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Chapter 59




AN: Yes, lovely readers, we're finished! Hope you like this Christmas Day.

And, I don't know how many people engage with the media at the top, but you really should listen to that song!!! Yes, David Brent (Ricky Gervais, yes!), and yes, it's absolutely stunning. Chris Martin wrote it with him, and it perfectly captures how I feel about Teddy and Birdie, and how they feel about each other, the joy, the hope, the beauty.

When I opened my eyes, the sunlight was streaming in through the windows. I checked the clock; it was close to nine o'clock already, and I could smell coffee. I smiled and stretched, finally getting out of bed and going to look for Teddy.

    I walked into the living room and stopped dead in my tracks. The fire had been rebuilt, making the room very warm and cozy compared to the rest of the house, but that wasn't what had caught my attention. The area behind the sofa, which was normally just empty, was filled by a seven foot living Christmas tree, festooned with hundreds of colorful lights and gigantic, fat, candy canes, the kind I loved to eat. The bottom of the tree was clogged with presents; it looked like a tree for a family of at least five or six people.Teddy sat cross legged on the floor next to the tree in his pajamas, looking, well, as happy as a boy on Christmas morning.

    "Happy Christmas, Birdie, my love," he said, rising and coming to me, holding out his arms to wrap me up in a huge hug. He kissed me, long and romantic.

    I was speechless. I just stared at him. He was smiling, dimples huge, as he rubbed noses with me. "Are you surprised, love?" He asked. "Are you happy?"

    I nodded. Tears pooled in my eyes, but I managed to keep them there. I smiled at him.

    "And there it is," he whispered, rubbing noses again.

    "How did you do this?" I asked, managing to find my voice.

    "I'm Theo Shelley, I can do anything, don't you know that?" He asked, taking me in his arms and rubbing my nose with his again.

    "Did you sleep at all?" I asked, stroking his face.

    He shook his head. "Maybe a little, until you fell asleep.

    "It's our first Christmas," he explained. "I wanted it to be special, you know?

    "Oh! Nearly forgot!" He reached into his pocket and pulled something out, something hanging from a chain. He lifted it so I could see it.

    It was an ornament, a simple cardboard affair, probably bought at a local shop, with the words "Our First Christmas" written in curly script around the open circle. Into the circle he'd inserted a picture, taken in Japan, at the end of tour party, of me sitting in his lap, laughing, and him looking at me and smiling. It was a lovely, intimate picture, our feelings for each other obvious. I remembered perfectly when Ronan had taken it.

    "Come on, love, let's hang it together, yeah?" We walked to the tree and reached for a branch, lifting it onto a fragrant limb, settling it way back, so it wouldn't fall. We stood back, arm in arm, looking at it. He kissed my forehead. "The first of many," he whispered.

    I nodded. "The first of many," I agreed, leaning into him.

    "So where did all of these presents come from?" I asked him.

    "Why don't you look?" He asked with a smile.

    I knelt on the floor and started picking up random boxes. "To Birdie, From Teddy," said the first. "To Birdie, From Teddy," said the next. Every box said the same thing. I turned to him. "Are all of these from you to me?" I asked in amazement. He smiled and nodded, tickled to death.

    "Are you out of your mind?" I asked him. "How much money did you spend? And when in the hell did you have time to buy all this stuff, let alone wrap it?"

    He turned to me. "I had months alone up there, so lonely, writing music and mooning about over you. I'd go out to follow you around, and go shopping, or go online, or whatever, with nothing to do but think about you and miss you so fucking much. I just missed you, that's all. I thought about you all the time, and buying things for you made me feel so much better."

    Without a word I got up and left the room. "Birdie," he called after me. "Where are you going? Are you coming back?"

    I returned a couple of minutes later carrying a motley stack of brightly wrapped boxes taller than my head. I carefully set them down.

    "What are those, then?" He asked curiously.

    "The less expensive version of what you just described," I explained, kissing the top of his head.

    He looked at a couple of the boxes.

    "To Teddy, from your Birdie, with love," he read. He smiled at me. "Where did you get the money?" he asked. "You haven't spent anything."

    I smiled enigmatically.

    He pulled me onto his lap, shaking his head. "First, though, we have to eat. You weigh less than a hundred pounds, I bet."

    He squeezed me. "I'm so fucking sorry for the last four months. I can't believe I let you get to this state. Come on, let's get you fed."

    "Don't be ridiculous," I objected. "This isn't your fault. I did it to myself. Some people gain weight when their lives go to shit. I just stopped taking care of myself."

    We went to the kitchen and found a loaf of pecan nut bread that I'd made and frozen months ago. We microwaved it, toasted it, and ate half of it, standing in the kitchen.

