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10 months together (Thanksgiving, Year 2)
After 10 months together, Chris and I had been really fortunate that we’d been able to spend pretty much every major holiday - and many of the minor ones - together. We hadn’t been together for Valentine’s Day, because it was just over two weeks after the movie premiered on base and he’d spent almost a week with me then. Honestly though, it was probably for the best, because we hadn’t even been a couple for a month at the time and the stress and expectations of spending the 'romance holiday' together would have probably caused a lot of anxiety for me and put a lot of pressure on him. Since then, though, we’d hit all the big dates - Memorial Day and Labor Day together in Virginia, July 4th at his place in L.A., and our birthdays together at Disney World. All of those had been fun, and some of them had come with important and developmental moments in our relationship, but Thanksgiving, in general, was a whole other ballgame.
Thanksgiving is the ultimate family holiday, even more than Christmas, in some ways, because it really is just about togetherness (and food, but isn’t that also about togetherness?) - no gifts, no fireworks, no pool parties or barbecues or big flashy balls dropping. It’s family, food, and maybe a parade or some football, depending on your tastes. My family wasn’t the best company for me at Thanksgiving; even when my husband had been alive we rarely spent the holiday with either of our families. Our official reasoning was always that my break from school wasn’t long enough to justify the trip when we’d lose a full day to travel each way. Our true reasoning was that our families were draining at best (his) and toxic at worst (mine) and would take all joy out of the holiday and leave us with nothing but stress and hurt feelings. So instead, we usually stayed wherever we lived at the time and had dinner with one or the other of our sets of work friends, usually his, since they were also displaced from their biological families.
That year, Chris’s and my first Thanksgiving together, he actually pointed out the same thing I’d always said to my family - my break from school only ran from the day before Thanksgiving to the end of that weekend. Travelling to Boston to spend the holiday with his family then turning right back around only a couple days later to go back to work would be exhausting and I’d probably go back to school more tired than I’d left it. Besides, I was going to be spending all of my Christmas break there; I already had my plane tickets to fly up in the evening of my last day of work and to return home the day before school started again in January. So, all things considered, the thing that seemed to make the most sense and also to satisfy our desire to be together was for Chris to come to Virginia to spend the week with me. Chelsea, with whom I’d spent the previous Thanksgiving, holding her sleeping toddler while she and her husband put together a fantastic meal, had invited me to her house again to have dinner with her immediate family and her in-laws. She hadn’t hesitated before extending the invitation to include Chris when I'd mentioned that he would be in town, and he had been fully on-board with the idea, insisting he was excited to spend time with my friends.
We were the first guests to arrive. In fact, Chelsea’s husband, AJ, wasn’t even in the house when we got there, out walking the dog in the hopes of wearing her down some before the house was full of guests and food. Chris tried to help Chelsea and me in the kitchen - I’d brought a few sides and a pie, which had shortened her to-do list a bit, but there was still plenty that could be done: dishes to wash, gravy to stir, turkey to carve - but she insisted, just like she and AJ had done to me the previous year, that the most help he could possibly provide would be to occupy Baby Beau in the living room. It kept the toddler from being underfoot in the kitchen, allowed Chris to play with the baby and watch football, and, most importantly, gave Chelsea and me an opportunity to talk about him while we worked.
“You seem really happy,” she told me while I rinsed the utensils I’d just washed.
I bit my bottom lip as I grinned over at her where she stood putting a pan of sweet potatoes back into the oven to stay warm. “I really, really am.”
“And he seems crazy about you.”
I rolled my eyes as I walked around her to start pulling plates from the high shelf she couldn’t reach. “We’ve been here for 20 minutes and he’s been in the other room for 17 of them.”
