Killjoy
The first bite I took, I nearly melted into the floor. It was all I could do not to moan with pleasure. Those homemade ravioli… damn.
So maybe having Danny here wasn’t turning out to be such a horrible thing.
Though I’d rather cut out my tongue than admit it out loud.
“You know my name, but I’ve been here a whole day now, and I still don’t know what to call you,” Danny said about three bites into the meal.
“Killjoy works.”
“Kill. Joy.” There was a definite pause between the two parts, as if he couldn’t understand how it all fit together. “I’ll just call you Joy.”
He brightened at the idea, but soon lost his large smile when he saw my scowling face.
“Mr. Joy? Joy Boy?” He just kept going, and I was startin’ to wonder if there wasn’t something wrong with him. I wasquestioning if he’d been up here all day, drinking the hours away while he… fuck, how had I missed all those decorations and lights? “No, you’re not a boy, so that one doesn’t work. How about JoyMaaan? Hm, no, that doesn’t have the same ring.”
“How about Killjoy,” I cut, not an ounce of a question in my tone, as I glared at the soft white little lights twinkling at me from behind some fake-ass garland, that so happened to be wrapped around the banister of the stairs and the whole way across the railing of the loft.
When he noticed that my attention wasn’t on him, he twisted in his seat to see what I was looking at.
“Oh! Yes! I did that,” he said very proudly. “I kept getting tangled in it, and I almost went over the top balcony once, but I think it turned out great. Don’t you?”
He turned back around to face me, and there was so much fucking joy on his face.
“Yeah, you did a good job,” I said, forcing my lips to curl up in a smile that came off as tight. It did look nice, but that wasn’t my issue.
“So, um, what’s the problem with it?” He twisted back around, studying it like he was trying to figure something out. “Do you not like it there? I wasn’t sure where else it could—”
“The problem is that it’s there at all,” I told him, causing his head to whip back around, his eyes wide as he looked at me.
“Oh,” he said brokenly. “I’ll take it all down after I finish eating.”
I opened my mouth to say… well, I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to say. I just knew I didn’t like the dejected tone he had going on, and I wanted to fix it. Wasn’t like it mattered, since he went on talkin’.
“Do you not, like, celebrate Christmas? I think the lights and garland give it more of a cozy feel, not necessarily Christmas-y, ya know? I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just thatI really like the whole winter vibe, and I’ve never had a white Christmas before. I had this whole plan to come here and have this amazing time to myself and do with it what I wanted—like decorate and drink a ton of hot chocolate. And now I don’t really know what I’m doing or how my Christmas is going to end up… orwhereI’ll end up for Christmas, rather.” He cut himself off, looking at me with sad eyes. A second later, a smile was plastered on his face, but it wasn’t a real one, and I didn’t like it. “I’ll take it down.”
I sighed heavily before saying, “Kid—”
“Not a kid,” he cut in.
I huffed this time, glaring at him.
“Kid—” I started, only to have him run right over me again.
“I’ll be thirty in eight months. I think that hardly makes me a kid. And even if you wanted to go by age, it still wouldn’t work. Not unless you are somehow, like, forty years older than me. Then, okay, yeah, everyone under thirty would be a kid to you.”
“You’re twenty-nine?” I asked, unable to keep the shock out of my voice.
He preened, a cute little blush hitting the apples of his cheeks.
“I moisturize,” he supplied, as if that was the reason he looked so young. I mean, I knew he wasn’t akid, but I would have put him in his early twenties. Drinking age at least, twenty-three at most.
And for some reason, doing the quick math in my head and realizing he was only twelve years younger than me, and not closer to twenty, had things goin’ on in my head that I had no right entertaining.
Shaking away the strangeness, I focused hard on him.
“That’s not the point,” I said gruffly. “I need you to just… simmer a little.”
