Christmas Catch: A Holiday Novella by The 12 NAs of Christmas, Chelsea M. Cameron

Patience.”
     

     
    After the presents have been exchanged, and everything has been exclaimed over and pictures have been taken, pizza is ordered and I tell Mom that Sawyer and I are going to have some more alone time.
    “Oh, going to give him a present.” She says it in a way that makes me screw up my face and utter a disgusted sound. “Go, be young. Have fun.” I give her a hug and then go around and give everyone else hugs. Sawyer and I take our own cars, and I have to take it slow. The snow is still falling.
    Yay for white Christmas. I’m finally in the mood and sing “Jingle Bells” at the top of my lungs all the way to Sawyer’s.
     

     
    “Where’s my present?” he says the second I walk in the door.
    “Right here.” I hold up the basket that contains his present. Well, it’s more than one thing.
    “Give it to me.” He holds his hands out and I place the basket in them.
    “Greedy much? Christmas is about giving, not receiving.”
    “Well, I’m sure there will be plenty of giving and receiving later.” He waggles his eyebrows and I push him toward the couch so he can go through the little packages in the basket.
    “Since you didn’t get me a card, I got you one.” He goes for that first. It’s not much, just a photograph of a snow-covered lobster trap.
    “With all my heart, Ivy,” he reads. I didn’t sign that until this morning. I’d spent way too long trying to figure out what to say, and had only come up with that in the eleventh hour.
    “Thank you, Poison.” I’m rewarded with a kiss. Then he opens the rest of the presents: a package of pencils, rubber bands, pens, a fold out bullseye, marshmallows, a box of Rice Krispies, and a stick of butter. To the casual observer, these would seem a random assortment, but Sawyer knows exactly what they’re for.
    He smiles as he looks down at all of the things in the basket.
    “This is the most perfect present ever. What should we do first?”
    “Crossbows. Definitely.”
    We take the pencils, rubber bands and pens and get to work making tiny little crossbows. Sawyer taught me to do this during an inside recess in second grade and we’d gotten in trouble for shooting them more times than I could count. Once, Sawyer shot one at a teacher and it got caught in her wig and she didn’t notice. We both got in big trouble for laughing the whole day.
    As soon as our crossbows are done, we set up the bullseye and start shooting.
    “Your aim may be true, my lady, but you do not have the focus that I, as a man have,” he says in a fake British accent.
    “A pox on your manhood! I can do anything that a man can do and I can do it better. Die, rogue!”
    Part of making pencil crossbows is pretending you’re back in medieval times at an archery tournament. Obviously.
    Once I’ve beaten Sawyer soundly with my pencil crossbow, we get to part two. Rice Krispie treats.
    Fifteen minutes later we’re molding our treats into little snowmen and putting them on sheets of wax paper.
    “You’d better take some of these home with you or your nieces and nephews are going to be upset,” he says, setting down another snowman.
    “Those kids don’t need any more sugar.” I swear, their blood must be at least 75 percent sugar by now.
    Once the snowmen have hardened, we go to town biting off their heads and causing Rice Krispie snowman carnage. I hold one out and Sawyer takes a bite as I sit on his lap on the couch. The snow is still falling and soft instrumental Christmas music plays.
    “Are you happy?” I say as he licks my fingers. Pretty soon that’s going to turn into something else . . . Even though we’d spent a lot of naked time together already, it doesn’t make up for two years’ worth of not being together.
    “Am I horrible person if I say yes?”
    “Why would you be a horrible person?”
    “Because none of this would have happened if my Dad hadn’t passed away.” I notice he avoids saying that his dad died. I don’t blame him.
    “Not