Page 27 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

“So—what?” I threw my hands out. “The four of us just shack up with our Christmas tree and our festive decorations and hot cocoa until New Year’s and fuck like rabbits? Pretend I don’t have a career and a life in Colorado that my round-trip ticket is waiting to bring me back to like we’re in some big orgy snow globe?”

“I heard orgy snow globe?” Mateo chimed, tucking the car keys Frankie had just tossed to him into his pocket.

“They sell those in Walmart?” Frankie added.

“You’re all on the naughty list,” I scoffed, leaving them to catch up as I stalked inside.

9

AllowingOpheliatoroamfreely in the holiday section of a store was sort of like letting a kid have free reign in a candy shop. Anything that sparkled or sang caught her attention and ended up in the cart that I pushed along beside her, and I instantly regretted that I’d said to “go crazy” after she added a pair of novelty Christmas dish towels that readMaking Spirits Brightwith whiskey glasses embroidered beneath it.

“Dish towels?” I protested. “Who needs decorative dish towels? I can’t even wipe my hands on them.”

“It’s about the ambiance,” Ophelia explained, eyeing the next shelf over full of coffee mugs. “Where did the other two go?”

“Not sure.” I played with the bells on a stocking as she chucked it, and three others, over my shoulder into the basket. “Something about needing rope and batteries, I think?”

“Oh yes, we’re definitely going to need batteries.”

I cruised along quietly, watching her and that tempting little tongue she flicked out when she was focused. Following her around a store felt entirely too domestic and comfortable for the reality of the situation. Anyone walking by would think Ophelia and I were together, holiday shopping for our home, running errands on a lazy Saturday. I secretly reveled in that idea, might have even played into it—reaching over her to grab something on a higher shelf, steering the edge of the cart with her, staring down any wandering eyes in her direction.

If she was thinking the same thing she didn’t show it. Zoning in on the task at hand, which was apparently turning our house into Santa’s fucking workshop while I made commentary hoping she might laugh. I enjoyed that girlish little sound so much I thought it should be bottled and sold. While O might still have been mad at me over the night before, I was creeping under her skin. Warming her slowly.

And despite Mateo’s initial disapproval, he’d made bets on us falling into bed together, and I wasn’t a man who didn’t follow through.

Ophelia added a set of seasonal buffalo plaid throw pillows to the haul with a matching blanket, a multi-use garland, red and gold ribbon in various patterns and sizes, and two boxes of candy canes. When I finally thought she was done, the woman arrived at the wall of string lights and compared a few before sweeping an entire shelf full into the cart with her forearm.

“Woah! What’s with all the lights? I’m no expert, but a box or two of those should do the trick for one tree.”

“You need lights for thetree, and then you need lights for thehouse,” she explained as another outdoor decoration nearby grabbed her attention and got added to the growing pile.

“The house?” I complained. “I have a bad back.”

“Aw, old man has no mobility?” She teased me with a pouty lip and a rub between my shoulders. “That’s okay. Mateo seemsverynimble.”

I scoffed and threw an extra box of lights in the cart. If my physical therapist knew I was offering to climb ladders he’d put me on the bad kind of stretcher, but I was always more competitive than cautious. “Oh I’m plenty nimble, sweetheart. You’re trying to instigate me into climbing a ladder so you can check out my ass all day.”

“What ass?”

Something inside me twitched.This fucking girl.

Right when I felt ten steps ahead of her in whatever game we were playing, she always knew how to give it right back. I let out a menacing laugh. “You’re asking for it, Trouble.”

She tried to hide her smirk. “I would love to continue talking about this, but I need to go sniff every candle in aisle eight.”

“We don’t need any candles,” I argued. “I can tell that you like the smell of me just fine by the way I caught you sniffing my blanket like blow last night.”

Ophelia left me behind with the cart as she pranced away. “Now I know you’re hearingandseeing things!”

Itshouldn’thavetakenas many hours as it did to decorate the house. The smaller stuff was easy; Ophelia and Tally had the living room and bathroom done up to the nines with ornamental snowmen and festive hand soaps before Mateo and I even got the tree over the threshold.

Of course he complained the entire time about the mess the needles were making as we shoved the branches through the front door jamb. I was the only one keeping my cool until I tripped over the coffee table attempting to maneuver the damn thing to the perfect spot under the girls’ opposing directions. I might have toned it down over the past few years, but I could still let a string of colorful words fly like you’ve never heard before.

It turned out that Mateo was right, which he flaunted, and the tree was just atadtoo tall for the ceiling. That set in motion a much longer chain of events, including finding a suitable handsaw,which we didn’t own, to hack off the tip of the tree after I tried and failed to strong man the stump with my bare hands.

Mr. Barry came in clutch, lending his own to Cap over the backyard fence and also offering us a word of advice about keeping a live tree healthy and how often we should water it. I thought a tree was more of a decoration and less of a fucking hassle. Like a spiky green toddler that Mateo informed me, I, alone, would be feeding and cleaning up after, because it wasn’t his brilliant idea.

When all was said and done, we still hadn’t cut enough off the top of the fir to more thanclearthe ceiling by an inch, thus leaving absolutely no room for the expensive star Ophelia had picked out to top it. She stood there for a moment, tapping her chin before she climbed on the arm of the couch, stretching those long, tan legs, and improvising by tying the sparkler to the point with tinsel.

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