“Mrs. Clay hasn’t gotten that far in my husband lessons,” Wilder says in a deadpan tone.
Well, shit.
“Okay,” Jensen murmurs. Then, louder, “Okay! We can do this. How hard can it be? Throw up some lights, a couple wreaths, some garlands… it’s not rocket science.”
His words don’t seem to inspire a lot of confidence in any of us.
“What the hell even is a garland?” Zander mutters.
“We gotta keep moving. Let’s just open the boxes and see what we got. Improvise.”
Everyone nods and reaches for a box. When we pull the lids off, it takes a moment to realize just how big of a mess this really is.
“What the fuck is this?” Wilder exclaims, reaching into my tote and pulling out a penis-shaped ornament. “Who brought this?”
I chuckle. “Oh…that’s Skyler’s. She found it when she was in New York.”
“Why the hell would she buy a penis ornament?” he demands to know.
I shrug. “She thought it was hilarious. Duh.” In fact, I nearly pissed myself when she first showed it to me, I thought it was so funny.
“I mean…yeah, it totally is,” Wilder agrees. “Still, come on!”
“Well, who packed all this shit?” Jensen groans, digging into his box and pulling up a thing of sparkly purple tinsel.
I recognize it immediately. “Ah, that’s also mine!”
“Carson!” He narrows his eyes at me. “Purple is not a Christmas color!”
“Any color can be a Christmas color if you believe.” I chuckle. “Skyler has been really into purple lately because one of her favorite animes has a purple cat-like god character that she’s slightly obsessed with, so there’s been a lot of purple in our lives lately.”
“It’s probably Lord Beerus fromDragonball Z,” Zander murmurs, unable to help being the biggest nerd in the room.
“Not. A. Christmas. Color,” Jensen repeats, emphasizing each word. “Plus, it clashes with everything else!”
“Everythingclashes with everything,” Wilder sighs. “Is that a damn Hello Kitty wreath?”
“Millie loves Hello Kitty,” Owen grins. “Oh, this is so cute. We got her a Hello Kitty toy kitchen set and she’s been making us pretend tacos and cupcakes. She will literally stand and stare at me until I finish my plate, because that’s what we tell her to do all the time.”
“That sounds very cute,” Jensen nods, his hands on his hips. “Just not so sure Hello Kitty goes with a penis ornament and purple anime cat decorations.”
“Pink and purple look kind of good together,” Wilder says. “But then we got another banger from Carson’s collection here.” He pulls an ornament from my contributions— a circle with an image of Santa on the toilet and the words “You’re on Santa’s shit list.”
I snort. “That’s just funny!”
“You are a child,” Owen sighs.
“That’s rich coming from the guy with an Elsa tree topper,” Wilder snickers, holding up a likeness of the Disney princess with an extra sparkly dress.
Rolling his eyes, Owen snaps, “When you have a seven-year-old, there’s no such thing as an adult Christmas.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Oh my God, we’re so fucked.”
“Hey, hey, come on,” Jensen quickly says in an upbeat tone.. “Okay, maybe we should’ve coordinated the decorations a little better, but it’s all right. We can work with what we got. It’ll just be a little… unconventional. Nothing wrong with that. The girls will probably love it, honestly.”
“He’s not wrong,” Zander agrees. “Rylee will probably want to take the penis ornament and the Hello Kitty wreath home with us.”
“Hands off the penis,” I warn him, wagging a finger at him. “Only Skyler gets to touch it.”