“Yeah, and every time I look over there, he’s got one hand on Beau and both eyes on you.” I looked across the open kitchen to where it transitioned into the living room just in time to see him with his head turned in our direction. He shot me a grin and a wink before he turned back forward to wave a stuffed football in front of Beau’s face. I felt myself blushing, so instead of turning to address her, I carried the plates straight through the doorway on the opposite side of the room into the dining room. Chelsea followed me. “I mean it,” she insisted, “for one thing, just the fact that he’s so comfortable here with us, just because we’re your friends, says a lot.”
“That’s just who he is.” I made my way around the large table, laying out plates and straightening flatware.
“Maybe,” she followed behind me with the glasses that had been resting on the sideboard, “but that doesn’t explain the way he looks at you.” I sighed and she came to stand beside me, bumping my elbow with hers. “Hey, it’s a good thing. Accept it.”
“I know,” I blew out a long exhale through my mouth, “it’s just hard. It’s like … too good to be true.”
“But it’s not. And it’s not like I’m saying anything you don’t know. You guys have said ‘I love you,’ right?” I nodded. “And you believe him, don’t you?”
I pulled out the chair I’d been standing behind and dropped into it. “I do. It’s just different somehow, having someone else acknowledge it. It’s like it gives me a case of imposter syndrome. Do you know what I mean?” It was also sometimes unsettling how often other people had to point out to me how happy I was and how much he seemed to care about me. It wasn’t at all that I didn’t realize how amazing our relationship was or that I needed other people to point out that I seemed happy and that he openly showed how he cared for me. But for some reason, when someone did point it out to me, some ridiculous part of my brain said that I didn’t deserve him (or at least that the other person probably thought I didn’t, depending on who that person was), or that simply agreeing would be akin to bragging.
Chelsea nodded and pulled out the chair next to mine, turning it to face me. “I get it. But you shouldn’t feel that way. I’ve heard you on the phone with him, I’ve seen pictures, and -”
She was cut off when AJ and their yellow lab Lucy came through the front door, AJ calling out to her before the door was even closed. “Hey Chels, Dad just called, they’ll all be here in about 15 minutes. I told him dinner would probably be ready in about 30. I’m going to check the turkey!” We saw him pass through the front hall from the doorway opposite the one we’d entered a couple moments earlier.
Chelsea rolled her eyes and shook her head, “I guess that was hello.” I only laughed; AJ was a great guy and he and I were friends. I didn’t expect any formalities. We knew when he’d made it to the living room and let Lucy off her leash, because we couldn’t make out the words, but we could hear his and Chris’s voices, low and even. We stood to head back into the kitchen to check on the sides while AJ tested the temperature of the turkey, but before we even turned from the table AJ was rushing into the room from the same doorway she and I had used originally, having made a complete circle of the first floor of the house, wide-eyed.
“Captain America is in my living room.” He blurted out, probably as quietly as he could. I laughed and Chelsea rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re laughing at. Captain America is literally sitting on our couch playing with our son and our dog.”
“My boyfriend is in your living room, playing with your son and your dog.” I looked over at Chelsea out of the corner of my eye and she just smirked.
“Okay, but your boyfriend is Captain fucking America.”
“He has a name,” Chelsea asserted, sounding exasperated.
“You already knew who I’m dating,” I told him at the same time.
AJ shot Chelsea a mildly dirty look then turned to speak directly to me, “Yeah, but I mean, knowing and knowing are two different things. And now he’s on my couch.”
Chelsea crossed her arms over her chest and cocked one hip to the side, leaning against the chair she’d just pushed back in. “He is. And his girlfriend and your wife are setting the table for Thanksgiving dinner, leaving you to be a good host.” AJ’s eyes grew wide and he looked to me for help. I only lifted my eyebrows and shrugged. “So. Go host.” Chelsea made a shooing motion with her hands. I wasn’t actually concerned about the hosting part. We’d left Chris in a room watching football and playing with a toddler and a dog. He was in heaven. But it was funny to watch Chelsea fan AJ’s panic fire.
“I can’t, I don’t,” AJ jerked his head around to look over his shoulder at the wall that separated us from the hall that led to the living room, “what do I talk about with Captain America?”
