Always Us (The Jade Series #8) (13 page)

“I don’t really like any of these,” Jade says, picking up a box of blue glass ornaments. “They look like they’d shatter if you touch them. And I hate to say this, but they kind of remind me of Katherine. All of these do.” She motions to the rack.

I laugh. “I was thinking the same thing. So you want to look somewhere else? We don’t have to get the ornaments here.”

“Maybe we could just go with the lights.”

“You don’t want ornaments?”

“I do, but I don’t want to get them all at once.”

“Why not?”

“I was thinking that maybe we’d collect them over the years, like get a couple this year and a couple more next year and make them special for each year so they mean something. Like this year we could get some that would remind us of our first Christmas together as a married couple.”

I never told Jade about the Christmas tree I had as a kid so it’s odd that she’d suggest that. It’s almost exactly how my mom’s family did their tree and how she did ours.

Noticing my silence, she shrugs. “I guess it’s a dumb idea. You don’t want a tree with just two or three ornaments. We’ll just go to another store.”

“Jade, it’s perfect.” I lean down and kiss her. “I love that idea. Come on. Let’s check out and go home so we can get to work. We’ll stop for dinner so we don’t have to make anything.”

I take her to her favorite Mexican place for dinner, then we go home and start assembling the tree. Well,
I
do, while she watches.

“You sure you know how to do this?” She laughs as she watches me try to figure out which piece is the bottom.

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the diagram on the flimsy instruction sheet. “There are only four pieces, Jade. I think I can figure it out.”

“But your dad said you weren’t handy around the house.”

I stand up, tossing the instructions aside. “No, he said
he
wasn’t handy, not me. And this isn’t the same as installing a light fixture.”

“You think you could do that? Install a light fixture?”

“Yes. But I’d rather hire an electrician.” I pick up the tree section that appears to be the largest of the four and set it in the metal base. The base wobbles a little and I see that I forgot to put in the stabilizing pins.

“It’s not sitting straight,” Jade says, laughing. “Do you want me to do it?”

“Okay, that’s enough.” I pick her up and throw her over my shoulder. “You’re waiting here until I’m done.” I drop her on the couch and toss the remote on her lap. “Watch TV so I can do my work.”

“But I was helping.” She sits up, hanging over the back of the couch, watching me.

“You weren’t helping. You were disrupting my concentration. Now turn around.”

“You’re so bossy.” She smiles, then flips around and turns on the TV.

I get the pins in the base and the wobbling is fixed. Then I find the second piece of the tree and slip it into place. This is way easier when Jade’s not watching.

“Are you going to put together other stuff?” she asks.

“Like what?” I slip the third tree section in place.

“I don’t know. Like tables and stuff.” She lies down, her legs dangling off the arm of the couch, swinging back and forth.

“We’re not buying furniture we have to assemble. We have plenty of money to buy furniture that’s already put together.” I slip the last piece of the tree in place.

“Well, other stuff has to be put together, like lawnmowers. Outdoor furniture. Cribs.”

I freeze, my hand still on the tree. Cribs? Is she trying to tell me something?

“Jade, you’re not—”

Her head pops up over the couch. “No. I was just using that as an example.”

I breathe again. Neither one of us is ready for a baby. Jade still hasn’t told me for sure if she even wants one.

“Maybe use a different example next time,” I tell her as I push down on the tree, locking the pieces in place.

Jade does this all the time now. She brings up the baby topic out of the blue, like she did at Frank’s house. And all it does is confuse me and get my hopes up. Then she says she needs more time to think about it, which is fine, but I kind of wish she’d stop bringing up the topic until she’s made a decision.
 

“Okay, I got the tree together.”

“Already?” She looks back at it. “How’d you do that so fast?”

“Because I didn’t have someone watching me, criticizing everything I did.”

“I wasn’t criticizing. I was helping.”

“You weren’t helping.” I go sit next to her on the couch and kiss her cheek. “But now you can. You get to fluff all the branches. They’re all matted down from being in the box. Have fun.” I put my feet up on the table and flip to a sports channel.

