“Areyou going to show me what’s in all those boxes you made me carry in this morning?” I asked as we cleaned the dining room after the last cookie was frosted. Ezra had spent part of the afternoon in the kitchen with Mom while the rest of us worked on the cookies. No one said a word about having overheard my confession of…whatever that was to Ezra. I’d been honest when I said it wasn’t love.
Maybe it was more of a promise than a confession. He’d been vulnerable and honest with me about his dating history, and it felt important that he know I wasn’t going to jilt him the way some others had. If anything, his lack of experience was refreshing to me because he wouldn’t judge me any more than I would criticize him. We were going to learn together.
When I grabbed the edge of the plastic tablecloth to throw it away, Ezra grabbed my wrist. “You might want to leave that for now.”
“Uh, okay?”
“Trust me?”
I wondered if this request was about a table covering or if there was some deeper meaning. Either way, my answer would be the same. “Absolutely.”
The smile he flashed me was all the confirmation I needed that he understood the meaning behind that single word. He pushed his glasses back into place with the knuckle of his index finger. “Get your brothers. I’m going to grab the boxes and then meet you in here.”
I didn’t ask questions. On my way to the living room, I spotted Ezra and Mom chatting in the kitchen, both seeming excited about what was to come. Mom pointed to the fridge, and Ezra nodded. I didn’t hang around long enough to see what they were up to. If she was in on his surprise, I wanted to experience it without any hints of what was going on.
“Hey, Ez wants us back in the dining room,” I told my brothers, who were all busy unpacking and detangling the Christmas lights. It was already dark outside, but that was par for the course on this job. We were used to working in the dark to get everything hung so the bulbs all pointed in the same direction and we could see any weird gaps where one string ended and the next began.
“What’s going on?” Anson asked.
Danny picked up on the shortened version of Ezra’s name. “How cute. Does he call you Car?”
That earned my brother a reprimand from his husband, even though I knew it was Danny returning the ribbing he’d taken his entire life. I couldn’t hear what Blake said after that, but it was followed by a quick, unnecessary apology from Danny.
“You’re fine,” I reassured him. I wouldn’t tell him, but I liked seeing him confident enough to speak out. There had been a time when it felt like he was constantly walking on eggshells around us, which was the real tragedy. To everyone, I said, “I’m just as clueless as you are. He asked me to stop by the bakery this morning and loaded up a bunch of boxes in the back seat of my truck. He and Mom are in the kitchen tittering, and he wants us in the dining room. So get off your asses and don’t forget to thank him for making it so you don’t have to freeze your balls off right this second.”
“Yeah, because it’ll be so much more fun to do even later,” Anson scoffed. I glared at him. If he said a single fucking word to make Ezra feel bad, I’d kick his ass into the tallest snow drift I could find. “Sorry. That was bitchy of me.”
“Yeah, it was.” I wasn’t letting him off the hook. It wasn’t lost on me that as recently as a few weeks ago, I might have been the one making snide comments.
A lump formed in my throat when we stepped into the dining room and I saw identical stacks in front of eight chairs and candies in bowls down the center of the table. It took me a second to recall our conversation from the other night when I told him how much fun it had been to decorate gingerbread buildings with my brothers, all of us trying to create the best candy house.
“Ez, this is…” Nope. I was not going to get emotional about this, no matter how sweet it was. I pulled him into my arms, pressing my face into the crook of his neck. “When did you do this?”
“Yesterday,” he admitted. “I was worried you’d see what was on the cooling racks and figure it out. The way you talked about how much fun you used to have building these, I wanted to give that back to you.”
“Fuck, baby, that’s…” Fucking amazing is what it was. No one had done something that meant as much as this. When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine my grandparents walking into the room, critiquing our work and offering tips for how to make our designs even more elaborate. “And you told Mom about this?”
“Yeah. As it turns out, peeking is a family trait.” Ezra smirked and shook his head. He leaned in closer, keeping his voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t tell her I said this, but I’m pretty sure she’s worse than all of you guys. She admitted she looked as soon as we were all in here working and Danny’s back was turned.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, she’s never been one to do well with surprises. That’s why Dad always took us shopping for her presents the afternoon of Christmas Eve.”
Ezra shuddered. “That sounds like a nightmare. I can’t imagine going to the malls when everyone’s frantic to find last-minute gifts before everything closes for the holiday.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t fun,” I agreed. I felt the muscles in my face turning into a wry smile as I thought back on those trips. Dad had been crazy, taking four boys with him to the mall. He always used the excuse that Mom deserved some time alone before they dragged us all over the county. When we’d get home, the dishes she agreed to bring to each celebration were neatly lined up on the counter, right beside storage bags filled with sandwiches and snacks to tide us over if we got hungry on the drive. “But it wasn’t all bad either. Mom and Dad had very different ideas of preparing us for the chaos. No one ever told her Dad took us all to lunch at the same diner every year. They only had cold sandwiches and other easy foods because they were busy getting their ready-to-cook dinners prepped for pickup, but that didn’t mean we went hungry. We always gorged ourselves on rum balls and rosettes because those were two things Mom didn’t make.”
“That sounds really cool.” I could practically see the wheels turning in Ezra’s mind. If I wasn’t careful, everything I mentioned that was even tangentially related to food would turn into him trying to recreate the Christmas magic for me. I opened my mouth to tell him he didn’t need to start hunting for recipes and supplies when he silenced me by pressing his lips to the corner of my mouth. It was such an innocent gesture, but it meant the world to me that he was comfortable enough to show me how he felt in front of my family. “Don’t worry. I tried rosettes once. It was a nightmare that had me ready to throw the iron across the room. I’m not making those again.”
“If you do, let me know so I don’t die by hot metal impaling my skull,” I teased. “Don’t look now, but I’m pretty sure we have an audience. You might want to tell us what’s going on before they start ribbing us about making out in front of everyone.”
“We weren’t?—”
“I know, sweetheart,” I assured him, hating that we were still in that getting-to-know-one-another phase while he simultaneously had the challenge of trying to feel comfortable with my family. “Come on.”
I turned Ezra to face the rest of the family, who were working hard to not spy on our private moment. I gave him a quick nudge forward, and he cleared his throat. He laced his fingers with mine, holding on for dear life. Ezra coughed into the crook of his elbow, which caught everyone’s undivided attention. “I wanted to do something to thank you all for inviting me to be part of your day,” he explained. As he spoke, his voice reflected his growing confidence. “Carson told me how your grandparents used to have you decorate gingerbread houses and buildings to keep you out of trouble. After seeing the chaos here today, I think I can understand a bit of why they wanted to keep everyone busy.”
Everyone laughed at his joke, and Billy flashed me a quick thumbs-up.
Ezra turned to Anson. “I also want to thank you for allowing me to be part of the Harmony House party. The work you’ve been doing over there is so valuable. I hope this can be the start of something that becomes a new holiday tradition. I thought it would be fun to decorate these to use for the party. Shiloh wants to do a family-friendly decorating party at the bakery too. If you wanted, you could probably put up some fliers or something to make sure people know what’s happening.”
