Christmas Eve

Elf's note: This is for KittyInASheepClothes, who I haven't got a chance to meet yet so on a side note(heh, see what I did there? 'Cause this was an author's note and I said side note and I'm funny sometimes just not now.)hello! Merry Christmas! Happy Hannukah! Santa's coming to town! Ok I should leave. Oh, and yes! I've got a hat!
----
They met on Christmas Eve.
No, scratch that, reverse.
They confessed on Christmas Eve, after years of being friends.
There had been a wind storm, and the power went out of his apartment in San Francisco. The nine friends had gathered around in the living room, the coffee table out of the way so there'd be space for them to form an odd looking circle near the fireplace, even though it wasn't lit. There was camping lanterns surrounding them - their only light source.
They start playing Truth or Dare to pass the time and to keep boredom from seeping in the dim-lit yet cozy room.
"James. Truth or Dare?"
James's face lit up and a smirk plays across his face. "Dare."
Tania thinks for a moment. "I dare you to..." Her face lights up. "I dare you to confess to the person you like, and ask her out on a date."
James glares.
Tania glares back.
And the rest of the group laughs. James's attention turns to the girl with mid-length brown hair and light brown eyes. She, too, was laughing.
Annette and Lora suddenly appears behind him and starts pushing him towards the girl with the brown hair. Derek and Elias nudged him with their elbows. Tania starts wiggling her eyebrows at him, Bridget and Diana remain laughing, and the girl with the brown hair looked utterly confused.
James starts rubbing the back of his neck out of nervous habit. "Adeline, er, do you mind if we talk somewhere else?"
Adeline could only nod.
After taking one of the lanterns and going to James's bedroom to talk, the seven remaining comically presses their ears against the door the second it was shut.
"What do you think they're talking about?"
"Forget talking, I bet they're already making out!"
"Oh, gross!"
"Really, Derek, really? You're a full grown adult."
"Shut up! I can't hear them!"
"How come no one made a peep hole in this thing!?"
"I told you that was a good idea!"
"Quiet, Derek! We all know some of your ideas are brilliant!"
"Ha! You admit it!"
"I still can't hear them!"
"Well maybe we all can if you all just shut up and-"
Annette was cut off by the sound of shuffling feet near the door. The seven friends freaked and went back to the living room, pushing and shuffling. The two came out.
"So," Tania starts. "What ya been up to?"
James laughs. "Nothing."
"Oh?"
"You seat on a throne of lies!"
"References from Elf won't get me talking."
"Did y'all kiss?!"
"Bet they did."
"Bet James is going to propose on their first date."
"Bet we're going to be third-wheels."
"That's a lot of third-wheels."
"Seven third-wheels."
"So are you going to tell or what?"
Adeline's eyes glimmers with amusement. "Nope."
And the night dragged on with the friends talking and laughing and occasionally trying to bribe information from James and Adeline. Eventually, one by one, they all fell asleep. James and Adeline manages to be the last to be awake after Tania's eyelids gave in.
"Merry Christmas," James says to Adeline, giving a kiss on her forehead.
Their eyes meet, his dark brown mixed with her light brown ones. So alike yet so different.
"Merry Christmas."
----
He proposed on Christmas Eve.
Long distance relationships hardly ever works out, but this one did. James stayed in San Francisco, as he always did, and Adeline went back to New York.
The nine friends reunited at Tania's place in Vancouver, celebrating Christmas Eve with pizza ordered from Fresh Slice and junk food from Costco. He'd planned it for a while now, and the seven friends already knew.
They watch a movie and catches up on each others' lives. Annette and Lora had been lucky enough to score an audition and made it as one of the co-stars in some TV show. Tania and Diana were still figuring out where to go next. Elias laughs and explains how he got in the video game-making business. Derek got auditions to voice a character for a certain movie for a certain company, but he won't say who.
"How's it going with Adeline? You know, you're lucky we know you already, because we would've chased after you and beat you up and threatened you to never hurt her," Diana says. Tania nods in agreement.
