Happy

Compared to the rest of my room, my desk was spotless. It was the product of a frazzled mind, I suppose, because when I got home from work the day I met Liam, I threw away almost everything that was crowding up my desk save for a few pens and some paper and started outlining my last scholarship essay.

The prompt?

In 200 words or less, please answer the following question: What makes you happy?

The only reason I didn’t pull out all my hair or have another halfway-to-uncalled-for mental breakdown over this simple question was because I had been reminded of what truly made me happy just hours before. After that, it was like a fuse had been lit in my brain, and the words came out like a spark eating up a wick. I couldn’t believe I ever forgot why I loved the holidays in the first place, why I let myself get carried away with the stress, when everything was finally coming together so effortlessly.

The deadline for the scholarship application was midnight on the 31st. I still hadn’t finished the essay on the last day, but I was damn near close. I’d kept off Facebook long enough on Christmas to bang most of it out, but the conclusion was still escaping me by New Year’s Eve as I scrambled to finish before submitting it online along with the rest of my application.

Thankfully, I had a few days off after Christmas, which was pretty much a godsend because even with my rediscovered love for the holidays, I still let myself get caught up with planning Christmas dinner. For some ungodly reason, I had offered to make the green bean casserole, along with cooking the ham, sweet potatoes, and the stuffing – the works just for my dad and me, since it was going to be just the two of us this year. And because Pop was Pop, he couldn’t cook a single damn thing to save his life, so I ended up whipping up a Christmas dinner big enough for a family of eight all by myself. Well, everything except dessert, which Pop so generously picked up from the supermarket on Christmas eve – his version of “baking.” It was safe to say that between my dad and me, there was no way we were able to scarf down all the food in one sitting, even with the help of a certain pop star that had stopped by.

So for the entire week after, I’d been shoveling away frozen leftovers in various dishes or heating them up in the microwave, trying to get rid of them before they went bad. This was why, next to my new candy cane pencil that I had stashed in a jar by my computer, I had a microwaved plate of cold-in-the-middle-but-burning-hot-on-the-outside green bean casserole. If it weren’t for Liam scarfing down plate after plate of stuffing and ham on Christmas, I would’ve been stuck with more than just green bean casserole for dinner. In the least, I was glad it was the last of the leftovers.

Actually, I was just glad that Liam didn’t have to spend Christmas alone.

And I think he was, too.

“Read it to me again, love.”

I minimized Chrome, the Skype window popping back up in its place from the corner of my screen. Liam’s scruffy face illuminated my bedroom, which was only lit with the lamp at the corner of my desk and my childhood The Rock nightlight plugged into the outlet next to my bed.

I tilted my head and pressed my lips into my palm to hide my smile from Liam, but he still caught it, splitting into a grin of his own as the corners of his eyes crinkled.

He’d long been back in London, having left the day after Christmas, but not before making me promise to video chat with him before he fell asleep every night that I could. Because I always opened at Dunkin, to get there in time I’d have to wake up around 4:00 in the morning, sometimes earlier, so I usually conked out in bed by 8:00 or so every night. Lucky for us, with the five hour time difference, that meant that I went to bed around the same time Liam did, which made it all that easier to keep a consistent Skype schedule. Soon enough, I found myself falling asleep to the sound of his voice more often than not, not that I was complaining or anything.

But after our first few video chats, Liam somehow weaseled it out of me that I was still having trouble coming up with the conclusion to my essay. And because he was Liam, he immediately offered to help out, even though he admittedly was never the best student. And because he was Liam, I just couldn’t say no.

At first, I felt uncomfortable reading aloud the words I’d written down to him. They meant something, and they were rehearsed – painstakingly so – so it kind of felt like that first day all over again, like someone had stripped my emotions naked and shoved them in his face. But he was able to coax the words from me with that soothing voice of his, along with the promise that he wouldn’t dare laugh when he listened to what I’d come up with so far. (It also kind of pushed me over the edge when he admitted he liked hearing my voice before he drifted off to sleep.)

“Don’t go all shy on me now,” he said, leaning forward so his face took up most of my screen.

