“Well, feel free to just because me anytime and anywhere you’d like,” he encourages with a wink.
I laugh, giving him a light smack on his arm as we walk through the doorway and enter the living room of the greatest Christmas movie ever made, my thoughts scrambled with visions of Ralphie and Randy opening presents and my mouth on Sam’s package. We pass by workers in each room of the house, all of them wishing us a Merry Christmas and each time, Sam just gives them an uncomfortable smile and a nod. I know he’s not a big fan of the holidays, but his refusal to reply to anyone who gives him the standard Christmas greeting makes me wonder.
As we all tour the house, I explain scenes from the movie to Sam in all the different rooms—the kitchen where the Bumpus’ herd of smelly hounds ate the turkey, the stairs where Ralphie stood in his pink bunny costume, and of course, the front window where the great Leg Lamp stands, tall and proud instead of broken and buried in the backyard. In between rooms, Nicholas takes the opportunity to grill Sam about his life, and I have to say, I’m pretty proud he only has to cough once trying to remember all the things about Logan I’d quickly thrown at him yesterday in our cab ride from the airport. And that one cough is justified since Nicholas asks him when he’s going to make an honest woman out of me and propose. Although the cough is more of a laugh/choke instead of a “Help me out here,” which earns him a very mean side-eye from me.
Poor Sam is grilled like a hamburger on a BBQ pit in the summer, Nicholas rapid-firing questions at him throughout the entire tour of the house, everything from where he went to college to how many woman he’s slept with. Sam answers all the questions with ease, making up the ones he doesn’t know, which only makes him look even hotter than he already does in my mind. This man—this Marine—who just finished an eighteen month tour overseas, has been thrown into this craziness and within a day already acts like he fits in perfectly. Did I ever picture Logan like this in the year we were together? I mean, I always thought about the first time he would come home and meet my family, planned it out in my head and stuff, but did I ever see it going this smoothly? This perfectly?
The answer comes immediately: no.
Logan is from a very wealthy, upper class family. Their idea of Christmas is flying everyone to St. Thomas for the week to be waited on hand and foot while sunbathing on the beach, not touring a house from a Christmas movie set in the eighties or putting up with a cross-dressing uncle/aunt with wandering hands. This is why it took me an entire year to even get up the nerve to ask Logan to come home with me. I knew he would spend five minutes with my family and look at me differently. I’d no longer be the strong, independent woman who moved across the country to have a life of my own. I’d be the middle class, crazy girl with a loud, inappropriate family to match. My family embarrassed me when I was with Logan. Looking at them now with Sam’s hand in mine, joking with each other, quoting lines from the movie and just happy to be together, I’m not embarrassed to have Sam here by my side witnessing all of it. I’m happy for the first time in a long time, and something about that scares the shit out of me. How could a guy I just met make me feel this way? Cause me look at my family differently and actually appreciate them, instead of wanting to hide them away?
“Alright, Black Bart, now you get yours,” Nicholas suddenly announces, standing in the middle of the living room after we’d wound our way through the whole house, holding a BB gun up to his shoulder, aimed at Sam.
I laugh at the quote from the movie, but Sam quickly drops my hand, holding both of his palms up and out in surrender with a tiny look of fear on his face.
“Jesus, don’t shoot me! I won’t drink anymore of your sister’s eggnog, I swear!” Sam panics.
Pressing my hand against his back, I rub small, smoothing circles in the middle of it, trying not to giggle.
“Sam, it’s fine. It’s a prop from the movie, it’s not loaded,” I explain softly, the rest of my family laughing at his expense.
“You’ll shoot your eye out, kid,” Aunt Bobbie adds.
“It’s an official Red Ryder, carbine action, two hundred shot range model air rifle!” Nicholas says excitedly, quoting the movie and hefting the gun up higher by his shoulder as he sets his sights right on Sam’s chest.
Sam sighs, dropping his hands down to his sides.
“I’ve been shot at with sniper rifles and almost got my legs blown off from a road-side IED, and I just pissed myself over a BB gun,” he laments. “This is just pathetic.”
“Don’t worry, Dr. Urinstein will fix you right up tomorrow morning,” my mother says with a smile.
Nicholas lowers the gun a tad, looking at Sam strangely, while my father sidles up next to Nicholas, shooting Sam the same questioning look.