Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Danny

Holiday did make me come with the vibrator. Even harder than when we’d been going down on each other. I’d floated somewhere near the ceiling for a while until remembering where we were and what we’d been doing.

“I need to shower before I go home,” I said. There was no way I could just put my clothes back on and go home the way I was. She was all over me.

“That’s fine. I might join you. We’ll get you all cleaned up and send you on your way.” She was pouting again. I reached out and grabbed her chin.

“You can’t do that anymore. It makes me want to give you things.”

“What kind of things?” she asked, raising those perfect eyebrows.

“You know what kind of things.” I rolled my eyes and sat up, my joints loose from the orgasms.

“Tell me,” she said, her eyes sparkling. My god, she was stunning. I couldn’t believe I’d seen her naked and had gotten to make her come. Twice.

“No. I need to get home.” I picked up some of my clothes and realized I couldn’t put them back on until I’d showered off.

“I don’t want you to go,” she whispered, staring at the bed.

“I know, baby,” I said, reaching out and stroking the side of her face to get her to look up at me. “But you know how mad my parents will be. And I’ll see you tomorrow as soon as we can.” She always had Christmas morning with her parents for breakfast and gifts, then would come to our party in the afternoon. Hopefully she could get away a little earlier. It seemed selfish to want her to abandon her family for me, but I didn’t really care.

“I like how you call me baby now,” she said, grinning at me.

“You do?”

She nodded.

“Then I’ll keep doing it. Baby. Do you have a robe or something I can put on?” She did, so I covered up and snuck down the hall with her after she’d put on a second robe. We showered together, touching and kissing and laughing.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she kept saying.

“I know. It’s scary how easy it is,” I confessed.

“I know. But we know each other.” She moved her loofah across my breasts, causing me to moan. If she didn’t stop, I was going to beg her to make me come again.

“We know each other really well now,” I said, grasping her wrist and making her stop stroking me. “If I’m ever going to get home, we’re going to have to stop.”

Holiday let out a little sound of frustration, but she handed me the loofah so I could finish washing myself. Once we were out of the shower, I put my clothes back on and brushed out my hair, putting it up again. Everyone was going to notice that my hair was wet when I got back, but I’d let them draw their own conclusions.

“So,” I said when Holiday had put her dress back on and had braided her hair. “We’re doing this?”

She snorted and kissed me once. “Yeah, Danny. We’re doing this. Officially.”

I’d needed to hear it confirmed.

“Good,” I said, kissing her again, letting myself melt into her mouth and enjoy the decadence of kissing her. God, she was good at kissing.

“I’m yours, Danny,” she said, smiling at me. My heart stopped for a second.

“I’m yours too. Always have been.”

We kissed one more time before she handed me my coat and pushed me out of her room, leaving me to do the walk of shame on my own.

The party was still going on, but things were winding down as people made their way back home to wait for Santa to come down the chimney or chimney equivalent if they didn’t have one. More than a few parents were going to be up late tonight assembling gifts to leave under the tree. I did my best not to make eye contact with anyone, but it would have been the height of rudeness not to say goodbye to Holiday’s parents, so I sought them out where they were hiding in the kitchen and whispering about something.

“Holiday is upstairs,” I said with as much dignity as I could manage while my entire face was on fire.

They shared a look and just smiled at me.

“We’re so happy it’s you,” Simone said, holding her arms out and I had no choice but to let myself be hugged by the woman who had been like a second mother to me. It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. I embraced her dad, Derek, as well, feeling too many emotions to name.

“Merry Christmas,” I said. Insufficient, but I didn’t know what else to say.

“Merry Christmas, Daniella,” Simone said, winking at me.

My parents were still up and bustling around when I got back, and immediately noticed my wet hair.

“We didn’t think we were going to see you tonight,” Mom said, nudging Dad. “We assumed you’d stay with Holiday.”

I rolled my eyes. “And get a massive guilt trip? No.”

Mom’s eyes narrowed. “You be nice to me or I’m going to tell Santa not to bring your presents.”

All of her children might be grown, but my mom still acted like Santa was a real person and would withhold gifts if she snitched on us. Normally it was cute, but tonight I was over it.

“I’m tired,” I said. “Can we not?”

“I wonder what she’s tired from?” Raquel said, coming into the living room with a smirk on her face.

“Don’t you have a husband to get home to?” I asked. Raquel had married a respiratory therapist who unfortunately had to work today but would be getting off right about now.

