After dinner, dessert, and some rounds of Cards Against Humanity, Paisley and I returned to the penthouse late, though Camden waited up for us. We’d left before he returned home from practice, but he greets us now in plaid pajamas with areindeer on his long-sleeved shirt.
“New tradition,” he declares as he signs then hands each of us a bag. The silent instructions clear. We are supposed to put on the matching pajamas.
Paisley shoots me a look, and I shrug. My man wants a new tradition? He’s going to get a new tradition.
“It’ll be fun,” I sign to Paisley.
“It’s pajamas.”
“That match.”
Camden butts in. “Yeah, and we’re going to take a picture with them. Even Rocky and Balboa. Go on. Get moving.”
Paisley groans but pivots on her heel to change, and I glance over to Camden, who’s grinning with excitement. After so much loss, they both deserve to have joy in their lives. Whenever and wherever they can find it.
Once we’re all dressed in our matching plaid, Paisley and I each take one of the guinea pigs in our arms as Camden sets up his phone. He positions us by the tree, his arms wrapped around both of us, and I decide we’re going to blow it up and frame it when he shows it to me.
All of us together and smiling.
Then Paisley says she’s going to watch a movie in her room, which I suspect is code for texting the boy she likes, but it gives Camden and me an excuse to bring out all the presents we hid from her. She obviously doesn’t believe in Santa anymore, but Camden refused to put any presents under the tree yet, arguing that it took all the fun out of waking up to them.
Once they’re all placed, we lounge on the sofa together, my head on his chest, his arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to go to your brother’s place tomorrow for dinner,” he informs me. “We don’t have any meetings, just practice, and we don’t have to be there until ten. Plenty of time for cinnamon rolls and presents. But I want to give you this now.”
Then he pulls a jewelry box from his pocket.
I sit up straight with a gasp.
“It’s not a ring,” he says immediately, as if to calm my racing heart. “Not that kind of ring, I mean.”
I gingerly take the box from him as he explains, “I know you like to wear rose gold, so I had this made, but if you don’t like it, I will?—”
“Oh, Camden.” I open the box to find a delicate bracelet with tiny diamonds along a curved cuff, almost like a river, with a chain on either side to fasten it. A matching ring accompanies it, and he turns it over so I can read the tiny inscription on the inside,love like a river.
I’d come across a poem a few weeks ago that I shared with Camden, about wishing for love to be like a river, strong and free, finding a love that twisted and turned but always stayed together. I thought it more than appropriate for us, and he loved it too.
A lot, apparently.
I slip the ring on my finger, admiring the tiny glittering diamonds. “I love it.”
“Yeah?”
I kiss him and then ask him to clasp the bracelet on me, so it sits next to the one his sister made. “It’s perfect.”
I hold my hand up, turning it this way and that, the diamonds catching the light. “I feel so bad. All I got you was?—”
He clamps his hand over my mouth. “Don’t spoil it.”
“But you gave me this now,” I mumble behind his palm.
“Because it’s the first gift. You can open the rest tomorrow.”
“Camden,” I scold.
“River.”
“I don’t need or want multiple gifts.”
“Until you see them. You might notneedthem, but you’llwantthem.”
