A Story to Tell Your Friends

“Boo boo!” A screeching voice rang into my ear as I answered the phone. “It’s Christmas!”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Tammy, it’s 6am. You have issues,” I groaned, pulling the handset away from my ears as she began shouting again.
“My ‘issue’ is that it’s 6am and you’re still sleeping! It’s God damn Christmas, Clara.”
“’It’s God damn Christmas, Clara’,” I mimicked.
“I hate you. I’m going to call momma Penny and have her hide your presents from me.”
“She’s not your damn mother, Tammy, and especially not at 6am. I just wanna sleep!” I whined.
“You’re hungover, aren’t you?” She laughed, loudly.
“Yes!” Jack semi-shouted at her words. I hit him lightly on the chest, though couldn’t help but cringe at the pain flashing through my head. I should not have continued spiking my drinks all night. I know last year she was here, waking me up at 5am bouncing on my bed, but this year I had been hoping she would be too wrapped up in Chris to remember to wake me up at an ungodly hour. Okay, I totally brought all of this on myself. I knew better than this.
“Don’t even talk to me,” I whined, passing Jack the phone and getting up to pee.
“Clara!” Marky shouted as I came back out of the bathroom. I groaned loudly, not sure what he wanted at this ungodly hour. “We’re all waiting for you!”
“Does no one in this family sleep?!” I shouted. “Tammy is not here. Go back to bed.”
“Fat chance,” he snorted. “Get Jack, we’re opening presents!”
“You’re fucking five,” I grumbled, making my way back to my bedroom and falling face first onto my bed.
“Did you hear that?” Jack laughed next to me. “Yeah, she’s definitely going back to bed.” I groaned loudly, knowing Tammy was still on the phone to him. “I think she needs coffee.”
“I needed coffee an hour ago,” I moaned, lifting my face out of my pillow to glare at him. He laughed again and I continued to glare.
“Oh, no, they’re up,” he said into the phone. “I can hear them.” He continued to talk to Tammy briefly before saying goodbye and turning to me. “Get up.”
“No.”
“If I go put coffee on, are you likely to follow?”
“I’m not unlikely,” I admitted. He chuckled once more, jumping out of bed and making his way out of the room. I flipped over onto my back, staring up at my ceiling as I tried to wake up a little more. My eyes were still a little blurry but I could make out where I’d ripped off my glow in the dark stars once I hit middle school, adamant they were too childish for me now.
I lingered in my room until the smell of coffee wafted in through the door Jack had left ajar. I was being a marginal bitch, considering this was Jack’s favourite day of the year, so I knew I had to get up. Give it half an hour (and three cups of coffee) and I would be just as excited as Tammy.
“I’m so happy,” I groaned, falling into my seat at the breakfast bar, Jack promptly handing me the coffee he’d been making.
“You haven’t even looked at your presents yet,” he laughed back at me, leaning against the bar with his own cup of coffee.
“6am is 6am, no matter what day it is.” He grinned at me and I leaned across the counter, kissing him quickly. “Merry Christmas, cutie.” He grinned wider and I couldn’t help but follow suit. He was too cute.
“Merry Christmas, Clara.”
“And Merry Christmas to me, too!” Marky shouted from the doorway. I groaned loudly, throwing myself back onto my stool. “Come on, asshole, mom won’t let me open my presents until you start on yours.”
“Five-years-old,” I told him, shooting him another glare.
“I’d rather be five than 25, now come open your presents.” I groaned again, grabbing my cup and standing up. I trudged into the living room, making it abundantly clear I was here begrudgingly, already missing the pot of coffee that had been within my reach in the kitchen. I felt bad asking Jack to keep grabbing me more, so I wouldn’t do that, but I also really wanted coffee. Tonnes of it.
“Merry Christmas!” My parents sang from the sofa and I forced a smile at them, not sure I could verbalise the sentiment with as much enthusiasm as they were expecting. Last year, Tammy had had me up at 5am and plied me with copious amounts of coffee before they’d even gotten out of bed, so they were somewhat unused to me being this bleary eyed on Christmas morning.
“Santa hat me,” I demanded, throwing myself on the free sofa. Marky threw the hat in my face and I rolled my eyes, throwing it on and taking another large drink of coffee.
The five of us began exchanging presents and I felt more and more alert as the time went on. As I got about halfway through my first cup, Jack disappeared, bringing me another with a smile. If I hadn’t loved him before that, I would have had to for that single act alone. I loved that, despite my slow, moody start, he knew just how to keep me happy and didn’t hesitate to help me out without me even having to ask, especially considering I was being a touch of a downer.
