Home and Holidays

chapter 12

After Thanksgiving dinner, Noah, Lisa, and David were back at the community center the next day for volunteer work, currently working together to set up a holiday themed display where they would put gloves and hats. They were waiting on Ella to show up, since she would be arriving there eventually too.

Lisa and David were in the middle of talking about last night's Thanksgiving games, and how Lisa had somehow won almost all of them.

"I still wanna know how you literally won every single game." David commented as Lisa shook her head in amusement.

"It wasn't every single game." she pointed out.

"Yeah, but you even won Crazy Eights, and I'm usually the one winning that game." David said, faking annoyance as Noah watched their little discussion, trying his best not to laugh.

"Well, you were probably too distracted to win since you have such a beautiful wife." Lisa teased, referring to herself in the third person as David chuckled.

"That's true." he agreed, since he couldn't argue with her on that. He would never understand how a person could actually be as beautiful as her. He then turned his attention to Noah. "I hope you enjoyed your lollipop, Noah. I think you were the only one who got to win one besides Lisa." he playfully said to him, Lisa nudging his shoulder as she laughed since he was clearly exaggerating. Everyone had each won at least two of the Thanksgiving games also.

"I gave mine to Ella. She really wanted a green one, so I was determined to win it for her." Noah said, smiling proudly.

David and Lisa both gave each other a look, smirking a little at how obvious Noah's crush on Ella was. It was clear how much he liked her and it was the cutest thing.

"We're going to get a Christmas tree today after we finish up here. Do you wanna come with us, Noah?" David brought up, looking over at Noah.

"Sure, that sounds fun." he instantly agreed.

Lisa had then excused herself to go use the bathroom, telling the boys that she'd be back soon before walking off.

"Hey, was everything ok last night? After Ella brought the lollipops in from the kitchen we didn't see you for a while." David asked Noah after a while.

"Oh, yeah everything was fine. I just needed a minute, so I went up to my room for a while. Ella came to check on me though." he clarified.

"I figured that's what she did. She told us she was going to use the bathroom, but I saw her run straight upstairs instead, so I knew she was probably looking for you." David mentioned. "So, you were ok though?" he checked just to be sure.

"Yeah. I had just panicked a little bit because I accidentally told her something that made her wonder about my home situation. She seemed really worried about me, and I ended up telling her the truth about everything."

"Did that go ok? I mean, I'm assuming it did, since you two were holding hands when you showed back up in the living room." David brought up, lightly teasing him.

"I didn't even realize we were doing that...." Noah trailed off, his cheeks red as he recalled the not so subtle looks that everyone gave him when he walked back into the living room with Ella last night, it all making sense now. "Is that why everyone was looking at us so weird?" he awkwardly asked as David nodded in response.

"I was wondering if you noticed that." David replied. "Don't worry about it though. None of us had any context to what was going on, so we were just assuming all kinds of stuff. We're way too nosy sometimes." he laughed it off, making Noah relax more as he chuckled as well.

"Well, anyway, things went well with talking to her. She was really understanding about it." Noah said, his mind drifting to last night again as he smiled a little. He felt over the moon as he kept thinking about the things Ella said, that she cares about him, that she likes him for who he is, that her connection with him wouldn't change. She said she had a connection with him. It was that specific statement that made him wanna smile like an idiot.