The Girl in Blue

40- The Girl Celebrates

Sutton

Jonah has a big family. When he said that I was going to Christmas with his family, I was expecting his parents, maybe some siblings and grandparents. But what I walked into on Christmas day was a house full of relatives from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. All of them eager to meet Jonah's new girlfriend.

They're all very sweet and nice and welcoming so it's a good kind of overwhelmed but I am definitely overwhelmed. Jonah tells me everybody's names as they greet me but they all go in one ear and out the other. There are just too many of them to remember. Because we're staying at his parents' house for the break, I remember his parents' names but that's about it.

At one point, I find myself sitting on the couch with Jonah and his cousin, who has two kids, and they're talking about how school is going for Jonah. Meanwhile, those two kids are running around the couch screaming loudly and acting very hyper, like somebody has shoveled a pound of sugar down their throats. I start to wonder if this is what my future looks like, with Jonah, sitting in this house every year for Christmas with our own little sugar bots running around like this. The thought makes me smile. We would definitely make beautiful babies, that's for sure.

"So, how'd you two meet?" His cousin asks him and, for the eighth time today, Jonah goes into the story. It's not a very exciting story, we just met in the library and fell for each other almost instantly but we were both too afraid to talk to each other for a while until we did talk and then we started dating. I love our story but it's just not something that would be made into a movie or anything so explaining it so many times in one day is exhausting.

His family is nice though, and so I'm having a good time.

"Are you having a Merry Christmas?" Jonah asks me after his cousin gets up to chase down her two children so that she can get them into the kitchen to feed them lunch.

I nod and offer him a small smile. "Yeah, this is fun. You have a big family."

"Yeah, I've noticed," He jokes. "I know that they can be a lot."

"No, it's fine, I'm just not used to the whole Christmas thing," I explain to him. "I've never celebrated it before so this is just all new but it's good. I'm having fun."

He reaches over to my lap and wraps his fingers around mine. "Let's go upstairs and get some privacy for a little bit," He suggests.

I nod, feeling grateful that he can see how wildly out of my comfort zone I feel here and he leads me off of the couch and upstairs. This isn't his house, his aunt is hosting Christmas this year and it's a rather large house which is fortunate because I don't know if this family could fit into a house that isn't this big.

The upstairs is full of doors and hallways but Jonah seems to know exactly where he's going because he leads me down the hall and then into a bedroom. It's all decorated well and the bed is made so I'm assuming that this is a guest bedroom.

"Your family won't think that we're doing anything un-Christmas-like up here, will they?" I start to worry that his entire family is downstairs thinking that we're having sex up here like animals who can't keep it in our pants for one day.

"Probably not," He shrugs. "I don't know, maybe. Anyway, I'm going to give you your present now."

"What, we're doing presents now?" I wonder. "I left yours at your house."

"That's alright," Jonah says. "I've been dying to give this to you all day and I can't wait until we get back to my house."

He had apparently pre-planned this because the gift is already in the room, in a drawer of the desk by the wall. He pulls out a flat rectangle from the drawer wrapped in snowman wrapping paper.