“I’m not sure I can make any promises,” he whispered back. She glared at him. “What? I had to get up at 5 in the morning for work! Besides, they’re all great, I’m sure you’ll get along well with them. You and Ellie had fun talking back at my parents’ house, right?”
“We only talked for like five minutes!”
“But you still had a good time.”
“If you fall asleep, I’m pouring cold water on your face.”
“Okay, I guess I deserve that.”
They sat down at the dining room table. Kennedy ended up sitting between Jared and Ellie.
“Hi again,” Ellie said. “Sorry I didn’t catch you on your way in.”
Kennedy waved her hand dismissively.
“No problem,” she said. “You were dealing with the very important issue of what movie we have to watch tonight.”
“Ah yes, the most important decision that could be made. Do you support my choice?”
“Absolutely. The Grinch is a holiday classic.”
They passed around the food and everyone served themselves. The conversation remained light-hearted and was mostly the siblings catching Parker and Greta up on everything that had been going on recently. Kennedy didn’t keep up with everything they were discussing but she was happy to just sit there, so long as nobody tried to talk to her. The topics didn’t turn to anything she could comment on until dessert.
“So, Kennedy, you met our parents last weekend?” Parker asked.
“Oh yeah, I did,” Kennedy said. “They were really nice. Very welcoming!”
“Overbearing, you mean,” Jared said.
Kennedy internally agreed but she didn’t want to say so out loud, so she said, “No, of course not! They were just excited to meet me.”
“How bad were they compared to usually, Jared?” Parker asked. Jared tilted his head as he thought.
“Not as bad as they have been,” he settled on. “But admittedly, I have pretty low expectations.”
“They really weren’t that bad,” Kennedy tried again.
“It’s okay, Kennedy, you don’t need to defend them to us,” Parker said. “They’re our parents and we all love them, but they can definitely be a lot, especially when you first meet them.”
“You’re all like that,” Greta said. “Not as bad but still. After the first time I came over, the whole family banded together to get you to ask me out.”
“So, as you can see, we’re an interesting family,” Parker said to Kennedy. She smiled uncomfortably, unsure of what she was supposed to say. Sensing that, Jared tried to change the subject.
“This is a great cake,” he said. “Who made it?”
“Parker and the kids did,” Greta said. “I think they did a fantastic job.”
“Except when they tried to eat the butter and sugar,” Parker said.
“We’re not going to talk about that,” Greta said.
“Greta likes to think that if she pretends something didn’t happen then it didn’t actually happen.”
“It’s working out pretty well for me, actually,” Greta said.
“It works well until our children wake up sick from eating handfuls of butter,” Parker countered.
“It’s not like I just let them do it! I— never mind, we can talk about this later. How are the rest of you liking it?”
They all said that they were enjoying it. Ellie finished her piece less than a minute later, dropped her fork and said, “Okay, dinner’s over. Let’s go watch The Grinch!”
“Let us finish our food, will you?” Jared griped.
“Hurry up!”
“We’re really not taking that long! Just because you eat at the speed of life doesn’t mean the rest of us do too.”
Ellie sighed loudly. Kennedy laughed a little and saw Ellie smile at her out of the corner of her eye. A couple of minutes later, everyone finished their food.
“Does anybody want anything else to eat?” Parker asked. Everyone shook their heads.
“Come on, let’s go to watch The Grinch!” Ellie said giddily.
“Okay, Ellie, we’re going,” Parker said. “I haven’t seen you this excited about something since…”
“Last week?” Lincoln asked.
“Yesterday?” Jared asked.
“I was going to go with this morning,” Greta said.
“Okay, point taken,” Parker said. “Let’s go watch the movie.”
“Do you need help putting the dishes away?” Kennedy asked.
“Oh no, it’s fine!” Greta said. “You can just leave everything here for now, we’ll clean it up tonight.”
“Are you sure?” Kennedy asked. “I don’t mind helping you clean up.”
