A Snowy Little Christmas

Kristen’s parents live in a tiny ranch house, barely three bedrooms, and the barely is because the third one is basically a thin-walled closet, hardly enough room for the futon Kris and I have been sleeping on for the last three nights to be unfolded. My back hurts, I’m sex-deprived, and last night I stayed up until three a.m. helping Kris’s brother-in-law build a dollhouse for his daughters.

I am having the best time.

“Okay, last one,” Kris says, passing me yet another pot from the stove. I don’t remember there even being enough food options on the dining table this evening for this many dirty dishes, but I haven’t much minded the escape, Kris and me alone in the small kitchen while the rest of the family relaxes and digests in the other room. It’s been fun, my second official Fraser family Christmas, but it’s been noisy, too, and hasn’t allowed for much privacy. Later tonight Kris and I will drive over to Traverse City, where we’ve rented a cottage right on the lake. Our Christmas gift to each other, and a private continuation of a tradition we started last year at the Dreyers’.

“I’m getting good at this,” I tell Kristen, scrubbing at a spot of stuck-on potatoes. “Your mom is gonna love me.”

Kris makes a clucking noise. “Please. She already loves you.”

I smile down at my soapy hands. She’s said it casually, jokingly, but the truth is—I think her mom does love me. I think her whole family does, and I’m as proud of that as anything I’ve ever done, especially since it made it easier to ask them—two nights ago while Kristen built a snowman with her nieces—for their blessing about a particular question I’m planning to ask Kris soon.

Tonight soon, if I have my way. I’ll be breaking a promise to her, saying the cottage was the only gift for the holiday this year, but I’ve got a feeling she won’t mind.

“I talked to Carol,” Kris says, interrupting my thoughts. “She opened our package. She says it’s her new favorite.”

“I can only hope her family put on sunglasses before she turned it on.”

Kris laughs, swats me with a towel. Keeping Carol on after the Dreyer deal lapsed hadn’t been easy, exactly. We’d had to downsize, moving into a space with only one private office, but as it turned out Kris and I liked sharing, and we’ll probably re-up the lease, even though we’re back—way back, thanks to a new deal we’ve recently made for Gil Dreyer that’ll keep him and his patent in Massachusetts—in the green. But it’d been worth it. Worth it to keep Carol, who still hums and plays annoying music all day. Worth it to be with Kris side by side, working together better than we ever have before.

Just as I’m rinsing, the screen of my phone lights up on the windowsill above the sink. I’d ignore it, but once I see the name I’m flicking my hands dry. “You mind?” I ask Kris, showing her the screen.

She grabs the pot I’ve just washed, leans over to give me a kiss. “Nope. Tell him hi.”

I duck out, down the hallway into the closet-bedroom.

“Merry Christmas, man,” Ben says when I answer.

“Hey, same to you. How you guys doing?”

“Hi, Jasper,” comes Kit’s voice through the phone, somewhat at a distance. “Ben, tell him hi!”

“I heard her. Tell her Merry Christmas,” I say.

“Same to Kris. I can’t talk long,” Ben says. “We’re on our way to my dad’s place for dinner. He’s trying to fry a turkey. I gotta get there before something goes real wrong.”

A year ago, this might’ve hurt a little, hearing Ben talk about his family holiday plans. But not long after Kris and I got together, I realized something. All that missing I did—for her, for us—it had a whole lot to do with what I’ve been missing since I was seventeen years old, on my own and learning what it was like not to have a home. And what she and I have between us now is everything I knew I was missing and also everything I didn’t know I was.

Including Christmas.

“Right,” I say. “I think I’ve got to go sing some carols or something.” In the living room, I can hear Kristen’s mom playing scales on the small piano they have by the back door.

There’s silence on the line for a few seconds. “What the shit did you just say?”

I laugh. “It’s a Fraser tradition.”

“Did I call the right number?”

I laugh. “I’m a changed man. I wore a Santa suit for Kristen’s nieces yesterday.” That’d been a hit. With the nieces, first, who squealed in delight and clapped when I’d come in the front door with a bag of presents, and then later with Kristen, who’d shoved me into this bedroom, pulled down my fake beard, and kissed me in a way that was entirely inappropriate for a television movie.

“I’m happy for you, bud,” Ben says.

I clear my throat. “Me too. Thanks for calling.”

When we hang up I head back into the living room. The kids are sitting on either side of their grandmother, wiggling excitedly on the piano bench. Malik and Mac are looking through a book of holiday songs. Kelly’s on the couch with one of the disgusting cocktails she got me to try yesterday, some salted caramel thing that made my eyes water with the sweetness.

“Jasper,” she says, patting the spot next to her. “I need you to tell me more about those solar panels I can get for our house.”

Kelly is into tech, probably even more so than Kris is, and whenever we talk she’s grilling me about the latest thing we’re chasing down at the firm. “Thank God she goes to you now,” Kristen said to me a few months ago after Kelly and I hung up from a long call about a new household generator. “She wants so much detail!”

But I like detail, and I like Kelly and Malik and their kids, and I like anything that makes Kristen press her body close to mine on our couch at home in Houston, cuddling close enough to kiss my neck, to tell me how glad she is that I get along so well with her family.

I’m headed to Kelly when Kristen makes her way in from the kitchen, her cheeks flushed from the warmer temperature in there. “How’s Ben?” she asks, sliding an arm around my waist as I put mine around her shoulders.

“Good. He says Merry Christmas.”

She smiles and pats my back. “You ready to get out of here for the night?”

My brow furrows as I look down at her. “But what about the—uh.” I use my free hand to gesture to the piano. “The carols?”

“Wellllll,” Kris says, stretching out the word. “It’s just that we’ve had a lot of family time.” She sneaks a hand under my shirt, tracing her fingertips across my lower back. “Sleeping in that very small room. And our cottage for the night is . . .”

“You’re right,” I say quickly. “Let’s leave. Now.” Suddenly the Fraser house feels like an extremely tiny, painfully loud torture chamber.

“Hey!” Kelly yells from the couch. “Are you two trying to leave now?”

Kristen winks at me before looking to her sister. “Yeah, I think we’re going to call it a night.”

“No!” says Kelly, pointing her drink at us.

“Ah, Kell,” says Malik. “Let ’em go. They’ve got a little drive ahead.” Forget Ben; Malik is my new best friend. When Kris isn’t looking he makes a totally obvious gesture at his wedding band.

Kelly gives her husband an exasperated look. “But we have to sing!” she says, and in her tone I can hear exactly what Kris is always telling me about Kelly from their younger years, how bossy she always was. “It’s the rules!”

Kristen laughs and looks up at me. “Kel,” she says, keeping her knowing, sparkling eyes on me. “Me and Jasper, we’re going to have to break that rule this year.”

I smile down at her, hold her tighter around the waist as I bend my head to whisper in her ear. She smells so good; she is so good, everything about her. “Making trouble, Kris?”

She shivers, clutches at the sweatshirt I’m wearing. Then she tips her head back to give me a kiss. “Of course,” she says, smiling that big, bottom-teeth-crooked smile that makes every one of my days feel like a holiday. “It’s a Christmas tradition.”

And when I bend to press my lips against hers, I know it’s a Christmas tradition I won’t ever have to miss again.