First Christmas

by Trevor McCall

  As she hung from Kyle’s side-view mirror she decided she would cross that unfinished bridge when the time was right. For now, she would enjoy the rest of this Christmas in whatever ways presented themselves to her. Aubrey thought the look in Kyle’s face said he wanted to give her a kiss. She tried to make the look in her face say she wanted to be kissed back. As Kyle finally got his automatic window all the way down, Aubrey ventured to lead with a joke. “Hi, boss,” she said.

  Kyle broke out in laughter. When he settled enough to speak, he said, “and with that, you ruined it.”

  “Hopefully, I’ve postponed it, not ruined it.” Aubrey said. She then jumped off the running board of Kyle’s truck and circled to the passenger’s side door. She climbed in and buckled herself up as Kyle crept down the driveway in reverse.

  “I hope you’re ready to do some manual labor today.” Kyle teased. “There won’t be any pencil pushing in this new job you’re auditioning for.”

  “Auditioning,” Aubrey pretended her feelings were hurt. “I thought I already had the position.”

  “I won’t make any promises until I’ve seen how you handle a cordless drill.” Kyle continued in the same vein as before. Cordless drill was the first tool he could think of they would actually be using today.

  “What makes you think I can’t handle it?” Aubrey enjoyed this fake fighting thing she and Kyle did. If she let herself think about it, something she was not going to do, she would have attributed their toothy banter to that kiss they wanted to engage in—but kept avoiding.

  “It’s not that I think you can’t handle it. It’s just that I feel I have to be fair to the other applicants.” Kyle leaned closer to Aubrey and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “If you promise not to tell anyone, the HR department of Morgan Construction LLC has confirmed they want you for the position. My job as boss, however, is to make sure you don’t feel overly comfortable on your first day.”

  “Is that right?” Aubrey smiled. Even when Kyle pretended, he couldn’t keep up a charade of despotism for long. She guessed that was why he had added that part about HR already having decided about the applicants. He wanted to take the bite out of the charade. Aubrey thought he must be a wonderful person to have for a boss.

  “Yes, but like I said before, please don’t tell anyone in the lobby as it isn’t common knowledge yet.” Kyle reached toward the console and plugged in his strand of Christmas lights. “Can’t believe I drove this far and forgot to plug those in.”

  “I love those lights, by the way. It demonstrates more than a passing commitment to the Christmas Spirit.” Aubrey wanted to say it reminded her of something her father would have done if he had thought of it.

  “Thank you. I can’t take the credit for the idea. I was in the drive thru of a fast food restaurant, which shall not be named, when I saw it in the window of the SUV in front of me. All vehicles have outlets nowadays, so I thought, why not? To me, it’s a pretty easy way to stay in the Christmas Spirit, no matter where I’m going.” To Kyle, this exercise in holiday cheer seemed natural, almost inevitable. Doing things like that to celebrate the season was a part of who he was as a person.

  “As long as you remember to turn them on.” Aubrey added.

  Kyle smiled. “Exactly.” Kyle put his blinker on and began to slow down.

  Aubrey recognized the driveway of Eric and Jenna’s house. “This is where we go for your Christmas job?” She wasn’t convinced there was an actual job waiting at the end of the driveway, and her voice betrayed her disbelief.

  “Maybe Christmas present would have been a better description than Christmas job. Although, don’t worry, we will be doing work. I remember how you put on your resume you were very interested in breaking a sweat. We will most certainly be doing that.” Kyle reached the end of the driveway and turned off his truck.

  Aubrey enjoyed the warmth in the cab. It made her not want to get out just yet. “In that case, what is the job?”

  “Well, I’ve been collecting donations at the shop for the last few weeks for those three.” Kyle pointed at the house indicating the three he referred to were the three who lived there, when it occurred to him his math was off by one. “Those four, I suppose. Anyway, Monday, I went online and bought them the crib and the bassinette they wanted but didn’t get at Jenna’s baby shower. Things are tight for them and I know they’re waiting until closer to the due date to buy them. Today, you and I are here to put it all together for them while they’re in Marion visiting Eric’s folks.” Kyle finished saying this like it were the most normal way in the world to spend one’s Christmas Eve. When Aubrey stared at him like he was an alien, he added, “what?”