“Oh, you’re so sweet,” Greta said.
“Yeah, why can’t the rest of you be more like her?” Parker teased.
“Because we don’t have to suck up to you,” Ellie said sweetly. “You have to love us because we’re your family.”
“Yeah, that’s about right,” Jared agreed, while Lincoln said, “What she said.”
Parker shook his head, but he didn’t argue.
“Come on, let’s head to the living room,” Greta said. They all got up and walked down the hall. “Anyone need a refill on wine?”
“I’ll take some,” Kennedy said.
“Sure thing. Want to come with me?”
Kennedy glanced at Jared to make sure he was okay with her leaving him, though she knew it would probably be fine since she was leaving him with his own family, and once he nodded that he was fine, she agreed to go with Greta. They walked into the kitchen and Greta handed her the bottle of white wine, while she grabbed red for herself.
“I thought you might need some time away from the rest of the family,” Greta explained. “I know from experience that it can be a lot.”
Kennedy smiled gratefully. “You can say that again.”
“Are you having a good time, at least?” She paused for a second. “To be clear, you are welcome to say no.”
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m having a good time,” Kennedy said. She was surprised to find that she was telling the truth. Although she was being introduced under false pretenses, she really enjoyed spending time with Jared’s siblings. “The wine is probably helping that, to be fair.”
Greta laughed. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
“Come on, we can head back in,” Kennedy said. “I feel bad leaving Jared there alone.”
“He’s used to it,” Greta said but walked toward the living room. “This is the first Christmas he’s had a girlfriend.”
Kennedy inwardly cringed. The knowledge that Jared had had a boyfriend for the past five years and still didn’t feel comfortable telling his family was eating her up inside. She hated helping him live the lie, but she certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone the truth without his permission.
Kennedy sat down on the couch in the spot Jared had saved for her. Once again, she ended up sitting between Jared and Ellie. Greta went to put the movie in the DVD player.
Jared frowned and looked around, as though he was looking for something.
“Hey, where are Millie and Olive?” he asked.
“Did you only just notice that they weren’t here?” Parker asked.
“No, I just assumed they were asleep already, but it occurred to me that we got here so early, there’s no way they were already asleep.”
“They’re at my parents’ place,” Greta explained. “We thought it would easier to have people over if they weren’t here and my parents love when they stay over, so it all worked out perfectly.”
“While they’re not here, actually, we need to wrap some presents,” Parker said. “You guys don’t mind if we do that while we watch the movie, right?”
“Of course not!” Ellie said. “Actually, we can help you! Right, guys?”
There was a general consensus that everyone was willing to help wrap presents so Parker and Greta went to grab them from their room.
“We have to hide them
up there so the girls don’t find them before Christmas,” Greta explained. “For two five-year-olds, they are strangely good at finding our hiding spots.”
“I think it’s a twin thing,” Parker said. “Like their combined intelligence makes them the equivalent of a ten-year-old.”
“We used to be like that back in the day,” Lincoln said. “I guess you were less so, Parker, since you were an only child for a while, but me, Ellie and Jared would get into all sorts of trouble when we worked together.”
“But that’s because Ellie was just an evil mastermind,” Parker said. “If it was just you and Jared, you wouldn’t have managed nearly as much. And without you two there, she still would have been just as sneaky.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Ellie said. “You see, I never wanted to risk getting in trouble, so I would always send them to do my dirty work. If I didn’t have them to do that for me, I don’t know that I would have been so bad.”
“I think you would have,” Parker said. “You were a force to be reckoned with.”
Ellie laughed. “I guess that’s why I decided to dress up as a villain for Halloween every year.”
“Wait, you did that too?” Kennedy asked. “I thought I was the only one! My parents started letting me pick what I wanted to be for Halloween when I started kindergarten and every single year, I would go as a Disney villain while everyone else in my grade would be princesses or superheroes.”
