♠ Original Fiction; I'll Spend My Christmas With You
I’ll Spend My Christmas With You:
Rating/ Word Count: r (because why the hell not?) || 3,440words
Summary: "We are going skating. C’mon, it’s Christmas Eve, we will have fun!” As Lainey looks at him like he has lost his mind, Gavin wonders if this isn’t true. A ghost of Christmas exuberance has seized him, and is making him say things he would never say.
notes: For noted @ inrevelations challenge #4 (prompt). I hope you enjoy this. I had a lot of fun with the prompt, and while I didn’t exactly stick to my plan, I’m happy with it. The idea behind this is that when you go on a trip or whatever, you don’t remember every single second; instead you have a few snapshot memories. And thus… Also. I figured, hey, it’s Christmas. Who doesn’t love a good cheesy romance? (Hopefully the answer is not ~noted)
also: thanks to everyone who read this & helped me choose a title
The first Sunday in December, Lainey is woken not by her alarm or the screeches from the apartments next to hers, but the trill of her cellphone. With a groan she rolls over to answer it, knowing before she even picks it up that there is only one person who calls this early - her mother.
~*~*~*~
By the time her best friend Gavin wakes up and walks into the kitchen almost an hour later, Lainey is sitting on the bench, drinking her second cup of coffee.
“You’re up early.” This is true - hyperbolic even. Neither Lainey nor Gavin are morning people, perhaps why they work so well as flatmates.
“Mom rang”. The explanation is unnecessary. There is no one else who would call at such a ridiculous hour on a Sunday except Mrs Merrick, who would have been up and dressed for Church for two hours already.
“She wants me to come home for Christmas. ‘It’s the first year without your father, Elaine. Jessica is flying all the way from London to be with us this year blah, blah, blah’. I told her I can’t come, that I had work.”
“She started crying?” This is a familiar guilt trip. Both of their mothers perfected it sometime around their thirteenth birthdays.
“And I started pacing.” Lainey sighs and takes a gulp of her coffee. They are both silent for a while, staring out the window at the soft snow just starting to fall. Eventually Gavin gets up and begins fiddling with the stereo, trying to find a station playing carols.
“You know,” he starts, with his back to her, “maybe you should go home. It’ll be hard enough on your Mom as it is, and with Jessica there, at least you’ll have a buffer - you may not even have to talk to her.”
“I know. I know that she wants - sorry, ‘needs’ me there; I know I can easily get the time off. I just… I’m not sure I can be there, in that house, with all of Dad’s stuff. She won’t have packed it up. It’s just going to be like a second funeral. I can’t do it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t think of it like that. Think of it as a way to remember Pete without mourning him. Like a new chapter in your family.” Gavin can see that she thinks he’s crazy. On any other day he would never say anything like this - full of bullshit and family values.
So somehow, and even two weeks later when they are locking up the apartment and calling for a cab to the airport, Gavin agrees to come to Michigan with her. To spend the holidays away from their nice, warm, Washington, D.C. apartment with her mostly crazy family.
In the back of his mind, he knows why he offers to come with her, and even further back he hopes she lets him for the same reason: Christmas isn’t the same without the love of your life.
~*~*~*~
Lainey had forgotten that, more than anything Gavin was a nervous flyer. As they sit in the small, uncomfortable seats waiting for their flight to take off, she notices his hands shaking, playing with a packet of gum, tapping on his knees - anything to keep from thinking of upcoming flight.
As the plane starts to pick up speed as they taxi down the runway, she leans over to him and holds his hand as she sings ‘Hold Me Tight’ under her breath, an old habit picked up from her father in her childhood - the idea that the music of The Beatles holds healing powers.
If nothing else, Lainey knows it will distract him until they can get some liquor in him.
~*~*~*~
For the first day and a half in Monroe, Lainey and Gavin manage to avoid any extended conversation with her mother or sister. They take walking tours around their old town, a place they fled as hard and fast as they could after graduation. They hire a rental car and drive to Detroit and Gavin watches her dance and twirl in the soft, clean snow, so very different to the snow they have become used to in the Capitol. He watches as her cheeks flush and her tongue darts in and out of her mouth trying to catch the snowflakes and wishes he were brave enough to risk twenty five years of friendship and just hold her there in the snow, sharing heat and sharing hearts.
