and squeals with every gift. Gifts from Mindy and Dave are distributed to Gabe and myself and vice versa.
When Gabe hands me a wrapped present shaped as a
semicircle, I quirked an eyebrow at him in puzzlement. We
never spoke about presents, so with a little embarrassment that I am empty handed for a gift for him. He smiles and
turns to sit back down as all eyes are on me. I take my time unwrapping the gift, Stella bounces up on the couch besides me and laughs.
“You’re doing it wrong. You have to rip it open,
that’s how people know that you are excited.” She loudly
whispers as everyone in the room chuckles.
As the last bit of wrapping paper is discarded from
the gift, I note that it’s a velvet jewelry box, thankfully not the size of a ring box, which would have me freaking out
completely.
“What’s it?” Stella asks leaning into me.
“I don’t know, do you want to open it for me?”
“Can I?” She asks.
I hand her the gift and smile at Gabe. Stella squeals a
second later and shoves the box in my face.
“Oh gosh! We can play dress up later?”
C H A P T E R
Nineteen
I take the moment to look at what’s in front of me.
It’s a gorgeous silver chained necklace, with a diamond
encrusted heart, with two red stones in the middle. I look up at him, my mouth is dry, and so I swallow so I can speak.
“Thank you.” I croak out.
“Let us see!” Mindy says reaching out. I hand the
box to Stella to bring to her mother. Mindy takes one look and places her hand over her mouth and brings in a deep
breath. She looks to her brother and smiles.
“It’s just like the one dad gave to mom.” She says
quietly showing it to Dave who smiles.
Gabe stands and picks up Stella, places her on his
lap and puts his arm around me.
“You like it?” He asks hopeful.
“I love it. I didn’t get you anything though.” I
whisper.
“You’ve already given me more than you know.” He
leans in and kisses me just beside the ear.
His hand on my shoulder squeezes me and then he kisses Stella on the cheek.
“Hey guys, I have an announcement to make.” Gabe
starts. The room quiets down and Stella turns to face him on his lap. He clears his throat and then looks at me, grabs my hand and links our fingers together.
“As you guys know, I’ve been looking for a new
job. I’ve been interviewing here and there and I accepted a position the other day.”
I keep my face neutral to not show my excitement
and ruin his surprise.
“So I got offered several jobs, from New York,
Missouri, Seattle and LA. But the job that I decided to accept is here in San Diego. So, I’ll be staying.”
“Holy shit! I mean, holy crap!” She winces looking
at Stella who is too enamored with one of her presents to
notice the slip in foul language. “Are you serious?” Mindy jumps up from the couch, hesitant to move closer looking
back and forth between Gabe and myself. Finally, I let my
smile show and nod excitedly.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” She squeals jumping up and
down ad clapping her hands. Dave stands up as well and
walks forward prompting Gabe to move Stella to the couch
cushion beside him and lean into a man hug. Mindy
propelled herself into Gabe and was talking incoherently into his shoulder. They laugh at whatever conversation they’re
having and then as they pull apart she grabs me and pulls me into a hug.
“I’m so happy for you.” She whispers into my ear.
“Thank you.” I reply hugging her back.
“I guess this is also a good time to tell you that I’m
officially moving in next door.” Gabe says.
“So you’re making it official now?” Dave asks.
“Yeah, figured it was time to actually give him a
key.” I laugh.
“That would imply that you lock the doors.” Gabe
interjects.
We lay on the couch watching Love Actually while
drinking red wine, relaxing from spending most of the day
next door.
“So, when do you start work?” I ask into his chest.
“After the new year. I have technically have a few
webinars to watch and then after the new year, I have a
conference downtown to attend and then I’m full-fledged
employed again.” He says.
“So we have a good week together before things get
crazy?”
“You don’t have any work?” He asks.
“Not until the second. At the agency there are
seasonal employees tending to things, and plus, most of the
business I conduct business with are closed or operating at very minimal capacity.”
“Sweet. Maybe now would be a good time to know I
have a gross toe-nail collection dated back to when I was a pre-teen.” He laughs.
“That would be gross. But I guess now would be a
good time to tell you that I pick my nose and wipe it on the walls. I won’t tell you which walls, you can just figure that out for yourself.” I smile.
“I have IBS.” He says his voice full of laughter.
“I like the smell of farts.” I smile.
“I like to poop with the door open.” He counters.
“I usually poop once a week, and by that time the
toilet is so backed up that we would have to call a plumber.”
“Sometimes, I will stuff my cock back between my
legs and make it look like I have a vagina, stand in the
mirror and do a runway walk.”
“I like to eat onions, like they’re apples.” I keep my
face neutral.
“Sometimes, when I’m alone I like to dress in all
brown, lie on the floor and pretend that I’m a potato, while watching TV.”
