Noah smiled. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you.” He glanced at the clock on top of the town hall. “Okay, we’ve earned another break, guys,” Noah yelled. A chorus of “Great!” erupted from the team of about ten volunteers, and everyone headed to the heaters,where Eli spied a plastic box filled with Christmas cookies. He followed Noah, who poured them both a cup of cocoa.
Noah tugged off his gloves and flexed his fingers. “So. You survived Ladder Day.”
“Barely,” Eli said.
“You’ll toughen up.”
“I don’twantto toughen up,” Eli said. “I want to live a long life without heights.”
“You’re doing great, though. Seriously.”
Eli looked at the swirling steam rising from his cocoa. “This feels weird.”
“What does?”
“Being here,” Eli said quietly. “Doing this. Being part of it.”
Noah nudged him with his shoulder. “You fit better than you think.”
Eli’s chest tightened. His mind kept flashing to the sketchbook tucked in his duffel at Aileen’s. That pencil portrait he’d drawn as a teenager. What it had felt like to want someone in secret and silence.
And Noah was standing right next to him, real and warm and impossibly close.
“Hey.” Noah studied him. “You okay?”
Eli pulled himself back into the moment. “Yeah. Yeah, just thinking, that’s all.”
“That can be a dangerous habit.”
“Tell me about it,” Eli said.
For a moment their eyes held, and the gaze felt too long, too warm, too…
Something.
Noah looked away first, smiling faintly. “Come on. Now it’s back-to-the-tree time. The top crew is ready for the next handoff.”
“Do I have to climb again?”
“No,” Noah said. “This time we’re on ornament duty. Strictly low risk, except for the rogue toddlers.”
“I can handle toddlers.”
He snorted. “No onecan handle toddlers.”
They spent the next hour decorating the lower half of the tree. Noah had surprisingly strong opinions about ornament distribution (“I’ve seen things, Eli. Trust me.”), and Eli found himself laughing more than he’d expected.
At one point, a little girl in pink snow pants toddled over with a glitter-covered ornament twice the size of her head.
“For the tree,” she said solemnly. “My mom said I could bring it.”
“That’s a very important job,” Noah told her.
She nodded and handed it to Eli, then wandered off.
Eli hung it on a low branch. “See? I can handle toddlers.”
“That one was gentle,” Noah said. “There’s a feral pack somewhere near the gazebo.”
