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Christmas always left Jamie feeling ambivalent. The holiday brought with it a myriad of emotions for Jamie; nostalgia for the happier times she’d had when her family had been whole and had all huddled together after long walks to keep themselves warm while they watched old Christmas movies. They were the times Jamie yearned for, the years she wished she could get back.
Then came the harder times, the years she had spent in foster care, followed by the years she had spent separated from her brothers, living with families who couldn’t have cared less about her and only cared about the money that came with taking care of her. She had thought Christmas would always be hard, that the whole month of December would leave her longing for her childhood- or her early childhood at least. When the magic of Christmas had still been there.
When she and her older brother Denny had stayed awake until the early hours of the morning, listening out for sleigh bells and reindeer hooves. Only to be disappointed each year when they heard no such things. Then she had met Dani Clayton, someone who had been able to make Jamie see the wonder in even the smallest things in life. She knew she had fallen and fallen fast for Dani and while she had finally been able to admit that to herself, she hadn’t yet found the courage to say those three little words to Dani.
Every time Dani looked at her or smiled at her Jamie was sure that her heart completely stopped. Dani had been the best thing that had happened to Jamie, and the past nine months had been the happiest nine months of her life.
That’s why it was almost impossible for Jamie to say no to her- not that Dani ever really asked for much from her in the first place.
But even times like now, when Dani had arranged an impromptu date to go Christmas tree shopping early on a Saturday morning, Jamie had agreed with a wide smile on her face, and a small chuckle to her voice.
The excitement that Dani had radiated even through the phone had been enough to spark even the smallest ember of excitement in Jamie, even if Christmas wasn’t her favourite time of year.
When Jamie saw Dani standing outside the entrance to the Christmas tree lot wearing her blue beanie hat, leather jacket, black skinny jeans, and a pair of fingerless gloves she felt her skip a beat, the same way it always did whenever she saw Dani. At first, she hated the feeling, she had hated knowing that anyone else could have this effect on her. But the more time she spent with Dani, getting to know her and everything that made Dani who she was. She had started to love the way Dani made her feel.
As Jamie continued to make her way to Dani, her feet heavy and scuffing against the cold ground, Dani looked up, from her phone a bright smile instantly spreading across her face when she saw her. “Hey gorgeous,” she said, pulling Jamie into a hug as soon as she was close enough, her arms circling around her neck as Jamie’s arms instantly wrapped around her waist pulling her impossible close to her body.
It had never failed to amaze Jamie just how much heat Dani radiated. She knew, especially in the colder months, she had found the perfect cuddle buddy in Dani; Dani was always warm, and Jamie was always cold, cuddling close together helped to balance out their body heat. “Hey, you,” Jamie mumbled as she buried her head into Dani’s neck. Taking a deep breath, expecting to be greeted by the usual scent of Dani’s sweet perfume and shampoo; only to be met with the strong scent of cinnamon instead. “You smell different,” she blurted out, pulling back slightly her eyes scanning Dani’s face curiously.
“I do?” Dani asked, pulling her scarf up slightly to take a subtle smell, a small smile spreading across her face, “Oh that… I always smell like that around Christmas,” she shrugged, “sorry… if you don’t like it, I can change it back?” she offered.
“No, I like it,” Jamie assured her, “but uh, then again, I reckon I’d like anything on you,” she admitted with a small smile. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”
“You’re cheesy… but I love it,” Dani replied, her smile growing, “are you ready to help me get a Christmas tree?” She asked, bouncing slightly on the spot, her excitement seemingly building with each passing second.
“Yeah… sure…” Jamie replied, trying to match the same level of enthusiasm as Dani, but already knowing she had failed.
“Are you okay?” Dani asked, her eyebrows furrowed slightly, “because we really don’t have to do anything like this if you don’t want to… it was just an idea… we can do anything you want?”
“No, no we can do this,” Jamie shook her head quickly, “I’m just not, the biggest fan of Christmas, y’know?” She asked, “so I might not be the most enthusiastic today… but we can do this, I really don’t mind going Christmas tree shopping if it means I can spend the day with you.”
She had never meant anything more, in the past when she had dated women, she couldn’t have imagined anything worse than spending a day outside in the freezing cold shopping for a plant that was going to be dead within a matter of weeks anyway.
But with Dani, that idea didn’t seem so bad. She would happily spend all day with Dani doing just about anything .
“You’re so cute,” Dani smiled softly, “I promise I will make this up to you later,” she said, her tone dropping a little lower, and dripping with suggestion.
“Then we can stay out here as long as you want,” Jamie replied quickly, bringing an even wider smile to Dani’s face, “but seriously, Dani, you don’t have to make anything up to me… I’m not doing this to get anything in return… I’m doing it because I want to.”
