And that’s making this Christmas better than any Christmas my brothers and I have had since our parents died.
“No way. A water bottle rocket? What even is this?” Charlie crows.
He hit puberty hardcore in September, and his voice is almost as deep as Eddie’s now, but still scratchy.
He’s also grown four inches.
And he’s in shorts and a T-shirt while the rest of us are in long-sleeve Christmas pajamas because that’s what kids who wear jeans and hoodies in summer do when winter hits.
We’re in the room formerly known as the dining room, which currently has the world’s fattest Christmas tree in the center, with space still for a foosball table and an air hockey table and a pool table, where Simon and the boys and I spend hours when they’re staying with us.
This will be the dining room again at some point, whenever we finish renovations on the house and open it as the Athena’s Rest Lodge, which is an idea Simon came up with when I went to visit him on a set in Calgary for a short shoot last month.
The cast and crew had fully taken the vacation rentals, and he and I ended up in an old-fashioned bed-and-breakfast.
“You take in strangers and make them family regularly anyway,” Simon had mused. “Why not convert that monstrosity of a house to an old-fashioned inn? You and I and the boys hardly need that much space. I merely bought it to be ostentatious in the hopes my parents would see, and now I don’t rightly care what they think.”
So that’s the long-term plan.
Because we’re taking it slow.
And byslow, I mean I moved into his house as soon as Daphne got back from her road trip, and he’s shown me Los Angeles and his favorite parts of New York and film locations in Canada and Washington state. He’s taken me to a few of Griff’s games and gave his opinion on the people I interviewed to manage the burger bus so that I could keep one hand in the business and also enjoy traveling and dabbling at writing screenplays with him.
I’m debating if I want to take Spite Burgers into a physical location, or if I want to buy a second bus.
The rebrand has been massively successful. I’d expected business to slow down in winter, but I’ve had so many party requests both in Athena’s Rest and the surrounding areas that I’ve hired more staff.
I needed to anyway.
Turns out, writing scripts is fun, and I like doing that more than I like flipping burgers.
For now, anyway. And if one day I want to do something different, that’s okay too. I don’t think my purpose in life is tosettle with any one thing. I think it’s to explore and try as many things as I can.
Also, the Camilles are no longer the family to fear in Athena’s Rest.
After my social media post went so viral that I was slightly more famous than Simon for a hot minute, with countless comments from people who had also been screwed by one member or another of the Camille family mixed in with the thousands of comments in support of me, Damon retired from ambulance chasing and Lucinda retired from teaching fourth grade. She also turned over control of the community theater to Molly Taylor, whom Hudson still hasn’t worked up the guts to ask out, mostly because he says he doesn’t want his college dating experience to be fully long distance.
Logan Camille took a job in Wisconsin after one too many complaints to the local police chief.
And Jake—Jake is still running JC Fig, but only barely.
Simon’s waiting for him to be desperate enough to sell that we can get the building at a bargain, and then he intends to turn it into a museum with a gift shop and a snack bar featuring some of my dad’s favorite recipes.
He still has the drive-in, which he named the Best Drive-In.
He thinks I don’t know the biggest box under the tree is actually seven wrapped boxes nested inside each other with an envelope with the deed to the drive-in signed over to me, but the boys can’t keep secrets.
And it’s not like I couldn’t have guessed.
“If I were to ever screw up so monumentally with you that Ryker did, indeed, bury me somewhere on his farm with no one the wiser, I should wish for you to have every opportunity in the world to continue finding yourself, and that means you should have a diversified business portfolio of already successful businesses to support you while you explore,” he told me overdinner last month when we were arguing over whose name would be on the lodge.
You know.
When it’s done in three years.
“Why is my present making noise?” Lana asks, pulling me back to Christmas as she shakes the wrapped present Ryker just handed her.
The boys giggle.