    We returned to the tree just in time to keep Molly and Lucy from climbing so high that Teddy couldn't reach them. He pulled them down, with both of them complaining the entire time, and we started opening presents, hoping that the wrapping and boxes would keep them occupied enough to keep them from climbing the tree again.

    I started, with a new bag for holding all of my music. It was far superior to my old one. It was very finely made, with zippered pouches for holding pens and cellphones and the like.

    I set it aside and next opened a gorgeous pair of winter boots, again, far nicer than what I owned, than any I'd ever owned. "For New York," Teddy explained.

    Next was a pair of faux fur lined gloves. "You don't have any at all, and you need to keep your hands protected," he said, smiling. "But they're fake, I know how you feel about fur," he added quickly.

    I moved on to a small box, which contained a slim, very finely tipped, what could only be described as a feminine Mont Blanc fountain pen. "Something I remembered from your Pinterest," he smiled.

    I just sat, turning the pen around in my hands.

    "What's wrong? You still have tons to go, my love." He motioned to the dozens of boxes still left under the tree.

    I shrugged, speechless for the moment.

    "I can't," I finally said helplessly. "I can't just sit here and take and take and take from you." I turned to him, putting my hand on his chest. "It's just how I was raised." I continued quietly. "I was rarely allowed to go to other peoples' houses for dinner, because we couldn't reciprocate. I was taught never to accept something that I couldn't pay back." I waved my hand at the gift lover's dream come true in front of me and let my hand fall to my leg.

    "I could never do this for you, never in a million years. I can't accept all of this from you. I don't even know how I can repay your letting me live here with you for seven months." I turned to him. "What am I supposed to do?"

    He looked at me, wide set eyes serious. "I honestly don't know. But the truth is that this is never going to even out. I mean, the thought that you can ever be 'even' with me is ridiculous. I hit the lottery of good luck. No one ever gets as lucky as I did, you certainly won't. So are you saying you can never accept anything from me, we can never live together and share things, because of my money? That the only way for us to be together is for me to give it all away?" He pulled me into his lap, putting his head next to mine, so we were cheek to cheek. "Because if that's what you're saying, I'll do it, I swear I will. I'll set up a charitable foundation or something to funnel all of my money away, and I'll make sure we only have enough to live on, and that it's a similar amount to whatever you're going to make as a pianist, or a professor, or whatever it is you're going to do with your life, and we'll live off that." He rubbed his cheek against mine.

    "Is that what you're saying? Tell me. I'll do whatever you say. I don't care about the money, I don't. I want you, and I'll do whatever I have to do to keep you." He turned his head and kissed my cheek.

    I thought about his words, and I thought about mine, how ridiculous I sounded. When my mother told me I couldn't go to Kelly Handler's house for dinner because we couldn't have her back to ours, she couldn't have envisioned this situation. She couldn't possibly have known that I'd be sitting in a multimillionaire's living room on Christmas morning opening gifts and having a personal crisis over reciprocity etiquette.

    I turned to him. "Tell me, honestly, honestly, how you feel. I mean, can you say that you don't feel a little bit put upon, not even a little? You don't feel like that rich relative, like the person that everyone comes to with his hand out, saying 'gimme'?" I put my hand on his arm. "I don't ever, ever, want you to look at me and think that I'm spending your money in a way you don't like. Not ever. You earned this. I've seen how hard you work.

    "I heard what you said earlier about luck, and I know that luck was involved. But without talent, that initial luck would have gotten you fuckall, and that's the truth. You took that luck and parlayed it into something incredible, you and all the boys. You earned everything you have, and I don't want to usurp what you've worked for, you understand?"

    He pulled me to him, hugging me fiercely. "I never feel that way about you, hummingbird, never, ever. I have felt that way about women in the past. All they wanted to do was spend what I had. A person can tell." He let me go so he could look into my eyes.

    "I've told you before. You bring so much to our relationship, so much to us, so much to me. I feel like a pauper compared to you, because all I have to give you is my money. So please, I beg you, take it, take what I have to give, let me feel like I have something to give you. Take my money, for Christ's sake, spend the hell out of it. Let it be our money." He kissed my nose. "I'm getting so much happiness watching you open these presents. If you only knew how buying them saved my life when you were so far away from me this fall, when all I could do was go into a shop or go online and think about you and what you would like, what would make you happy."

    He took the pen, which I was still holding. "Did you see I had it engraved?" I hadn't. 'For my hummingbird', in lovely filigree, along with the word 'Christmas', the year, and 'love, Teddy'.

Swoon.

    "Now, tell me you love it, and it will be worth ten times whatever money I paid for it, honestly," he said, smiling at me.

