Elijah has spent Christmases in Florida at Cocoa Beach ever since the incident on Christmas Eve when he was 17 that led him to despise the holiday with the desire to wipe away all memories and thoughts of the dreadful night 5 years ago. He's an aspi...
25| The Grinch of the Christmas Gingerbread Village
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I was convinced Elijah couldn't see me. Convinced of my invisibility as I grabbed a big plate and started filling it up with everything. Sometimes, when I had too much to drink, I'd wake up nauseous, and vomiting for the rest of the day. This was one of the opposite occasions, where I felt the need to eat the entire buffet. Half in order to ease my headache, half in order to satisfy the stomach in which had not received any sort of food in the past 12+ hours, instead, only receiving many, many alcoholic liquids right to the gut.
When my plate was full to my satisfaction, I had to go set it down before grabbing several drinks. Water, orange juice, apple juice, and a little coffee. None of which particularly would taste amazing mixed together, but all were beverages I craved. I needed to be a balanced human being and drink water, you know, to survive. And on top of that, orange juice was necessary to have with bacon and eggs, and to get some vitamins, of course. Apple juice for that sweetness, the kind you crave especially when you're a child, and you have that early morning sweet tooth. Coffee for the bitterness and wake-up.
"A little bit of everything, huh? Hangover pretty bad?"
Elijah appeared in front of me as if he was the invisible one, and just spawned out of nowhere.
"You saw what I drank last night," I responded, downing the bacon I'd been chewing with orange juice. "This shouldn't be too surprising."
"It's not, but sometimes its strange to see a fancy ass chef eating the breakfast buffet," Elijah said. He then proceeded to sit down across from me, which inherently, I didnt mind. But I still found myself protesting:
"Did I say you could sit here?"
"What is this, Mean Girls, but the colored, Floridian hotel version?"
"You're probably the most hilarious person I've ever met," I said, inherently sarcastically. I focused down on my plate of food. Going for a scone. Blueberry. I bit down into it. Dry, nearly flavorless. I put it right back down on my plate, shaking my head in chef-disgust.
"Not pleased by the baked goods section?"
I looked back up at Elijah. His smile was so prominent, I couldn't fucking ignore it. And somewhere in my mind, I was trying not to look down too much, to look down at his lips. They were soft, surprisingly for a man. Dale had the worst chapped lips that couldn't be fixed with any amount of chapstick, or vaseline. It was kind of atrocious.
Elijah wasn't anything like Dale.
It still didn't mean I trusted him, or wanted to kiss him more. But maybe part of me did. Sort of. I banished the thought as soon as it came into my mind, and ate some more ultra-salty bacon. Greasy ass bacon.
"Hotels probably get their scones in frozen. I can't bash them for it, but damn. It's fucking unpleasant," I muttered. "What, do your low standards fall in love with these hotel goods?"