~*~*~*~
Being home in Monroe reminds Lainey too much of her senior year. She remembers how Gavin seemed to suddenly grow into his height, how they had spent many late nights studying, how she thought there was maybe something more than a lifetime of laughter and camaraderie. Somewhere between college acceptance letters and packing the car to drive to Georgia in July, the feelings dropped off and she never thought any more about it. Not when they would study in his dorm at Georgia State, not when his family moved to Texas and it became clear that ‘travelling home for the holidays’ would no longer mean sharing a cab, a plane and secret looks to save their sanity in their hometown.
The shivers in her chest had started again that February - even if she had been steadfastly ignoring them. The memories of the first two weeks of the month are a blur to her, all she knows is that without Gavin to hold her together, there is a chance she would still be curled up in a foetal position, refusing to do wear anything but her fathers old sweatshirts and eat nothing but ice cream and Chinese takeaways.
The death of her father had been nothing less than earth shattering. She had always been a daddy’s girl, preferring to bake pies with him on Sunday afternoons than her mother’s obsessive gardening. She had respected him, sought advice from him and then one day, he was just gone.
If it hadn’t been for Gavin, she too might have disappeared.
~*~*~*~
Gavin stumbles down the stairs on the morning of the 23rd to find Lainey balancing on the sofa, trying to loop fairy lights around the windows and over the doorways. As she strains to reach the hooks, he can see the curve of her hips as her pyjama shirt rides up, exposing a thin slice of creamy skin. While tempted to watch her for another hour, he knows why she’s doing this, and knows it will be easier if he does it.
Over the years, there have been many Christmas’s spent at the Merrick’s. Unlike his family, Lainey’s mother and father cared how the house looked for the month of December. A tree was carefully selected and decorated with ornaments from all over the world, enough stockings for three families were placed around the fireplace, the final touch - the last thing completed by Peter - was the fairy lights, sparkling away in the lounge, den and dining room.
Taking the last steps as loud as he can so as not to frighten her, Gavin walks up to Lainey and takes the end of the string in his hands and pulls gently.
“Let me.” Smiling slightly, Lainey nods. He can see in her eyes that having to step in and do all the things her father used to do is taking their toll on her.
And so, Gavin takes Lainey’s hand to help her down, as he steps up threading strand after strand of fairy lights around her home.
~*~*~*~
Lainey has just got back from a last minute grocery run on Christmas Eve when the smell of cinnamon and vanilla hit her as soon as she enters the house.
Baking. Cookies. Dad.
Somehow, the bags end up sitting on the floor before she collapses against the wall, trying to rake in enough air to cry. As she wraps her icy arms around herself, she hears laughter coming from the kitchen.
Jessica. Gavin. Baking?
Slowly, she pulls herself together (as much as she can without a stiff drink) and heads into the kitchen. She barely gets one step in before she is stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of Gavin in a pink apron rolling out dough. As she takes in his flour-streaked face, and hands covered in food dye, she cannot help but finally acknowledge the knotting in her stomach. All the years of denying her feelings rush to the surface at once and she knows that as stupid and corny as it is, she has fallen in love with her best friend.
~*~*~*~
Gavin doesn’t like how Monroe makes him remember high school and the time he would spend looking sideways at Lainey, trying to figure out what all the other boys saw in her. All he saw were the same green eyes, the same milk chocolate coloured hair, the same smile that lifted on the right first, the same sense of humour that could make anyone’s day.
The eighteen year old him would have been a liar if he said that he never thought about Lainey as more than a friend. But then, he was an eighteen-year-old boy, so what did he know?
So when on Christmas Eve Lainey asks him to leave her and her mother alone for a few hours, he finds himself at the local pond watching children he no longer recognizes learn to skate. With nothing else to do, he sits with a coffee and wonders when he started honestly caring about Lainey the way he does now.
It doesn’t take long for him to realise, that deep down, he has always felt this way. This is the reason that every girlfriend was compared to Lainey in one way or another, the reason that he is the only person who can call her Elaine without mortal threat, for the same reason that they can co-exist so well.
