be so festive? In some rooms, it was just the outdoors brought inside. In other rooms, the pinecones were painted gold, with miles of burgundy ribbon tied into beautiful bows.
I took a picture of her den and asked Mad Dog it if would be okay for me to ask her to do that treatment to the clubhouse. He asked her to get with the other ol’ladies, and they chased us out one Tuesday morning, so they could work in peace. Mad Dog stayed to supervise because there are rules about that kind of thing, but we all knew he wasn’t going to tell them what to do.
And that was fine. It was good to have ol’ladies trying to run roughshod over us again.
Christmas in the makeshift clubhouse the year before had been sad for me. So empty, it just reminded me of everyone we’d lost. Time has a way of healing those wounds, though, and our Christmas Eve party was one of celebration, this year. We were in our new clubhouse, we had more members, more prospects, and more ol’ladies.
Cheyenne and I went back to her place after the party, so we could awaken and exchange gifts at her house Christmas morning.
What do you buy the woman who has everything? I opted for a wine refrigerator, the fancy kind with the glass door, and I selected three dozen different wines to stock it with. Okay, so Ember and Sophia helped me with the wine choices, but I researched a few bottles as well.
And then I opened my gift from her, and emotions I didn’t know I could have slammed into me. Each chess piece had details I’d have never thought to include. Motorcycles, bikers. The knight was my motorcycle from the tank forwards — not just any bike, but mine. The bishop’s top part was my helmet. A detailed owl wearing a crown was on top of the king, and a lynx’s head with a crown on it made up the top of the queen.
I was so fucking glad we hadn’t done this in front of the kids, because my emotions swelled into my throat and pushed tears into my eyes. Not out of them, mind you, but into them.
Cheyenne
I know you aren’t supposed to compare gifts, but everyone does, right? I spent a hundred dollars on him and he only spent forty on me. No one admits to it, but a helluva lot of math happens on Christmas morning.
But there was no way to use math to compare our gifts to each other. I mean, sure, dollar wise, I spent a few thousand on his gift and he probably spent around six thousand on mine because some of the bottles he bought me cost in the hundreds of dollars. Each.
But I almost made him cry. Frost. The man whose name says more about his emotions than they do about his inner animal. I’d walked away from the club because I’d been convinced his icy walls would never come down, and on Christmas morning, he had tears in his eyes from so much emotion.
It made me offer something I hadn’t planned, but it felt right.
So, while he helped me prepare Christmas dinner, I told him, “I think it’s time you moved more things in. I have a huge walk-in closet that isn’t being used.” I took a breath. “I don’t know what else you might want to bring over from your house, but that’s a conversation we should probably have. Furniture or doodads or whatever. Tools. Kitchen stuff.”
“I’ve missed having my home office. I’d like to move it here, if you’re asking me to make this a permanent move. Maybe the guest bedroom at the back of the house — the one with a balcony? Otherwise, while I have some small things I’d like to bring, none of my furniture is that important to me. If there are pieces you want, we can move them.” He stopped mashing the potatoes and turned to me. “I never thought I’d move into a woman’s house and give my house up, but I’ll do it for you, even though your motherfucking ex-husband lives next door, because I love you more than I ever expected to love anyone. Ever.”
And then, after delivering a little soliloquy that had me in tears, he went back to mashing the potatoes — as if he’d just talked to me about next week’s fucking weather.
I stopped his hands, pulled them from his work, and wrapped my arms around his