“Sometimes, I dream about cheese.”
“When you leave for your day, I go and sit in your
closet and try on all your things.”
“I feel myself up in the mirror, just to see what its like.”
“Shit. Can I watch you do that next time?” He
breaks the spell of our banter.
We both laugh and then quiet down a few minutes
later.
“This has been nice.” I murmur.
“It has. I think we should do this every year.” He
says.
“I concur.”
C H A P T E R
Twenty
The few days after Christmas were a blur. Suddenly,
Gabe and I were talking more about the future, what we
wanted in life and about renovating the house. He dragged
me to Home Depot where I begged to be pushed around in
the cart, as I was bored while he went from isle to isle. While the store was fascinating and huge, I didn’t know heads or tails about whatever he was talking about, so a lot of the isles and information just went in one ear and out the other as he put several things in the car, which he would not let me ride in.
“Hey, can we maybe make a plan and have
something figured out before we got back to that store? I had no clue as that anything that you were saying.” I admitted to him after leaving that store the day after Christmas.
So that’s likely a reason why we are sitting at the
kitchen table, with carpet samples, some wood samples, and a shit-ton books with different paint schemes. Gabe has
arra
nged everything by his favorite colors and samples. He has a notepad in front of him and looks at me in anticipation for my thoughts on the items in front of us.
“So, what exactly am I looking at here?” I ask.
“What are your thoughts?”
“Well, the carpet samples, I figured we can replace
the carpet in those areas that there is already carpet, I
grabbed some bamboo and hardwood options too in case you
were feeling those.” He points to the wood samples. “This is for updating the bathroom cabinets and the kitchen. Both
look to be from the Seventies, so it couldn’t hurt to switch it up a little bit. And these, are paint colors.”
I take a moment to silently observe everything in
front of me. I begin arranging everything and then step back to observe what I did. I step back in and arrange a few other spots and then step back again and cross my arms.
“I like these.” I say pointing to the left side of the
table. “I like this wood for the cabinets in the kitchen, but I think this one would be good for the bathrooms. I like the idea of hardwood, but I hate sweeping and don’t want to
constantly wear socks to keep my feet warm. Maybe we can
replace the floor in the kitchen and dining area to a
hardwood or something like that if you like any of these. I think a neutral thick cushy carpet is good. I sometimes spill wine, so more so the spotted one would work in those
instances. Plus, if children play any role in our lives that type of carpet would be bomb for hiding shit.”
Gabe smiles then steps towards the table and looks
at the choices that I isolated from the others. He grabbed his note pad and starting writing down my selections. A few
minutes later, looks up as he passes the notepad to me. I saw several stars and a few arrows next to the choices.
“What am I looking at?” I ask.
“The ones that have stars are the same things that we both chose. The arrows, and as you can see, there aren’t a lot of them are ones that we would need to come back to and either agree on a selection or pick something entirely.” He says placing his hand on my thigh.
The arrows are around the hardwood samples and
the bathroom cabinet choices.
“Explain to me your reasoning for this cabinet
selection for the bathrooms?” I ask, willing to give his
selection a chance.
“I like the dark wood, but I think in a bathroom it
makes the space look bigger if it’s a lighter or more neutral color. I honestly like darker colors in kitchens for the
cabinet, but I get that you’d want a separate color to not have those two rooms be the same. I’m cool with what you choose though if you’re dead set, this is after all, your house.” He smiles.
“It’s our house.” I correct him.
He pulls me closer to him and wraps his arm around
my waist. He kisses my neck and nuzzles his nose up the
length of my neck to behind my ear. “I like that.” He
whispers as he pulls my earlobe between his teeth and lightly bites then sucks. Chills go up my spine and I sigh heavily into him.
I push him away as much as I can before his arms
pull me back flush against his body.
“I like how responsive you are to my touch too, I bet
your wet?” He whispers, his hands wandering down my
sides to the waistband of my pants. Halfheartedly, I push him away and he groans.
The front door opens and I can hear the clicking of
Mindy’s heels as she walks through the house.
“We really need to start locking that door.” Gabe
mumbles as we separate when she walks into the kitchen.
“Hey guys!” She says siding up to me, not noticing
Gabe’s glare. “What’s going on?”
“Just looking at samples of things to do to the
house.” I reply, ignoring the growling - yes growling, coming from Gabe.
“You guys are seriously going to start renovating?
So soon?” She asks.
“That’s the plan.” Gabe continues to growl.
“I like this one.” Mindy points to a sample of
hardwood flooring, one that Gabe chose and I didn’t.
“I do too.” He says with a smile.
“Kinda like the one back in the house that we grew
up in, right? Where we’d pretend that we were ice skating
partners?” Mindy continues as Gabe’s face reddens.
