Page 30 of She Came Upon A Midnight Clear
“How about you slice some mushrooms for me? And maybe a few leeks?”
“Sure. Let me just go put some clothes on.”
Working next to her in the kitchen feels so natural. Music is playing in the background, some older EDM we both love, and she dances a little as she works.
“We haven’t been dancing in forever,” I tell her, washing the mushrooms in the sink.
“We haven’t. There aren’t any permanent lesbian clubs in San Francisco these days, except for Jolene’s. I haven’t been yet, but I hear the vibe is good.”
“Are we too old to go dance at the lesbian club?”
“Baby, you’re only, what? Thirty-six? And I’m not forty until January, but even then, we can dance when and where we want to. And I’ve heard it’s a pretty diverse crowd. Should be fine. But meanwhile…”
She puts down the knife she’s been using to mince chives, wipes her hands on a dishtowel, and takes me in her arms, her hips swaying right up against mine, and we dance around the kitchen to one of my favorite Disclosure songs,You and Me.
We’re meant to bethe song says, and I feel so deeply that it’s right.
The song ends and she kisses my forehead before letting me go to return to cooking, leaving me warm and full of emotion. It’s a little scary, but I push that edge of fear away.
After we eat, we clean up, which only takes a few minutes, then she goes downstairs to get her holiday decorations, and comes back up carrying a huge plastic tub.
“Wow. You have a lot of ornaments.”
“Yep! Got one more. Be right back.”
She returns shortly with another big tubful, then we sit on the floor in the living room area and open them up, and she pulls out a bundle of white lights.
“I like the white ones so you can see each of the ornaments,” she says. “The colored lights feel like overload to me.”
“No, I get it,” I tell her, my throat going a little tight. My mom always loved the plain white lights for the same reason. But I don’t want to open up that Pandora’s box. Not right now, when I’m feeling so damn happy. I’ve been feeling so lost in the world since I lost my mom; I don’t want to revisit that sense of being lost right now.
She must have set the tree in the stand while I was napping. It stands now in one corner of the living area, where two huge windows meet. It’s beautiful, making the entire loft smell like a forest in winter. Like Christmas.
“Come help me with the lights,” she says, pulling a step stool over from the kitchen.
The tree really is a good seven feet, and even as tall as Dru is, she couldn’t possibly reach the top without the stool. It takes a little while and some work, but eventually the lights are on, and we dig into the boxes of ornaments. Not surprisingly, many of them are dogs.
“Aw, look, it’s a gray and white pittie. It looks like Sulu and Seven,” I tell her, holding the ceramic dog up.
“It really does. We should go spend some time with them tomorrow—it’s so important for them to be properly socialized if they’re going to be good candidates for adoption. Maybe take them for a Christmas Eve walk if it’s not raining since they haven’t had a ton of leash training yet.”
“Oh, I’d love that!”
She smiles, and there are those dimples again, melting me down to my soul. “Me, too.”
She continues to pull ornaments out, some of them silver and gold glass balls, and some that look like vintage glass in different colors, plus a few made of wood, and a whole collection of birds wearing silly outfits made of felt, plus a bunch of women’s sports-themed ornaments: soccer, basketball, hockey, with whatmust be her favorite players’ faces and team logos. She even has a few shaped like tiny books with classic literature titles.
“You know, I think you can probably tell as much about a person from their ornament collection as you can from their bookshelf,” I say as I hang a small metal 1950s truck on a branch.
“Yeah? And what can you tell about me?”
“I just sort of see you all over them. Everything I’ve always known about you, but also, I think you’re a lot more sentimental than you like to let on. Look at this teeny book ornament! It’sThe Little Prince. I’ve always loved that book. And this one—is this picture little you?”
Dru takes the ceramic ornament from me, peering at it. “Yeah. I was probably three or four in this one.”
“And you already had dimples.”
“You are obsessed with my dimples, pretty girl.”
