Everyone woke up on Christmas Eve with a mission; the men still needed to finish their shopping and the women were going spend the day finishing decorating the tree and relaxing. The guys had figured between the babies and the decorations, they would take Ava with them and give the girls time to catch up. Emma appreciated the time with her girlfriends to talk without having the guys around and for the space between her and Nick; she was worried that things would get awkward if they had to sit around for too long.
After the men left with Ava, the girls got right into putting up the ornaments on the tree; since Addie was pregnant, it was more of her job to unpack everything, and the other two women placed them where they thought would be best. Since Emma didn’t want to discuss the situation between herself and Nick, she asked her friends everything she could think of to keep the topic at bay; they talked about pregnancies, raising babies, Addie’s move to Florida and how Ro was doing with two children at home.
Addie let her continue for a little while before she interrupted her and asked the question that was on everyone’s mind.
“How does it feel to be around Nick again?”
Emma inwardly groaned and now, she hated Addie’s ability to always ask the tough questions. She had assumed that Nick told both his brothers about the conversations he had with her before she headed back to North Carolina; she was also positive that, if the guys knew, then so did their wives.
“It’s fine.” Emma answered and went back to hanging ornaments. “It’s just fine.”
“Liar.” Addie responded with a chuckle. “You know I won’t let this go until we talk about it.”
“Come on Ad,” Emma begged, “I came just like everyone wanted and Nick and I can clearly handle being in the same space together with no problems so it’s all good.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it!”
Emma took a seat on the couch and Ro paused her hanging; both women knew that this would be tough on Emma and, even though it seemed like an interrogation, they just wanted to make sure she was okay with a situation she had been reluctantly tossed into.
“It’s weird.” Emma admitted honestly. “It’s tricky and confusing.”
Emma took the time to explain everything that had happened once they got to California and about the conversations they had had before she left. She knew they both had feelings for each other and that she had lied when she told him that they were just friends and that it was just past feelings making them think they felt any other way. It would be so much easier if they had just agreed to be friends and left the other side of their relationship untouched; it would make things less uncomfortable and less uncertain, and she told her friends that.
“Do you really think that it’s possible to just be friends?” Addie asked in a serious tone. “Can you honestly say that you both can put any other feelings aside and just be two people who have a totally platonic relationship?”
Emma was going to lie and say yes but she was saved by the men walking through the front door. Addie and Ro understood enough to drop the conversation and go back to what they were doing. They knew Emma was already uncomfortable with the situation and the conversation and they didn’t want to make it more embarrassing talking about it with the men within earshot.
The rest of the afternoon flew by and they sat down for dinner a few hours later. The grown ups were trying to talk in code and decide how long after the little ones went to sleep, they could start putting together Ava’s presents. They needed her to be fast asleep before they started so she wasn’t sneaking down to see what they were doing.
After dinner, they watched “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” with Ava and Nick read her The Night Before Christmas. AJ, Ro and Addie went to put all the children to bed while Howie, Nick and Emma crept down to the basement to start putting together all the things Ava would be opening at Nick’s.
“I’m going to kill AJ,” Nick grumbled after forty-five minutes, “he buys things with seven thousand pieces and we get stuck putting it together.”
Emma chuckled at the look on his face and he stuck his tongue out at her. She blew a raspberry back at him and he tossed one of the pillows within his grabbing reach at her. Tossing it back at him, he ducked and the pillow bounced off of Howie’s head.
“Hey!” he yelped. “You two are like little kids! Do we need to put you two to bed too?”
“Bite me.” Nick responded with a laugh. “It’s okay to act like kids every so often.”
They had just finished the first of the two projects when the rest of the group came down to help. Nick good naturedly complained to AJ that he wanted an elf’s salary for putting in all this work and the group laughed. They all got back to work and, by the time they looked up, everything was done and it was almost midnight.
The men carried all the toys upstairs and covered them with a blanket so that, if Ava did wake up, she wouldn’t be able to see anything from the stairs. As everyone headed off to bed, Emma asked Nick if it would be alright if she stayed up with him to watch the Christmas lights on the tree; she had loved to do it when she was a girl and he eagerly agreed as it would allow him to spend more time alone with her.
They talked about all the traditions they had growing up and all the Christmases that Nick had spent away from home; after a while, they both got drowsy and Emma was the first to fall asleep. Nick covered her with a quilt that was on the back of his couch and he settled back down on his sofa to attempt to sleep. As he watched her sleep, he hoped that he would get the gift he really wanted for this Christmas.
Last Chance by Kyrie
