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Merry Christmas! **OUT OF OFFICE**

Thanks for another amazing year of choosing Sterling G. Merch for your officially-unofficial fan gear! We love you!

***Subject to UPS/USPS carrier limitations and availability. Delays may occur.

***

You get lucky, and the Cyclones don’t have a Christmas game this year.

Following a Week 16 win that puts you guys at 12-3, Coach encourages the first string to go home and enjoy their families.

The division is clinched, along with first seed as long as you don’t lose out, meaning that the starters will see only limited playing time for the last two regular season games.

Until January 2nd, when the playoff grind begins, you have a tiny bit more time on your hands than usual.

Christmas Eve, which falls on Tuesday, sees you fighting the crowds at Miami International to fly home for the holiday.

You can’t help but think that it would have been faster to drive.

The airport is an absolute madhouse, packed with wall-to-wall families trying to make it to their destinations before Santa shows up.

Everywhere you turn, there’s a wailing baby or someone barely covering a wet cough.

You hate flying under the best of conditions, and December 24th is not the best of conditions.

It might actually be the worst, and you are kicking yourself for being too proud to let Sterling loan you his jet .

You two are spending Christmas with your respective families.

Your mom invited Sterling to come to Macon, but you asked him to please extend his regrets.

Your relatives are a lot , to say the least. The thought of trying to steer Sterling through your huge collection of extended aunts, uncles, and cousins is enough to plant you right in Miami and make you refuse to leave.

So Ster goes to Connecticut, and you are taking not a midnight train to Georgia, but a midday commercial plane.

Your eldest big brother comes to collect you from Hartsfield-Jackson.

It’s almost a ninety-minute drive, and you are grateful for his efforts.

Roman grunts and isn’t effusive when you thank him.

Unlike August and Aquila, who have lived big and loud every moment since they rolled into the world side-by-side thirty-one years ago, Roman is a man of few words.

He’d move heaven and earth for the people he loves, however, and you know that you are included in that lucky number.

On the way home, you manage to extract from him that Mama is very excited for you to be coming home—which you knew—and that Vanessa, Roman’s ex-wife and the mother of his two daughters, is also coming.

Which you did not know. You understand from experience that probing Roman for information on his relationship status will get you nowhere, so you keep your mouth shut and vow to pump Quill and Auggie for the lowdown.

You are hoping for a couple hours of peace and quiet to regroup and maybe FaceTime Sterling when you pull up to your house in Macon.

It’s three streets over from your folks’ home—close enough to walk, but far enough for a modicum of privacy—in the same gated community.

Except for the fact that Roman can’t even pull into the driveway, because both spaces in front of the garage are taken.

“The hell, man?” you complain to Roman. “What’s this?”

His expression impassive, Roman shrugs. “Mama said that you didn’t need all that space and that some of ‘em could stay over.”

Your eyebrows shoot for your hairline, and you are ready to kick up a fuss before you remember that, until two days ago, you yourself didn’t know that you would be able to make it home, and that you previously gave your mother carte blanche to use your house as she saw fit.

Considering that she’s your de facto property manager and spends more time there than you do, you guess she has the right to use the extra rooms for overflow guests.

“My damn bedroom better be free,” you grumble.

“Couldn’t tell ya,” your brother says. “You needin’ help with your bags? ”

You are both taller and heavier than Roman, but he still treats you like the baby of the family. You thank him again for the ride, and he drives away.

Inside, it’s thankfully not that loud. The house has four bedrooms, and your mother was kind enough to leave your room unoccupied.

One of the guest bedrooms contains your Aunt Mavis, who mostly keeps to herself, and the other is housing your cousin, Darnell, and his wife, Esther.

Their three kids are set up on an air mattress in your office.

“Kai-i-i!” Angelika, Darnell’s youngest, runs toward you, wheeling her arms wildly. “Horsey, please! Horsey!”

You obligingly scoop her up on your shoulders and go to greet your guests.

***

“What did you get me for Christmas?” you ask Sterling that night.

Stuffed to your gills on chicken and dressing, dirty rice, collards, ham-hock pinto beans, and enough buttered cornbread to choke an elephant, you are flopped back on your bed.

You’ve pulled your shorts down low to let your gut breathe.