    "I love it," I whispered, smiling at him as I put my arms around his neck.

    "The smile alone makes it worth it," he whispered back, pulling me to him. "Now open your fucking presents, yeah?"

    I nodded.

    The pile beside me grew to include gift cards to various yarn shops, wine shops, chocolatiers, not to mention actual boxes of chocolates, which I had to sample immediately, more gloves, because everyone knew that gloves got lost, socks, a piano keychain from Tiffany's, and some very sexy lingerie.

    "Yeah, that's kind of for both of us," he said, scratching his head sheepishly.

    "It's very pretty," I said, smiling. "I've never owned lingerie. I mean, always went for the underwear, never the sleepwear, so that'll be fun. You should get me more. Aren't there always sales after Christmas?"

    He smiled at me. "Yeah, sales always matter a great deal to me, Birdie." He pulled my head to him, kissing me. "Sales," he muttered under his breath, turning away and shaking his head.

    I looked around. "Well, I think that's finally it for me," I said. "Wow, I don't think I've ever gotten so many presents in my life."

    "No no, there are a few more," he said, jumping up. "Those were just the ones from me. He returned from the front closet. "These are from the boys, I almost forgot."

    They had apparently arrived by mail, as they were in plain brown boxes, with the gift wrapped boxes inside, and I was glad I'd remembered, even with all of the turmoil of the past months, to mail them gifts in early December.

    Matty had gotten me a vintage Chanel handbag, black, decorated with real pearls. It was beautiful. I wondered where on earth he'd managed to find it. "So much love for you, from Matthew," the card read.

    From Ronan I'd received five different pairs of jeggings, each in a different, outrageous floral pattern. All were beautiful, and they came with a handwritten note from Ronan, which said, "When you want to be the totally hot Tinker Bell, these will look great on you!" I laughed until I got cramps.

    From Gethin I got an antique hairbrush and comb set with a mirror. The enclosed card said, "So my poppet can tend her beautiful hair, even when I'm not there to do it. Love you so much, little one. Geth."

    "I didn't think to send them anything," Teddy said regretfully. "I was so fucked up these past few months. Dammit, I feel like shit, I'm pretty sure they all got me something, too, I think it's in that mess that's still left upstairs."

    I patted his chest. "I sent them something at the beginning of December, and I put your name on the card, along with mine," I said. "I hope that wasn't presumptuous of me, but you paid for the supplies, so it was completely true."

    "Oh, thanks for that," he said, relieved.

    "Now, open yours, my love," I said, motioning toward his. "They're all the same thing, and I'm pretty sure you know what they are, but they were very bulky, so I couldn't box them together.

    "Actually, the way things were, I wasn't sure we'd be exchanging gifts, but I didn't know what else to do with them, and I had nothing but time, so I went ahead and found boxes and wrapped them anyway," I said, unable to keep my voice from thickening at the end. Would I ever be able to control my tears?

    "No, no, I actually have no idea what they could be at all," he said, sitting down on the floor. Molly and Lucy were immediately in his lap, having discovered that this was the most interesting place to be when presents were involved.

    He pulled the first one toward him and ripped it open, throwing the paper well away in the hopes that the cats would chase the paper and leave him alone for a few moments.

    As I watched him, I pulled one of the huge candy canes off the tree, unwrapped it, and started eating it. I didn't like the tiny, skinny ones, but the huge ones held great appeal for me. They didn't even have to be cane shaped, I loved the stick shaped ones also, they just had to be peppermint. My mother, and later Ben, got me a huge one for my stocking every year.

    Teddy looked at me, and I smiled. "They were the only decorations I could find on such short notice," he said apologetically.

    "No, don't be sorry," I said. "I love these, they're just about my favorite candy," I said. I stuck it back in my mouth. "And these are fantastic," I said. "They have the most marvelous texture, they taste hand made."

    "Yeah, they actually came from a nice shop, I think," he said. "Patrick knows the owner, called her in the middle of the night, cleaned her out."

    I smiled at him, sucking contentedly on my candy.

    He was behaving strangely, staring at me, making no move to continue unwrapping his gift. I gestured toward it.

    He leaned toward me, pulling the candy nearly all the way out of my mouth and pushing it back in slowly. He smiled.

    "You're giving that candy cane the sexiest blowie ever," he said.

    Oh. I pulled it out. "Want me to stop?" I asked.

    He leaned toward me again, kissing me this time, his tongue licking my lips before moving into my mouth.

    "Sweet," he pronounced. "Very, very sweet. And no, don't stop, it's so fun to watch. And it makes kissing so nice, too. Please, continue. And I'll open my presents."

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