Page 80 of Just A Little Joy

The tree lights buzzed faintly in the corner of the room, throwing little glints of color across his hair and cheeks. The whole place smelled like wet pine and cold rain, and Casey was warm against my side, still bundled in the quilt with his notebook tucked under one arm like he hadn’t decided yet if he could let himself set it down.

I slipped my arm around his shoulders, slow enough that he could lean in or pull away. He gave his full weight to me instead. Like it was natural. Like he was tired of holding himself up alone. His head found that same spot on my shoulder he always seemed drawn to, the one he fit into like it had been waiting for him.

I kissed his temple. “I’m glad you’re home, bub.”

“Me too.”

“I love you, sweetheart.”

“I love you too, Daddy.”

“Daddy, Daddy, you gotta wake up.”The cheery voice cut straight through the fog in my head. The bed shook as Casey bounced on it like a kid who’d had too much sugar. Déjà vu hithard, but I refused to mess this up again or say anything that would make him pull away.

“Good morning, bub,” I rasped. I cracked one eye open to see if the sun was even awake yet. Weak light slipped around the closed shade. Too early for anything sane. I rolled toward him. “Why are you up so early? Are we going back to the gym?”

“No, silly. We gotta fix our house. It’s kind of sad, Daddy.”

Our house. He said our house. That woke me up faster than any alarm.

“You’re right,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “It does look a little sad. What do you think we should do to fix it?”

“I made a list, Daddy.” Casey pulled out a piece of paper from behind his back like a magician doing a trick badly on purpose. It was a numbered list in messy crayon handwriting.

“First,” he announced, “gotta finish lights on the tree. We can’t do nothing ’til the tree is pretty ’cause a pretty tree is a happy tree.”

“I didn’t know trees had feelings,” I said, pretending to think about it. “Makes sense. What’s next?”

“Gotta make cookies ’cause it’s not Christmas if we don’t have cookies.”

“Totally reasonable. Next?”

“Gotta watch a Christmas movie and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows.”

“We are in complete agreement.”

“You don’t mind, Daddy? Oh no.” His eyes widened like something terrible had hit him. “Do you have to go to work today?”

“The nice thing about owning your own business is sometimes you can set your own hours,” I said. “So no. I don’t need to go to work today. Do you need to go to work today?”

“Silly, Daddy, I don’t have a job.” He said it with a mischievous grin and a wink.

I reached up and bopped his nose. “Good. You don’t need to think about that today. You’re right about what we need to do. We gotta get our house looking like Christmas.”

Casey ripped the duvet off me and nudged me not too gently until I rolled out of bed.

“I’m gonna fix breakfast, and you’re gonna take a shower.”

“You’re an awfully bossy boy,” I said, giving him a pretend stern look.

“Silly Daddy, you like it. Cause you get a yummy breakfast today.”

“Oh yeah? And what am I having?”

“French toast,” Casey said hopefully.

I blinked. “How did you know that was my favorite?”

“Mostly just hoping ’cause it’s my favoritest too.” With that solved, he skipped out. I showered fast and headed to the kitchen.