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Lawson
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IT REALLY WAS THE PERFECT tree. Tall, full, and bright green, it looked like it came out of a magazine. I wondered quietly how it hadn’t already been picked, but I figured it was probably a little larger than most people wanted to deal with. But the main living room where Holly wanted it to go had vaulted ceilings, and anything less than this size tree would look sad anyway.
“Alright, this is your part,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest and looking up at me with an expression I could only place as her attempting to say that this was the plan all along. If I were honest, it was, but I felt like ribbing her a bit, too.
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “My part is lugging this thing onto the car. You have to cut it down.”
Her jaw fell, and she turned so she was fully facing me, her hands on her hips like a pouting toddler. It was adorable. She even did the one-foot stamp and everything.
“What?” she asked. “You’re the big manly man, so full of Christmas cheer. I can’t cut that thing down!”
“Look over there.” I pointed across the field, where a small child was working on a tree much smaller than the one we had picked out. He was happily sawing away, a concerned but proud papa beside him, watching carefully. “That kid is doing it. If he can, you can.”
“That tree is like six feet tall!” she said. “Ours is at least nine.”
“And you are at least twice that kid’s size. The math all works.”
“You can’t be serious,” she began, then closed her eyes and shook her head, laughing. “You know what, I know you aren’t serious. But I am going to do it anyway.”
“You are?”
“I sure am,” she said. “Just to show you that I can, if nothing else.”
“This ought to be fun,” I said, crossing my arms and watching.
Holly bent down, pulling her hair back under the hood of her jacket. It had been pulled out in that way women do to show off their hair even when it’s cold by pulling it through, but now it was becoming a problem for her. She shoved it back in, fighting with her gloves not to stick to it and clearing her throat.
“Here we go,” she said, taking a few experimental movements with the saw.
“It usually works better when you’re using the saw on the tree,” I said.
“I am well aware of that,” she said teasingly. “Just getting my cutting form going.”
She knelt down further, moving her head under the lower branches before stopping suddenly and cursing.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Stupid branch,” she said. “Got me right in the eye. Why is there so much sap?”
“Did... did you just ask why there was so much sap? Under a tree?” I asked, laughing.
“I mean, I knew there was some,” she said, her voice somewhat muffled as she struggled. “Just not this much.”
“I’ll be sure to complain to the manager,” I teased.
“Shut up,” she said. “Here we go.”
Short sawing sounds began coming from her direction, and the tree shook, needles falling in some places and collecting on the back of her coat. I reached up to hold the tree upright just in case she got far enough that it might start falling and waited, unable to completely avoid my eyes from her perfectly shaped backside sticking up in the air. It made my stomach tighten and my cock twitch, so I had to force myself to look away.
After a few moments of grunting in ways that certainly didn’t help my desire to avoid specific thoughts, she sighed. I waited for a moment, but the sawing sound had stopped. It was instead replaced by a low muttering.
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.
“I said,” she said, just the tiniest bit louder, “that I am getting nowhere. I need your help.”
“I thought you said you could do it?”
“I will literally sit out here all night and saw at this thing until it comes down to prove a point, but unless you feel like waiting all evening, then maybe you could help me.” She pulled herself out of the bottom of the tree and looked up at me. Sap and needles covered her hood, and some of it had made its way inside to the beanie she wore underneath.
It was such a spectacular combination of cute and sad that I couldn’t help but shake my head.
“Alright,” I said. “How about we switch places. You make sure the tree doesn’t fall on top of me, and I’ll saw.”
She nodded and stood, and I bent down to get a good look at the base of the tree.
“Ow,” I said, covering one eye.
“Branch got you, too, didn’t it?” she asked.
“It might have,” I said, blinking and trying to get my vision right again. When I did, I slinked under the branches to where she had been.
The saw was lying on the ground, and I could see where she had been cutting. It wasn’t much. She had barely scratched the surface of the thing. It was almost like she had just come under the tree and scratched at it with her bare hands rather than sawing. Shaking my head, I grabbed the saw and went to work. After a few moments, I was pretty deep, and I could see the tree sway above me with each motion.
“I think it’s getting loose,” she said.
“Gently pull in the direction away from me,” I said. “Not like you’re trying to snap it in half or anything, just so you are guiding it that way if it were to fall, okay?”
“Got it,” she said.
I kept sawing, and eventually there was a crack. I snaked out of the bottom and stood, not bothering with getting the needles off me yet. She was holding the tree with one hand, looking at me expectantly.