Putting his head in his hands, Gavin wonders if he is just imagining it, if being back home has warped him somehow. If he just wants to be in love with Lainey because it would make things easier. Because if he loved her, shouldn’t he have known by now? Shouldn’t he have been unable to live without her? Shouldn’t he have wanted to punch any man who came within five feet of her?
~*~*~*~
Leaving her mother weeping in the kitchen, Lainey storms out of the house, not knowing where she is going. As she strolls around the residential area of Monroe, tries to push the conversation with her mother out of her head - but she can’t. The look in her mothers eyes, once so full of life, now seem dead and meaningless. The lines on her face had deepened in just ten months, and Lainey wasn’t entirely sure that her mother would be around for another Christmas.
Soon, her thoughts move to how much her sister has changed after just three months of studying abroad. In retrospect, Lainey realises that her disbelief at her baby sister growing up must have been almost identical to what her parents felt when she and Gavin returned from Georgia for the first Christmas. Something in her chest clicks over, as it often does now whenever she thinks of Gavin, when she realises that though they’ve never been a couple, never kissed, never been more than friends, they have always been a single entity to so many of their friends and family.
As she rounds the East bank of the old pond, more memories hit her and she is suddenly angry with herself. In falling for Gavin, it seems like she has taken the easy way out. For that one moment, she wants nothing more than to get in her car and drive as fast as she can to Detroit and get on the first plane back to D.C. In frustration, she kicks at the snow, wishing it could be her subconscious.
Sighing, she lists the reasons she can’t leave in her head, and like magic, as she thinks of #7: Couldn’t bear to strand Gavin in Monroe alone, she catches sight of a familiar face on the other side of the pond, his frosted breath calling to her like Morse Code.
~*~*~*~
Gavin has retreated so far into his own thoughts that he doesn’t even notice Lainey come up behind him, doesn’t feel her arm around his shoulders until she nudges him.
“Penny for your thoughts?” startled, Gavin looks up and catches her eye. (Mistake number 1)
Suddenly, he wants to be anywhere but sitting on a bench at the old pond next to Lainey. He wants - needs - to… breaking the eye contact with Lainey, Gavin casts his gaze around, for something, anything to do.
“Skating! When was the last time you went skating?” (Mistake number 2) Something in his voice is harsh and rushed and can’t be blamed on the weather.
He sees the grief in Lainey’s eyes, not at all hidden by her hair falling in her face.
“Last Christmas with Dad.” Well, shit, thinks Gavin, in your effort to prove you aren’t in love with her, not only have you managed to prove to yourself that you are obviously in love with her, you’re well on your way to ensuring she’ll never love you the same.
Buoyed by a sudden wish to make her smile like she hasn’t in almost a week, Gavin pulls Lainey to her feet and half drags her over to the skating rental booth.
“Remember that talk we had about living life to remember your father and not get all depressed because you can’t do things with him anymore? We are going skating. C’mon, it’s Christmas Eve, we will have fun!” As Lainey looks at him like he has lost his mind, Gavin wonders if this isn’t true. A ghost of Christmas exuberance has seized him, and is making him say things he would never say.
So, as they simply glide around the pond, Gavin is content with sneaking sideways glances at Lainey, watching the delicate snowflakes fall on her hat, wishing there were someway he could change things between them.
There is a moment though, when Lainey stumbles slightly on an uneven patch, and Gavin reaches out and grabs her hips, and somehow Lainey’s hands are on his chest, and their breath is mixing, and he is close enough to see the few faint freckles on her cheeks, and she seems to take a half step closer to him and there is a single moment when he could let go and carry on, but he doesn’t and that moment turns into a moment where all it would take is a slant of the head and another half step forward, and he could kiss her.
He settles for a hug and a laugh and carries on.
(Mistake number 3)
~*~*~*~
Eight o’clock on Christmas morning found Lainey standing in her room, wrapped in a towel, combing her hair. Overall, she supposed, the trip hadn’t been as terrible as she had thought. There were moments of course, where she had frozen, unable to move for fear of breaking down at the memory of her father. But this happened in Washington too, just less often.