“Excuse me?” I stifle my laughter.
“We would pretend that we were partners, I’d dress
him in in something shiny, sometimes we wore tin foil, I shit you not, and we’d slide around in our socks for hours.”
I keep my laughter in as Gabe’s face gets even redder and he avoids eye contact with me. Mindy grabs his arm as she starts laughing hysterically.
“Do you remember that one time, when I dressed
you up in mom’s wedding dress? Shoes and all?” Mindy
continues, as Gabe buries his head into the corner of his arm.
“Can we not, Min?” He groans into himself, rubbing
his hands through his hair.
“I even got into mom’s make-up and put lipstick on
him. He looked like a clown. On the other hand, I looked
amazing and gorgeous.” Mindy is in hysterics now, about to double over as I can’t contain my laughter any longer.
Gabe looks up at me through the crook of his arm
and shakes his head.
“You’re supposed to have my side.” He says
accusingly.
“I do. But I’ve got so many wonderful images
running through my head.” I laugh.
He shakes his head and walks towards the fridge,
grabs a beer while shaking his head and pulling a long drink from the bottle trying to ignore our giggling.
“This one time-.” Mindy starts, but suddenly her
mouth is covered by Gabe’s hand. He’s shaking his head, his lips curving up as he fights giving in.
“We’re going to stop story time for today. Mindy,
don’t you have somewhere to be?” He says to her, his hand
still covering her mouth and she shakes her head.
“I think you should make up somewhere to be before I start to tell Vanessa about the night you lost your
virginity.” He threatens.
“Oh, I wanna hear this story.” I coax as I take a seat.
“You wouldn’t?” Mindy’s eyes go wide at his
attempt to embarrass her.
“Mindy decided one night to go hang out at this
place called The Barn where basically the entire high school hung out at on the weekends. She never went there though,
because she was too good to hang out with us average
people.” Gabe starts as he holds Mindy back with one hand
as she tries to get her hands to cover his mouth.
“Stop!” She screams, her voice echoing off the
kitchen walls.
“No, please, don’t stop. Keep going.” I plead with a
grin.
“So, Mindy thought she was better than a lot of
people while we were in high school. And when she was a
senior, I was just a sophomore not wanting anything to do
with her, pretending that the nerdy chick who would
sometimes show up randomly to tell me what to do was a
complete wacko.” Gabe laughs.
“Can we please not?” Mindy whines.
“Min, you two are friends. Girls share these types of
facts about their lives when they’re friends with someone.
I’m just helping you two get closer, being a great brother and all.” Gabe smiles at Mindy. He looks at me and winks.
“This is not a fun story.” Mindy stomps again.
“If he’s tells me yours, then I’ll share mine.” I bargain.
“Deal.” Gabe says for her. “So, anyways Mindy
came to The Barn one night, with a friend or a quazi-friend of hers, I’m not sure. I never noticed the chick before.”
“You wouldn’t have, she was home schooled.”
Mindy mumbles.
“So, she’s all dressed up, looking to impress and
since my friends didn’t know she was my sister, one of those boneheads, starts chatting her up. Now, since this is a high school party and we lived in bum-fuck of nowhere, there’s
underage drinking happening. My buddy, fuck! What was
his name?” Gabe looks to Mindy, who is now covering her
face and leaning against the counter.
“Smitty.” She mumbles into her arm.
“Right, Smitty. He was tall, lanky and not really all
that awesome. But he was a smart guy, I remember that
much. So Smitty and Mindy cozy up and dance a little on the makeshift dance floor guzzling down the jungle juice and
eventually disappear.”
“Wait, before you go any further. How do you know
the details?” I ask.
“Smitty shared. With diagrams and shit.” Gabe says
without missing a beat as Mindy groans.
“Gross.” I sigh.
“Yeah. Anyways, so everyone is shit-faced and the
party is dwindling down. I left and hitched a ride with our neighbor, assuming that Mindy left already. I wasn’t used to
her going out and partying so it wasn’t on my radar or anything to look out for her. But rumor has it, and Smitty confirmed the next week at school that Ms. Mindy here and
Smitty got busy in one of the stalls in the back of the barn.
No blankets, but Smitty did lay down his shirt like a
gentleman. Apparently, they did the deed, but once they
were done, there was brown mud everywhere.” Gabe snorts.
“They didn’t notice the brown mud when they went in there
and during, but once they left, they both noticed some foul smell. And it turns out that they fucked in hay covered cow or horse shit and their awkward movements, made the soil
loosen up a bit and moisten, or something. I’m unsure of the logistics. But they were both covered in the shit all except a square spot in the pelvic region, thankfully. Mindy got the brunt of it, since she was actually on the floor. She stank for days after that.”
New Year, New You Page 9
