Scrooging Christmas by Sarah Ready

Author:Sarah Ready [Ready, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781954007673
Publisher: Swift & Lewis Publishing LLC

21

Natalie

The bathroom is tiny when there’s only one person, it’s miniscule when there are two. Especially when one of them is a man over six feet tall with wide shoulders and a disapproving glower.

I stand backed against the vanity, my thighs pressed against the wooden counter.

Gabe’s squeezed in next to me, and I realize that when he showered this morning, he would’ve had to duck since he’s taller than the showerhead.

The bathroom should’ve been renovated years ago, but my family loves nostalgia. We voted to keep the faded pine tree wallpaper border, the woodshop vanity (Felix’s eighth grade project), the pine cone balsam potpourri, and the hunter green bath accessories.

Gabe looks around the bathroom, the vanity light hitting his black hair, making it as glossy as midnight, then he looks back to me with a scowl.

“You want me to do what?” He shakes the folded Santa paws bedsheet like it’s radioactive.

I cross my legs and give him a pleading, wide-eyed expression. “Pleeeease.”

I’m going to burst. I’m literally about to lose it. All that coffee hit at once and now…oh my gosh.

“Just uncuff us,” he says in a measured, patient tone. “Then you can have all the privacy you need.”

“Ha. And while I’m in here, you’ll be tearing this place apart looking for your phone.”

He lifts his eyebrows but doesn’t deny it.

“Please. Just hold up the sheet so you can’t see me. And don’t peek.”

He gives me that are you out of your mind look that usually makes me smile. “Why would I peek?”

“I don’t know.” I cross my legs, then recross them, and then do a little jump-up-and-down dance. “Please. Please.”

He sighs. “Fine.”

Thank goodness.

He unfurls the sheet, displaying it in all its Christmas-pup-in-a-Santa-hat splendor. Then he holds it high above his head so that we’re separated by a seven-foot-long fabric barrier.

Sort of.

I mean, our hands are still cuffed together, so the sheet has to fold around our arms. But it’s a start.

“Okay, I’m just going to…” I scoot over to the toilet and then try to undo my jean’s button with one hand.

My gosh, it’s impossible. Who makes these buttons? What’s wrong with them? Didn’t the button makers ever think that someone may need to unbutton their pants with one hand?

“What’s wrong?” Gabe asks from behind the sheet.

I keep fumbling at the button. My word, it’s like a chastity belt. It knows there’s a man in here with me and it’s trying to prevent me from dropping my pants.

“I can’t get my button undone with only one hand,” I say, squeezing and praying.

“Really?”

“Really. It’s hard. Have you ever tried it?”

“On a woman’s buttons? Or my own?” he asks, like he needs that information to give me an accurate answer.

“Come closer,” I say, “so I can use my other hand.”

He sighs and steps closer, the sheet drapes over my arm and then waffles over my face. I bat it aside. Then I tug my other hand close. His is there now too. His arm, his hand, reaching from under the Christmas puppy sheet.

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