She stands up, her hands on her hips. “You’re not going to help?”

“I did my part. Now it’s your turn. Tell me when you’re done and we’ll do the lights together.”

She goes over to the tree. I’m quietly laughing as I listen to her complain.

“This is going to take a really long time. There are a lot of branches here.”

“You can do it,” I yell back at her. I have to give her a hard time after she acted like I was too incompetent to put the tree together.

“I can’t reach the top branches. I might need a ladder.” She mumbles it to herself and I hear her straining to reach.

I flip around and check her progress. “What’s taking so long?”

“I just started!” She’s so annoyed with me I want to laugh but I try to be serious.

“I would’ve been done by now.” I give her my cocky smile.

“There’s no way you would’ve been done by now.”

“That branch in the middle isn’t fluffed enough.” I point to it.

“How do you know if it’s fluffed enough?” She actually takes me seriously, so I play along.

“There needs to be even distribution of the evergreen tips. Some up, some down, and a couple shooting out each side.”

“Really?” She adjusts the branch, making it just like I instructed. She starts mumbling again. “I don’t know why it matters as long as it fills in the space.”
 

I laugh. “I’m kidding, Jade. I made that up.”

“Garret! I thought you were serious.”

“I know. It was hilarious. You want some help?’

“I thought you said you wouldn’t.”

I hop over the couch and meet her by the tree. “I was joking. Of course I’ll help.”

She fluffs another branch, shaking her head, smiling. “Why were you teasing me? You know I don’t know anything about Christmas trees.”

“Because you’re fun to tease. You always believe me when I make shit up.” I glance over and see that she’s doing every branch the way I told her to. “Jade, you don’t have to follow my instructions. I told you I was kidding.”

She stands back to look at the branches. “I know, but your stupid technique actually works. They look better when I do it that way.”

“Then you shouldn’t say it’s stupid.” I kiss her. “We need music.” I shut the TV off and put my phone in the speaker dock and turn on some holiday classics. The song about roasting chestnuts on an open fire starts playing. I grab her from behind, hugging her. “How’s that? Feeling Christmasy yet?”

She flips around. “When did you load Christmas songs on your phone?”

“I always keep a few on there. I like Christmas music.”

“I love this song.” She closes her eyes, presses her cheek against my chest, and just listens, smiling contently.

It may still be November, but I can already tell this is going to be a great Christmas.
 

JADE

I could stay like this for a very long time. Hugging Garret while listening to Christmas music. Last year I was with him at Christmas but that was at his dad’s house. This year we get to have our own Christmas with our very own tree. Well, actually, we’ll be at his dad’s house again on the actual day, but we’ll spend most of December here at home, enjoying our tree and our lights and doing whatever holiday traditions we decide to start.
 

The song ends and I pull away. “Let’s keep fluffing so we can do the lights.”

He doesn’t let me go. “You sure? This is kind of nice.”

“It’ll be even nicer when the lights are up and we can turn all the other lights off.”

“True. Okay, you keep working on the branches and I’ll get the lights.”

Garret rummages through the closet and comes back with extension cords and power cords. He takes the lights out of the boxes and checks that they work, then helps me finish the tree.

I keep watching him to see if he’s okay because I still find it odd that he’s acting this way when his grandfather’s dying. Is he trying to pretend it isn’t happening? Hide his sadness with holiday fun? Or maybe, like he said, he really isn’t that sad about it. I just find that hard to believe after seeing how upset he was last Fourth of July when his grandfather rejected him. Garret was really hurt by that and I know he was hoping that someday he’d have a relationship with his grandfather again. So did something happen since then to make him not even care that his grandfather is in a coma and going to die soon?

“You want to put them on or do you want
me
to?” Garret has the lights stretched out and ready to go.
 

“You do it. I’ll hold them for you.”

He weaves the strands in and out of the branches and when he’s halfway up the tree I say, “Is that a certain technique or are you just making it up as you go?”

