Run, Girl (If You Can) Chapter 141 – A Toast

To break the tension she felt permeating the room, Keeley turned to her dad. “Can you take a picture of me next to the tree?”

“Sure. Do you want to break out the spare tree topper and wear it as a hat?”

“Ooh, that would be great! Be right back!” Keeley zipped off to find it and fled the room. It was in a box with extra Christmas stuff in Kaleb’s old room and wasn’t terribly hard to find.

Standing next to the tree, she posed before placing it on her head and standing very still so it wouldn’t fall off. Her dad snapped the picture and proclaimed that she made a fine Christmas tree before handing her phone back to her.

She took the star off her head. “We should probably get changed into our pajamas now. Aaron, you can just wait out here.”

Keeley headed to her room and pulled on the reindeer onesie. When she came out, her dad was wearing his but Aaron was nowhere to be seen. Was he in the bathroom?

A minute later, the bathroom door opened and he emerged wearing an identical reindeer onesie. She couldn’t help it; she started laughing so hard she actually fell onto the floor and started rolling around. Oh, she couldn’t breathe!

Every time she tried to speak she would dissolve into another helpless fit of laughter. She couldn’t get a grip no matter how hard she tried.

Robert was bewildered. “What exactly is so funny?”

“Me, I think,” Aaron said grimly.

Keeley was finally able to sit up and wheeze out a couple sentences. “I’m sorry! It’s just—I thought you were kidding when you wanted to know where to get the pajamas! You—”

He stood there with an emotionless expression in a reindeer onesie with the hood up and she burst out laughing all over again. No one would ever believe her if she told them the great Aaron Hale wore something so frivolous that made him look like a giant petulant five-year-old.

Eventually she regained control. “I’m sorry. I was amazed and lost control for a moment. You look great; you really pull it off.”

“Really?” he asked doubtfully.

“Totally! Super cute.”

“I agree,” her father pitched in helpfully. “Come on; let me get a picture of you two together!”

“I promise I won’t blackmail you,” Keeley teased.

He sighed. “You’re going to hold this over my head forever, aren’t you.”

“No I’m not! Okay maybe a little.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him closer for the picture. “I promise I won’t tell anybody else about it though.”

“Fair enough.”

She linked her arm through his and told him to smile as they looked towards Robert’s camera. To her surprise, he actually did. Well sort of. It was his little amused smirk but it was more than he usually did in pictures.

Aaron held out his phone. “I want one too.”

He stood behind Keeley and rested his chin on top of her head with his arms around her for this one. She allowed it because he was being a good sport about the fact that she nearly died laughing at how he looked.

“I’ll order the takeout; you break out the eggnog and the nice glasses,” Robert instructed and she responded by saluting dramatically.

“Takeout?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, we always get Chinese takeout from this specific restaurant on Christmas Eve. It’s been a tradition for longer than I can remember. We have the real fancy dinner on Christmas Day.”

She looked at him seriously, gauging whether or not she offended him earlier. “I really am sorry for laughing. I was just caught off guard because it didn’t seem like something you would do. Honestly, it was kind of awesome.”

The hint of a smile played around his lips. “Awesome, huh?”

“Totally awesome! You surprise me sometimes—there’s never a dull moment with you.”

He tilted his head at her. “Interesting. I could say the same about you.”

Well, she had worn a sweater that made her look like a Christmas tree today. That was a fair statement.

Keeley pulled out her mom’s goblets that were saved for special occasions and opened the fridge to retrieve the eggnog and begin pouring out three portions. “Have you ever had eggnog before?”

“No.”

She handed him a glass and lifted her own. “Since it’s your first time let’s have a toast. What should we toast to?”

Aaron’s eyes bored into hers and there was a certain softness to his gaze. “To your future.”

That was an odd thing to toast to. “Why that?”

“I’m glad you’re here, that’s all.”

She shrugged. He didn’t make sense a lot of the time but she could let it slide. “Alright then. To my future. We should toast to yours as well to be fair.”

He held up his glass. “To our future.”

Shouldn’t that be plural? Futures, because they were two separate things? Oh, whatever. She gently clinked her goblet against his and took a big gulp. Eggnog hits you just right sometimes.

“What did I miss?” Robert asked as he returned from ordering the food over the phone.

“Eggnog,” she said simply as she handed him his glass.

They sat around the table drinking eggnog as they talked. Her father was very curious what Aaron had been up to since graduation. He explained that he went to Harvard and became the vice president of Hale Investments upon graduation, including a few recent projects he had been working on.

“Oh, so your proposal went well then?” Keeley asked as she swirled her eggnog around.

“Yes, I got the majority vote 9-2.”

“Nice!”

This sort of small talk went on until the food arrived and the Halls dug in with gusto. Aaron was a bit more cautious since he was unfamiliar with this restaurant but eventually he ate a decent amount. Keeley noticed he was getting more used to ‘commoner food.’

She felt oddly proud of him but wasn’t sure why, since it was a really dumb thing to be proud of. Was it just because he was acting like a normal human being along with her instead of the snob she used to know?

Watching him interact so naturally with her dad wearing those ridiculous matching pajamas, she could almost believe he was an average, every day kind of guy. It made her feel a bit wistful. If Aaron hadn’t been Aaron, this would be completely normal.