“It’s ready,” I said.
“For what?” she asked. “I thought you were cutting it down.”
“This,” I said, giving the tree a hard push.
A second, louder crack happened, and she took her hand off it in surprise as it fell over. I laughed at her little jump and walked over to the base, now separated from the trunk. A couple of quick sawing motions and I evened it out, making it perfect to sit in a tree holder. I turned back to see a now closed-mouth Holly, attempting to look as nonplussed as possible.
“Very good,” she said. “Now how do we get it to the car?”
“I would guess we use the hayride,” I said. “But we could just haul it over. It’s a bit of a steep hill, but I think we could manage.”
“You think we could get this big tree up that big hill with my tiny hands? I don’t think so,” she said. “We already saw what happens when I attempt to saw things. I don’t plan on covering myself in more sap when there is a perfectly good hayride to drive us.”
“Fair enough. It won’t drag very well without snow anyway. Come on.”
I began pulling the base of the tree, making it look perhaps a slight bit easier than it was just to impress her more. It wasn’t all that heavy, really, just big and unwieldy. I shuffled my grip a few times as I dragged it, Holly happily walking along the other side with a completely useless hand on the bottom of the tree, as if it were helping in any way.
When we reached the hayride, I put the tree down by the sled on the backside of the car. One tree was already in it. The process was that the hayride would drop off the sleds and then bring people down without them so sap didn’t get in the back of the car. The only issue with that was the three-foot wire grating that had been added to the sled so it could hold more trees.
“Need a hand?” came a voice from the driver’s seat of the car.
A crinkly old man, wide in the middle and wearing a red ball cap with Christmas lights on it, hopped down. I recognized him as Gina’s grandfather, Roy. I could have sworn it was a younger guy driving us down, but Roy had been working the tree farm since I was a kid, so it wasn’t a shock to see him.
“No, I think we’ve got it, Roy,” I said. “Come on, Holly, help me grab it.”
“Oh heavens,” she said. “Okay, here we go.”
Together, we were able to get the tree in, though at one point I was pretty sure she was going to go over the railing with it. Once safely inside, we hopped into the bed of the car, and Roy took off, bringing us back to the front. Before we even got off the bed, Gina’s brother Sam and some other guy I didn’t recognize but looked his age grabbed it and took it to the area where they put it in its netting.
“They sure are efficient,” I said.
“Yeah, I told them this year that I’d pay them by the hour or by the tree netted, whichever was higher. Sammy’s been working like a devil dog since,” Roy said.
“Wait, who else is netting trees?” I asked.
“Me,” he said with a grin. “He hadn’t put two and two together yet, but I hopefully won’t have to bag a tree all season.”
When the tree was done being netted, they helped me carry it over to the car. They helped me hike it up there but then went back to the netting area, leaving us with the tree loose on the car top and a bunch of rope.
“Well, I guess we have to figure this out ourselves,” Holly said.
Roughly ten minutes of sap-infused muttered curses later, we had it tied down and were both cold and exhausted.
“One more thing,” I said, holding out my hand.
“Oh no, what did we forget?” she asked.
“Hot cocoa,” I said. “And toasted marshmallows.”
“Oh. I can deal with that.”
She took my hand, and we began walking toward the cabin area, off to the side, where a campfire was set out. I felt the shiver run through me when our hands touched and fingers interlaced. Holly seemed to feel it, too, but neither of us said anything about it, choosing to act casual as we strolled toward the cabin.
There was a big fire there, deceptively larger than I originally thought. I brought her to the window on the side of the cabin and ordered us both some cocoa and marshmallows. We brought them to the fire and roasted them side by side, not saying much but letting the moment speak for itself. There was something so wholesome and cute about watching her try to eat the sticky marshmallow off the stick that somehow still doubled as incredibly sexy at the same time.
When we had our fill of marshmallows, we took a stroll into the tiny gift shop inside the cabin. Immediately, we found ourselves in the ornaments section, and it reminded me to ask her a question.
“So, do you have anything to decorate this tree with?” I asked.
“Some old stuff in the attic that was Grandma’s,” she said, distracted by a particularly ugly Christmas sweater for sale. “How in the world is this forty dollars?”
“The price of beauty,” I joked.
She turned to me, a horrified look on her face, holding the sweater’s arm like it might transmit its ugliness through osmosis.
“This?”
“It was a joke,” I said.
We picked out a few tiny ornaments and made our way to the register, checking out and heading back to the car.