“Oh, I couldn’t leave without seeing my baby sister’s walk of shame,” she said, laughing as if this was the best thing to happen to her all year. Insufferable. Maybe I should have stayed with Holiday. Then I could have snuck in early in the morning and pretended I was here the whole time.

“Like you haven’t had one before?” I asked. When it came to walks of shame, my sister had had many more than me. Once I’d even sat down and ranked them from least to most embarrassing. This must be revenge for that.

“Children,” Mom said, her voice sharp. “Not on Christmas Eve, please.”

Raquel rolled her eyes and then hugged and kissed my parents goodbye and said she’d be here tomorrow with Kevin for the family celebration.

“Byeeeee, Danny,” she said, laughing as she walked out the door.

I glared after her until the door shut.

I miss you. Come back. The message from Holiday came about twenty minutes after I’d gotten home. I was already in bed, scrolling social media and trying to get to sleep. It was impossible though, because every time I closed my eyes, I thought of her.

Hey, I miss you too. I didn’t want to leave you. I wished we were together right now.

Instead of answering my message, she video chatted me. I answered, smiling as her sleepy face filled the screen, illuminated by the glow of her phone. She was in bed too, which was unusual. Holiday was more of a night owl than I was.

“I’m too tired to type. You took it out of me, you monster,” she said, laughing.

“Yeah, I know how you feel. Tonight was…something else.” Something amazing, incredible, unbelievable. All of those words.

She kept smiling.

“I can’t believe this is happening, Danny. I just… Wow. You’re kind of dirty, you know that?”

Now I was the one laughing. “I guess? I think you brought it out in me. I’ve never really thought about it before.” In my past sexual experiences, I guess I’d taken the lead of whomever I was with at the time. With Holiday, it had been different. Everything had come easily and naturally by knowing her and by knowing myself.

“Well, it was hot as hell. I’m a big fan. And I can’t wait for this holiday to be over so we can go back to our apartment and not go anywhere but the bedroom for a while.” Right. In a few days we’d be heading back to our regular lives and I’d be going back to work and so would she and we’d pick up our lives, but everything had changed.

“How is that going to work?” I asked.

She pretended to think about it for a second. “Well, we can use your bed until we just absolutely wreck it and then my bed and go back and forth. You’ll have to do a lot of laundry, but it will be worth it. I’ve always wanted to have sex in the kitchen too.” It took me a moment to catch up. She was talking about sex.

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean everything else. Are we together, together?”

She snorted. “Are you asking me if I’ll be your girlfriend? Are you saying you like me , like me?” Holiday was making this into a joke, but I was serious. I needed to know what we were to each other now after everything had changed.

“Yes, Holiday. I like you. A lot. In every way. And I want you to be my girlfriend.” There. The only thing I’d held back was the fact that I was completely in love with her. This should have been a startling revelation, but it wasn’t. I’d realized sometime around when she’d taken her dress off. I’d just known, in every cell of my body, that I loved her in every way you can love a person. In loud ways and in quiet. I had always loved her, but that love had grown and stretched and moved with the two of us as we matured into the adults we were now.

I’d tell her tomorrow.

“Well, I want you to be my girlfriend. So there,” she said.

“Sounds perfect to me.”

She gazed at me and was quiet for a moment, but I knew she was thinking about something.

“I love you, you know,” she said, her voice quiet.

“I love you,” I said, the words coming out of my mouth before I considered what they meant. We said them all the time, but now they had a different definition.

“I know,” she said. “But it’s different now, isn’t it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. It has. But I don’t regret it. I wouldn’t change anything about how this has happened between us. Nothing.” There was no way to know how things would have worked out if we’d discovered feelings for each other when we were younger. I wasn’t interested in playing that kind of game. I was only interested in who we were now, and the fact that we loved each other.

“We’ve got a lot of sex to make up for,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Mmmm, yes. But other things too.” Not that the sex wasn’t amazing. It was. But I was excited about everything with her.

“You know, it was pretty smart of us to fall in love now, because we already live together. It’s like we skipped a step. Didn’t even have to UHaul.”

I laughed. “We did UHaul. Just not in the usual way.” We’d rented the truck together and had crammed it full of our stuff before we’d moved into our current apartment.

“We’ve literally been living together for years.” Since our freshman year in college.

“You’re still my best friend too,” she said. “I know my brain is all loopy from the sex, but I need you to know that you’ll never stop being my best friend, Danny. Always.”

I’d never wished I could teleport somewhere more in my life than I did at that moment. The clock on my phone screen showed me that it was after midnight, so it was officially Christmas.

“You’re my best friend, H. Always and forever. Merry Christmas, baby.”

“Merry Christmas, babe.”