Twas the Night Before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even—

As it happened, there was a creature stirring, a Valerie creature. This Valerie creature had sleep that had been troubled by many dreams before one of them, being so very vivid, had awoken her from her slumber.

A moment of disorientation held Valerie when she woke but it quickly passed as she found herself in her room at home. She snuggled her face further into her smurf-covered pillow and breathed deeply to take in that lovely smell of home. She’d missed this when she’d been away for school. Valerie knew every hum and click that happened in this house. She knew all the smells and all the squeaks that would emerge from the floors. She knew—

There was a noise that she didn’t recognize.

In was coming from the basement.

Valerie lay very still in her bed, listening. It was a series of creaks, not unlike those that came from the futon downstairs where she had spent the majority of many summers lounging, but who would be there now? It was, Valerie checked her clock, 2:30am on Christmas Day! Had one of her parents gotten up and gone downstairs? Had her brother snuck in later when she had been asleep? She’d been told he hadn’t been coming until later in the morning…

Valerie wasn’t sure what the noise was, but what she was sure of was that if she didn’t figure it out she wasn’t going to get any sleep. She grabbed her glasses but didn’t bother with her usual hair elastic before heading out of her room on route to the basement.

Three steps and three creaks of the floor later, Valerie was cursing to herself under her breath. How in the world had Craig ever managed to find a noise-free path through the house she would never know but right now she certainly wished she did.

As much as she knew that she wouldn’t sleep if she didn’t check out what was causing the noise there was no good reason to wake her parents up for her bit of insanity. After vowing to take lighter steps Valerie started moving again toward the basement.

Just as she was heading down the stairs she heard the noise again. It was definitely the springs on the couch but how? Craig had said that he wasn’t staying over this year—in fact it had been the talk of the house for the last week as their mom had tried to figure out what was so important that would keep him away on Christmas Eve. Valerie knew that if he’d gone through all that effort to keep his distance for a few hours he certainly wouldn’t be back in the house so soon.

But if it wasn’t Craig, what could it be? Valerie had no idea. She had come to the bottom of the stairs by this point and took a moment to stop and appreciate the relative lack of squeaks that had happened on her trip. Maybe there was something to this noiseless travel after all… Then came the noise of the couch springs from across the room and damn it if she wasn’t as curious as Dina on Facebook chat!

When she first peeked around the corner to peer into the room Valerie’s eyes immediately focused on the Christmas tree which had all its lights glowing. This was intensely odd for Valerie because her family always turned the lights off before going to bed. The tree was in the basement so there was obviously no way that anyone would see it during the night and no reason to keep in lit when no one would see it.

When she pulled her eyes away from that first oddity she noticed something else strange. There was someone lying on her couch, someone who obviously didn’t know how to dress for winter because she could see more skin than clothes, someone who had a red bow on his dark head of hair, someone who was now looking at her with a smirk on his handsome face and a mysterious light in his green eyes…

Oh my good God, Valerie thought, Jay Crawford is lying on my couch…

Oh, and he was and by all things under the sun was he beautiful. His intense green eyes she remembered from her time in high school had the same power to pierce right into her thoughts and turn them all into incoherent babbles, his short dark hair still made her finger itch with the need to thread through the strands and grab hold but this was where the similarities to her high school days ended. While she’d been able to guess at the shape of his body and the curve of his muscles when she was sitting in the back of her grade 12 English class she’d never actually seen the real thing.

Now she was seeing the whole thing. Her eyes slowly took in the curve of his neck and how it flowed smoothly into his broad shoulders. Her gaze gently caressed his muscled arms and his powerful hands. She took in his defined chest, bare but for a light dusting of hair, before her eyes wandered down to his belly button and the trail that lead down between his hips…

The whole time that her eyes travelling his body she had also felt his eyes on her. Valerie felt the heat of them as they were fixed on her, watching her watching him. It was all she could do to keep from going up in flames. While she managed to keep most of her body from showing signs of fire there were a few things she couldn’t control, the most noticeable of these being her cheeks which had turned bright red.

Finally Valerie was able, by some miracle, to pull her eyes away from his body to focus back on his face and more specifically his eyes.

“W-what are you doing here?” She managed to breathe out. The question was so soft that she really wouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t heard her.

Apparently he had an excellent sense of hearing because her question brought a sigh, not of exasperation or frustration, but of resignation. Jay sat up on the couch and then stood up. He took the two steps that separated them before reaching for her hands. When he held them both in his he looked up at her and asked “May I?” to which she nodded, not quite sure what else to do. He squeezed her hands gently and shuffled his feet nervously before he began his explanation.

“Well, it’s a bit of a long story,” he said. He took a deep breath before continuing.

“I know we weren’t really the closest of friends in high school. Sure, we talked a few times and we were in some of the same classes but the few times we did talk I really felt like I could relate to you, that you would understand anything I had to tell you or at least put the effort into the conversation.”

After Jay finished saying this he paused, seeming to draw some courage from their joined hands.

“That about covers what I thought about you in high school and I hadn’t really thought about it in depth until I saw you downtown last week. I don’t think you saw me. You were walking with a bunch of your friends and it was like I saw you for the first time that day. You were having so much fun and laughing and I just wanted to be a part of it…”

Valerie’s head was swimming. She couldn’t quite pull it together.

“Okay… but why the, you know, socks and—” Valerie trailed off. She hadn’t really meant to ask that question but now that it had popped out of her mouth she was genuinely curious.

“Oh,” Jay mumbled, a slightly blush showing on his cheeks. “Well I didn’t really know what to do so I was doing some reading and I…there were stories and I…grand gesture and I…so, yeah.” He gestured vaguely with their joined hands. “This…”

Valerie had to smile at this.

“I’m not sure what you were reading,” she teased, “but I think I might know where to look for it.”

Jay looked up from his nervous contemplation of his socks to her eyes seeming confused by her light tone.

“So you’re not totally creeped out by what I said?” he asked.

“No!” She said a bit too loudly. She clamped her lips shut after she’d said it and looked a bit embarrassed. “I actually kind of might maybe feel a bit of the same way…”

Jay blinked for a minute before a blindingly bright smile lit his face and he positively beamed at her.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yeah, really.” she smiled shyly at him.

And there, in the Clifton family basement in the very early morning of Christmas Day, Jay Crawford pulled Valerie Clifton in close and gave her their first kiss.