Your abs still ripple gratifyingly, but there’s a definite food-baby bulge on your lower belly.

Sterling laughs. “You expect me to answer that? I’ve told you ten times that you have to wait ‘til tomorrow morning. Maybe eleven times.”

“Hmph,” you pout. “Can I shake it?”

“No, you may not.”

You guys exchanged your gifts the last time you saw each other, after that disaster at Mantel with GoGo, and agreed not to open them until Christmas Day.

You are stumped by Sterling’s gift. It’s a package about the size of a Cheerios box, bundled in beautifully-folded silver paper.

Despite his lack of permission, you have already tried to shake it.

There’s no give. It could be almost anything.

For your part, you had a lot of trouble picking out a gift for Sterling.

On top of the fact that your boyfriend’s either a certified billionaire or damn close to it—the trade papers can’t decide, and you aren’t about to ask Sterling to clarify—you are also afraid of giving him anything too sentimental.

The ideal present, you decided, has to straddle the delicate line between meaningful and not too meaningful .

You decided on a Cyclones jersey. It’s one of the official ones, hand-stitched, in a pretty golden alt colorway that you think will look great with Sterling’s hair.

Your number—99—is emblazoned on both sides.

Grayson is embroidered on the nameplate.

It’s kind of dorky, but kind of cool. Deb, the lady at the pro shop, was sworn to secrecy, and she even agreed to wrap it for you.

There’s a card included, too. It took three days for you to decide what to write in it.

Merry Christmas! I can’t wait to see what next year holds.

? Always, Kai

That heart/word combo gave you fits. Real, honest, clutch-your-heart paroxysms of anxiety. But you figured the text of the message, which is hopeful, but measured, balanced the implications of the sign-off. You almost asked Sandy for his opinion, but you chickened out.

“How is the fam?” Sterling asks, shifting the subject away from gifts.

You groan a bit, and scrub a hand down your face.

“They’re on their shit,” you say, pitching your voice low so that your house guests don’t overhear.

“Mama and her sister got into it over who was fixing Great-Nana’s pie.

So they each made one, and they’re trying to get everyone to say which is better. ”

“Yikes,” Sterling intones with real sympathy. “Is that all?”

“Well, my ex-sister-in-law came to dinner with my nieces and sat next to my brother,” you say. “Quill told me that she’s been spending nights over at Roman’s house, but he doesn’t want to talk about it to anybody.”

“Quill is one of the twins, right?” Sterling asks hesitantly.

“Yup. Him and Auggie. They both played for Georgia Tech. Cornerback and RB.”

“And Roman played football too, right?”

“Uh-huh. He played the same position I did. Would have been drafted, too, but he tore a bunch of ligaments in his knee and never got back on the field.”

“Your poor parents must have worked two jobs apiece to feed you guys when you were teenagers.”

That one makes you laugh. You describe how there were three fridges in your childhood home: an industrial side-by-side in the kitchen and two in the garage, all stuffed with food.

“How are things up North?” you ask. “You told everyone I said hello, right?”

Sterling rolls his eyes. “Oh, trust me, they want to know where you are. My mother is distraught that you weren’t here for the ugly sweater party. She wanted you to try her Buffalo chicken dip and tell you all about how it won the Junior League Crockpot Cook-Off back in ‘06. ”

“No offense, but that might be the single whitest set of words that I have ever heard.”

That makes Sterling laugh from his belly.

You turn your head to yawn, and catch sight of the clock on your nightstand. It reads 12:02 AM.

“Hey, look at that,” you say. “It’s Christmas Day.”

Sterling pulls his phone back, like he’s checking the screen. “So it is. Merry Christmas, Kai.”

“Merry Christmas, Ster.” You wait exactly five seconds. “So, this means we can open our gifts now, right?”

He pretends to think about it, tapping his index finger on his lips. “I think, contractually, you are correct.”

“Where’s yours?” you ask eagerly. “I’ve got mine on the other side of the room.”

Sterling bites his lip. “I put mine under the tree,” he says. “I have to tiptoe back into the house and go get it.”

That melts your heart, the image of Sterling slipping your gift under the Grayson family tree along with all the other ones.

“Oh, never mind,” you say quickly. “I don’t want to disturb your folks. ”