“Don’t give me that look,” I muttered, turning away. “She’s easier to deal with than people.”
I cleared my throat and pointed vaguely toward the kitchen. “You don’t need to feed her your food anymore, by the way. If you wanna feed her, just come up here. There’s real cat food in the pantry. Probably more than she’ll ever finish.”
Her lips curved slightly, barely a smile, but enough to make me feel it.
She nodded, stroking Honey’s head. “Th-thank you.”
Silence sat between us for a few seconds before she asked quietly, “You’re… not g-going home for Christmas?”
I shook my head. “Don’t celebrate it.”
Didn’t have a reason to.
“There’s a tree in the storage,” I added after a beat. “Brand new. Bought it a few years ago. Never opened it. It’s just sitting there.”
“Why?” she whispered.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t… excite me, never did.”
That made her sit up straighter, Honey still clinging to her cast like a small orange shadow. She tilted her head at me, just slightly, curious and something else.
“What?” I asked.
She turned her gaze away, murmuring so quietly I almost missed it. “I d-don’t…either.”
Something about the way she said alone, without actually saying it, hit harder than I wanted it to.
I sighed, rubbing the back of my neck. “Well,” I muttered, trying to play it off, “if you’re not celebrating and I’m not celebrating… might as well do nothing together.”
She glanced at me again.
“I’ve got decorations somewhere in there,” I said, nodding toward the storage room in the corner. “Lights, ornaments, fake snow spray. We can… set it up if you want.”
Aurora blinked, clearly unsure if I was serious.
“Maybe Honey will like it,” I added quickly. “She looks like the type to climb a Christmas tree or whatever. Wreck the whole thing. That little thing.”
That earned me a tiny laugh, a real one this time. Barely a sound, but I caught it. And damn, if that didn’t feel more festive than any holiday ever could.
—
I don’t even know how it happened. One second, I was standing there trying to sound like I didn’t care, and the next… my living room looked like Santa’s storage room exploded.
Boxes everywhere. Tinsel, ornaments, garlands, hooks, and lights, half of which I didn’t even remember buying.
Aurora was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding Honey in one arm while the kitten batted at a strand of tinsel hanging off the box.
I looked around the chaos and exhaled through my nose. “You probably know better than I how to put all this together.”
She blinked up at me, then she looked at the open boxes around her, shrugged, and signed, God knows what she signed. I gave up on Jennie’s lesson a while ago.
“I hope you know Jennie didn’t teach me shit; I got nothing from that. Apart fromI,” I said, making her blink up at me.
“Instructions or g-guess.”
…where the fuck did I get the I from…?
“Guess,” I repeated under my breath, shaking my head. “Yeah, that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.”