  “What? What do you mean, what? Are you trying to get nominated for sainthood?” Aubrey thought what Kyle was doing was one of the most beautiful things a person could do this time of year. She didn’t know how to say that directly, so she couched it in more of the fighting language that had become one of their things to do when they were together this Christmas.

  Kyle smiled at her playful taunting. “What can I say? I like Christmas.”

  “I like Christmas too, but I’m never going to receive any medals because of it,” Aubrey replied. “Unless I’m standing beside you.”

  Kyle examined Aubrey’s observation more seriously than she meant for him to examine it. He didn’t want her under the impression he was doing what he did for the credit. “I hope I don’t ever get any medals. That would ruin it for me.”

  Aubrey was less sure she knew what motivated Kyle. “If you don’t do it for the feeling you get when you know you’re being a good person, then why do you do it?”

  That was a tough one. Kyle had never parsed his relationship with Christmas before. It was something he accepted, like the fact he had dark brown hair. As he sat there inside the cab of his cooling truck, he began to see how he might explain it, so it made sense to Aubrey. “For me, Christmas is about the giving. And I don’t just mean the things you give that have to go in wrapping paper. Don’t get me wrong, those things are great too. But what Christmas really means to me is giving your time to someone else. Giving things you can’t buy in one of Mr. Clarke’s stores. It’s when those gifts are given, that the spirit of Christmas is strongest.”

  Kyle continued to think about it. He could see the topic was important to Aubrey, and thought he knew the reason for that, so he wanted to do the best job possible of answering her question. “It’s like this, Aubrey. Christmas is pure joy—like the morning sunrise, or a baby’s first laugh. It’s one of those things you feel in your heart so easily when you’re young. And then you spend the rest of your life trying to chase it away with grownup things you buy in stores. People go on and on about bills, and mortgages, and whatever the next political crisis is going to be, but none of that is real. Things that are real last. They don’t change. Things like Christmas, and… love.”

  Did he go too far? He roped it back in with a little of the self-deprecating humor he was famous for around Timberville. “Would you look at me, I’m as mushy as an old bowl of oatmeal this morning.”

  Aubrey disagreed. It was necessary to let Kyle know it, while it was still fresh in her mind. “I think what you just said was one of the most beautiful things I ever heard.” Aubrey smiled, “can you repeat it word for word so this time I can use my phone to record you? I mean you’ve gotten so many quotations from me this week, I should get at least one from you.” An impish light sparkled in Aubrey’s eyes, “that way I could put you on the internet and collect one third of a cent every time somebody viewed you saying it. I’m pretty sure you would go viral. I would get rich.”

  “Beautiful or not, daylight’s wasting and we need to get this done before Eric and Jenna come home. I’m not sure how long they’re going to be in Marion, and we have a lot to do.” Although Kyle projected a sense of having moved past the moment he had with Aubrey, the truth was he couldn’t have been happier. It signaled to him he wasn’t silly for hoping something could be reignited be
tween them.

  “Right.” Suddenly Aubrey was hyper-aware of their situation. “Wait, do you have a key?”

  “I know where they keep the spare,” Kyle replied.

  “Of course, you do.” Aubrey and Kyle opened their doors at the same time. “What are the odds you’ll give on the two of us being the only people in the history of the world to get arrested for breaking and entering while trying to give a deserving family their surprise Christmas presents.” Aubrey said this as she stepped down from the truck.

  Kyle smiled from the snowy ground on the other side. “If Santa can do it every year without going to jail, why can’t we?” He waited for Aubrey’s smile to break across her face and then shut his door.

