Page 121 of The Elf Beside Himself

A half-smile hovered over my dad’s lips. “You’re not exactly the most calm person in the world, Val,” he pointed out.

I pressed my lips together, but I couldn’t argue the point. I’m not. I’m a surly asshole.

“But he seems to even you out. Heck, I’ve seen you smile more this trip than some others, and, considering the situation, that’s saying something pretty big.” There wasn’t any judgment in his tone—he wasn’t trying to pick on me for smiling or anything. Just… letting me know that he could see it. “He makes you happy.”

I felt my ears flush. “Yeah, he does.”

My father nodded once. “Good.” And then he turned on the TV, ending the conversation.

21

I wokeup on Christmas Eve morning still sore, but finally capable of sitting up all by myself. Merry fucking Christmas to me. Taavi was already gone, a post-it note on his pillow informing me that my mother had commandeered him to work on Christmas Dinner.

In my family, we always did Christmas Dinner—yes, with capital letters—on Christmas Eve. When I was little, we’d then go to Midnight Mass, then get to bed at like two in the morning. My parents had left their church a few years after my transformation, and they’d started going to services at the United Church of Christ in Cecil, which was only about fifteen minutes away. St. John’s—the church in question—had a nine p.m. on Christmas Eve, which is what my parents were planning to go to.

I was definitely not expected to attend, although Mom had offered to take Taavi if he wanted to go. He’d politely declined, saying he’d stay to make sure I didn’t need anything.

Elliot was supposed to show up for breakfast this morning and stay through tomorrow, which was going to be the usual Hart-Bergmann extravaganza, just hosted by my mother instead of my Aunt Susan, my dad’s overbearing and judgy older sister.

Mom had been freaking out for the last two days since they’d come to that decision, amid many phone calls while Taavi took over making eggplant and chicken parmesan because my mom couldn’t stay off the phone long enough to even cut the eggplant once the Hart-Bergmann phone tree had been activated.

Taavi had also been employed by Mom helping to completely sterilize the house, then ‘spruce up,’ to use my mother’s phrase, the Christmas decorations, which meant digging out several more boxes and also going to the local tree lot to purchase enough pine and spruce boughs to festoon the whole house and make wreaths for all of the front windowsandthe door.

The whole house now smelled like pine, which was actually quite nice.

It was about to smell like cookies, because Mom had decided last night right before bed that she couldn’t possibly have enough of them, and I assumed that the reason Taavi was doing dinner prep was that Mom was about to cover the whole kitchen in flour, sugar, and sprinkles.

I shoved myself to my feet and decided that I could shower later, carefully getting dressed so that I could go downstairs and insert myself into the baking process. I’m good at baking, and if I was going to try to contribute anything to this shitshow, it was going to be with bakery.

Jeans, a plain green long-sleeved t-shirt Taavi had picked up for me on one of his shopping trips with my mother, and a sweater I wasn’t going to wear until I got too tired to keep working in the kitchen, completed by a pair of festive fluffy socks that were also courtesy of Taavi.

I’d been informed that I had a specific outfit for tomorrow, as well, and I was a little dubious about what that was going to entail. As long as there were no goddamn Santa hats, I’d survive.

I carefully made my way down the stairs, leaning pretty heavily on the railing, hitting the bottom at the same time that a rosy-cheeked Elliot came in from the front hallway, carrying several bags of stuff, a finger hooked in a six-pack of holiday shandy.

“Hey, look who’s managing stairs all by himself!”

I shot a glare at him, but I couldn’t help the smirk. It really was good to have him giving me shit again. Maybe this wouldn’t be a total disaster.

* * *

I fellasleep on the couch at some point in the middle of the afternoon, dough still under my fingernails, although whether from the five million cookies or the four loaves of stollen or the five dozen dinner rolls or the cinnamon apple kugel, I wasn’t sure. Taavi had shooed me out of the kitchen when I wobbled a little kneading dinner rolls and informed me that he was more than capable of handling the rest. I’d crashed out next to my dad—who was fiddling with one of three misbehaving strings of lights my mother insisted had to go in the wreaths—and fallen asleep before I’d even registered whether or not he had anything on the TV.

Taavi came and woke me up two hours later by gently running a finger down the bridge of my nose.

I scrunched up my face and blinked at him. “Wrgggnh?”

“You’ve got about an hour to take a shower and get dressed for dinner,” he told me, a half-smile hovering on his lips.

I rubbed my fists in my eyes, trying to wake my brain up. “How’d the bread turn out?”

“Just fine. Elliot actually took over.”

“You let Elliot bake?”

He smiled. “He has known you since you were five, Val. You seriously think he hasn’t picked up baking knowledge?”

I made a face.