Chelsea’s eyes fell closed and her chest heaved on a sigh. “Well, you can start by calling him by his actual name.” AJ just blinked back at her, “Oh my God. Chris, AJ, his name is Chris .”
“I know that,” he snapped. “But that doesn’t help me carry on a conversation with Chris Evans ,” he narrowed his eyes at her for a second then looked over at me pleadingly, “in my living room.”
“AJ. You’ll be fine . Just talk to him, like any normal person. Talk to him about,” I paused for a second, thinking, “oh! Talk to him about Tom Brady!”
AJ brightened. “Tom Brady?”
“Yes. He loves Tom Brady.”
“Oh my god, that’s perfect!” Chelsea added. “Finally, someone in this house you can talk to about your man-crush without them wanting to strangle you!” Chelsea grinned almost evilly at her husband and I covered my mouth with my hand to quiet my laugh.
“You’re not nice,” AJ pointed at her. “Be more like her,” he pointed at me.
Chelsea and I both just laughed as AJ exited toward the front hall to head back to the living room and she and I moved in the opposite direction toward the kitchen. “Okay,” Chelsea grinned back at me over her shoulder as she led the way, “I know I said you should be confident and secure, but you may want to watch out for AJ. There’s a good chance he’s going to try to steal your boyfriend before the day is over.”
Whether it was their shared love of the Patriots’ quarterback, amusement over Baby Beau’s - and Lucy’s - antics, or the craft beers AJ kept pouring samples of to share with Chris and his own dad and brother, Chris and AJ had clearly bonded by the time dinner started. While everyone else carried the sides into the dining room and seated themselves around the table Chelsea and I had set earlier, Chris and AJ finished carving the turkey. (“Didn’t he carve the turkey last year?” I’d asked Chelsea when he asked Chris if he was any good at it and, subsequently, to show him how . She nodded and told me, “He’s just flirting . ”) By the time they came in and sat down the platter, everyone else was settled and there were only two empty seats: one at the head of the table, presumably for AJ, and one at my left, between me and where AJ’s dad sat at the other end of the table.
Chris was just pulling out the chair next to me when AJ spoke up, one hand on the back of my chair and one on Chelsea’s. “Hold on.” Chelsea looked up at him over her shoulder. “Hey Chels, why don’t you take the head of the table?”
“What? No, it’s fine, I’m good where I am. You should sit at the head of the table, man of the house .” Everyone laughed quietly, knowing they didn’t adhere at all to old-fashioned roles like that.
AJ shrugged, “But you’re the one who really did all the work for this incredible meal, you should take the seat of honor.”
“No sweetie, it’s okay. Besides, I want to sit by my friend.”
AJ stepped away from me and closer to Chelsea, already working to pull out her chair. She looked up at him like he was going a little crazy as he walked the chair backward with her still in it. “That’s fine, she can move down too. Everyone can just shift down one seat. You sit here,” he stepped around the corner of the table and pulled out the empty chair at the head of it, “she can sit there,” he looked at me and motioned to the chair his wife was currently occupying, “Chris can sit in her seat, and I’ll sit between him and dad.”
And that’s when it clicked. Chelsea narrowed her eyes and looked over to me before bringing her arms up to the table to rest her chin in her hand as she looked up at her husband. “Between Chris and your dad, huh?”
I looked up at Chris and he just smiled softly and lowered his chin to his chest, tucking his hands into his back pockets. I had to imagine that in the grand scheme of things he’d dealt with as a literal superhero celebrity, having someone rearrange the Thanksgiving dinner seating chart to sit next to him probably didn’t even register on the “weird” scale.
By that point, everyone else had been seated for a few minutes and AJ’s pregnant sister-in-law had already started picking at a roll, and all eyes were fixed on the pair of hosts. I could tell that Chelsea wanted more than anything to keep teasing her husband, but she wasn’t willing to hold up everyone’s meal. The way she glanced over at me then up at Chris told me that she was probably also a little worried about embarrassing him. (She did not seem to have the same reservations on her husband’s account.) “Okay. Fine. We’ll move.” She stood and patted his chest with one hand. “So you can sit by your dad, of course.”