He was wrapped up in his comforter, his legs crisscrossed in front of him with a pillow propped up in his lap. And he was still smiling, enjoying every second of making me blush with just the sleepiest sigh of one of the few pet names he’d been trying out, little things like love and darling. But none of those words had quite the same effect as when he’d say my name, my whole name. He’d draw it out like he had forever to spend shaping his tongue around the word, and a soft warmth would always spring up just below my bellybutton, inevitably making me lose my train of thought.

It took him a few days, but I think he finally picked up on it, because then he said, “Kaitlin.”

I looked back up to my screen, my eyes wide. Liam had pulled back from his computer, tugging the peach comforter tighter around his shoulders as he buried his chin in to the pillow he had hugged to his chest.

I swallowed hard, my eyes still wide and unblinking. “My dad hasn’t been able to shut up about you.”

“Oh?” He said it like he was surprised. I knew he wasn’t, though, not when Pop nearly talked his ear off Christmas day when he found out that Liam had a soft spot for American football. I barely had a minute with him all day before he had to go back to his hotel to pack, though not for my lack of trying.

“I swear, he’s half-considering sending you a Browns bottle opener in the mail as a late Christmas gift. I can’t tell if he’s actually being serious or not.”

He laughed, but then that turned into a yawn, and the tinny sound that came from my earbuds only made my insides twinge.

“But to be fair, I haven’t been able to shut up about you either.”

He smiled shyly, dragging his lower lip between his teeth and running his fingers over his stubble as he looked off to the side. “You’re adorable. Now stop stalling and read it back to me.”

I let go of the laugh I was holding back, which only made him break out into a proper smile, and read off the last paragraph that I’d jotted down on the crumpled up sheet of filler paper in front of me.

“While, yes, the holidays can be hyper-commercialized and stressful and crazy, it still brings out the best in everyone.” I cleared my throat, suddenly hyperaware of the stare Liam had trained on me, something soft but still imploring. “It still brings out the best in everyone, and all at the same time and always for the same reason: the little things don’t matter as much, or at least not as much as the important things in life.” I glanced at him to gauge his reaction, but all he gave away was silent approval mixed in with a thoughtful look that pinched his brows together delicately, like he was trying to grasp onto the fraying ends of a distant memory. “B-but despite all of that, the holidays remind me, if only for the moment, that life always has the capacity to be bright. And that will never cease to make me happy.” I lifted my eyes from the scrap paper, matching my gaze with Liam’s as my voice dropped down, soft yet nervous. “Ever.”

A moment passed and he still hadn’t said a word. I was too impatient to just sit there and watch him unscrew his eyebrows while I waited for him to finally say something, so I spoke up.

“So?” I asked, still a little breathless.

He sucked in his lips and rubbed them together, still looking at me like he had lost himself in a crossword puzzle looking for a word that was never there. Then he opened his mouth, but paused, until he finally croaked out, “I think it’s bloody brilliant.”

“Yeah?”

He nodded, letting out a soft yawn as his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yeah.”

“What was that?” I teased. I pointed at him covering up another yawn on my screen, the corner of my mouth twitching as I fought back a smile. “It’s not even midnight over there and you’re quitting on me already?” I clicked my tongue at him as I blindly grappled for a pen from my pencil jar.

He made a curious noise when he saw the pencil I’d finally picked out, satisfaction dripping off every tired contour in his face that came about at the sight of me making a note in the margins of my essay with a candy cane.

“What can I say? I must like sleep more than you.”

I could feel my cheeks warm up when I spotted the smirk he let drift across his sleepy face. “But you apparently also like sleep more than any one of the millions of New Year’s parties you could’ve gone to tonight, so it’s not like I’m offended or anything.” I scratched out a word, glancing at Liam before focusing back on my essay.

“Sorry, I meant to say that I like sleep more than you right this second. There’s a reason I’m ringing in the new year with a gorgeous girl on Skype and not with the boys at some ridiculous party.”

I put down my pencil, peering at him from behind my hair as my cheeks hummed red. “There is?”

He pulled the comforter tighter around his shoulders, digging his chin into the pillow in his arms as he let his eyes drift closed. “Yep.”

“And what reason is that?”

His eyes fluttered open for a second, and he scanned my face as a drowsy smile crept across his lips. “Because she makes me happy.”