  After several minutes of digging around in the deep snow which surrounded the foundation of Eric and Jenna’s house, Kyle found the spare key in its hideaway rock. Aubrey looked at the mess they made in the snow and sighed. “Are you planning on giving them a call to let them know we were here?”

  “I wasn’t. Why?”

  Aubrey pointed at all the disturbed snow around the Lindsley front porch. “It looks like someone was here.”

  “It does, doesn’t it. I hadn’t thought about the snow tipping our hand. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should pin a note to the front door before we leave,” Kyle suggested.

  Aubrey acknowledged that would do the trick. “Probably a good idea. I know if I came home and saw a bunch of tracks in the snow around my house, I’d be scared to go inside. I’d probably get back in my car and dial 9-1-1.”

  Kyle inserted the hideaway key in the lock and opened the door. He propped the interior screen door open with the lock on the spring-loaded return mechanism. “I sure am glad you’re here now.”

  “Oh yeah, why is that?” Aubrey asked.

  “It would have been hard to carry the crib in all by myself.”

  “See you did need me after all. I knew I was going to be good at construction.”

  Several minutes later Aubrey and Kyle struggled through the narrow house carrying the bulky box which contained the crib. They were leaving a moderate trial of destruction in their wake. Magazines were knocked off coffee tables. A vase with a bouquet of live poinsettias tipped over. The water from this disaster narrowly avoided soaking the magazines where they lay beside the coffee table. Luckily for Aubrey and Kyle, the vase didn’t shatter when it hit the floor.

  Eventually they managed to get the crib and the baby stroller into the addition without claiming any more household objects as victims of their generosity. With everything safely unloaded, they decided to divide and conquer the tasks Kyle had planned as an early ‘Merry Christmas’ for the Lindsley family. He would stay in the addition and manage the construction of the presents for the baby, while Aubrey tried her best to clean up the mess they made while carrying in those presents.

  Aubrey was at the sink refilling the water in the vase for the poinsettias when Kyle appeared in the doorway. “What’s up,” she asked, innocently.

  Kyle frowned. It looked like he was biting down on his vision of virility. “I could use a little help…” Aubrey waited for him to finish. She wasn’t being kind. She enjoyed watching him squirm. “With the assembly,” Kyle mumbled.

  Aubrey heard what Kyle said, but acted as though she didn’t. She cupped her hand to her hear. “What was that, Kyle, I didn’t quite catch that last part.”

  Kyle liked that Aubrey felt this comfortable with him. “I said,” he started over again at his usual volume and in his clearest voice, “I might need some help with the assembly.”

  Aubrey shut the water off. She placed the vase on the counter and looked at Kyle. “I would be glad to offer whatever assistance I can. After all, of the two of us, I was the one who got an A+ in that AP Calculus class we took.” Together they walked off in the direction of the unassembled furniture.

  Aubrey and Kyle were both on the floor in the addition looking at the parts spread out in front of them. They were on their hands and knees. It looked as though they were involved in a high-stakes game of Twister in which only they could see the colors on the invisible plastic mat below them. Aubrey pored over the booklet of directions, while Kyle tried to match the pictures to the pieces which were strewn on the floor. They weren’t making progress.

  Aubrey sighed. “I don’t think whoever wrote these instructions actually used them to put this thing together. I think they just kind of told a story about what putting one of these together might look like in a perfect world.”

  “Now you see what I was saying.”

  “I really do.” Aubrey fell silent. She picked up the instruction booklet and flipped through it. “What other languages are in this thing? I took two years of French in college.” Aubrey found the French section in the booklet and concentrated on it.

  After she had spent a few minutes trying out the French, Kyle asked, “is that any better?”

  Aubrey shook her head. “It seems to me like they’re just going on an on about a broken outlet cover. I don’t really see what that has to do with a crib.”

  Kyle laughed. “You were a lot better at Calculus than you are at French. You should stick with the English instructions.”

  Aubrey leafed through the booklet from front to back. “Do they have an 800 number in here anywhere we can call for help?” Aubrey was getting desperate.

