Mine on Christmas

by Sarah J. Brooks

  Some girls might have gotten caught up in the fact that this relationship wasn’t going to move forward, but I wasn’t like that at all. I enjoyed my time with Thomas and when it was over that would be the end of it. Expectations were what killed relationships and if I didn’t have expectations then I wouldn’t be let down.

  I grabbed the clothes and went to Thomas’ room to shower. It took me nearly twenty minutes of standing naked and pushing buttons before I finally managed to get the hot water on. It was spraying out of every shower head there was and I could barely stand up. The shower heads on the wall were turbocharged and I couldn’t get them to calm down. I just braced myself and finished my shower as quickly as possible. Luckily, the off button was clearly visible and much easier to figure out than turning the thing on.

  I was nervous to visit with Rose’s family. She seemed like a really nice woman, or at least she did from the photos I’d seen. Although it would really help me with the planning of the party to talk to them I was also interested in talking to them for more personal reasons.

  Thomas didn’t talk much about Rose and the kids didn’t talk about her at all. I hoped her parents would be willing to give me a clearer picture of who Rose was and what she liked. The past tree had to be dedicated to Rose. She was such a big part of the family and it didn’t matter that she had been gone for years; she was still there with them every single day.

  As I hurried down the stairs I heard the voices of guests in the kitchen with everyone else. I was nervous to meet them. It wasn’t like I was anyone special to the family. Sure, I was sleeping with their late daughter’s husband, but no one needed to know that much information. To everyone in that room, I was just the party planner and I was okay with that.

  “Hello,” I said as I smiled and came into the kitchen.

  “Oh, you are the party planner,” Mrs. Steermen said as she rushed over to me and gave me a big hug. “I hear this party is going to be really amazing. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

  “Hear about it? Oh, you have to come,” I said not realizing that they were not planning on attending. “We have a ton planned and I really would love it if you would come. Well, I mean the kids and Thomas would love it. No one really cares if I would love it,” I laughed nervously.

  “We would really like you to come,” Jenna said. “And Niki, we love your plans and we do care.”

  “Thanks, Jenna. I’m falling in love with your family. I hope you guys don’t mind if we stay friends after the party.”

  “Not at all,” Samantha added. “From what I hear you have tamed Thomas quite a bit. He’s been nice to people and even managing to take some time off from work. That is a huge feat for him.”

  I wasn’t going to mention that I’d also manage to get him laid a lot over the last few weeks. The delicious detail of our sex life didn’t need to be known by anyone outside of Thomas and me.

  “I’m Mildred and this is Henry,” the grandparents said as they shook my hand. “Is there anything we can help with? We would love to be part of the planning if you need anything.”

  “Actually, I still haven’t had a chance to go through the old Christmas boxes very much. Would anyone be willing to do that with me this evening?”

  It turned out that everyone was interested in going through the old boxes with me. Now that Thomas was gone, the kids even wanted to go through them. It was pretty clear that they weren’t talking about their mom when their dad was home because they worried about how he would react. But now that he was gone, both of the kids were really excited to go through the boxes.

  “I wish we could decorate a little,” Jenna said.

  “Actually, the trees are out in the garage too. Maybe we could bring them in and get them set up. There’s a lot of decorating to do for the party. It wouldn’t hurt to get started on those trees.”

  “Yes, I’ll go get them,” Jackson said and rushed out to the garage.

  I went with him to help and Mr. Steermen joined us. We were able to get all of the trees into the house and situated where they had to be in the great room. Jenna and Samantha carried in the old Christmas decorations and we all went crazy putting things up on the tree.

  “I think these decorations should be on the present tree,” Jenna said holding up a cute photo of her.

  “This is your party. You can put your decorations on any tree you want. I do think the ones that are special to your mother should be on the past tree though. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yep,” she said and excitedly continued to add decorations to the trees.

  Jackson was just as excited as he went through the box and picked out some of his favorite decorations and put them up. Both of the grandparents, Samantha, and I sat back on the couch and watched as the kids had fun decorating the tree.

  “I don’t have all the rest of the decorations just yet, but I’ll finish with the trees tomorrow when they arrive,” I said as we watched.

  “Thank you for inviting us to the party. Sometimes I think Thomas gets wrapped up in what is going on in his life and forgets to include us in things,” Mildred said looking extremely sad about the distance between her and Thomas.

  “He definitely seems wrapped up in his life,” I agreed. “But I’m sure he will love having you guys at the party. He was even going to invite work friends so I know he will be fine with this.”

  The rest of the evening was spent laughing and decorating the trees. We even brought our dinner out to the couch and ate while the kids did all of the work. They put every single decoration up from the boxes that we had brought out. Most of them were on the Christmas past tree but they each picked a few decorations that they wanted on the other two trees.

  I snapped a photo of the trees as the kids decorated them. They were both smiling from ear to ear as the stood proudly in front of their masterpieces. I could only imagine how excited Thomas was going to be when he saw the final product and knew that the kids had participated in helping so much.