“Well, thank you, I appreciate that… but I still really wanna make this up to you,” she said, pulling Jamie in for a long, deep kiss.
A kiss that tasted strongly of coffee and peppermint.
A kiss that felt different to Jamie that day, a kiss that seemed to be filled with something more, something that hadn’t been there in the beginning, but something she had felt building more and more over recent days until now when all she could feel as Dani’s lips moved against her was that something else .
They hadn’t been walking around for long, with Dani singing along softly to the songs playing over the speakers, the sound of her soft voice only making Jamie fall more and more in love with Dani with each passing second. As Dani glanced around the lot, trying to find the perfect tree, the only thing Jamie could do was watch Dani, how her eyes seemed even bluer in the cold, and how they seemed to light up every so often when they happened to pass by a particularly big or full tree before she would go straight back to looking at smaller trees.
Jamie had never known anyone could be this beautiful and then she had met Dani, a woman who she had once described as being too pretty - a statement she still stood by. Dani was, without a doubt, the prettiest woman Jamie had ever seen.
And Jamie was sure she got prettier every day.
“Jamie,” Dani chuckled, the sound of her lilting laugh pulling her from her thoughts about how gorgeous her girlfriend was.
“What?” She asked, shaking her head slightly, and blinking her eyes, hoping to clear her mind enough to focus on what Dani wanted to say to her.
“I asked what you thought about these trees?” Dani said, pointing to the two trees beside them, both of them dying and drying out, and clearly there from the year before, “because I think they’re beautiful…” she said sardonically bringing a small smile to Jamie’s lips. “I think I should get them both,” she joked.
“God no,” Jamie said shaking her head, “we are not getting you either of those trees for your apartment… you deserve something way nicer,” she said softly, giving Dani’s hand a gentle squeeze. She looked around the lot, her eyes widening slightly when they landed on the biggest tree there. “You deserve something like that,” she beamed pointing at it.
Her smile only grew when she took in the look of awe stamped on Dani’s face. “That is amazing,” she smiled, “but I don’t think we’d be able to get that back to my place… seriously, whichever tree we get, we have to get it into my apartment.”
“We’d manage,” Jamie shrugged, though she already knew looking at the tree, there was no way she and Dani could get that up to Dani’s fourth-floor apartment.
“I admire your ambition, but I really don’t think we would,” Dani chuckled, “I am fine with having something smaller, but thank you so much for saying I deserve a tree like that.”
“I’m just being honest,” Jamie shrugged, “but uh, since you’re so set on a smaller tree… I guess I’ll have to get you one like that another year,” she’d said it without thinking, and she regretted it almost straight away.
She had no idea how Dani would feel about her making an offhand comment like that, but as she took in the soft smile on Dani’s face. “You think we’ll have more Christmases together?” She asked, her eyes shining brightly.
“Uh, yeah,” Jamie nodded her head, “I think so… I hope so at least…”
“I hope so too.”
Jamie felt her heart rate increase slightly, and a warmth spread through her body at the thought of spending more Christmases with Dani- though, deep down, Jamie knew, what she was hoping for more than anything would be that she would get to spend all her Christmases with Dani.
She had never known that decorating a Christmas tree could be a happy or fun experience. All her childhood decorating the tree had been filled with arguments, and adults telling her that she was just getting in the way whenever she tried to help. Jamie had half been expecting it to be the same when she and Dani got back with her tree. Decorating the tree had always been one of the many downsides of Christmas for Jamie, it was just a lot of unnecessary stress and effort for something that would be taken down and thrown out at the beginning of January anyway.
But with Dani, decorating the tree and her whole apartment had been filled with laughter, singing and dancing to Christmas songs, and stolen kisses every time they happened to be even remotely close to each other.
Kisses that just like early made Jamie feel lightheaded, kisses that always seemed to be filled with something else. Something that Jamie couldn’t put her finger on. Something that was stronger than anything Jamie had ever known in her life.
“Do you wanna put this on?” Dani asked, holding out the small ornament to Jamie- it was one they had bought before coming home, a personalised one that had the words Dani and Jamie Christmas 2015 burnt into the wood. It had been Dani’s idea, to get a personalised tree ornament to commemorate their first Christmas together. And when she had suggested the idea to Jamie with that wide, bright smile on her face, Jamie had been powerless to say no.
“Uh, you can do it if you want,” she replied, looking up from the box of ornaments Dani had pulled from under her bed. “You’ve got a lot of baubles for just one tree,” she commented.
“I have a lot of what?” Dani asked, a small chuckle slipping past her lips.
