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Home For The Holidays

Merry Christmas and Happy Reading :)

This chapter is a bit of a time jump. The previous chapter that you read was a Christmas three years before this.

Sorry if you don't like time jumps, but well it's already done sooo...

Enjoy!

Don't forget to vote!

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"It smells like burnt ass in here."

I laughed and Chase crossed his arms in a pout.

"Merry Christmas to you too, Zander." Chase said. "And by the way, that 'burnt ass' smell is gingerbread cookies, which you won't be getting any of."

Zander muttered a "thank god" under his breath but Chase heard it and threw an oven mitt at his head.

Everyone was coming over to my parents' house for a Christmas party and Chase wanted to try his hand in the kitchen and bake gingerbread cookies. Baking wasn't exactly a talent of his, and I told him that I would handle everything but he insisted.

"Come on, Nat, my mom never let's me bake. Please?" He gave me his best puppy dog face and I just couldn't say no.

Luckily I had made plenty of other baked goods, since his experiment didn't seem to be going so well.

This was my first time hosting a Christmas party and I'd gotten a little carried away with the food and everything. I'd made enough to feed us for a week.

My friends and I always spent this holiday together, but it had never been at my house. Since our first Christmas together, three years ago after Calvin had been released from the psych ward, we'd made this a tradition. It was my favorite time of year.

We were all more excited than usual this year because this would be our last year in college. After one more semester, we'd graduate and we'd be starting our careers and the rest of our lives.

Chase was staring into the cook book with a look of intense concentration. He had flour on his nose and in his hair and the heat from the oven caused his cheeks to turn bright red.

Zander came and stood next to me. "This is all your fault, you know that right?"

I shrugged. "Maybe his cookies will turn out to be really good."

Zander raised an eyebrow with a doubtful look on his face.

"Uh, Nat?" I looked over at Chase. "What's the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon?"

Zander snorted and walked out into the living room. I sighed and went over to help Chase save his gingerbread. After thirty more minutes, he got a batch and a half of decent cookies and I declared that we needed to take a break before everyone else showed up.

Right now Zander, Chrissy, Rebecca, Robyn, and Chase were in my house. My parents were here too but they were upstairs getting ready. It didn't take much convincing for them to let me host a Christmas party here, my mom loved social gatherings. She also understood that I didn't have anywhere else to hold the party. After two years, I transferred to USC, which meant that I didn't have a place of my own and I was still hours away from Andrew.

Chase brought a cookie out and gave it to Rebecca with a hopeful look on his face. She smiled warmly at him and took it with a soft 'thank you.' I noticed her slight grimace when she took a bite, but for Chase's sake she pretended that she liked it.