Page 45 of Jingl
Trace and I are snuggled together on my full-sized bed. It’s still too early to wake up completely, so I wrap myself around him and watch him until I can fall back to sleep.
Too soon, the singing of bells wakes us. Mom stands outside my door and pounds on my door. “Santa’s been here!”
Trace and I giggle. Mom still does this every year.
“And the reindeer got into the pantry again!”
I snort, puffing Trace’s hair off his face. We throw off the blankets and rush from my room, the entire house smells like maple syrup from the breakfast casserole. Cookies line the table on cooling racks. And fresh coffee brews in the coffee pot.
“Merry Christmas, kiddos!”
We wrap Peggy in a joint hug.
“I got the video chat going with your niblets in the living room. The casserole has a little longer so we can do presents first.”
Trace laughs. “They’re never patient.”
“I recall a pair of boys exactly the same way at their age.”
“True,” Trace says and we follow him to the living room, where he greets his niblings on Peggy’s phone. “Hey, nibs!”
“Trace! Shae! Peggggyyy!” The kids wear matching pajamas as they bounce in their living room clutching stuffed animals.
Trace and I sit on the floor. There aren’t many presents, but Trace’s family sent us each something, like every year. And our gifts to them made it in time. Porter and Kenzie start with our package and squeal at their new stuffed dinosaurs. Porter loves purple, so he got a purple stegosaurus, while Kenzie loves yellow and got a triceratops. Wendy said dinos have been their obsession of choice for months so it made sense.
“Now you!” Porter drops to his tummy and brings the phone with him.
“I can’t see!” Kenzie says, and Wendy adjusts the phone so they’re both on screen.
Trace grabs the gifts from his family and passes them around. Mom gets her annual birdhouse made by Trace’s dad.
“Beautiful.” This year it’s baby blue with delicate flowers painted over it.
“You have to open them together,” Wendy says when Trace starts on his first.
We each have a box about the size of a pencil box. We shimmy the boxes open and start laughing. Inside are so many glow-in-the-dark stars.
Wendy smiles. “You didn’t have enough to fill your ceiling, so I had to make sure you could finish the job.” She was right. Trace’s bedroom ceiling only had the center done. This will help finish the job.
“Thank you, Wendy.” Trace leans into me. “I hadn’t even thought about adding more.” But she’s right. We need to complete the project.Together.
Trace and I had told each other we didn’t need to give each other gifts, but he presses a small box into my hand. I look at it in confusion. “I thought—”
He kisses me, making Porter and Kenzie fake gags. “Move in with me, officially.” Trace looks over to my mom and she’s grinning from ear to ear and wiping her eyes.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Totally sure.”
I kiss him back. “I’d love to. But I come with a lot of stuff. Have you—”
“I don’t care, we’ll make the room.”
It’s not much longer and we wrap up presents and the call. We eat breakfast, but soon Trace pulls me to my feet. “If you don’t mind Peggy, I’d like to take Shae home so we can rest up for tomorrow’s tear down.”
“Sounds perfect.”
We both kiss Mom, and I pack a fresh bag before we head out to start our new lives together.