Because it was Christmas, and she was being completely honest with herself - if no one else - Lainey was able to admit that the hardest part had been Gavin. Being with him, seeing how easily they understand each other, how easily they slip into a holiday routine, has made her realise that maybe, taking the chance and actively loving him, would be worth the risk of losing her best friend.
Especially after yesterday at the pond.
In the last fifteen hours she had thought about it countless times and could only conclude that actually, he had almost kissed her. She wasn’t delusional; he really had held her that tight, really had looked at her like that.
But then, did it mean anything? So he almost kissed her, so what? She had kissed many guys and it meant nothing. Shaking her head, she started to get dressed, fake smile first, to head downstairs and run through the Christmas ritual, even if it is going to be wrong without Dad.
She is halfway dressed when there is a knock at her door and assuming it is Jessica wanting to borrow earrings or a shirt or perfume, she opens the door without thinking.
To say she is surprised to see Gavin standing on the other side is an understatement. Too late she remembers that she is only in jeans and a lacy blue bra. Too late she thinks about grabbing her dressing gown. As the haze of embarrassment fades slightly, Lainey sees that while he is blushing, Gavin is not looking at her face. As if reading her mind, Gavin’s gaze snaps up to meet hers and before she can move, his hands are cradling her face, pulling her closer until their lips touch. Almost immediately her hands find their way to his belt loops and pull him even closer, wanting to savour as much of this as she can.
And as he moves her backwards toward the bed, she can taste the mint of his toothpaste and feel the ease with which they come together. She refuses to pause and talk, to look at him, to hesitate, instead she gives herself fully to her senses and hopes they don’t mislead her.
~*~*~*~
For the next twelve hours, Lainey and Gavin manage to talk about nothing other than presents and Christmas dinner and who should set the table. They each do different things - he carves the turkey when it becomes clear that none of them know how, she serves the pies and cookies made for dessert. They stand next to each other, washing and drying dishes, making trivial talk about the weather and the New Year.
The one thing they do not do it talk about how Lainey’s lacy blue bra ripped. Or why Gavin now has a purple bruise on his collarbone.
But as Gavin sits out on the Merrick’s back porch, the remnants of soapy bubbles from washing up still on his sleeves, he wishes they would. Losing Lainey would be devastating but for Christmas morning to have just been grief or pity - that would be even worse. He knows there is no way he would trade that half hour for anything. But… he wishes Lainey would talk to him and let him know everything is fine.
As if his yearning thoughts had summoned her, Lainey suddenly appears at his side. It takes him a great deal of effort to fight a ten-year-old habit to put his arm around her shoulder. Instead he stays still, facing north on the porch, watching the incessant snowfall.
“I love you, you know. Not like we’ve said for years, like a best friend. I am in love with you. My heart flips when you touch me, even the littlest thing. And, whatever, you can take this how you want, but I think the risk is worth it.” Words are hurtling out of Lainey’s mouth and it takes a moment for Gavin’s brain catch up.
“You… what?”
“I love you. I think I always have a bit, but it seemed too… easy to fall in love with you. You’ll always be my best friend, and I’m fine with that. I just think you should know I love you.”
“You keep saying that. You really mean it?” Never before has he felt of perplexed. Things like this don’t happen. She was meant to come up and tell him it was all a big mistake and please move out as soon as you can. Not this.
“Uh. Yeah. That’s why I’m telling you.” She looks so confused that he just has to kiss her again. And talk to her in the dark of Christmas night. And make snow angels with a heart between them.
And tell her for once and for all: “I love you”. Because it’s Christmas and that’s what you do at Christmas, you spend it with the people you love, and you thank deities that you are still happy.
But to Gavin and Lainey, Christmas will always be snow and ice-skating and The Beatles and kissing outdoors and vanilla cookies and fairy lights.
~*~*~*~
The first day of the New Year, Lainey is woken, not by a pounding headache, or the urge to throw up, but the smell of strong coffee, and the delicate touch of someone pushing her hair behind her ear. With a smile, she rolls over and opens her eyes, knowing there is only one person who cares enough.
locked: jan. 2010
© caitlin a 2009
feedback is always welcome.
