The room lit up with a million little twinkles and I shivered from head to my toe. Tom gripped my hand tightly as our faces flashed with a dozen glowing lights. First blue, then green, then yellow. I was so mesmerized by what was happening. I didn’t even realize he was leaning down until we kissed.
It was sweet, slow, and tender.
Magical.
With the lights sparkling all over the room—it was pure magic.
Before I’d nearly had enough, he pulled away and set me gently on the couch. I stayed perfectly still, watching with a little grin as he pulled open the doors on an ancient television and then started fiddling with the VCR. A second later, the music started in on ‘Miracle on 34th Street.’ He draped a thick, fur blanket over our legs and settled in beside me on the couch.
“This was always my favorite,” he said softly, his eyes still flashing with the many colors of the tree. “We’d watch it every year on Christmas Eve. I kept it up for a long time,” he admitted, “but I haven’t seen it in a while.”
“I’ve never seen it,” I confessed.
He wound his arm around my shoulder and snuggled me tighter up against him. “Well, you will tonight.”
The movie was exactly the sort of calming, holiday sparkle we needed after a rather emotion-packed day full of tree-hauling and sudden make-out sessions. We nestled deep down under the blanket, pulling our feet onto the couch as the fire slowly gave way to glowing embers.
Alright—I had to say it—I was out of my element here.
I had signed up for a weekend of impersonal sex. To borrow a phrase from Tom—to fuck it out. I never anticipated the weekend would turn into something like this. Reliving old memories, falling together in the snow, tender kisses and soft Christmas lights.
I’d never anticipated it, and yet, I couldn’t think of a single place in the world I’d rather be. The house still smelled of sugar cookies and pine, and I took a deep breath, resting my head back on Tom’s shoulder and shutting my eyes with a contented smile.
It was then that his hand slid up my thigh.
My eyes flew open, and I turned to see him watching me with a little smirk. The hand crept higher as he leaned in, but before I knew what I was doing, I was jumping to my feet.
Tom blinked up in surprise as the blanket tumbled to the floor. “Are you okay?”
I thought of the bottle of vodka in my bag and sent a silent message of thanks to Rose.
“I...think I’m going to need a drink.”
Chapter 10
If there’s one piece of advice I could pass on to the masses, it would be this: Never play drunk Monopoly against a Wall Street genius.
Piece of advice number two: If you do happen to play, never play for stakes.
It had all started out innocently enough. To take a small step back and to settle our nerves, I’d pulled out the vodka, while Tom had retrieved a worn copy of the board game from a downstairs linen closet.
The rules were simple. Every time we rolled a two, we had to drink. Every time we landed on a railroad, we had to drink. And every time someone owed upwards of five hundred dollars...you get the picture.
Needless to say, the bottle didn’t last very long.
But that’s not what had me standing there, peering into a tiny shower in the bathroom on the second floor. It was the final rule Tom had created before the game got under way.
Loser had to strip naked and jump into the shower.
It seemed fine at the time. The vodka was working its magic and, however foolishly, I was liking my chances. Now that the losing moment was upon me, it didn’t seem too brilliant...
“You know the rules,” Tom had said with an unmistakable sparkle in his eyes. “You lost, Jen. Now strip.”
Never one to back out of a bet, I’d wandered up to the little bathroom and here we were.
I had paused, wondering what exactly I’d gotten myself into, when I felt two warm hands on my shoulders. Before I could turn around, Tom leaned his head down beside mine.
“You going to stand there looking? Or are you going to get inside?”
The tiny, one-person stall suddenly seemed a bit daunting, but I swallowed quickly and nodded. “Yep...here I go...”
I felt him smile beside me, his face still pressed against the side of mine. Then, before I could have any second thoughts, those warm hands started sliding off my clothes.