“This is my car.”
“It’s Christmas!” I countered.
“That can’t be an excuse for terrible decisions,” he argued as “Jingle Bell Rock” blared from the radio.
Kringle started howling along.
“I rarely get to ride in a car, and when I am in a car driving down a snowy country road in December, I will listen to Christmas music!” I yelled at him.
Screw him and his bad attitude.
I turned up the music and the heat. Matt turned the heat off then opened the window, letting the frigid air blow in.
“I’m freezing.” I wrapped my arms around myself.
“You can have heat or music,” Matt said, “not both. That’s called compromise and is the bedrock of a healthy relationship.”
“You sneak around trying to watch me while I sleep; this is hardly a healthy relationship.”
“It’s nothing compared to your unhealthy attachment to Christmas,” he retorted.
“You should put some Christmas lights up,” I suggested as we turned onto the drive that led down to the large estate house.
“Never.”
After we unloaded the car, I started a fire, or tried to.
“I thought you were a wholesome small-town girl?”
I grimaced as I stuffed more newspaper under the wood I had stacked in the fireplace and tried again to light it.
“I am more of a sit-inside-with-hot-cocoa-and-a-book type of small-town girl, not camping out in the woods.”
“Surprising, considering you slept in a nativity scene.”
“That was out of desperation.”
Matt took the matches from me and started restacking the wood. Then he grabbed a handful of loose fur from Kringle and added it to the pile. He lit the match, and in a few minutes, a fire began burning cheerfully in the hearth.
“Well, look at you. For someone who hates Christmas, you sure know how to bring the atmosphere.”
I spread out a blanket and set out the food I had bought. Kringle stretched out in front of the fire.
I snapped a few pictures and posted them on Instagram with the caption Indoor Christmas Picnic! With Matt and Kringle posed in front of the fire and the large steel window that looked out over the snowy woods in the background, the picture was the perfect Christmas-core aesthetic.
I took a bite of the crab cakes and swiped a french fry in the creamy sauce that came with the meal.
Matt tossed Kringle a french fry.
“You can’t tell me this doesn’t feel like Christmas,” I said, wolfing down my crab cakes. Should I have savored them? Probably. But they were addictingly good, which was why I had bought a pre-wrapping meal and a post-wrapping meal.
Matt was still eating his food as I tied my gift-wrapping tool belt back on and started setting up my wrapping assembly line and organizing the presents.
“Do you need any help?” he asked.
“I’m assuming these presents were your doing?” I asked, pointing at a small pile of terribly wrapped presents: the wrapping paper was wrinkled, they were covered in way too much tape, and the patterns on the paper didn’t even line up.
“They aren’t that bad,” he said, leaning back on the blanket.
