Page 34 of A Very Bumpy Christmas
The lights go on in a slow, shimmering wave. My whole apartment exhale smells like pine and oranges and something I haven’t let myself name—hope, maybe.
Lucas reaches up and adds a star like he’s done it a thousand times, and then looks at me to make sure it’s the one I want on top. It is. He smiles, and it makes something inside my chest rearrange into a shape that fits us both.
“Thank you,” I say, not just about the star.
He tips his head. “Sandbags,” he says simply.
“Sandbags,” I echo, and then I lean into his side because it’s where my body wants to be. His arm curves around me, careful of the belly, firm on the fear. The baby shifts, curious. I swear I feel the three of us align for a heartbeat—like a constellation we didn’t know we were drawing.
“Okay,” I say, wiping away a happy tear because this is my brand now. “Hot cocoa andMuppet Christmas Carol?”
Lucas doesn’t even hesitate. “Copy that.”
13
Lucas
I didn’t expect happy to feel like this… like all the furniture in my head finally slid into the right place. The tree glows in the corner, the credits song fromMuppet Christmas Caroldrifts through the room, and Melanie’s laugh keeps catching me off guard in the best way, like a door opening to fresh air.
I sit there and let myself picture it—Saturdays with grocery lists and strollers, a car seat that lives in the back of my truck, her hand stealing fries off my plate, a small person in a snowsuit shaped like a starfish. It’s a future I don’t know how to operationalize yet, but my pulse settles just thinking about it. I make myself a promise I intend to keep: figure it out. Build the bridge as I walk it. Let her set the pace. Don’t screw it up by sprinting.
The music swells and fades. She shifts, grimaces, and pushes a palm into the small of her back. “Okay,” she says through a wince, “my body would like to file a complaint.”
I’m up before the sentence lands. “Sciatic?” I ask, already offering my hands.
“Baby’s practicing parkour on my nerve,” she says, standing slowly. “Sitting is… not it.”
“Arms around my neck,” I tell her gently. “Let me be the counterweight.”
She hooks her arms over my shoulders, trusting, and I settle my hands at her waist, thumbs pressing the muscles that have been fighting gravity all day. We sway—small, slow—a lazy dance with no music but the radiator and our breathing. I take some of her weight, tip her pelvis the way a physical therapist once showed me to save a teammate’s back after a long flight.
“Better?” I ask.
She exhales, tension draining from her face. “Oh wow. You just turned my spine back on.”
“Occupational hazard,” I say, smiling. “I know a few tricks.”
Her eyes find mine and hold. The room narrows to green and gold and the electric hum of close. Heat builds at the edges of the space we’ve spent days keeping careful. I can feel her deciding, feel myself answering.
I dip my forehead to hers, breathing the same small square of air, and say the truest sentence I’ve got. “I didn’t know home could be a person until you.”
Her fingers tighten at the back of my neck. The light in her eyes changes. “Kiss me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The first brush is careful, checking doors and windows, and then the second is warmer, longer, turning intention into language. She makes a sound I want to memorize and pulls me closerby the collar. My hands bracket her ribs, thumbs skimming the line of her sweater, and for a minute everything is just mouth and breath and the low, impossible relief of getting exactly what you’ve been trying not to want too much.
When we come up for air, she rests her forehead against mine. “I want to go slow,” she whispers, voice a thread that ties around my chest, “but I need you to touch me.”
My restraint stands up, stretches, and reports for duty. “Slow I can do,” I say, and mean it. “You call it. I follow.”
She nods once, decisive, and laces her fingers with mine. The small smile she gives me is so brave it hurts. “Come with me.”
We move together, unhurried, past the glow of the tree and down the short hall. I hit the light in her room and then think better of it, leaving the door mostly closed so only the soft spill from the living room finds us.
I take a beat, scan without letting go of her hand—habit I’m not interested in losing. Street quiet. Building quiet. Phone on the dresser, face down, volume up. Safe enough to be present.
She watches me with that look that says she knows exactly what I’m doing and likes it anyway. “You always working?” she murmurs.
