“Cheese pizza!” they yelled together before high-fiving.
I couldn’t restrain my smile.
We set Noelle up on the floor for a picnic of pizza and juice while Chris and I sat at the kitchen counter and shared our pizza. It was oddly domestic but surprisingly not awkward.
“You guys really brought the Christmas spirit to town with you, didn’t you?” he asked, looking around his apartment.
I set my pizza down. It wasn’t sitting well in my stomach. “Is it too much?”
“Actually, I love it. I haven’t celebrated the holidays in a while. Maybe a little Christmas cheer is exactly what I need,” Chris offered, and I found myself wondering what had changed his mind.
Noelle appeared beside him. “Chris?”
“Yes?” He turned in his seat, giving her his full attention, and she was eating it up.
“I made this for you,” she told him, thrusting the card into his hand.
“What's this?”
“It’s a card, silly.”
“Oh, wow!” Chris looked at the front. It was a misshapen green snowman, but Noelle was so proud of it.
I watched silently over the rim of my glass and sipped on my water, letting them have this moment. When he opened the card, he read aloud the message she’d written. While I’d helped her with the spelling, she’d chosen the words herself.
“Merry Christmas. Thanks for letting us stay. Love Noelle.”
Chris tossed a glance at me over his shoulder, and I just shrugged. I wasn’t getting in the middle of this. It was between them. Then I watched as he jumped off the barstool, bent over, and hugged Noelle. Her eyes went wide when she stared at me, but as soon as I nodded, she wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him back.
“Thank you so much. I’m going to put this on the fridge right now so I don’t lose it,” Chris declared, walking over to the fridge and sticking it under a magnet front and center. “And I’ve got a surprise for you, too.”
“You do?” Noelle’s voice raised about four octaves and hurt my ears. When she got excited, she tended to really get excited.
A moment later, Chris was rifling through the bags of shopping still waiting to be put away when he pulled out a blue packet.
“Oreos!”
“Not just any old Oreos. Double-stuffed Oreos.” Chris presented the cookies proudly and Noelle’s eyes went wide.
She turned to me. “Mom, can I have one? Please?”
Some days it sucked being the mom. “Have you finished your dinner?”
“When I’ve finished can I have one?”
“When you’re finished,” I conceded as Noelle scurried back over to her plate and took a huge bite before chewing dramatically.
Chris came back and dropped onto the stool beside me. “Hope that was okay,” he asked, picking up his slice.
“It’s fine. Thank you.”
“If all it took was a packet of Oreos to keep a woman happy maybe I wouldn’t be known as the Grinch,” Chris mumbled, staring at Noelle wistfully.
“I don’t know. I don’t think you’re as Grinchy as you’d like to pretend,” I called him out.
“You don’t?”
“Nope.”