I laughed under my breath and scooted over into the seat Chelsea had just vacated then watched as Chris sat in mine and AJ went around to sit on his other side. I reached over to squeeze Chris’s knee under the table and he lifted my hand to his lips to kiss the back of it. Even in the midst of the silliness - the teasing between Chelsea and AJ, having my boyfriend co-opted by my friend’s husband and their baby, listening to them gush over a football player I hated - my chest tightened due to how happy I was, even as I’d tried to be more modest about it when talking to Chelsea. I loved that, as she had pointed out, he was able to walk into their house with me and feel so comfortable that he would make himself part of the group while I was playing assistant to the hostess. I loved that he was so gracious when the inevitable “celebrity questions” came up (even as AJ shot daggers at anyone who dared to interrupt their one-on-one conversations). I loved that he seemed as happy to be there as they were to have him there. Mostly, I just loved him. And I felt that love returned through the press of his lips to my knuckles and the way his arm came to the back of my chair, his hand resting at the base of my neck and his thumb tracing my hairline, once we’d all finished eating and were too fat and happy to get up from the table.
A couple hours later, after dessert had been served and the dishwasher had been loaded and AJ’s dad had gone to the guest room for a post-turkey nap, the rest of us lay sprawled around the living room. AJ’s step-mother and his brother and sister-in-law lounged on one couch while Chelsea and AJ reclined in the smaller one, Baby Beau asleep across both their laps. Chris and I sat on the floor on the other side of the room facing them, our backs resting against the coffee table that had been moved out of the center of the room and pushed up against the wall. Lucy’s chin rested on Chris’s right thigh as he ran that hand up and down her back, his other hand curled around my knee.
Somewhere along the way, the conversation had switched from people asking Chris about himself and his experiences to Chelsea and AJ telling him things he didn’t know about me. When it started I had worried that it was going to be just one embarrassing story after another, but while there were a few of those (Chelsea and I were about as mature as 12-year-old boys when we were together, especially in faculty meetings), it was really more just funny stories that, though they often featured me, weren’t generally at my expense. Chelsea finished telling one of her favorites, one about one particular lunch in the teachers’ lounge one day shortly after Trump had been elected. I’d been making fun of KellyAnn Conway, complete with hand gestures and head movements, and Chelsea had laughed so hard that she nearly choked on her leftover pizza. She got almost as much amusement out of it every time she retold it, or made me do it.
I think Chris’s presence probably saved me that time (or maybe it was that she was worried that I wouldn’t give the reenactment my all with him and her in-laws there), because rather than trying to force me to do it, Chelsea simply acted out the story herself, ridiculous hand motions and all. I had dropped my face to Chris’s shoulder right when she got to the “good part,” but I heard everyone laugh and I felt his chest and shoulders shake with his rumbling laughter. The hand on my knee crossed fully over my lap and hooked around my thigh to pull me closer, and when I lifted my head to look at him, his own head was thrown back and his free hand clutched his chest. Any embarrassment I wanted to feel was gone, replaced by joy at seeing him so happy and open.
I looked over at Chelsea and she lifted both eyebrows at me, smirking, the epitome of an I told you so look. I just rolled my eyes and bit my bottom lip to try to contain my grin before dropping my head so that my temple rested on Chris’s shoulder. Several long seconds later, once he’d finally finished laughing, Chris moved his arm from where it reached across my legs to curl it around my back and pull me a little tighter against him. He turned to kiss the top of my head and murmured into my hair, “You’re fuckin’ adorable,” then kissed me again.
“They loved you,” I told him when we were in the car, halfway through the 30-minute drive back to my house.
