Page 146 of Holidating
And last, but certainly not least, there’s a folded-up thing made of finely knitted wool. He pulls it out and unfurls it, revealing a small blanket—the size you’d throw over your sofa to keep warm while you’re watching a movie. Except it’s the nicest blanket ever made, in charcoal gray, and soft as butter. He fumbles for the little tag sewn into a corner.100% Cashmere, it reads.
Shit, really?
“What did I tell you?” Jarvis says, running a hand over the blanket. “This Nicolette thinks of you, and her mind goes straight tobedding. My wife would pee herself to have a blanket this nice.”
Damien rolls his eyes, even though Jarvis has a point. It’s quite a spread of presents covering his cot. An embarrassment of riches.
As he sets the cardboard box onto the packed-earth floor, something heavy slides around inside it. Two somethings. The book-shaped objects are heavy and wrapped in brown paper, which is why he hadn’t noticed them before.
More? Seriously?
He carefully tears the paper off the first one and finds a beautiful hardcover book. It's a graphic novel calledThe Arrival, and when heopens to a page in the center, the art is outrageously intricate and intimidatingly beautiful.
Then he rests the next wrapped object on his knee and contemplates it. This is already the best gift box he's ever seen on an army base. He runs his thumb under the seam of brown paper and peels it back to reveal a cloth-bound sketchbook. It’s navy blue, with paper so thick and creamy that ink would never bleed through.
Stuck between its pages is an envelope addressed to Nicolette in Durham, North Carolina. And two sheets of notebook paper, with a single post-it attached.Would love to hear from you, if only to know if you received this!
“Aw,” Jarvis says, cutting the crap for once. “Do you believe me now? The lady wants to hear from you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. But the truth is that two sheets of paper will hardly be enough for the thank-you note he needs to write. He flips through the blank sketchbook pages and imagines himself filling them with new art. Something to take his mind off the stress of endless patrols. Honestly, the paper is almost too fancy to draw on.
But that's what it's for, says Nicolette's voice in his head.
He grins, as if she were right here with him. He hopes this gift is more than just a gift. He hopes it means something. You don’t send your lucky marble halfway across the world just on a whim, right?
“Look, I know I like to bust your balls,” Jarvis says. “But if you like this girl, let her know, okay? You gotta stick your neck out if you want to get the goods.”
Damien rubs a hand over his scruffy face. “Is that what you did?”
“Absolutely. Told my Katie that she wasthe one. Women like a guy who isn’t afraid to say how he feels.”
"Supper!" yells the Staff Sergeant.
Damien hastily tidies up his treasures, storing everything carefully in his footlocker for later, except a couple candies he pockets for the Staff Sergeant as he heads for the mess tent.
He’ll write that thank-you letter after dinner.
Who knew that a thank-you note could be so freaking hard to write?
His first efforts are too bloodless.I really enjoyed your gift.
But then he swings too far in the other direction.You can't have any idea how much this meant to me.
Too dramatic.
“You finish that thing yet?” Jarvis asks him every night for a week. “It better be epic after all that scribbling you’re doing over there.”
Finally, after a lot of spinning his wheels, he ends up trading his last packet of Oreos for more paper. And then he sits down to just write the damn thing.
Nicolette,
Your box arrived at the end of a long, exhausting day when I was feeling homesick. If I’m being honest, that's every day. But your gifts were a bright beam of sunshine. And Google did us both a solid, because everything was perfect. And I'm very popular now because I have chocolate.
I miss chocolate. I miss Vermont, and I miss my family. And maybe it’s dumb, but I miss driving the taxi. It's a job where you're always helping someone in the moment of need.
Also, I miss you. Maybe I'm not supposed to say that. Maybe that's too much, but it's true. The book you sent me is special. Not only because it's a nice book, but because only someone who knows me well could have picked it out.
I mean that. I'm not a big talker, but you know as much about me as anyone. And when I come home again, I want to take you out for pizza. Or drinks or dinner. Whatever I'm allowed to ask for, that’s what I want.
