Page 47 of Grinchland
Never in my life had I been picked up for…whatever this was…and been given a more fitting gift. It was like a bouquet of flowers for the Christmas crazed.
“For me?” I asked. But on further inspection, I started recognizing the items. “What…?”
“You can stop sneaking them over to my house,” he said as I stepped out of the way so he could come inside.
His words confused me. “I can what?”
He set the decorations down on the couch and then turned to face me. “You’re the one who keeps leaving these all over my yard and porch, right?”
I shook my head. “That does sound like something I would do, but I promise you, I didn’t do anything of the sort.”
Silas frowned as he stared down at the decorations and then shifted his gaze to his house through my front window. Down to the pile…over to his house. Then he smiled.
“Dog,” he whispered.
“Dog?” I asked, wondering how that was the answer to this riddle.
He scrubbed his face with his hand. “Yeah.” He paused. “Dog—who you renamed Blitzen—is a service school dropout.”
I raised my eyebrows. “He’s a what?”
“A service school dropout. I got him back when Isabelle…” His voice drifted off as his skin paled. I wondered what he was trying not to say. Was it wrong that I wanted to know what seemed to be plaguing him?
I wanted him to keep going. I wanted him to open up to me. But I also didn’t want to push him past where he was comfortable. I hoped that, at some point, he would open up to me. And when he did, knowing about his past would be an honor.
Silas cleared his throat. “Anyway, I got Dog for Isabelle. She grew attached to him, so even though he flunked out, I had to take him home.” He smiled. “Problem is, you can’t really unteach certain things. He must have seen this stuff and fetched them for us.”
I couldn’t help the smile that emerged. “That is so cute,” I said.
Silas’s expression softened as he glanced up at me and then back down to the ornament pile. “Yeah. He’s a good dog.”
Silence fell between us. I stood there, watching Silas, waiting for him to speak first. This was his memory, and I didn’t want to interrupt it. Finally, he sighed and glanced over at me. His gaze trailed down my body before he brought it back up.
“You look nice,” he said in a way that made my cheeks flush. His smile made my heart pound as he asked, “You ready?”
I wasn’t crazy, right? He had to be feeling something too. At least, I hoped he was. It had been too long since a man had paid attention to me. Maybe I was misreading everything. Maybe I was so tired of being alone, that after the tiniest bit of attention from a man I jumped in feetfirst.
Was that what I was doing? Reading into things that weren’t there?
On paper, Silas and I didn’t make sense. We were exact opposites. I was spontaneous and weird, while he was serious and reserved. I was a fool to think that any kind of relationship could happen between us. I wasn’t sure I could make him happy, and if he was still hell-bent on canceling Christmas, I was certain he couldn’t make me happy.
So, why did I feel so happy?
Realizing that he was waiting for me to speak, I glanced up and smiled. Whatever that freak-out had been, I was going to keep it buried deep down inside my chest. I wasn’t going to let it surface tonight.
My feelings were just that, mine. Silas was just starting to open up to me, and the last thing I wanted to do was make him slam the lid closed on our friendship for good. Silas and I weren’t some cosmic couple finally finding each other. We were just two stubborn people life had thrown together.
I was determined to change his mind about the best time of the year, while he was determined to keep the status quo. That was all.
“I’m ready,” I said as I reached forward to grasp the door handle.
Silas nodded and just as he turned to follow me out the door, he paused, his gaze falling on Isabelle’s tree.
He knit his eyebrows together. “You decorated it,” he said.
“Yeah.” I pointed at him. “I used the popcorn chain we made.”
He studied it before he slowly began to nod. “It looks nice.” Then his gaze drifted over to the opposite wall, where I’d stacked up the decorations I’d removed from around the tree. “What’s going on here?”