  This Christmas was going to be a very healing year for their family. I felt like this party didn’t matter who came or not. Even if it was just Thomas and the kids, they were going to have so much fun. It was the first time they were decorating and celebrating at home in so many years. I wished I could be there Christmas morning to watch the kids as they excitedly opened their gifts, but at least I’d be there Christmas eve for the party. It was going to be an amazing party, that was for sure. I was going to make sure the decorations were all up and ready by the time Thomas got home in three days.

  Chapter 15

  Thomas

  Returning from my trip was exhausting. I lost time and then gained time back in the flight process. I had no idea what day of the week it was or if I needed to try and stay awake or get some sleep as I landed back home in New York.

  The trip had been a success and I was grateful that Matthew had joined me. He kept everything organized and was on top of the day to day schedule that I had to maintain in order to get everything accomplished.

  “Thank you for coming with me, Matthew. I know this is a busy time of year and I want you to take the rest of the year off so you can spend it with your family.”

  “Thank you. So I should come back on January second?”

  “That sounds good, yes. But please plan on coming to my Christmas party. It’s going to be fantastic. Feel free to bring a date or your whole family. I will have plenty of room, food, and fun for everyone.”

  “I might just take you up on that offer. My mother has been dying to meet you. She’s convinced you’re an elderly man who is torturing me. It doesn’t matter how many times I describe you and tell her how old you are, she insists that you are in your sixties.”

  It was funny when Matthew talked about his family because it meant that I’d finally made him feel comfortable. I honestly never meant for him to feel that comfortable around me; I was still his boss, but it was nice to have someone to talk to on long trips and being friendly with Matthew wasn’t all that bad.
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  “Let me drop you off,” I said as we walked out of the airport and to the car parking area.

  “Sure, anything to save some money,” he replied.

  We were both exhausted and by the time I dropped Matthew off all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and go to sleep for the next twenty-four hours. Luckily we still had two days before the party and I was excited to see how Niki had done with the decorating.

  Since the two of us had picked out nearly everything for the party already, I knew what it was going to look like, but there was still going to be some excitement to see it all put together and looking amazing in real life.

  The drive out to the house was longer than normal. I stopped and grabbed coffee at the same place that Niki had gotten it for me when we were driving the truck out to the house. I couldn’t help but laugh as I remembered her trying to feed me, so I wouldn’t be grumpy when we arrived.

  It was a pretty good idea too. I ended up feeling much better when we got to the house and even managed to wrestle with Jackson for a little bit. The look on Niki’s face as Jackson and I tried to pin each other on the driveway was pretty funny. I could tell she hadn’t spent too much time around a bunch of guys.

  Wrestling between Jackson and I was a form of bonding. We just did it for fun and to get energy out. I started when Jackson was in preschool and it continued on up until the other day. We wrestled less and less as he got older but we still liked to do it.

  I could see the outside decorations on the front gate from a half of a mile down the road. They looked amazing and sure did make the house feel more like Christmas. I’d never thought about decorating the gate before but it looked really good and I hope it was just a sign of what was to come when I saw the house.

  The driveway was even decorated with lights along the edge of it. They weren’t specifically Christmas lights and I really liked the way they looked. I thought I might keep those lights there all year long as a permanent lighting feature to make the driveway nicer to navigate in the dark. As it was, if there were no lights on, the driveway was dark and hard to see where the turns were.

  As I pulled up to the house I stopped and took in the magnificent sight of the outdoor decorations. The house looked as if it was part of a television show or movie. There were white lights on all the windows, across the top of the house and around the doors. I’d never decorated the outside of the house since we were tucked so far back and away from the road. I never thought it mattered all that much but as I looked at the beautiful exterior of the house I suddenly wanted to make sure that I purchased all of these lights, so we could decorate exactly like this the next year.

  It was a very festive feel. Not only were there lights everywhere but there were yard decorations and lights in the bushes as well. I half expected to see one of those blow-up snow globes out to the side of the house and was a little disappointed when I didn’t see one.

  Niki had done such an amazing job that I absolutely couldn’t wait to see how the inside looked. I opened the front door and could hear a bunch of commotion going on in the great room. They didn’t hear me come in so I took my time looking around the entryway, sitting room, and a library and all the decorations that were up.

  Every little detail was taken care of and I was in awe. I never imagined my house would look so amazing for a party. I needed to hire Niki to come and decorate the house for our day to day life; she was clearly amazing at her job.

  Niki said she wanted to make sure the whole downstairs had some sort of decorations since people would be coming and going from the front door. Originally I’d told her not to bother but I was so glad that I’d finally agreed with her.

  The entryway was decorated in silver Christmas accessories and in the library, it was mostly red accessories. The library was a difficult place to decorate since it was mainly just a couple of sitting chairs and the bookshelves, but as I looked around I found dozens of small additions to the room that made it stand out and feel really Christmassy.

