Unpredictable • cth

11

El-

"Ella...wake up."

I stir, barely able to open my eyes.

"Ella, Merry Christmas."

My eyes are blurry but I can make out a head full of blonde curls filling my eyesight.

"Hi dad." I finally mumbled out.

"Ella! Your Awake! Merry Christmas!" My dad was now jumping on my bed, springing around like a toddler.

He is now grabbing my arms and yanking me out of me bed.

I'm standing straight on my feet, my hands wrapped in my dads.

"Merry Christmas Father." I am now laughing like a crazy person because he looks like he's about to an Irish gig.

He wraps his arms around me, pulling me into a hug.

"Ella, your not wearing your pj's." My father now playfully annoyed as he pulled away from his hug.

"Give me 10 and I'll be down. Yea?"

"Make it five and I'll make pancakes before Uncle Luke's." He is now laughing and walking out of my room, shutting the door behind him.

My dad always made a big deal of Christmas before mom was gone, but the year after she passed, my dad did not wallow, instead he made it the best one I ever had.

We have had a pair of matching pjs since my first Christmas, we get a new pair every year.

We are basically the white family who isn't white on Christmas.

I slipped on my flannel shirt and plaid pants on, along with my slippers before putting my curly hair into a bun and brushing my teeth.

I am not even down the stairs and I can hear duke howling at his stocking.

"Dad why didn't you give Duke his stocking yet?"

"Ella, thats a dumb question. We never start unless we are all here." He said in his sassy tone, rolling his eyes before sitting down at the base of the tree.

"Ya ready for stockings?" He is basically giggling like a child, as he hands me mine.

I grab his, placing it in front of his. I raised my body off the floor, grabbing Duke's socking off the fireplace, shaking it out onto the floor for the baby duke.

We have a second tradition in this house. We only put socks in the stockings. That's it. All types of socks. And if we are feeling funky, one small present.

We both dump out our stockings, we both got nike crew socks for each other, mine white, his black. He got me fruit socks because of my recent love for HS1 and Fine Line, as well as some socks with Duke's face on it.

He is now dumping his out, its full on 5sos that he never got from the PR team as well as socks with mine and Duke's face on it.

Also by some weird turn of events we both got each other new guitar picks.

We stayed and opened some gifts for a while, going back and forth between the yule log and the grinch. I missed him, my dad. He was finally home, but he was leaving a three weeks. That seems long, but at the end of the day it feels like he never he came home.

I grabbed his last gift, the custom bass I ordered. He never expected it.

"Ella, this is too much." He didn't even look at the bass yet, but he's had enough basses to know the shape of the box.

"Open it."

A single tear fell from his eye.

It was a clear base, with the inside filled with pictures of him and uncles, the many 5sos logos they've had, with pictures of him and mother, me, and the petals from my mom's wedding bouquet, wildflowers.