Vicious Love [Teddy Lupin]

29. Christmas

"You got me scented candles."

"You're welcome."

"Scented candles."

"Yeah."

"Do you think you're hilarious with your scented candles?"

"Yeah."

I sigh in defeat and set down the five candles in front of me. "You've already got me. I'm your twin brother. That's like your ultimate gift. It can't get any better than that, Sammy."

"You're starting to sound like Edward. Maybe you should find new friends." I scoffed. "But thanks, I guess. I'm going to add these candles to mum's collection of scented candles, all from you."

"Cool."

Seth and I are sitting by our fake cute little Christmas tree, surrounded with many gifts from our friends and family. So far, I have received scented candles from Seth, an expensive jacket from Aunt Emmy, jewelry from Aunt Emmy's adopted sons, Raphael and Daniel, concert tickets from mum, a book from Uncle Marvin, mum's younger brother, and a handmade dress from Colleen.

"What's this?" I frowned, holding up a box bigger than my face. "It's heavy."

"Is that for me?" Seth looks up excitedly.

"It has SAM' written all over it, literally."

Slowly ripping off the badly wrapped gift, I first smelled flowers, without even taking off the lid of the blue box. When I removed the lid, all I see are a bunch of flowers. It's many kinds of flowers, one for each kind and the floral scent is quite strong. There must be at least 50 flowers in this box.

Once I removed all the flowers and put them on a table, the next thing I see is a music album that I once saw before. Badlands by Halsey. At the back of the album, there are written lyrics of the song called 'Colors'. There are certain lines from the lyrics that are highlighted but when I read them, they didn't make sense so I don't know what it's about. This album just came out weeks ago and I have never heard of the song Colors before, so I'm curious about it.

Everything is blue
Everything was blue
His pills, his hands, his jeans

His hair, his smoke, his dreams
And now he's so devoid of color
He don't know what it means
And he's blue

You were red and I was blue

Right after that album comes the last item on the box, which is something that surprised me the most.
It's my sketchbook.
It's there, perfectly safe and not destroyed like I thought.

I flipped through the pages to find everything there just like how I left it. Not one page is torn or ruined.
At this point, all I'm feeling is complete happiness because this sketchbook means so much to me and it's nice to have it back.
In fact, I was so happy at the moment, I didn't even want to continue opening everything else. I just wanted to use it since I missed it.

And so that's exactly what I did. I opened on the next empty page.
I was just getting ready to draw but then I realized the previous page was not something I drew.
It was a drawing of a girl, more specifically a drawing of me.
It was me playing the piano. At the bottom of the page, there's a little note.

'so funny story, I kind of really really really really like you and I don't know what to do'