“Baubles,” Jamie said, holding up one of the items from the box, “for the tree.”
She watched as a small smile spread across Dani’s face. “You say the cutest things sometimes,” she said, shaking her head slowly, as she placed the ornament on the tree. “Like seriously, the cutest.”
“Why, what do you call them?”
Dani shrugged and dropped down to sit on the floor beside Jamie. “Ornaments or decorations I guess, but baubles?” she asked, “that’s really cute…” she leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to Jamie’s lips, “you’re really cute,” she said pecking Jamie’s lips once more. “But yes, I do have a lot of baubles ,” she said.
Jamie rolled her eyes playfully and sighed. “Are you mocking me?”
“Not mocking… I’m just trying to be proper British innit,” she said, putting on an overly forced cockney accent, an accent Jamie knew was Dani’s best attempt at mimicking her. An accent that whenever Dani did it, brought a soft smile to Jamie’s lips.
“You’re an idiot,” Jamie said softly, shaking her head slowly, “but I—” she cut herself off quickly, and shook her head, taking in the slightly confused look on Dani’s face, “Why do you have so many?” She asked, hoping to steer the conversation to safer topics.
“Oh, Judy sent them over to me, said she wanted some new ones, so she wanted me to have these…” she explained, “some are ones my mom sent me, and some are ones I bought when I was still with Eddie…” she shrugged, “so some of those will not be on the tree.”
“Don’t mind you putting them on the tree if you like them,” Jamie admitted.
“No,” Dani shook her head, “no I don’t know why I have them really,” she said softly, “besides, those ornaments are from then and I am much more focused on the now… with you,” she smiled. “And maybe the future a little bit too.”
“The future?” Jamie asked, her heart flipping slightly. She had thought about having a future with Dani a lot lately. Had thought about them one day moving in together and having a place to call their own.
Had thought about them having a life together and spending their lives together.
Jamie was sure that she had never wanted anything more than that, was sure that she had never met anyone that she would rather spend all her time with than Dani.
Dani nodded her head slowly. “Yeah… I see a future with you,” she admitted, “and I’ve been wanting to ask this for a really long time, but I just kept putting it off and then I thought maybe I could ask you a little closer to Christmas and surprise you and do it in a big romantic way, but I really don’t know if I can wait anymore…” she said, shaking her head. “You’re my best friend Jamie, and I love spending time with you and I wanna spend all my time with you… I know you spend a lot of time here anyway, but I was thinking maybe you could just spend all your time here- other than when you’re working obviously.”
“Staying here all the time?” Jamie asked, her eyebrows furrowed slightly, “like living here?” She asked, her heart speeding up slightly at the thought of her living with Dani, at the thought of waking up next to her every morning and going to sleep next to her every night.
“Yeah…” she replied nodding her head slowly, “I hate it when you have to leave here, or I have to leave your place… it always feels empty without you, and I know I always sleep better when you’re here… and I know we haven’t been together that long, and I know there are some things we don’t know about each other. But I figured we could find all that out about each other in a place we could call ours …” she shrugged her shoulders. “So, will you,” she asked, “move in with me?”
Jamie nodded her head slowly, warmth spreading through her body at the thought of living with Dani and building a life with the other woman, a life she had never envisioned herself having until she had met Dani Clayton.
“Yeah… yeah definitely,” she said with a wide smile spreading across her face. Dani beamed at her, taking her face in her hands, and pulling her into a long, slow kiss, that something else radiating through Dani’s lips and into Jamie’s, and she felt it again, the undeniably need to tell Dani. To be brave and tell Dani exactly how she felt, to find the same courage Dani had when asking her to move in. She pulled back from the kiss and rested her forehead on Dani’s. “I love you.”
Another wide smile pulled at Dani’s lips, as she closed the gap between them once more, mumbling a returned sentiment of love against Jamie’s lips. She pushed the box of ornaments away from them and used her weight to guide Dani onto her back, being careful not to break their kiss.
Her hand moved to Dani’s thigh, gripping it gently as she settled herself between Dani’s legs, rolling her hips forwards into Dani and relishing in the soft moan that Dani sank into her mouth between kisses.
She used the opportunity of Dani’s parted lips to slip her tongue into her mouth, moaning softly when their tongues met.
The kiss started slowly, a promise of all the things to come in her new life with Dani, a life they would build together. Though it soon turned filthy, hungry all teeth and tongue, her hands working quickly to get Dani out of her clothes and Dani’s working just as fast to rid Jamie of hers.
Christmas had always left Jamie feeling ambivalent. Until that year. That year, Christmas became Jamie’s favourite holiday and she couldn’t wait for so many more to come, with Dani by her side.
