Site Title

softnow:

thankful

msr | teen | words: 302

happy thanksgiving, babes.

— — —

She dozes in his lap, a small, sweet thing, wrapped in his sweatshirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Charlie Brown dances on the TV, volume down low. There’s a fire in her fireplace, and tomorrow, there will be a tree. She told him this morning before they left for her mother’s. Turkey today, tree tomorrow.

It has been twenty-five years since he celebrated Thanksgiving—really celebrated—and he’s never had one like this. There were so many people crammed into Maggie’s modest house, aunts and uncles and cousins he’d never even heard of. They hadn’t all fit at the dinner table; he’d eaten on the living room floor, styrofoam plate balanced on his knee, iced tea nearly knocked over more than once by one rambunctious kid or another.

He’d told Scully he was fine, she could sit at the table with her mother and brothers, but she’d refused to leave his side. She’d sat right there with him on the carpet, had stolen his cranberry sauce and sipped mulled wine and deferred to him when Uncle What’s-His-Name or Aunt So-and-So asked her questions when her mouth was full.

And now she’s here, half-asleep in his arms, tryptophan-drunk and wine-heavy. In an hour or so, when he starts to nod off too, he’ll carry her to bed. And tomorrow, when she finds the perfect tree, he will chop it down, haul it home, lift her by the waist so she can reach the star to the very top. And then he will lay her down under the tinsel and twinkling lights, will make love to her like she is his best and only Christmas gift come four weeks early.

He can see it now, as clearly as he can see Charlie and Woodstock and little Sally Brown.

And he has never been more thankful.