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Rating/ Word Count: r (because why the hell not?) || 3,440words
Summary: "We are going skating. C’mon, it’s Christmas Eve, we will have fun!” As Lainey looks at him like he has lost his mind, Gavin wonders if this isn’t true. A ghost of Christmas exuberance has seized him, and is making him say things he would never say.
notes: For noted @ inrevelations challenge #4 (prompt). I hope you enjoy this. I had a lot of fun with the prompt, and while I didn’t exactly stick to my plan, I’m happy with it. The idea behind this is that when you go on a trip or whatever, you don’t remember every single second; instead you have a few snapshot memories. And thus… Also. I figured, hey, it’s Christmas. Who doesn’t love a good cheesy romance? (Hopefully the answer is not ~noted)
also: thanks to everyone who read this & helped me choose a title
The first Sunday in December, Lainey is woken not by her alarm or the screeches from the apartments next to hers, but the trill of her cellphone. With a groan she rolls over to answer it, knowing before she even picks it up that there is only one person who calls this early - her mother.
~*~*~*~
By the time her best friend Gavin wakes up and walks into the kitchen almost an hour later, Lainey is sitting on the bench, drinking her second cup of coffee.
“You’re up early.” This is true - hyperbolic even. Neither Lainey nor Gavin are morning people, perhaps why they work so well as flatmates.
“Mom rang”. The explanation is unnecessary. There is no one else who would call at such a ridiculous hour on a Sunday except Mrs Merrick, who would have been up and dressed for Church for two hours already.
“She wants me to come home for Christmas. ‘It’s the first year without your father, Elaine. Jessica is flying all the way from London to be with us this year blah, blah, blah’. I told her I can’t come, that I had work.”
“She started crying?” This is a familiar guilt trip. Both of their mothers perfected it sometime around their thirteenth birthdays.
“And I started pacing.” Lainey sighs and takes a gulp of her coffee. They are both silent for a while, staring out the window at the soft snow just starting to fall. Eventually Gavin gets up and begins fiddling with the stereo, trying to find a station playing carols.
“You know,” he starts, with his back to her, “maybe you should go home. It’ll be hard enough on your Mom as it is, and with Jessica there, at least you’ll have a buffer - you may not even have to talk to her.”
“I know. I know that she wants - sorry, ‘needs’ me there; I know I can easily get the time off. I just… I’m not sure I can be there, in that house, with all of Dad’s stuff. She won’t have packed it up. It’s just going to be like a second funeral. I can’t do it.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t think of it like that. Think of it as a way to remember Pete without mourning him. Like a new chapter in your family.” Gavin can see that she thinks he’s crazy. On any other day he would never say anything like this - full of bullshit and family values.
So somehow, and even two weeks later when they are locking up the apartment and calling for a cab to the airport, Gavin agrees to come to Michigan with her. To spend the holidays away from their nice, warm, Washington, D.C. apartment with her mostly crazy family.
In the back of his mind, he knows why he offers to come with her, and even further back he hopes she lets him for the same reason: Christmas isn’t the same without the love of your life.
~*~*~*~
Lainey had forgotten that, more than anything Gavin was a nervous flyer. As they sit in the small, uncomfortable seats waiting for their flight to take off, she notices his hands shaking, playing with a packet of gum, tapping on his knees - anything to keep from thinking of upcoming flight.
As the plane starts to pick up speed as they taxi down the runway, she leans over to him and holds his hand as she sings ‘Hold Me Tight’ under her breath, an old habit picked up from her father in her childhood - the idea that the music of The Beatles holds healing powers.
If nothing else, Lainey knows it will distract him until they can get some liquor in him.
~*~*~*~
For the first day and a half in Monroe, Lainey and Gavin manage to avoid any extended conversation with her mother or sister. They take walking tours around their old town, a place they fled as hard and fast as they could after graduation. They hire a rental car and drive to Detroit and Gavin watches her dance and twirl in the soft, clean snow, so very different to the snow they have become used to in the Capitol. He watches as her cheeks flush and her tongue darts in and out of her mouth trying to catch the snowflakes and wishes he were brave enough to risk twenty five years of friendship and just hold her there in the snow, sharing heat and sharing hearts.