“That’s it, we’re out,” my dad said an hour later, officially declaring his lack of further presents. We’d already passed around all the presents to and from my parents, Marky and I had passed our own begrudging presents to each other (as a rule, we tried to see which of us could get the other a worse present each year. Our parents were okay with this purely because it meant we got each other something, ‘like real siblings should’), and now we were officially out.
“I’ll go start breakfast,” my mom said, standing up, immediately followed by Marky who, like me, heard food and went to sniff it out. My dad followed after finishing his coffee, glancing at the small pile of remaining presents I had wrapped hastily for Jack and he had wrapped for me.
“You wanna make a start?” He asked, having taken my Santa hat somewhere in the last hour, grinning at me as he nodded his head toward the presents.
“Okay, this one first!” I replied, handing him his smaller present first, grinning widely and clearly over my earlier sour mood. He chuckled as he took it off me, ripping it open in no time. He paused, looking it over, flipping it back and forth as if he didn’t understand.
“Clara, this is a cookbook,” he said slowly, finally looking up at me as I grinned at him. My grin didn’t falter as he continued to stare at me, waiting to see if he would find the humour in it.
“It’s not just any cookbook, it’s a Star Wars cookbook!”
“But, I can’t cook...”
“Well, duh,” I responded. “Alex thought it was hilarious when I found it in Baltimore.”
“You can point the finger all you like, but you can’t cook either.”
“I told you, you can learn how to cook. You can’t trick me like you did May and your mom.” He grinned sheepishly at me before turning back to his present and beginning to flick through it. I saw him beginning to smile a genuine smile as he glanced over the recipes and began to feel amused by the theme.
“Okay, it’s pretty sweet,” he admitted. “We’ll try it out when we get home. I’d rather burn down my kitchen than your parents’. Thanks, cutie.” He pressed a small kiss to my cheek and I began to grin wider.
“That’s not your main present though,” I assured him, handing him a larger gift that I had bought when he was out of town and promptly shipped here so he couldn’t begin to find it.
“Where the hell did you hide this? I repacked your bag before we left for Maryland. This was not in there.”
“I mailed it like a month ago,” I told him, rolling my eyes. “Now open it!”
“Clara, this is…” His eyes widened the longer he looked at the now unwrapped present. I had taken over a month to track down the poster from his first Blink show and had it framed for him. Having had to speak to Mark to trace it (he called in a few favours for me too), he had offered to sign it and have Travis do the same, but I’d declined. It felt slightly weird to have them sign shit for someone they knew.
“Yep,” I replied, my grin never faltering.
“I’ve looked for this for years,” he spluttered. “I’ve never found one.”
“You’ve never asked Mark.”
“You didn’t.”
“100%.” He laughed lightly, still glancing in awe at his present.
“I love it. I love it almost as much as I love you, and shit that’s a lot.” I laughed myself at his response, grateful I had gotten this one right. Not that I doubted it too much, but we always get a little conscious of peoples’ reactions right before we let loose a surprise.
“Alex is super jealous,” I told him. “He tried to steal it when I told him.”
“I feel kinda bad giving you your present after that,” he told me, sheepishly. It was at least half a joke, so I rolled my eyes at him, demanding my gift. He put the frame aside carefully, grabbing a neatly wrapped box and passing it to me.
“Your wrapping is already better than mine.”
“May demanded she do it because ‘we don’t want anyone mistaking it for trash.’” I snorted but made a mental note to text her my thanks at a more reasonable hour.
Underneath the wrapping paper, I found a box holding a number of things. From the cute (the picture of he and I at Blink, framed, and a small, silver necklace) to the downright nerdy (a, frankly, shocking number of Witcher related items and passes for Disney World). I squealed loudly at my gifts, the number and how amazing they all were taking me off guard. Jack laughed at me and I glanced up to see his phone in his hands as he either took a picture or recorded my reaction. I swatted his hand down and he laughed again.
“I take it you like it,” he said, putting his phone down properly.
“I love it,” I gushed. “It’s all amazing.”
“Good,” he grinned. I pushed a small kiss to his lips in thanks, grinning much wider than him. “Those tickets do come at a cost though, and that cost is Lisa.” I emitted another squeak and he rolled his eyes. “Alex is making us go in the middle of next month and says we have to take Lisa to Universal.”
“I’m getting a wand,” I told him immediately. “And Minnie Mouse ears and you can’t stop me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, cutie.”

Notes

I've got the rest of this story planned out.
I'd say 10 - 15 more chapters, but I'm also prone to getting carried away.