  The sitting area was decorated with green bows and green holy. She had various Christmas knick knacks around and it even smelt like an emerald forest. The photos in that room were covered in a variety of green Christmas wrapping paper and she had even switched out the couch pillows with green decorative pillows.

  Then I came to the special area where we kept the photos of Rose. I felt my anxiety increase as I noticed there were changes to the area. A new chair had been added that faced the photos, it was a red chair with Christmas trees outlined in white. The chair was strategically placed making it impossible to reach the photos without sitting down in the chair. What a brilliant idea that was, I loved it. At least that way we could try and keep our pictures safe from people accidentally knocking them over.

  I could still hear everyone talking excitedly in the great room so I went there to see what was going on. Jackson and Jenna were playing Pictionary and it looked like Niki was there decorating one of the trees.

  “I’m home,” I hollered to get their attention.

  “Dad,” Jenna yelled and came running up to me.

  She wrapped her arms around me so tightly I was almost knocked over. Jackson stayed over on one of the couches which had also been rearranged and Niki stopped decorating and gave me a little wave.

  “The house looks amazing,” I said as I looked around the great room. “This room is really cool. I guess this is where all the money went,” I laughed.

  “It’s not cheap to throw an amazing party,” Niki added.

  I walked over and gave her a hug and tried to keep it as professional as possible. It was hard though because I really wanted to hug her and kiss her and then take her up to my room and make love to her. I resisted though.

  “Dad, wait until you see all the decorations on the trees,” Jenna said and pulled me over to look at the tree.

  “Yeah, they look really good,” I said too tired to actually pay attention to anything.

  All I wanted to do was go crawl into bed. I tried to sleep on the plane but I didn’t get a very good night of sleep. Now I needed to catch up so I was back to my normal self by Christmas Eve when it was time for our party.

  I’d received a few emails with details about who was coming and who wasn’t coming to the party but I was just too busy to pay attention to any of it. While I was in Japan I was working nearly eighteen hours a day. I barely had time to eat or sleep and I trusted that whatever Niki was doing for the party was going to be just fine.

  “Dad, look I put this one on the future tree,” Jackson said as he pulled an ornament off and showed it to me.

  It was one of me and him playing catch. We hadn’t played catch in a really long time and it was sort of cute that he had it on the future tree like it was something he wanted to do with me in the future.

  As I looked through the decorations briefly, I started to feel uncomfortable. More and more of the familiar decorations from the past were in my view. I saw them on the future tree and the present tree, and way more than I’d agreed to put on the past tree.

  One of the things I disliked most was when I asked for something to be done in a specific way and an employee didn’t do it that way. I had been very clear about what I was okay with having on the trees and what I did not want.

  I’d told Niki that she could use any of the ornaments that were just the kid’s but not to use ornaments that had Rose in them. But there they were, a whole plethora of ornaments that had pictures of the kids with their mother.

  I could hardly breathe as I looked at photo after photo of Rose. My grief was sneaking up on me and so was my anger. I didn’t want to feel sad on Christmas. That was why I had specifically said not to use those pictures. I didn’t want to spend this holiday bent over crying because my grief had swept in and taken away my sadness.

  “Why didn’t you listen to the directions I gave on which photos to use?” I asked Niki calmly. “If I remember right, you and I went through a long list of what was okay and what was not. Did you lose that list? Pleas
e tell me you lost that list and that is why you totally disobeyed every order I gave you about what should and should not have been put on the tree. Please don’t tell me that you just decided to ignore my request and do whatever the hell you wanted to with my Christmas trees.”

  “Dad,” Jenna yelled at me.

  “Don’t Dad me. I am talking to Niki. You two can go up to your rooms,” I said and pointed for them to leave us alone.

  “Dad, she worked really hard on this,” Jenna continued.

  “Jenna, you’re going to get yourself grounded if you don’t knock it off. Now go to your room. I’m dealing with Niki right now.”

  Niki was standing by the Christmas trees and looked shocked at how I was acting. I didn’t know why she looked so shocked. The two of us had clearly gone over the details and I watched her take notes on what I wanted and did not want.

  I couldn’t figure out why she would have gone totally against my wishes like that. She didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would purposely want to upset a client like this.

  “Thomas,” Niki started to say as she held her hands out and tried to reach for me.

  I pulled my hands away and took a step back. The last thing I wanted to do was hold hands with her. Could she not see how upset she had made me with this stunt? It was about more than just the decorations. She had brought the kids into it and enlisted them in dragging Rose back out into all of this. That wasn’t fair to the kids.

  For years I’d worked to not mention Rose and try and concentrate on the present instead of the past. I didn’t want the kids to constantly have to hear me talking about how much I missed their mom. Instead, we talked about the future and what we looked forward to.

  My heart rate was through the roof as I tried to calm myself down and talk to Niki without yelling at her. This was such a personal thing for us and part of our first Christmas together and Niki had ruined it. She had taken this special event and totally ruined it. At this point, I didn’t even want to have the party anymore.