He lifted my hand off the gear shift and played with my fingers. “I love you. ”
“Chris,” I whined, “I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” he swore, and when I rolled to a stop at a red light and looked over at him he looked back at me with a surprisingly straight face. “I mean, your friends are great. Chelsea’s really funny and I know how good she’s always been to you, and AJ is awesome, and a Pats fan,” I rolled my eyes and looked back at the stop light in front of me, “but,” he lowered my hand back to the gear shift and left his resting on top of it, “the best part was watching you.”
“Nope,” I deadpanned as the light turned green and I gave the car a little gas so we started rolling forward, “that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”
“Haha, Snarky.”
“Not a dwarf.”
“Well, it should be, just for you.” I turned just long enough to stick my tongue out at him then put my eyes back on the road. “Anyway, Snarky, I’ve never really seen you like that before.”
I made a face, confused, and didn’t say anything until we were at another red light. When we were stopped I turned to look at him again. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
He chuckled a little. “I mean , you were so, I don’t know, comfortable, in your element.”
“Do I normally seem uncomfortable?”
“No, that’s not, shit,” he groaned. “Okay, I mean, I’ve seen teacher-you, and mom-you, and of course the huge overlap between the two, and I get to spend a lot of time with girlfriend-you, and I looooove her.” He sent me his best puppy dog eyes and his biggest grin.
“Suck-up.”
He laughed again and squeezed my hand where his still rested on top of it. “But today I got to just see you with your friend, organizing things and playing back-up hostess. You’re always organized, and you’re always a great hostess to me,” he was sucking up again, and I scoffed and shook my head, but I didn’t say anything, “but, I don’t know, it was a different side of you. You were so confident. It made me happy.”
“Well, thank you,” I shrugged, “but I feel like you deserve some -”
He cut me off. “Nope. Not gonna let you do that. Just take the damn compliment, woman. You earned it.”
I huffed, “Fine.” I saw him pump his fist out of the corner of my eye. “But! You have to take one too.
“Ugh, what?” I cut my eyes over at him and I could tell he was trying not to smile.
“You’re so patient. I’m sure you have to get tired of answering the same questions over and over again, but you always do it with a smile on your face and you make everyone feel special and important. It makes my heart happy to watch you.”
“I mean,” he shrugged then started picking at the sleeve of my sweater at my wrist, “it would be pretty shitty not to, right? They’re only asking because they’re interested and supportive.” I loved that that’s how his brain worked. “Besides, like I said, they were great. And, pardon me while I get really cheesy, but I’m really just happy I got to spend Thanksgiving with you, whatever else comes along with that.”
“Aww,” I teased, “are you saying that what you’re thankful for is me?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The overthinker in me had to make sure he didn’t think I was fishing. “I was joking, babe.”
“I know.” He reached across the car to tuck my hair behind my ear, I assume so he could see my face. “I’m not.”
My heart clenched as I pulled into my driveway. “God Chris, you know-”
“Hey now,” he slid his hand from my elbow down the inside of my forearm once I had the car in neutral and slipped it under my hand so he could lace our fingers together, “don’t get all weepy on me baby girl.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I turned in my seat to face him, pulling my knee up and hooking my foot behind my other leg, and he smiled back at me. I brought my free hand up to cup his jaw and when I traced my thumb over his bottom lip he acted like he was going to bite it, then at the last second he winked at me and kissed it instead. “Okay, fine, I won’t be sappy. But you can’t stop me from telling you I love you.”
He closed his eyes and leaned into my hand, chuckling quietly, “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
I promised not to be sappy, and I didn’t want to break my promise. But when we got into the house and he wrapped his arms around me from behind after handing me the last of the bowls of leftovers to put into the fridge, I closed the door and leaned back into him. And when he pressed his lips to the side of my neck, I brought one arm up to wrap around his neck from behind and closed the other hand over one of his on my hip, holding him close, pressed against me, and walked us to the bedroom. There was no way I could tell him how thankful I was for him without being sappy, but I could do my best to show him.