Page 127

Taavi was efficient, patting the injury clean and then drying it with a deft, delicate touch. It was sore, and still puffy and red, and Taavi had frowned at it before putting a fresh gauze pad on it and taping around it.

He then dried the rest of me off and helped me back out of the tub so that we could get dressed in our Christmas Dinner finery.

* * *

My mother had gone all out asonly my mother can do. A massive ham, studded with both cherries and pineapples because it was apparently still the 1950s. I do not knowwhyin God’s name anybody would do that to a ham, but I didn’t have to eat it, and Elliot and Dad seemed perfectly happy, although I caught Taavi—who wasadorablein a crimson vest and a button-down with tiny embroidered pine trees on it—looking at it a little askance.

My mom, looking proud as fucking punch, was wearing a bright red dress with white and green sequined embroidery around the cuffs and neck, and my dad had a matching goddamn tie and equally bright red shirt. I don’t know where the fuck they found that ensemble, but it was nauseatingly cute.

Elliot, in a simple dark green button-down and a red embroidered Mamaceqtaw vest with a bolo tie, had very obviously had to not laugh when my dad—and hisverysparkly tie, had come into the kitchen to carry the ham out to the table.

I was the least festive of the bunch, in a white button-down and grey slacks, with a tasteful green and red candy-striped tie dotted with tiny reindeer. Taavi loved the tie. And also fretted that he wasn’t wearing one.

“You don’t need a tie,” I told him. “I’m just boring and not at all creative.”

Elliot had then gone into the other room and came back with a small, flat box. “Here.” He handed it to Taavi, who looked surprised. “Just open it.”

I experienced another flash of jealousy that I very quickly tamped the fuck down at the excitement on Taavi’s face—Elliot had given him a bolo tie, the center cabochon polished granite in a scalloped silver setting.

Taavi looked up at him. “It’s beautiful.”

Elliot shrugged. “Henry does them,” he replied. “Val has one somewhere.”

“I do, but it doesn’t match my eyes anymore,” I teased him. The one I had was a dark cats-eye brown stone that Elliot had joked at the time matched my very brown eyes.

“I’ll get Henry to make you another one,” my best friend told me, rolling his eyes.

“Boys!” my mother half-sang. “Dinner!”

* * *

Over the past three weeks,I’d somehow managed—thank fucking God—to get online long enough to order and ship presents, even though nobody got them wrapped because I hadn’t planned on spending the four days leading up to Christmas being a goddamn invalid. I was still extremely surly about the whole thing, because I hadn’t had the time to really think about what to get. I’d just had to dosomething.

I was really disappointed about Taavi.

It was the first Christmas we’d spend together. That part of me that inherited some amount of sentiment from my mother had wanted to make it memorable—and not in thethis is the Christmas Val got stabbedkind of way.

I’d wanted to get him the perfect thing. Something small, but meaningful.

Something that wasn’t a goddamn set of cozy mystery novels, which was the genre he’d been reading his way through this whole trip. He loved the damn things. Especially if they had recipes. I was sure he’dlikethem, but that wasn’t what I’d wanted his gift to be.

Add Elliot’s clearly much better present on top of it, and I was extremely irritable by the time we got through all of the obligatory present-opening that followed dinner, but preceded my parents’ excursion to church.

Taavi and Elliot had shooed my mother out of the kitchen to do the dishes, leaving me to decide whether I was going to follow and sit in the kitchen or stay in the living room with my dad while my mother went to ‘fix her hair’ before church.

I wanted to help, but the ache in my side told me that I’d probably pushed physical activity more than enough for the day, and sitting in one of the hard kitchen chairs drying dishes might mean that tomorrow would be even more hellish.

It was already going to be one of those things that I spent the entire day regretting, so I didn’t want to also be in pain for it. Well, any more pain than I already had to be.

My mother came over to kiss my head before my parents left for church. “There’s plenty of leftovers in the fridge,” she told me. “So you leave all the food for tomorrow in the garage alone.”

As though any of us needed any more food. “Okay, Mom.”

“And if you’re tired, you go ahead and go right to bed, honey.”

“I will, if I get tired.” I wouldn’t. Because I alreadywastired, and here I was, not going to bed.

“And no peeking at Santa presents!” My mother at least no longer pretended therewasa Santa, although she still insisted on putting out little presents in the morning for Elliot and I. Things that were physically small, although they weren’t always cheap. Over the years I’d gotten everything from candy and pencils to a really nice watch—the last one the year I’d left Shawano for the Milwaukee Police Department.