“You’re making it difficult to concentrate on my ball placement,” I whispered, rearranging a couple of the silver orbs Sam had placed a little too close together in the middle of the tree after Lincoln had gone to bed.
“Ball placement can be tricky business,” Sam chuckled, setting his hands on my hips as he tilted his pelvis suggestively.
“Not really. The average tree should host ten to fifteen ornaments per foot. I like to keep that number at ten. Since this is an eight-foot tree, we’re using approximately eighty ornaments. The circumference dictates how—”
Sam turned me to face him and crashed his mouth over mine. His tongue deep-dived, then twisted with mine, leaving me breathless. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Tonight. Yesterday. The day before and the day before that.” He caressed the shell of my ear. “I’ve never seen my kid this happy at my house during the holidays. I think I’ve been missing out…till now. So, thank you.”
“I didn’t really do anything.”
“You did everything, Chet. Everything. Thank you.”
He kissed me again.
Okay, maybe I was guilty of wanting that kiss to mean something more than it did. Something like, “I like us together. We might be good at this all year…in a forever kind of way.”
Not to worry, I didn’t give myself away. I made an effort not to stare too long or bat my eyelashes or do anything ridiculous. But in the glow of twinkling lights and the crackling embers from the dying fire, I was pretty sure I’d never been happier in my life.
And then reality hit.
It didn’t come all at once. It was more of a gradual thing. The initial game in LA was the only local one on Sam’s schedule. The rest required travel. And all at once, we lost our built-in excuses to see each other. Sam was healthy, the house was holiday ready, and Lincoln spent his weekends with Jase. I knew that our arrangement would have to adjust once real life set in again, but I wasn’t quite prepared to face the fact that I wasn’t needed.
If I wasn’t necessary in some capacity, I’d become dispensable. That was life.
As a scientist, I knew better than most that there were specific laws of dispensability. I won’t bore you with the abstract arguments about realism and nominalism. However, a completely different, yet accurate example was the human spleen. It served a purpose, but humans could live without it.
In short, I’d become the equivalent of a spleen in a relationship that wasn’t a real relationship. I liked to think I’d been useful over the past few weeks or so, but was I necessary?
Gosh, I didn’t want the answer to that question. It was far too depressing.
I heeded Sam’s “one day at a time” advice as best I could, but it became harder to do as the calendar ticked down the days to Christmas. I became something like an elf on steroids. I couldn’t help myself. When Lincoln was at Sam’s, I suggested a medley of holiday activities, such as baking cookies, making garland from popcorn and cranberries, gingerbread houses, and movie marathons.
By the middle of the month, we’d baked five dozen sugar cookies, made enough garland to wrap the perimeter of the house twice, constructed three gingerbread houses each, and had watched so many Christmas shows that I was beginning to worry we’d have to repeat a few. Not that Lincoln would have complained. He clearly had no problem with the wintery, festive atmosphere at Chez Rooney.
And maybe Sam didn’t mind so much either. Last night, we sat with Lincoln wedged between us on the huge sectional with Christmas lights twinkling and a fire crackling, watching Elf and sipping peppermint hot cocoa. Lincoln had drifted off toward the end of the movie, and though I’d seen it so many times I could recite every line, I kept my eyes locked on the screen, wishing there were a way to freeze time.
“What are you thinking, baby?” Sam whispered over Lincoln’s head.
I glanced sideways, unsure if he was talking to me. “Baby?”
“Yeah. I like it better than science guy.” He smiled sweetly, his face glowing in the blinking white lights as he ran his fingers along my jaw. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”
“I wish we lived on Mars.”
Sam widened his eyes. “I thought you weren’t signing up to visit Mars.”
“I’m not. The average temperature on Mars is minus eighty degrees Fahrenheit.”
“That’s cold.”
“That’s freezing,” I agreed in a stage whisper. “I wouldn’t like that, but I would love to have those extra forty minutes every day.”
His thumb stilled on my bottom lip. “Me too, baby. Me too.”
I gazed into his eyes for as long as humanly possible. I felt his need and desire as keenly as my own, but I knew it wasn’t enough.
Those were heated yet fleeting emotions, belonging to a specific moment. They didn’t last. You might need a mechanic today, but you wouldn’t need him once your car was fixed. You might desire a piece of cake right now, but you might not feel the same tomorrow. Yep, I felt like a mechanic with a piece of cake. I wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, but it made me sad.