“Ellie was the exact same,” Parker confirmed. “My personal favourite was when she was in grade two and went as the Evil Queen from Snow White.”
“One of the girls in my class went as Snow White and she screamed when she saw me,” Ellie said. There was an evil grin on her face. “It was really fun. For me, at least. I think I might have traumatized her.”
“Seeing you as the Evil Queen traumatized her?” Kennedy asked doubtfully.
“Oh no, I think I traumatized her by offering her an apple. She ate it too fast and started coughing, and I cackled. I think she thought I was genuinely trying to poison her.”
“She had already perfected her evil laugh by then,” Parker added. “It was… quite something.”
“You skipped a grade after that year, though, right?” Greta asked. Ellie nodded. “Well, that’s good, then. You weren’t in the same class after that.”
“She still had to suffer from November to June seeing Ellie every day,” Parker said.
“She eventually got over it,” Ellie said. “It’s not like I actually poisoned her or anything. But she did ask the teacher if she could switch seats, so she didn’t have to sit next to me anymore…”
“Can you blame her?” Jared asked. “She legitimately thought you were the Evil Queen, and you were trying to kill her.”
“Yeah… Elementary school was an interesting time,” Ellie said. She looked at Kennedy. “Did you have any experiences like that?”
“Nothing as good as that,” Kennedy said. “When I was nine, I was obsessed with Coraline, so I dressed up as the ‘Other Mom’. My mom’s a makeup artist and she was really into Halloween, so she did this really cool makeup for it. It looked like I had buttons instead of eyes whenever I closed my eyes. That really freaked people out.”
“That sounds awesome, though!” Ellie said. “I think we would have gotten along as kids.”
“Definitely. Oh, did you ever use fake blood in your costumes? When I was ten or eleven, I made it look like I was bleeding out of my eyes, but I guess I made it a little too realistic, because it freaked a lot of kids out. Even when I went tricking or treating, the parents stared at me.”
“Oh, fake blood was the best!” Ellie said. “I started to get into really creepy costumes like that when I was in middle school.”
“You don’t think your earlier costumes were creepy?” Parker asked.
“Definitely not as bad as when I got to middle school and high school,” Ellie said. “But anyway, it’s Christmas now, not Halloween. Unfortunately. So, let’s wrap some presents!”
“Okay, there are all the presents we need to wrap,” Greta said. She gestured to a pile of boxes in the corner of the room. She and Parker had placed them there earlier without anyone noticing.
“There’s so many!” Lincoln said. “Are you sure you only have two kids?”
“They’re not all for Millie and Olive,” Greta said. “It’s just easier to get all the presents wrapped when they’re out of the house. Otherwise, they try to help and then I spend the next hour trying to get scotch tape out of my kids’ hair.”
“That’s a good point, let’s get started,” Lincoln said. They all moved to sit on the floor. Greta passed out boxes while Parker gave everyone wrapping paper rolls.
“We’ve only got two pairs of scissors, so you’re going to have to share,” he said. He kept one pair for himself and gave the other to Jared and they all got to work.
“Wow, Kennedy, you’re great at this!” Jared said after she had expertly wrapped three presents in the time that he had only wrapped one.
“I had a seasonal job of wrapping presents at the mall for all of high school,” she explained. “It was painful at the times, but it meant that I got very fast at wrapping.”
“Maybe we should just let Kennedy wrap all the presents,” Ellie said. She held up her arm. The present was dangling from her hand because had accidentally taped around her hand as well as the box.
“How did you manage that?” Kennedy laughed. She helped Ellie get her hand untangled then re-taped the wrapping paper for her. “Well, it’s a bit messy but that just means it has character.”
“Who’s it for?” Parker asked.
“Uh…” Ellie stared at the package blankly for a few seconds.
“Ellie! You did not forget who that gift was for in the two minutes it took you to wrap it.”
“You think it only took me two minutes to wrap that?” Ellie asked incredulously. “But anyway, I remember what it was now. It’s for the present steal game at the family Christmas party.”
