Total pages in book: 27
Estimated words: 25630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 128(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 85(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25630 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 128(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 85(@300wpm)
“Yep. And this life, it’s never boring.”
Sky nodded. That was so very true.
Chapter 9
January 3
Nolan loved all the Christmas decorations Sky had lovingly spread throughout his home. He loved it even more when Sky had demanded he bring some of his decorations to the house they shared so they could be woven in with Sky’s, making them feel even more like a couple.
However, by the time the new year celebrations were finished and the ball had dropped, Nolan was ready to get the house back to normal. He didn’t want to see another cheery snowman or jolly Santa until after the next Thanksgiving.
And now that they’d celebrated the end of one year and the beginning of a new one, it was time to get all this holly-jolly crap packed up.
After enjoying a mug of coffee and a sausage sandwich with his lover, Nolan tromped into the basement to grab the boxes that would hold the decorations. Not an easy task. Sky had almost a dozen boxes and plastic containers holding his Christmas decorations. They were now stacked in the hallway and all over the dining room.
“Are you going to give Frank a call later to drag the dining room table and chairs up from the basement?” Nolan shouted as he set the last box on the stack in front of him. He thought he’d heard Sky rummaging in the kitchen a minute ago, but his boyfriend’s voice echoed from the second floor.
“What? You don’t want to carry all that up for me?” Sky teased.
“You’re not funny. If even attempted that, I’d break my neck on the stairs, and you’d have to raise my body from the dead.”
“Ugh,” Sky groaned. He padded halfway down the stairs and stopped in the middle to smile at Nolan over the railing. “That’s too much work. It’s easier to call up a few minions. We can make sandwiches out of the ham from New Year’s Eve dinner.”
“Sometimes I feel like we’re feeding half of the underworld.”
Sky’s grin spread. “It’s always worse during the holidays because there’s too much to do and not enough time. Just imagine that we have teenage boys who complain when we ask them to do things and then empty our pantry after they’re done.”
Okay. That sounded pretty damn accurate from what Nolan remembered of being a teenager. A growing body meant that he was a bottomless pit of hunger. Minions, as far as he could tell, were also always hungry.
The creepy tree wasn’t a big fan of the minions as they popped into the house to do a job for Sky, but they’d seemed to have developed a “live and let live” attitude during the past month. So long as they didn’t cross each other’s paths, they didn’t fight, which meant fewer headaches for Nolan.
“Where do you want to begin?” Nolan inquired. This was Sky’s show, and he was happy to follow his lead. Most of this Christmas stuff was his boyfriend’s anyway. His job was to make sure it was all safely packaged up for another year and to carry the box to the basement storage.
“I have only a handful of things on the second floor that need to be boxed up. I thought I’d start there. Could you tackle the kitchen? There are just a few things in there, and they all go in that blue box.”
Nolan nodded. Sounded like they were going with the easiest rooms first and would eventually converge on the living room, where the bulk of the decorations resided. He turned on some music that wasn’t Christmas music and grabbed the box Sky had indicated. Treasured items, kitschy knickknacks, and other holiday things were enveloped in old towels, plastic bags, and bubble wrap to protect them before they were moved to the box.
He completed the kitchen in about twenty minutes and moved on to the dining room, taking down strings of lights and part of the snowy village that had grown by three buildings that year. He couldn’t help but pause at the quaint bookshop Sky had gotten him. His darling boyfriend had even repainted the flag that hung outside the shop so that it was now a rainbow.
After about an hour, he stood at the edge of the living room with his hands on his hips and sighed. This was going to take a bit. It seemed like beloved Christmas crap blanketed every inch of the space in front of him.
“Deep breath,” Sky called out as he strolled in. “It takes a couple of hours, but we can have lunch and relax afterward.”
“It’ll go faster because you have my help,” Nolan reassured him.
Sky snorted. “That was the adjusted time estimate accounting for your help.”
Nolan’s shoulders slumped. “Ugh.”
“Start small. You take the ornaments and lights off the tree while I get the stepladder.”
Nolan turned his gaze to the little tree that was sitting near the window, several of its roots resting in a blue-and-white speckled pan filled with water. Its white lights were glowing warmly and reflecting off the hodgepodge of ornaments that covered its stubby branches. They’d learned that the quickest and easiest way to placate the tree was to give it shiny ornaments. As a result, Nolan had made stars and short chains from aluminum foil for the tree since they were very unwilling to risk any of Sky’s more delicate ornaments.