“This is how my mom did it when I was a kid. She said the lights fill the tree better if you go from the inside of the tree to the outside, instead of only going around the outside. And it’s true. You end up with a better looking tree.”

“Did your dad help with the tree?”

“He’d take us to the tree farm and chop it down and get it set up in the stand. Then my mom would do the lights and I’d help her with the ornaments. My dad doesn’t like doing that stuff.”

“Did your grandfather? I mean, was he into Christmas?”

Garret stops stringing the lights.
 

“I’m sorry, Garret. I shouldn’t have asked.”

He starts weaving lights into another branch. “He’s never been into Christmas. My grandmother isn’t really either. She has her staff decorate the house for her and everything’s very formal. The tree at their house looks just like the one at my dad’s house. White lights and glass ornaments.”

Garret’s now at the very top of the tree. He tucks the end of the light strand behind a branch and stands back. “Done. Hit the lights and we’ll see how it looks.”

I turn off the overhead lights.

Garret puts his foot on the switch that turns on the power strip, but doesn’t turn it on. “You want to do a drumroll like on Christmas Vacation?”
 

I laugh. “No, that’s okay. Go ahead.”

He turns the switch and the room fills with a warm glow. The tree is amazing. Garret’s trick for stringing the lights worked great. Lights sparkle from both the inside and the outside of the tree.

“That’s the blinking version,” he says. “I could put it on steady if you want.”

“Leave it on the blinking. I like how it looks all sparkly.”

He comes over and hugs me, my back against his chest, and we gaze at the lights. The Christmas music is still playing, making the scene even more magical. This night is one of those memories I’ll tuck away and take out again when I want to relive it. Because I’ll definitely want to relive it. It’s perfect.

“I love you, Garret.” I lean my head back, checking out the top of the tree.

“I love you, too.” He kisses my forehead.

And we remain there, listening to the music and watching the twinkling lights. Later, when we go to bed, we leave the tree on so we can see the warm glow of the lights from the bedroom. It’s calming and I fall right to sleep.

The next day I get up early because I have chem class at eight. I only have two classes on Tuesdays, but they’re spread out in the morning and afternoon, so I end up staying on campus all day, doing homework between classes, either at the library or at the coffee shop.

Garret usually sleeps in because he doesn’t have class until ten, but today he got up with me. When I get out of the shower, I go in the bedroom and see him checking his phone.

“Any update?” I ask him. Every morning and all day long, he checks his messages to see if there are any updates about his grandfather.

“He’s the same. No change.”

Yesterday, Holton was moved to the clinic, the special medical facility that only rich, important people have access to. Garret said the clinic has several locations but he didn’t tell me which one his grandfather is at, and I didn’t ask.

Garret’s acting strange about this whole thing and I’ve decided not to force him to talk about it. He’s not ready to. He needs time to work this out in his head. He has a complicated relationship with his grandfather and I think he’s struggling to figure out how he feels right now.

“Did you hear from your grandmother?” I ask him.

“No.” He keeps his eyes on his phone. “She has too much going on. She doesn’t have time to call me.”

I’m dressed now and I go over to the bed and kiss his cheek. “I have to go.”

He kisses me back. “Have a good day.” He focuses back on his phone.
 

I rub my hand along his scruffy cheek. “Garret, I know I keep asking you this, but are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

I wait for him to look up, and when he does, he says, “Jade, stop worrying about me. I’m fine. I really am. I know what’s going to happen and I’m prepared for it. It’s okay. He’s old. It’s not like I thought he’d live forever.” He kisses me. “Go to class. I love you.”

I hug him. “I love you, too.”

On the drive to campus, my mind is still on Garret. I wish his grandmother would call him back. I don’t know why she’s ignoring him. I know she’s busy with everything going on, but you’d think she could take a minute to call her grandson.

After class, I go to the library and study for a quiz I have later. During lunch I call Garret but he doesn’t answer. I forgot he has physical therapy at noon. When my afternoon class lets out, I go outside and am surprised to find that it feels like a summer day. It’s way hotter than normal. It’s the perfect weather for laying out on the beach, which is exactly what I’m going to do.