~*~*~*~
Being home in Monroe reminds Lainey too much of her senior year. She remembers how Gavin seemed to suddenly grow into his height, how they had spent many late nights studying, how she thought there was maybe something more than a lifetime of laughter and camaraderie. Somewhere between college acceptance letters and packing the car to drive to Georgia in July, the feelings dropped off and she never thought any more about it. Not when they would study in his dorm at Georgia State, not when his family moved to Texas and it became clear that ‘travelling home for the holidays’ would no longer mean sharing a cab, a plane and secret looks to save their sanity in their hometown.
The shivers in her chest had started again that February - even if she had been steadfastly ignoring them. The memories of the first two weeks of the month are a blur to her, all she knows is that without Gavin to hold her together, there is a chance she would still be curled up in a foetal position, refusing to do wear anything but her fathers old sweatshirts and eat nothing but ice cream and Chinese takeaways.
The death of her father had been nothing less than earth shattering. She had always been a daddy’s girl, preferring to bake pies with him on Sunday afternoons than her mother’s obsessive gardening. She had respected him, sought advice from him and then one day, he was just gone.
If it hadn’t been for Gavin, she too might have disappeared.
~*~*~*~
Gavin stumbles down the stairs on the morning of the 23rd to find Lainey balancing on the sofa, trying to loop fairy lights around the windows and over the doorways. As she strains to reach the hooks, he can see the curve of her hips as her pyjama shirt rides up, exposing a thin slice of creamy skin. While tempted to watch her for another hour, he knows why she’s doing this, and knows it will be easier if he does it.
Over the years, there have been many Christmas’s spent at the Merrick’s. Unlike his family, Lainey’s mother and father cared how the house looked for the month of December. A tree was carefully selected and decorated with ornaments from all over the world, enough stockings for three families were placed around the fireplace, the final touch - the last thing completed by Peter - was the fairy lights, sparkling away in the lounge, den and dining room.
Taking the last steps as loud as he can so as not to frighten her, Gavin walks up to Lainey and takes the end of the string in his hands and pulls gently.
“Let me.” Smiling slightly, Lainey nods. He can see in her eyes that having to step in and do all the things her father used to do is taking their toll on her.
And so, Gavin takes Lainey’s hand to help her down, as he steps up threading strand after strand of fairy lights around her home.
~*~*~*~
Lainey has just got back from a last minute grocery run on Christmas Eve when the smell of cinnamon and vanilla hit her as soon as she enters the house.
Baking. Cookies. Dad.
Somehow, the bags end up sitting on the floor before she collapses against the wall, trying to rake in enough air to cry. As she wraps her icy arms around herself, she hears laughter coming from the kitchen.
Jessica. Gavin. Baking?
Slowly, she pulls herself together (as much as she can without a stiff drink) and heads into the kitchen. She barely gets one step in before she is stopped dead in her tracks by the sight of Gavin in a pink apron rolling out dough. As she takes in his flour-streaked face, and hands covered in food dye, she cannot help but finally acknowledge the knotting in her stomach. All the years of denying her feelings rush to the surface at once and she knows that as stupid and corny as it is, she has fallen in love with her best friend.
~*~*~*~
Gavin doesn’t like how Monroe makes him remember high school and the time he would spend looking sideways at Lainey, trying to figure out what all the other boys saw in her. All he saw were the same green eyes, the same milk chocolate coloured hair, the same smile that lifted on the right first, the same sense of humour that could make anyone’s day.
The eighteen year old him would have been a liar if he said that he never thought about Lainey as more than a friend. But then, he was an eighteen-year-old boy, so what did he know?
So when on Christmas Eve Lainey asks him to leave her and her mother alone for a few hours, he finds himself at the local pond watching children he no longer recognizes learn to skate. With nothing else to do, he sits with a coffee and wonders when he started honestly caring about Lainey the way he does now.
It doesn’t take long for him to realise, that deep down, he has always felt this way. This is the reason that every girlfriend was compared to Lainey in one way or another, the reason that he is the only person who can call her Elaine without mortal threat, for the same reason that they can co-exist so well.