"Glad to know!"
"But seriously, how's it going with you guys?"
"Good," Adeline says.
"I think I deserve more than good," James jokes. "Like, great. Or fantastic!"
"I think just good," Adeline teases.
James mumbles something inaudible.
"What's that?"
"I'm going to be marrying a girl who thinks our relationship is only ever going to be 'good'."
The girl with the brown hair looks utterly confused and baffled as she tries to decipher what her boyfriend of three years just said.
"The girl you're marrying?" she questions carefully.
He nods. "The girl I'm marrying. She's the most wonderful, fantastic, marvelous, beautiful girl I've ever met." He gets down on one knee, reached in his pocket and- "Crap. Where's my ring!?"
The group of friends silences, trying not to laugh. Then Tania couldn't hold it in anymore, and she bursts out in laughter. "No," she laughed, "ring!?"
And the whole group starts laughing, clutching on their stomachs and some falling on the ground in fetal position to stop their stomachs from hurting from such laughter.
James's face was a tomato now. He starts searching his jacket pocket, both the front and back pockets of his pants, and then he sees it. He grins. Coat pocket. He gets up and got his coat, searched the pockets. "Got it." He could breathe normally again.
Adeline laughs a bit as he gets down on one knee again. "Will you excuse all my flaws such as misplacing the most important things at the last minute and make me the happiest person alive and marry me?"
Adeline laughs again and nods. "Yes." She laughs again. "Yes, even if you misplaced the ring."
James slips the ring on her left ring finger so swiftly she didn't even notice, and he stands up for a hug and a kiss.
"Merry Christmas!" the friends shouts as the hands of the clock strikes midnight.
James and Adeline pulls away from each other and both laughs softly. "Merry Christmas, wife-to-be."
"I believe the correct term is fiance."
----
His car crashed on Christmas Eve. He had been driving to Vancouver all the way from San Francisco to visit their friends yet again, and to see Adeline and discuss what they wanted to do for their wedding (after all, it's been an year after the proposal, but neither had found the time and energy from their work, plus it was still a long distance relationship).
What happened after being blinded by the headlights of the other car and the sudden feeling of fear and dread and a voice in his brain screaming No! was a blur followed by darkness. A thought came to him, no, not a thought. He remembered something. In all the rush and thinking of the wedding and the excitement of meeting up again with his friends and fiance had made him forgotten. Today's Christmas Eve.
He feels himself on something soft, and a sense of being pulled somewhere. He opens his eyes and was blinded by the lights on the ceiling. On the ceiling of what? The lights were replaced by a face and wavy brown hair. The lips on her face begins to move. He could barely catch anything she was saying.
"Listen, to me, alright? The doctor says you're fine, the doctor says you're fine."
He was pretty sure he wasn't fine, plus he could always tell when she was lying. It was getting hard to breathe. Was that normal?
"We're going to pull through this."
They did. But then again, they didn't.
After the five hours of agony and waiting on her side and pure blackness on his side, he pulls it through.
But then again, he didn't.
Amnesia. It doesn't hit him like it did her. After all, he hasn't got any memories, has he? But that'd be awful, your whole life gone in a flash, couldn't even remember your own name.
He couldn't even remember his own name. He had said it out like a baby, like a person learning a new language, like it was something so foreign that was on the tip of his tongue. "James."
But he remembers, by some weird miracle, he remembers it was Christmas Eve.
He looks over at the woman with the wavy brown hair that was sitting on the chair beside him, her eyes red and puffy and all he knows was that she looks genuinely upset from something. He has the strongest sense to cheer her up somehow. He smiles when he remembers. He remembers tomorrow was Christmas. The clock strikes 12. She accidentally look up and their eyes meet. He smiles at the woman with wavy brown hair and her dazzling light brown eyes. He says something that makes her hope and somehow know that everything will be all right eventually. "Merry Christmas."
Category:Secret Santa 2011
Category:KittyInASheepsClothes