  “I didn’t see one,” Kyle replied.

  “How about a You Tube video? Someone has to have made one of those. As hard as these directions are to understand, a video showing it successfully put together would probably get a million hits.” Aubrey committed to grasping at every available straw. She pointed to an L-shaped piece with a spring-loaded tensioner on it. “Did we try…”

  Kyle cut her off. “We tried it.”

  Aubrey pointed at another random piece of crib hardware. “Well, how about that one. Did we try…”

  Kyle cut her off again. “Yep. We tried that one too.”

  “Man, we have been super resourceful.” Aubrey couldn’t resist complimenting their efforts.

  Kyle laughed. “We sure have.”

  “So, what do we do now?” Aubrey was out of ideas.

  Kyle took the instruction booklet from her and tossed it into the hallway. “We wing it.”

  “I like the sound of that.”

  *

  Several hours later they had assembled the crib and were putting the finishing touches on the bassinette. Boxes and Styrofoam littered the floor in the addition and the hallway floor which lead to the addition. Based on the clutter in the room compared to the sizes of the physical items they put together; a casual observer might think the packaging had been fruitful and multiplied.

  Kyle paced the room reading a new set of directions. This one was for the bassinette. He inadvertently tripped on a corner of one of the thick crib boxes. In what looked like super slow-motion to Aubrey, he began to fall. For reasons which he would never be able to articulate, he reached out and grabbed Aubrey by the waist as he fell. This caused him to drag her down on top of him.

  It may have been an accident, but neither was in a hurry to pick themselves up. They lay on the floor for several moments. The pressure of their attraction to each other collected in their cheeks as they lay. It turned them both bright shades of Christmas red. Neither one could make that first move that would end in a kiss, and neither one wanted to break the spell by doing anything that would call attention to the spell. Finally, Aubrey compromised. She gave Kyle a delicious, yet tiny, peck on the cheek.

  “You see,” Aubrey began, “this is why I didn’t want to work for you.”

  Kyle knew she was making a joke. He also knew better than to walk right into it. But, at the same time, she was laying on top of him and he didn’t want her to move. Therefore, he accepted the bait. “Oh yeah, why is that?”

  Aubrey was pleased he gave her the opportunity. “Because I knew you’d be laying down on the job.”

  Kyle laughed, “Aubrey Wilson.”

&nb
sp; “What?” Aubrey asked innocently.

  “That is the worst joke I’ve heard all year. And I live with myself.” He continued to laugh in spite of his assessment of the merits of the joke.

  Aubrey dug deep within her for the resolve to stand. She popped up off the floor as if it weren’t costing her an enormous amount of willpower. “You’re laughing pretty good to be claiming such record heights of unfunniness.”

  “You got me there.” Kyle rolled over and pushed himself off the floor too. He retrieved the instructions from the corner where they rested after his crash-landing with Aubrey. “This project is going to be the death of us.”

  “Literally, if you have any say in it.” Aubrey smiled to show she didn’t mean anything by it. “It looks like you’re almost done. Anything else you want me to work on while you’re finishing up.”

  A light bulb went off in Kyle’s head. “Oh my!”

  “What?”

  “I almost forgot the most crucial present.” He handed Aubrey the instruction booklet. “I would have been in the doghouse for sure if you hadn’t reminded me.” As he retreated down the hallway, he called back to Aubrey. “The French part in that booklet begins on page thirty-seven.”

  “Ha-ha.” Aubrey called after him.

  She was on her back underneath the bassinette tightening a screw with an Allen Wrench when Kyle returned carrying a large guitar case. He preemptively curtailed any questions about what the guitar was for by explaining its appearance as he walked into the room. “This is my present for Rachel. My feeling is the new baby has to be a little tough on her since she’s been the only child for so long. Plus, I couldn’t get all this,” Kyle indicated their massive and now mostly completed, construction project, “and not get something equally cool for her. You heard how much she was into the idea of playing guitar when we were here yesterday, so…”