~❤️~Always Better Together~❤️~

~ 29 ~

It's 12th December. 13 days to my and almost everyone's favourite day of the year.

CHRISTMAS.

I love Christmas, especially the snow that looks like soft crystal marshmallows. I can actually eat them. Then there is the extravagant decoration that was my mom's and I favourite part - hanging string lights everywhere in the house, decorating the tree that we set up in the garden with bells, bulbs, chocolates, candies, cotton balls, and stars.

But the best thing about Christmas is togetherness, the time you spend with your loved ones and not to forget, the delicious food. I loved mom-made Christmas cookies the most. She used to cut the dough in various shapes like a star or a stocking or a bell or a tree. They tasted heavenly. Ever since her death, I have gone through her cooking journal for the recipe and tried to bake those cookies just the way she did but never could match the taste and the finishing.

Maybe some things are never meant to happen again.

With Christmas around the corner, there was not much to do in campus. We only have one class everyday until 20th, which is the last day before holidays. Today being Sunday, Vallie and Liam are dragging me to the campus Christmas celebration. It's kind of a tradition here. Students celebrate the entire month of December until they leave for the holidays. The 2nd and 3rd year students decorate the entire campus and it looks really really heavenly, especially at night when the lights glow like fireflies. There's endless supply of hot chocolate, egg nog, cookies, candies, music, and what not. It's like a little Christmas fair in the middle of nowhere.

So we are going to the celebration and I couldn't decide what to wear, like always. Glancing at my clothes in the cupboard I made a mental note to bring more clothes from New York as I don't have much here. I came here with very few clothes hoping to bring the others later. And later hadn't come yet, and now I only have a scarlet red oversized crop sweater that would suit an occasion like Christmas.

I put on the sweater and it looked glazing. The red of the sweater complemented my complexion. I wore medium dark blue shaded jeans to go with the sweater, brushed my hair a little and left it open. Well, I love only one hairstyle deeply and that's my long coffee brown hair cascading down my shoulders upto my waist. When I was convinced about my appearance, I left my room locking the door and knocked on Valerie's.

_________________________

I knocked a couple of times but she neither opened the door nor responded back. So I thought of the alternative. I fetched the spare key of her room and shoved it in the lock.

Just when I was about to turn the key, the door opened, revealing a just-woke-up Valerie, her hair completely dishevelled, her clothes not properly worn. But her face looked lighted as if she was..... I raised an eyebrow understanding what that meant.

"Noooo wayyy." I said shaking my head to which she just laughed. And the moment she moved aside to let me enter, a shade of horror painted over my face.

There he was, in all his evilness, half naked in Valerie's bed and inside her duvet, the duvet I have shared with her while we had sleepovers, wearing an evil smirk, in all his glory the one and only Alex freakin Anderson.

My face lost its colour seeing him and all I wanted to do in that moment was pray to God to put some sense in my dear bestie's brain, which is completely damaged.

"Hiii" he said winking at me.

I looked at Valerie and gave her a 'what the hell' expression. She made a puppy face and told me that she will fill me in later.

"Remind me not to use that duvet anymore." I told Valerie and both of them laughed. "Seriously just put on some clothes." I threw him a black tshirt that was hanging from the chair and turned around so that he would change. Alex catched it and got up from the bed finding and putting his clothes on.