“Nobody’s going to pick it if it’s wrapped like that!” Parker said, pointing at it. Ellie waved him off.
“I know what it is, Parker, if nobody else picks it then I will,” she reassured him.
“Pretty sure that’s cheating,” Lincoln said. “The whole point of the game is you don’t know what is in the gift.”
“What does it matter?” Ellie asked. “Somebody has to open it.”
“Whatever, it doesn’t matter,” Parker said. “Just keep wrapping. Or… maybe you shouldn’t wrap any more gifts if they’re all going to end up looking like that.”
“Oh, come on, Ollie and Millie are just going to rip the wrapping paper off, anyway!”
“I want the presents to look good under the tree, not like somebody already ripped them apart!”
“It does not look that bad!” Ellie defended.
“Here, Ellie, I can teach you how to wrap it properly,” Kennedy offered. “It’s really easy, you just need to learn the trick to it.”
Ellie sighed. “Yeah, that would be good, thanks. I think it’s a bit sad that I’m twenty-five and incapable of properly wrapping a gift.”
“Only a bit?” Jared asked. Ellie threw a roll of tape at him.
“Here, Ellie,” Kennedy said. She showed her how to wrap a present while explaining what she was doing the whole time. Ellie then tried to wrap the next present with Kennedy’s help. The entire time, Kennedy tried to ignore the butterflies that appeared in her stomach every time she brushed hands with Ellie.
“I did it!” Ellie cried when they finished that gift. “Thank you, Kennedy.”
She threw the present on the stack of already wrapped ones and grabbed the next box.
“We only have a couple left,” Parker noted. “Why don’t we finish them up then we can watch the Grinch?”
“Perfect,” Lincoln said. He looked at Ryleigh. “You’ve been really quiet, babe. Everything good?”
“Hm? Oh, I’m fine. Just concentrating hard
.” She held up the present she had been working on. It was beautifully wrapped with the ribbon tied in a bow on top.
“Wow!” Kennedy said. “And here I thought I was good at wrapping presents.”
Ryleigh blushed. “I also used to work at the gift-wrapping section of stores along with being an elf at the mall. My manager in my first year was militant about us making the wrapping look pretty and… here we are.”
“Okay, I vote Ryleigh and Kennedy wrap the last few presents,” Lincoln said. “The rest of us aren’t nearly that good.”
“Pass it,” Kennedy said. Parker threw one of the boxes to her, then slid the other one to Ryleigh. The two girls made quick work of wrapping the presents and added it to the large pile. “Should we put them under the tree?”
“Let’s do it later,” Ellie said. “I want to start the movie!”
“Why are you so excited about this, El?” Parker asked.
“I don’t know, I just like watching movies.”
They all got off the floor and moved to their previous positions on the couch. Kennedy realized that she ended up sitting much closer to Ellie than Jared. She knew she should move to be closer to her supposed boyfriend, but she couldn’t deny how much she enjoyed her hand brushing against Ellie’s. As Greta turned off the lights and pressed play on the movie, Kennedy could have sworn that Ellie shifted a little closer to her. Kennedy tried to tell herself that it didn’t mean what she thought it did, then failing that, she hoped that nobody noticed the way her cheeks were tinged red.
As promised, on the night before Christmas Eve, Kennedy stayed with Jared and his family. It was two in the morning when Kennedy finally gave up on falling asleep for the night. She got out of bed, being careful not to wake Jared up as she did so, put on a sweater and went downstairs.
She was surprised to find the kitchen light on when she went downstairs. She self-consciously crossed her arms and walked inside, prepared to explain that she was just looking for a glass of water if she ran into one of Jared’s parents. She walked and stopped short when she saw that it was actually Ellie inside.
“Hey,” Ellie said. She was leaning against the counter with a glass of water in hand. “Can’t sleep?”
Come To Stay Page 13