The GEEKs

19. holiday spirit and too much spirits

PREVIOUSLY: Chris gives Kat a ride home after a party and they end up kissing; he spends the night in her room but in the morning Kat ushers him out through Mark's apartment so that the other GEEKs wouldn't see him; Eva shows up at Raison an hour before her shift to do some studying, and right in the middle of her enjoying the newly born calm and peace between her and Jeff, Heather shows up and makes a scene over Jack not hiring her to work there; Eva reluctantly decides to take over the last bit of Jeff's shift so he could go talk to his fuming girlfriend; Lizzy finds herself in the midst, yet just outside of everyone else's relationships and drama and secrets, feeling a tad bit lonely herself; while she contemplates her lack of love life, Jeff shows up at the apartment to have a word with Eva and so does Chris, claiming he borrowed a record from Kat but can't return it because he hasn't seen her in a week.

"Not gonna lie, it'd be cool to sign with a label already." Jerry throws it out there while we're on a break between rehearsing, discussing the attention we've been getting recently.

"Yeah, but we can't just jump on the first thing that comes our way. This is not picking up girls, this is our music...it's important!"

"Hey!" I glare at Sean, out of necessity since he's dating my sister.

"It's true, if we wanna keep our sound—" Layne begins but is interrupted by Sean.

"Which sound?"

"Certainly not the drums." I shoot him a smirk.

"You're part of the rhythm section, I'll take you down with me," he quips back. "Anyway, I agree. We need to make an informed decision and just do it."

"Well what I was gonna say is, we need to do some serious research and make that decision sooner rather than later. We don't want to wait for labels to change their minds."

"Preach." Jerry nods. "Although we can't really do much now, it's almost Christmas."

"We can hope and pray," I point out.

"Pray to whom?" Layne looks at me dubiously.

"To Buddha!" I quickly rub his belly in circles like one would of a statue of Buddha, before he slaps my hand away laughing.

"Wait, when's Christmas?" Sean asks while squinting and I swear sometimes I think he should just bleach his hair.

"Next week."

"Exactly a week from now."

"So we still have some time to look into this whole signing with a label thing before everything dies out for the holidays."

"Actually, Dee's coming to town tonight so I for one won't have as much free time on my hands but y'all are welcome to do some work on my behalf."

"So you're gonna disappear now then?" I ask Jerry. "Are we gonna have to come looking for you under Dee's bed hiding from her parents?"

"I'll have you know I've been invited to a Christmas dinner at their house."

"Oh that's right." Not gonna lie, I am curious to see how this whole long distance relationship pans out for Jerry. He seems real eager to make things work for some reason, when he would honestly be so much better off finding someone else in Seattle.

"What about you, Mike?"

"What about me?"

"Have you been invited to Gwen's folks' Christmas dinner?" Sean gives me a shit eating grin.

"Her parents live in San Diego. Besides, I'm not married to her, unlike Jerry here who seems to have forgotten there's other girls in the world besides Dee."