Putting his head in his hands, Gavin wonders if he is just imagining it, if being back home has warped him somehow. If he just wants to be in love with Lainey because it would make things easier. Because if he loved her, shouldn’t he have known by now? Shouldn’t he have been unable to live without her? Shouldn’t he have wanted to punch any man who came within five feet of her?
~*~*~*~
Leaving her mother weeping in the kitchen, Lainey storms out of the house, not knowing where she is going. As she strolls around the residential area of Monroe, tries to push the conversation with her mother out of her head - but she can’t. The look in her mothers eyes, once so full of life, now seem dead and meaningless. The lines on her face had deepened in just ten months, and Lainey wasn’t entirely sure that her mother would be around for another Christmas.
Soon, her thoughts move to how much her sister has changed after just three months of studying abroad. In retrospect, Lainey realises that her disbelief at her baby sister growing up must have been almost identical to what her parents felt when she and Gavin returned from Georgia for the first Christmas. Something in her chest clicks over, as it often does now whenever she thinks of Gavin, when she realises that though they’ve never been a couple, never kissed, never been more than friends, they have always been a single entity to so many of their friends and family.
As she rounds the East bank of the old pond, more memories hit her and she is suddenly angry with herself. In falling for Gavin, it seems like she has taken the easy way out. For that one moment, she wants nothing more than to get in her car and drive as fast as she can to Detroit and get on the first plane back to D.C. In frustration, she kicks at the snow, wishing it could be her subconscious.
Sighing, she lists the reasons she can’t leave in her head, and like magic, as she thinks of #7: Couldn’t bear to strand Gavin in Monroe alone, she catches sight of a familiar face on the other side of the pond, his frosted breath calling to her like Morse Code.
~*~*~*~
Gavin has retreated so far into his own thoughts that he doesn’t even notice Lainey come up behind him, doesn’t feel her arm around his shoulders until she nudges him.
“Penny for your thoughts?” startled, Gavin looks up and catches her eye. (Mistake number 1)
Suddenly, he wants to be anywhere but sitting on a bench at the old pond next to Lainey. He wants - needs - to… breaking the eye contact with Lainey, Gavin casts his gaze around, for something, anything to do.
“Skating! When was the last time you went skating?” (Mistake number 2) Something in his voice is harsh and rushed and can’t be blamed on the weather.
He sees the grief in Lainey’s eyes, not at all hidden by her hair falling in her face.
“Last Christmas with Dad.” Well, shit, thinks Gavin, in your effort to prove you aren’t in love with her, not only have you managed to prove to yourself that you are obviously in love with her, you’re well on your way to ensuring she’ll never love you the same.
Buoyed by a sudden wish to make her smile like she hasn’t in almost a week, Gavin pulls Lainey to her feet and half drags her over to the skating rental booth.
“Remember that talk we had about living life to remember your father and not get all depressed because you can’t do things with him anymore? We are going skating. C’mon, it’s Christmas Eve, we will have fun!” As Lainey looks at him like he has lost his mind, Gavin wonders if this isn’t true. A ghost of Christmas exuberance has seized him, and is making him say things he would never say.
So, as they simply glide around the pond, Gavin is content with sneaking sideways glances at Lainey, watching the delicate snowflakes fall on her hat, wishing there were someway he could change things between them.
There is a moment though, when Lainey stumbles slightly on an uneven patch, and Gavin reaches out and grabs her hips, and somehow Lainey’s hands are on his chest, and their breath is mixing, and he is close enough to see the few faint freckles on her cheeks, and she seems to take a half step closer to him and there is a single moment when he could let go and carry on, but he doesn’t and that moment turns into a moment where all it would take is a slant of the head and another half step forward, and he could kiss her.
He settles for a hug and a laugh and carries on.
(Mistake number 3)
~*~*~*~
Eight o’clock on Christmas morning found Lainey standing in her room, wrapped in a towel, combing her hair. Overall, she supposed, the trip hadn’t been as terrible as she had thought. There were moments of course, where she had frozen, unable to move for fear of breaking down at the memory of her father. But this happened in Washington too, just less often.
