass. As the maid of honor (and her best friend) I am her sounding board at all hours of the day and night. We're already spending evenings folding paper cranes for "the most beautiful backdrop."
And it wouldn't be that bad if Shelley didn't have one foot in Florida, the other inching out of Ballard music every passing day. Her daughter-in-law is pregnant and Shelley wants to be down there as soon as she can to help.
Which means that I'm drowning in paperwork and tax information and all this business-y bullshit that I barely have a grasp on. My only saving grace is Em, who is walking me through as much as he can.
My parents can hear the stress in my voice when they call-which is saying something because that means they're actually listening to me for once. I start getting checks in the mail every couple of weeks, 50 bucks here, 100 there and they yell at me everytime I tell them to stop.
"For food," they say.
I save it all instead, thinking of that empty room at the shop, ready and waiting to be put to use.
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At the beginning of April, Edward takes a week off work and convinces me that the shop will most definitely not collapse into chaos if I join him for a vacation. We take his car and drive down the coast, staying in cabins in the woods and Air BnB's in town, working our way out of Washington and into Oregon. We stop at Seaside and marvel at Haystack Rock and Edward points out all the filming locations for The Goonies.
We get donuts in Portland and see a couple of shows, meeting up with some friends I know from the scene for too many beers, and we crash on their floor when we're too tired to keep going.
It takes us most of the whole next day to not only recover from awful hangovers, but to drive down to San Francisco, and then another day to enjoy California. We go thrifting and look at other music stores, my leatherbound notebook filling with ideas for Ballard. On our way out, we stop at Muir Woods and Edward tries (and fails) to take a full length photo of a redwood tree and we make out on the nearby beach until I'm sunburned and dizzy.
The fourteen hour drive home is easy, we're sandy and tired and eat too many snacks, but we stop whenever we see a view we like and Edward lets me pick all the music.
We're barely back in Washington and at a rest stop, getting sodas at three a.m. when he kisses me, smiling the whole time.
This is the first time he tells me he loves me.
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song: 'stove lighter' by camp cope
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There's maybe one more lil chapter and then a lil epilogue to this thang. Thanks for sticking with me.