It’s two in the fucking morning.
Nodding, because that’s all I can do besides chew, I mutter, “All the nuts would be a good way to kill me if I were allergic.”
Meirna grips my cheeks with two fingers underneath my jaw, causing my chewing to halt. “You’re allergic?” she asks almost frantically before I quickly shake my head.
“No.”
“Are you allergic to anything?” she remarks quickly as if she may have made something that I am prone to death with.
“Not that I know of.”
Meirna drops her hand from my face and nods with a released sigh. “Good. You scared me for a second.” I can’t help but be a bit surprised when she shoves the pastry between my lips and forces me to take another bite. “Don’tscare me like that again.”
Noted.
Since I’m forced to munch on a second bite, I wrap my arm around Meirna’s waist so I can at least enjoy it some more.
“Do you like it?” she asks excitedly. “I know you’re not into sweets but?—”
“It’s perfect,” I reply honestly. “I like the almonds.”
“Do you think it needsmore glaze?”
I shake my head. “No. I don’t like sweet things, but this is the perfect combination for me.”
“I made you a gingerbread cookie.”
She slithers out of my lap, and I begrudgingly let her go as she walks to the kitchen.White Christmasplays quietly on the TV. Lit candles twinkle along the long shelf underneath, and a Poinsettia that wasn’t on the coffee table before is there now.
She gave Alexander more to do than run out and get nuts for whatever it was she called it that she made.
Because the small things, in my view, make the space more Christmasy. Meirna is more content than she was before.
And what an easy—easier than I thought it was going to be—transition that was. I don’t know if I should be grateful or skeptical that she poisoned the gingerbread cookies, and she’s setting the mood to watch me choke to death.
“Here we go,” she beams chipperly at me, again, two o’clock in the morning, sitting at the edge of the couch by my side. “You have a bowtie and two buttons. I’m not that good at drawing, I’d make you in a suit but…it’d probably look like a dress.”
Several perfectly cut gingerbread cookies are laid on a white plate. One has a red bowtie and two buttons, red and green, and there’s another alongside it with red lips, pink and purple buttons, and what appears to be a little flower along its head.
“Is that you?”
She smiles almost shyly. “Yeah.”
Another two gingerbread cookies lay above them, one that looks like an old man with a white frosted mustache. And the other with just green and red buttons along the center of his body.
“Is that Bobby?”
Meirna quickly plucks the cookie with the green and red buttons, then, between her thumb and index finger, breaks its head off. “If you want it to be.”
She drops the beheaded cookie on the plate and inches the plate closer. “Did you want to try yours?”
I eye the damn thing like it’s laced with something. “Are you going to pop my head off if I don’t?”
A sweet chuckle rumbles off Meirna’s lips, and she drops the plate in her lap. “No. I made you try enough. It’s late.” She begins to get off the couch. “You should?—”
I grab her arm and gently get her to sit back down again. “You need to sleep, Daydream. You’ve been up all night making cookies?—”
“I like making cookies,” she pouts. “It’s one of my favorite things to do?—”
