Page 23 of A DIY Christmas Miracle
“Are you feeling warm?” I asked, scrutinizing him. Eli’s face wasn’t flushed. Were people flushed when they had a fever? He was rather pale, but pale could also mean being sick.
“Huh? No, I’m cold.”
Maybe not a fever. Unless he was running a really, really high fever… and I’d probably have noticed while lying in bed with him.
“Sorry,” he finally said, shaking his head. “I’m just… not in a good mood today.”
“Why not?”
It was Christmas Eve, and all of our friends were on their way to celebrate Christmas with us. We were on vacation in an amazing mountain lodge, there was a winter wonderland right outside the door, and he… was in a bad mood?
At first, he didn’t say anything, just shrugged again. Then he slowly reached out for the coffee cup, raised it towards his lips, and took a sip. His eyes fell closed and for a short moment, he looked like he was asleep, just not as relaxed and content as last night.
“Didn’t sleep well,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
“Do you want to go back to bed for a while?” I offered. The digital clock on the oven let me know our friends wouldn’t be here for a few hours.
“Nah, I’m fine.” He smiled at me, but it was that hollow smile again, the one that left his eyes scarily empty.
“Is your knee still hurting?”
I was running out of ideas.
“Huh?”
“Your knee. Is it still swollen? Did it turn blue? Are you in pain?”
I should’ve texted Jack and asked him to bring some cooling ointment or some kind of cream for Eli, even though he’d claimed everything was fine.
Hell, yesterday he’d been standing on his toes, trying to reach the top branches of the tree, and basically skipped and danced around while singing Christmas carols. Maybe he’d overextended himself. I’d asked him twice if he was sure he was fine to put that much weight on his knee. Both times, Eli had ignored me and started singing louder, pretending he couldn’t hear a word I’d said.
I should’ve insisted that he rested, but I’d let myself get caught in his spell. I’d let myself get caught up in his good mood and lightheartedness. Decorating the tree with Eli while singing and joking had felt like the most natural thing in the world. I hadn’t even been dying a thousand deaths every time he’d said something that could’ve possibly, in another dimension, been considered flirtatious.
I knew better than to believe he was actually flirting. He was being nice, and yesterday, I’d finally managed not to take things so seriously, not to read too much into things.
“Eli!”
He slowly looked up from his e-reader.
“My knee is fine,” he mumbled, putting on a brave face that showed me just how much of a lie that was. I should’ve been more persistent, but that really wasn’t my strong suit.
“Okay, but… why don’t you elevate your leg for a bit, hmm? Here, take one of the pillows.” I took the pillow from behind my back and placed it on the coffee table in front of Eli. His eyes flitted briefly in my direction, then back to the pillow and back to me again. A small, tentative smile formed on his lips.
“Thank you.”
He dutifully rested his leg on the pillow, then hid his face behind his e-reader again.
I followed his example, not that I was able to focus on even a single word in front of me. My whole attention was focused on the young man next to me, whose smile turned wider and wider the longer he kept reading, diving right into the story until he let out an amused snort.
Running a hand through the white hair that had a silver gleam to it, he almost looked elvish to me. The first time he’d come to one of our outings with his new hair color, he’d immediately reminded me of the elves in TheLord of the Rings. That was until Eli had opened his mouth and started joking in typical Eli fashion. Because apart from the color of his hair and skin, Eli had nothing in common with Tolkien’s elves at all. Neither their stoic mannerisms nor their height.
I sighed internally and tried concentrating on the book in front of me. I wasn’t reading it for fun; it was a book I’d be reading with my Juniors after Christmas. And since I was the teacher, I absolutely had to read it before torturing my students with it. And a torture it would be. If it was torture for me to read it, I didn’t want to imagine how the students would feel about it. That’s what happened when teachers old enough to retire decided which books were ‘in’ with the teenage crowd. I’d much rather let them do a book report about a book they truly enjoyed.
Eli shifted on the sofa, attracting my attention once more. I watched him intently, studied his long legs and the slim figure hidden beneath a cozy-looking oversized hoodie. The way he slightly shook his head, chuckled softly, and rolled his eyes at the book while tapping his reader almost every other second to turn the pages made me smile.
He didn’t notice me at all. It was as if he were lost in his very own world, a world where no one but him existed, in which he was much calmer and more relaxed than usual. Ely was always this energetic, lively, and enthusiastic guy who smiled and laughed a lot. His hands had to be in constant motion, and sometimes it felt like he always needed to do something with his body or he’d combust. The only time he really seemed to calm down was when he was reading, although he wasn’t any less expressive while doing so. Eli was absolute shit at hiding his feelings; his face was always an open book. And yet, he often seemed to be a book written in a different language from mine. One I couldn’t understand, no matter how hard I tried.
A noise snapped me out of my thoughts. Eli let out a heavy sigh and his relaxed, genuine smile disappeared within the blink of an eye, replaced by a slightly pained expression.
