Sprinkle All The Way (Evergreen Lake: Under the Mistletoe)

Chapter 24

twenty-four

VIOLET

I stood in the hallway with Noah for twenty minutes, letting him get it all out before asking if he had enough blankets to build a fort. He looked at me confused, but led me to his closet with extra blankets and sheets.

Now, Christmas music plays from Ginger’s record player as he brings up a box of twinkle lights from the basement.

“You were right,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “There was a box of lights in the basement.”

“Of course I was right, Ginger wouldn’t have tossed those,” I say, satisfied I was correct when I thought I saw a box earlier and hopeful once we plug them in and see they still work.

“Want to tell me what your plan is here?” he asks, setting the box next to the blankets and chairs I’ve moved from the table to the middle of the living room.

“We’re going to make a fort,” I say cheerily, standing tall and placing my hands on my hips.

This doesn’t get the reaction I was hoping for. Instead of an excited response and something to cheer him up he only furrows his eyebrows and rubs the back of his neck .

“What? You don’t like the idea?” I ask, dropping my hands from my waist.

“I’ve actually never built one before,” he admits to the floor, slowly looking at me to where my mouth is hung wide open at his confession.

“Noah. Callahan,” I emphasize each syllable of his name. “You’ve lived on this earth for twenty six years and have never once experienced the joy of laying on the floor under a fort of blankets?” A ping of sadness tugs on my heart at the thought. I spent countless hours building forts in the living room with my sister. With our age difference, when she first went away to college it became a tradition to build one and have a sleepover the first night she would come home in between each semester.

“I never had anyone to build them with.” He shrugs, leaning against one of the chairs in the room.

“Well, that ends tonight. Now you have me, and Simon, but he won’t be much help. He can supervise.” I gesture over to Simon who is in the middle of licking his ass on the cat tree.

“Sounds good, tell me what to do, boss,” he says, standing straight and giving me a salute. My stomach flutters at the thought of being the one who gets to boss him around, since he’s spent the past few weeks teaching me what to do. Now I finally get to teach him a few things.

Noah turns out to be a great listener, and his reflexes really showed whenever I tripped over the blankets and almost sent the whole thing crashing down. I taught him how to set up the chairs for optional space inside the fort, with the chairs facing backward. When he got worried laying inside wasn’t going to be comfortable I assured him it would. With a combination of other blankets and the comforter from his bed, his skepticism quickly diminished.

The final step of stringing up the lights is the trickiest, since there needs to be optimal lighting inside the fort, but draping them right over the blankets is a fire hazard.

“Up one more inch,” I tell Noah, whose scent surrounds me as I stand under him and watch him lift the lights higher on the wall.

“Better?” he asks, pausing and keeping the lights in place.

“Perfect.” I smile at him, ripping off a piece of tape and handing it to him so he can secure the lights. “Now the best part”—he raises one eyebrow at me—“we get to go inside.” His expression darkens and my heartbeat becomes more apparent in my ears.

“Wait, I have one more thing to do before we relax,” I tell him, holding up one finger and ditching the tape in the kitchen. He eyes me curiously and follows me toward the front of the apartment. “I also saw some stuff in the basement we need to bring up, that’s how I knew about the lights,” I tell him, leaving the apartment and down the stairs.

“What stuff?” he asks, and I can envision the confused expression on his face behind me.

“Window decorating stuff. Better late than never, right? I was thinking we could do them since we’re stuck here?” I tell him.

He sighs and says, “Sure, why not?”

The squeal of excitement that leaves me startles him, and thankfully causes him to laugh as he gestures toward the door. I lead us to the basement where we both grab boxes before heading through the kitchen, that I cleaned while he was upstairs, and into the shop’s front area.

Flipping on the lights, I walk to the newspaper covered windows.

“Would you like to do the honors?” I spin toward him, holding the corner of one of the papers.

He smirks at me, and my stomach does a tumble, before he meets me at the window. His large hand covers mine, and it’s warm from his skin but cold from the glass.

“Together?” he asks.

“Together,” I agree as we rip off the first piece.

“Holy shit,” he says as we both gape at the scene behind the glass. The snow is still coming down, and the visibility on the street is minimal. The sun has long set and I can see the lights of various businesses through the darkness, but no movement. There has to be at least five feet of snow, and I have no doubt it could get taller than me.

“Well, we’re definitely stuck for Christmas.” I laugh, pulling another piece of newspaper off the glass.

It doesn’t take us long to clean off the windows, but my fingers are getting colder the longer we stay near the window. Pulling out all the decorations has caused us to sneeze and cough due to all the dust they’ve collected.

Noah tells me stories about various different decorations. One year Ginger took the window chalk markers away from him for trying to draw penises. Then Sydney was banned from helping when she kept moving the reindeer stickers into the suggestive positions. Half of the decorations are unusable because of their old age, but we manage to get something on all the windows.

We step back to take in our masterpiece, and he drapes his arm over my shoulder, pulling me close. It’s lit by the snow and lights, and my ‘Opening Soon’ might be backward to us but it’s beautiful.

A sense of accomplishment fills my chest that I haven’t felt in months, and I’m suddenly grateful for all the work Ginger left behind for us to pick up. With him by my side and I’ve found a purpose I didn’t know I had. Like everything is finally right where it needs to be.

“We make a pretty good team, don’t we?” he asks, pulling me from my train of thought.

“We do,” I smile at him. “But we need to clean up,” I say, pointing to the dust that covers both of us from head to toe.

He smirks, and I can see the mischief in his eyes. “You put these boxes in the basement and then wait maybe two more minutes and meet me upstairs,” he says before disappearing into the kitchen and running upstairs.

Anticipation starts to flood my veins as I gather the boxes together and head to the basement.