“You’re not doing it right!”
“There’s no right or wrong way,” she snapped. “It’s just a tree!”
I gasped in horror. “Just a tree? What a horrible thing to say!”
“Well, it is! You take this way too seriously.”
“And you don’t take this seriously enough!”
She yanked the string of lights out of my hands, then started jogging around the tree, nearly knocking me over as she passed.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? You have to tuck the lights in!”
“No, I don’t,” she sang, practically skipping for joy as she drove me up the wall with her chaotic light stringing.
There was no way I could deal with this. Staring at this horrible display of lights all winter would drive me up the wall. I hobbled behind her, tugging at the strand, but she wasn’t having it and just walked behind me, stringing the lights around my body.
“What are you doing?”
“Making you part of the decorations,” she laughed.
“Alyssa, you let me out of this right now!”
“Admit that you’re a crazy Christmas psycho and I might.”
“I am not! I just like things done a certain way!”
She went around again, wrapping me tighter against the tree. I lost my footing, falling forward into the tree. “Alyssa!”
She reached for me, but it was too late. The tree was already tipping over. I caught her hand at the last second, hoping she could save me, but the momentum of the tree took me along for the ride, and Alyssa by default.
We yelped as we fell on top of the tree, crushing the branches beneath our combined weight. Needles pricked at my body, irritating my skin, but when I saw Alyssa, I started laughing. We’d knocked over the bottle of wine, and it dripped from the table onto her face.
“This is not funny.”
“What the hell is going on in here?”
We both screamed, but where she jumped to her feet, I was forced to burrow further into the tree, with nowhere to go since I was lashed to the tree.
I peeked out from under the branches, sighing in relief when I saw it was just Sam standing in the doorway, looking at us like we were crazy.
My eyes met Alyssa’s, and for a moment, neither of us said a thing. And then we both burst out laughing as Sam walked over, shaking his head.
“What the hell did you do? Why are you wrapped up in lights?”
“She wouldn’t listen to me about where to put them on the tree,” I said, pointing a finger at Alyssa.
“So, you decided to wrap yourself in lights in protest?”
“No, I did that because I was tired of taking orders from her.”
While she bounced around without a care in the world, I was still stuck in the tree. “Um, can someone help me out of this, please?”
Sam’s sigh of irritation only made me chuckle. For the first time since I came home, I wasn’t angry at the world or Sam for being here.
“What the hell did you even do? I’m not sure how to get you out of this. I might just have to cut the lights.”
“Don’t you dare! Lights are expensive. Just tip me back up.”