"Silena come on! We're going to be late. We don't want my mom hanging around your dad for too long with wine, you know how she gets!" Beckendorf yelled through the bathroom door to his girlfriend.

"Just one more minute!" She called back.

He sighed and sat on the bed they shared in their apartment. He took some spare wires off the night stand and started fiddling. He ended up with a cookie-cutter shaped Christmas tree. I bet I could make it light up if I could find the— his thoughts were cut off by Silena opening the bathroom door to revile a modest, deep-red Christmas dress. The collar and long sleeves covered everything up top and the dress fell just below her knees, but Beckendorf didn't think she needed to be showy to be beautiful.

"You look —" He started, but her smile faded.

"I don't want to be rude, but I have a picture of you from last Christmas wearing the same sweater." She said. Beckendorf looked down at his sweater. It was red with little white reindeer across the top. It obviously wasn't the most attractive thing, but she didn't say anything last year.

"It's my Christmas sweater." He defended, sounding a little saddened.

"Charlie," She said walking over to sit next to him on the bed, "this is the first holiday with my father. Don't you want to make a good impression?"

"Yes, but why does my sweater matter? I've met him before and I wear much worse cloths when I go out with you." He pointed out.

"That's because I want you to be comfortable and I know that you get dirty easily, but tonight is different. Can you please just try and find something else? For me." She bat her big blue eyes at him, which was much more effective than any charmspeak.

"Fine, but only because I love you." He stood up and walked to his dresser. Silena turned around to watch him.

He dug through some drawers and pulled out a wrinkled ball of what he was pretty sure was a shirt. He took the sweater off and out the white shirt on, buttoning it up as he turned around to face her.

"Better, but you should iron it." She said.

"Could you do it?" he asked.

"Why? Just because I'm a woman who likes wearing dresses and make up doesn't mean I'm going to play to any other gender stereotypes."

He laughed. "No, I can't iron."

She looked at him quizzically (at least the mystery of why he never had pressed cloths was solved.) "You can get into NYU on a full scholarship but you don't know how to iron?"

Beckendorf suddenly felt pretty stupid and he felt his face get warm. "Yeah, so?"

Silena immediately felt bad about teasing him and got up off the bed. "You know," she said bending over to pick the sweater up off the floor, "it's actually pretty cute. Why don't you put it back on." She smiled at him and handed the sweater back to him. He leaned down to kiss her, lifting her up off the ground to meet her lips. He swung her around for good measure than dropped her on the bed, while she was laughing.

Beckendorf pulled the sweater on. "Come on, gorgeous." He called walking out the door. She ran after him, not caring that her hair was definitely messed up now.