~*~

At around 1pm the next day, I got a text from Jimmy saying that he'd be at my apartment in twenty minutes to help me get my stuff into the car.

It was happening: I was going to be living with Jimmy for the next three weeks during my winter break.

I was already mostly packed; after all, I only lived ten or fifteen minutes away from Jimmy's house, so I wasn't too concerned about forgetting something. Now that I had a car, I could easily just stop by my apartment if I had forgotten to pack something.

I had a huge suitcase with wheels that was packed full of clothes and other random items, a small bag with some of my toiletries, and my laptop case that held my laptop.

I told Jimmy that I'd be fine just driving over to his house by myself, but he said that he wanted to help me carry my stuff downstairs "to be a good host". To be fair, my suitcase was really heavy, so it was definitely really sweet of him.

Here! Jimmy texted me.

I opened my door to see Jimmy standing there, grinning. His smile was definitely contagious as I found myself smiling as soon as I saw him. Why was he so cute?

"Are you excited?" he asked.

I laughed. "If you're excited, then I'm excited."

Jimmy lifted my heavy suitcase as if it weighed nothing. I had to admit that watching the muscles flexing in his strong arms as he carried my luggage downstairs gave me butterflies in my stomach.

~*~

When we got to his house, Jimmy started giving me the "grand tour".

I laughed. "Jimmy, I've been here before."

"I know, but you've never lived here before, so I need to give you a real tour," he explained, grinning.

He was such a dork. I loved it, so I put up with the rest of the tour of the living room, two bathrooms, and the kitchen, which I already knew about.

Then, we went upstairs where the bedrooms were. There was another bathroom upstairs, Jimmy's room, and three guest bedrooms.

He showed me his room, which was a little bit messy with some clothes thrown on the floor in a corner of the room, but it was mostly clean. I'm sure he paid someone to clean the house for him because it was way too clean for a guy in his early twenties.

He had various posters on the wall that I'd seen in some of his videos, a very comfortable-looking bed off to the side of the room, a private bathroom, and a walk-in closet.

"Nice room," I said.

"Let's go check out yours."

We didn't have to walk far to get to my bedroom: it was the guest bedroom literally right next to Jimmy's room... because of course it was.

The guest bedroom was really nice. It was smaller than Jimmy's bedroom, but not by much. It had a walk-in closet, but not a private bathroom, which was fine.

I went to go lie down on the bed to see how it felt. The bed was so comfortable--definitely the most expensive bed I was probably ever going to sleep on in my life.

"How is it?" Jimmy asked.

I was lying on my stomach and had my face pressed against the mattress, so I'm sure my voice was muffled, but I said, "I never want to get up."

Jimmy chuckled and came over to me, sitting down on the bed. He put his hand on my back. "You'll have to get up eventually."

"Never!" I argued.

"Would you get up if I said we should go shopping for Christmas stuff?"

I lifted my head up to look at him. Christmas was about ten days away, and considering all I had at my apartment was a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree, I was excited to actually decorate. "That'd be so fun!"

"Well, then let's get shopping."

~*~

We spent the next few hours shopping at Wal-Mart--yes, the same Wal-Mart that I work at, since that was apparently the only one that Jimmy knew about.

We ended up finding a beautiful, artificial, 7.5 feet tall Christmas tree with multi-colored lights. After that, we loaded our cart with a shit ton of adorable decorations.

When we got back to his house, we started going through the bags of stuff we had gotten.

We put on one of those music channels to have some Christmas music in the background as we started to decorate.

I threw one of the Santa hats at Jimmy as I put a Santa hat on my head. "Put it on while we decorate."

He chuckled and put on the Santa hat. "You should've gotten an elf hat instead," he commented, making a joke about how short I was in comparison to him.

"Rude," I retorted.

Jimmy's face fell for a second before he realized that I was joking. "You'd make a cute elf."

I was glad that there was music playing in the background because I didn't know what to say. I felt my cheeks start to get warm. "I would!" I finally said as I started to hang some of the decorations from the tree.

I reached into one of the bags of stuff to pull out some more decorations.

This was really nice, just spending time alone with Jimmy, decorating the house for the holidays. It sure beat having to spend my entire break alone in my apartment.

I was planning on working a bit during the break anyway as I still needed money, but I wasn't going to work crazy hours. Of course I was going to spend a lot of time with Jimmy this break, but I didn't want to be around constantly, so I figured working some shifts at Wal-Mart would be a good idea.

Plus, he was often busy with videos, so I needed to keep busy, too.

Jimmy was busy putting up some decorations on the other side of the room. I reached into one of the bags, thinking it would have some of the other decorations, but instead, there was just a mistletoe.

I was stunned. "Did you get a mistletoe?"

How cheesy was that?

Jimmy looked over at me and shrugged. "I didn't realize it was a mistletoe. I just thought it was a cool decoration."

Bullshit. It literally says "mistletoe" on the packaging, and everyone knows about kissing under the mistletoe... but all I did was laugh. "Well, it is."

He laughed. "Oops."

Finally, we finished decorating.

"Go team!" Jimmy said, giving me a high five.

"It looks so pretty. Jeez, and I thought I was going to have a Charlie Brown Christmas. Thanks for having me."

Jimmy laughed. "No Charlie Brown Christmases for anyone I know. You're going to have a fucking amazing Christmas, whether you like it or not."

I knew that was true--Jimmy would make sure of that.

That made me realize something: what in the world was I supposed to get Jimmy as a Christmas gift? What do you even get for someone who has more money than they know what to do with? I felt obligated to get him a gift after everything he had done for me, but I had no idea what to get him.

Eventually, I looked over towards the window where we had put up some decorations... and saw nothing but white. "It's snowing!" I exclaimed.

"Cool!" He came over to join me by the window, looking out at the snow. "We should try getting everyone together tomorrow to break the record for the world's largest snowman."

"I don't know if we'll get that much snow, but we can try. How tall was the biggest anyway?"

"It was like 122 feet. Is it cheating if we use fake snow?"

I laughed. "You're ridiculous."

~*~

Eventually, we settled into our separate bedrooms, and I changed into my pajamas--a hoodie and sweatpants, since it was freezing outside today--and started to unpack some of my stuff.

I was just about done unpacking, when suddenly, the room went dark and everything went silent. "Jimmy?"

"Yeah?"

"Did the power just go out?"

Jimmy came into my room. "Looks like it."

"Do you have a generator?"

"Um, no."

I had to resist the urge to scream. He had thousands of dollars to buy me a freaking car, but he doesn't have a generator. I didn't complain, though. "Oh."

"We could wait a few minutes and see if it comes back on, or we could go stay at a hotel," he suggested.

"Maybe." I peeked out the window in my room. The snow was still coming down really hard, and it was hard to even see the roads. "The roads don't look too great, though."

"I guess let's wait it out for a bit. I have some candles."

"Sounds good." I paused for a moment. "What should we do to pass the time?"

Jimmy shrugged.

"Let's talk," I suggested.

He looked petrified. "About what?"

I think the darkness was giving me more confidence because I smiled mischievously. "Everything."

~*~

A/N: Can anyone tell that I'm already in the mood for Christmas? 😂 To be fair, I'm always in the mood for Christmas.