Because it was Christmas, and she was being completely honest with herself - if no one else - Lainey was able to admit that the hardest part had been Gavin. Being with him, seeing how easily they understand each other, how easily they slip into a holiday routine, has made her realise that maybe, taking the chance and actively loving him, would be worth the risk of losing her best friend.
Especially after yesterday at the pond.
In the last fifteen hours she had thought about it countless times and could only conclude that actually, he had almost kissed her. She wasn’t delusional; he really had held her that tight, really had looked at her like that.
But then, did it mean anything? So he almost kissed her, so what? She had kissed many guys and it meant nothing. Shaking her head, she started to get dressed, fake smile first, to head downstairs and run through the Christmas ritual, even if it is going to be wrong without Dad.
She is halfway dressed when there is a knock at her door and assuming it is Jessica wanting to borrow earrings or a shirt or perfume, she opens the door without thinking.
To say she is surprised to see Gavin standing on the other side is an understatement. Too late she remembers that she is only in jeans and a lacy blue bra. Too late she thinks about grabbing her dressing gown. As the haze of embarrassment fades slightly, Lainey sees that while he is blushing, Gavin is not looking at her face. As if reading her mind, Gavin’s gaze snaps up to meet hers and before she can move, his hands are cradling her face, pulling her closer until their lips touch. Almost immediately her hands find their way to his belt loops and pull him even closer, wanting to savour as much of this as she can.
And as he moves her backwards toward the bed, she can taste the mint of his toothpaste and feel the ease with which they come together. She refuses to pause and talk, to look at him, to hesitate, instead she gives herself fully to her senses and hopes they don’t mislead her.
~*~*~*~
For the next twelve hours, Lainey and Gavin manage to talk about nothing other than presents and Christmas dinner and who should set the table. They each do different things - he carves the turkey when it becomes clear that none of them know how, she serves the pies and cookies made for dessert. They stand next to each other, washing and drying dishes, making trivial talk about the weather and the New Year.
The one thing they do not do it talk about how Lainey’s lacy blue bra ripped. Or why Gavin now has a purple bruise on his collarbone.
But as Gavin sits out on the Merrick’s back porch, the remnants of soapy bubbles from washing up still on his sleeves, he wishes they would. Losing Lainey would be devastating but for Christmas morning to have just been grief or pity - that would be even worse. He knows there is no way he would trade that half hour for anything. But… he wishes Lainey would talk to him and let him know everything is fine.
As if his yearning thoughts had summoned her, Lainey suddenly appears at his side. It takes him a great deal of effort to fight a ten-year-old habit to put his arm around her shoulder. Instead he stays still, facing north on the porch, watching the incessant snowfall.
“I love you, you know. Not like we’ve said for years, like a best friend. I am in love with you. My heart flips when you touch me, even the littlest thing. And, whatever, you can take this how you want, but I think the risk is worth it.” Words are hurtling out of Lainey’s mouth and it takes a moment for Gavin’s brain catch up.
“You… what?”
“I love you. I think I always have a bit, but it seemed too… easy to fall in love with you. You’ll always be my best friend, and I’m fine with that. I just think you should know I love you.”
“You keep saying that. You really mean it?” Never before has he felt of perplexed. Things like this don’t happen. She was meant to come up and tell him it was all a big mistake and please move out as soon as you can. Not this.
“Uh. Yeah. That’s why I’m telling you.” She looks so confused that he just has to kiss her again. And talk to her in the dark of Christmas night. And make snow angels with a heart between them.
And tell her for once and for all: “I love you”. Because it’s Christmas and that’s what you do at Christmas, you spend it with the people you love, and you thank deities that you are still happy.
But to Gavin and Lainey, Christmas will always be snow and ice-skating and The Beatles and kissing outdoors and vanilla cookies and fairy lights.
~*~*~*~
The first day of the New Year, Lainey is woken, not by a pounding headache, or the urge to throw up, but the smell of strong coffee, and the delicate touch of someone pushing her hair behind her ear. With a smile, she rolls over and opens her eyes, knowing there is only one person who cares enough.
locked: jan. 2010
© caitlin a 2009
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