Not Exactly What it Seems

She was so amazing, but what was I supposed to do? Or think for that matter? It seemed like she was avoiding me and I wasn't sure why. Did she regret it after all? That would have just been my luck. I kiss the girl I'm pretty sure I'm in love with and she regrets it. That would be just great. My luck would give me just that, though.

Hayden stayed fairly quiet throughout the night and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Did he regret kissing me? Did he think that I was avoiding him? It did kind of seem that way because I was trying to help everyone in the family out as well as Daniel and Charlie, but that was not the case at all. I was confused though, about the situation. What did that make us? Did that make us anything different? Was I putting too much thought into the matter?

I realized that I had begun to overanalyze the situation so it was best for me to go to bed. Things would work themselves out, I reasoned with myself, if they were meant to be worked out.

Just as I was settling into my bed for the night, there was a soft tapping at my door. I couldn’t imagine who would be at my door, trying to disturb my peaceful sleep. All I knew was that if it was not important I was going to be really bitter. So I grudgingly left the comforts of my bed to answer my nocturnal visitor.

“You better have a darn good excuse for this disruption,” I grumbled before even looking to see who was at my door. But there was no one there, only a note attached to my door in Hayden’s messy scrawl.

Why did you have to
Was it really necessary to
Can you tell me
You stole my heart. If you’re not willing to take care of it I would like it back. Thanks.
-Hayden

The smile that was on my face as I read the note over and over again was one that I’m sure no one had ever seen before. It was a truly genuine smile that said I was happy-ecstatic even. It was a smile that rarely even showed up. The only bad part of that smile was that I spent the night with it on my face, finding sleep challenging.

I was still enough of a sadist to make Hayden wait the entire night for my answer, though. I would not give him the benefit of knowing my answer straight away, though I figured the answer would be easy enough to figure out.

Hayley took it upon herself to be my alarm clock the next morning. At the ripe hour of five o’clock, she was jumping up and down on me as if shaking me was not good enough for her. I was a little bit bitter that I could not have a few extra hours of sleep, though I knew that if Hayley did not wake me up, one of my other little cousins would. Oh the perks of having excited little family all over the place.

Hayley decided that I was taking too long so she left to go wake up Frankie, assuming that I would follow her out the door. When I did follow her, I found Hayden standing right in my doorway looking cautiously hopeful yet oddly rejected. I knew what he was waiting for so I pulled him into my room and got really close to his ear.

“You are the sweetest thing I have ever met,” I whispered. I still loved the way I could make him shiver. “I’ll take amazing care of your heart if, in exchange, you can take good care of mine. It isn’t in the best shape right now.”

He gulped loudly, attempting to find words. “You heart will be better than new, I can assure you that. But I will never give it back; I just want to let you know.”

“As long as you keep it safe, I don’t want it back.” We smiled at each other for some duration of time until Hayley’s whining voice could be heard outside the door, completely ruining the moment.

“NyNy! Why are you taking so long?” she asked in exasperation. “And where is HayHay? I wanted to wake him up, but he’s not in his room. Did you eat him? Because if you did I will never talk to you again! You always said you were going to eat people for annoying you, but I didn’t think you would! How could you?”

We both started laughing, though we tried to stifle it so as not to hurt the little girl’s feelings. After we were sufficiently laugh free, I opened the door to see Hayley standing there impatiently waiting for me to open presents. Her face lit up when she saw that I had not eaten Hayden and that he was very much alive.

So we went to open presents down in the living room under the ginormous Christmas tree which took a very long time because we had to sort out all of the presents. But once they were all sorted, it did not take very long for us to plow through the actual opening of the presents. That wasn’t a surprise. The little kids were done in about two seconds so they actually help us open ours. How thoughtful, eh?

After that whole ordeal was over, we still had almost four hours until Daniel, Charlie, and his family were coming, so I set about to discard trash, clean up the house, and especially clean up the kitchen. There were remnants of the previous night’s activities so I figured since they were there they did not need to see what was left over. Especially Daniel since his wife died in a similar way.

Charlie and his two younger brothers came around 9:30. His youngest brother Colt was eight while the other one, Johnny, was fourteen. He seemed to like my cousin Taresa who was also fourteen. When she noticed that he was openly staring at her, she blushed the cutest shade of red and I must say that it was quite amusing to watch. Charlie instantly gravitated to my cousin Libby as I knew he would and they seemed to be getting on rather well. Colt instantly found a playmate in Hayley so they, along with some of my other little cousins, were running around the house like crazy people. But that was the fun of the holidays.

Hayden and I stayed close the entire day, leaving the other’s side only to go to the bathroom practically. At one point, my mom pulled me aside and gave me a knowing smile. I knew that she knew what was up and I wasn’t sure I liked how into the idea she was to be honest. It kind of creeped me out a little bit. But she congratulated me and then basically pushed me back to him. There was this smile on his face the entire day that made me smile because I knew that it was all for me. That smile was mine.