“How’d he end up here?” Levi guesses.
She nods.
“He can’t be on active duty with that injury,” Levi explains. “By the time he’s done with surgery and physical therapy, he’ll have four weeks left at most in his tour. Someone in medical over there was feeling the Christmas spirit and put in a request to ship him stateside for surgery at Walter Reed by Christmas. Dean didn’t want to say anything to Sara at first until he knew what kind of injury he was dealing with, then he didn’t want to tell her he might get sent back. The paperwork on stuff like this can be . . . well, let’s say the army is only efficient about some things.”
“Where do you come into all this?” I ask.
“He called me when I was at the café yesterday. Explained Sara had mentioned I was home in her email, and he wondered if I would be on standby to meet him at Walter Reed if his transport worked out. It all hinged on him making it to Landsthul in Germany in time to catch the last flight out before Christmas. It’s a nine-hour flight but a five-hour time difference. He called me in the twenty minutes between when he landed at Landstuhl and caught that last plane. It was 6 PM.”
Here he pauses and looks at me, but I’ve already started working on the story problem. “Wheels up in Germany at 11 PM means touchdown at Bolling by 2 AM.”
Levi smiles. “Yeah. Then he went straight to Walter Reed. They said he could wait until after the holidays to do the full assessment and surgery, so he’ll go in right after New Year’s.”
“So you drove out there last night, waited, threw him in the car, and drove straight here?”
“Not quite. It took a few hours for him to get processed, so it was close to 5 AM before I got him.”
My mom gasps. “Levi Taft, you boys drove here from Bethesda in two hours?”
Levi answers by taking a long drink of orange juice.
I laugh and pull him to his feet. “Come with me, wonderboy. We’ve got a whole Christmas Eve to make up for.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m snuggled against him on his bedroom’s too-small double bed as he tears the paper off the book I got for him. He reads the title aloud, smiling. “The World’s Most Interesting Animals.”
“Look inside,” I urge him. It’s a kid encyclopedia, basically, the glossy pages packed with animal facts and full-color photographs. He turns to the first page and starts laughing. “What did you do, Taylor?”
“African aardvark,” I read aloud. “Aardvarks are nocturnal insectivores. They mostly feed on ants and termites. They have sharp claws, which they use to dig burrows where they live and raise their young.” Then I get to the part I neatly lettered at the end of the typed facts. “An aardvark can take any mammal under six feet tall in a fight when armed with a butterfly knife.” I printed and taped a switchblade to the end of its snout. I would have glued it but there had been no time to let it to dry. The text goes on to explain, “The aardvark is undefeatable when armed with a flamethrower regardless of the opposing mammal’s size.”
“What about an orangutan?” he argues.
“You’ll just have to see when we get there.”
He closes the book and puts it aside.
“Hey, I worked really hard on that,” I object.
“I’ll definitely finish it,” he says, “but I already know it’s the best present anyone has ever given me. Right now . . .”
“Right now?” I prompt him as he repositions me so he can look into my eyes.
“Right now...” He reaches behind him, feeling along the headboard until he finds what he’s looking for, and brings his hand down to reveal a sprig of mistletoe.
I rest my forehead against his. “Just right now?”
He nods. “Well, and forever, if that’s okay with you.”
I shrug. “It’s already been that long for me. Might as well double down.”
Then we lean into another mistletoe kiss.
Epilogue
Taylor
One year later…
“Game night ison,” my mom announces, adjusting her Santa hat. “Dean picks the first game this year.”
