Beer, Spaghetti, and Pharmaceuticals ||COMPLETED||

Twenty Seven

Alice's nose nearly brushed the gingerbread man in front of her as she hunched over her kitchen table, delicately swooping a green smile made of frosting on the sweet treat's head. Marveling at her creation, she sat up straight, letting out a breath of satisfaction. "There. Isn't he cute?"

Grinning widely, she proudly held the cookie in the air to show Blaise, who was focussed on his own gingerbread man. When he glanced at her creation he gave her a quick thumbs up and returned back to his masterpiece. Slowly, she leaned over the circular table to peer over Blaise's shoulder and frowned when she saw the poor gingerbread man had two large X's for eyes and a tongue hanging out of his mouth.

"Blaise," she whined. "You killed him!"

"What?" Blaise said with a cheeky grin. "It's funny!"

"It's not funny, it's morbid." Her bottom lip puffed out as she slumped back into her chair. "Now my gingerbread house is going to have a dead guy on the front lawn."

"It's an unwritten rule that when you make a gingerbread house after the age of twelve, you have to make it as inappropriate as possible," he said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Either I made a dead guy, or there'd be certain phallic images scattered along the roof. What would you have preferred?"

The bottle of merlot in the middle of the table was nearly empty, but she filled her wine glass regardless, and leaned back in her chair, tapping her finger against her lips.

Dead guys or penises...dead guys or penises...

"You know," she said, "a penis probably would have looked pretty cute with a little Santa hat on top."

The cheeky grin slid off Blaise's face and he set the tube of frosting on the table, frowning at the deceased gingerbread man in front of him. "Dammit. You're right."

"Oh well." Alice reached over to grab one of the Santa hat shaped candies and placed it on top of Blaise's cookie. "There. Now it's a dead Santa Clause. It can be a symbol of the spirit of Christmas dying from consumerism...or something..."

Blaise rested his chin on his palm and stared at Alice. "Damn, that's deep, Alice."

"What can I say?" she said. "I'm a modern-day Socrates."

"I think that would be more along the lines of Marx..."

"Whatever," she said and rolled her eyes. "It's Christmas Eve. Not philosophy class."

"I can't believe it's Christmas Eve already," Blaise said as he poured the remaining wine into his glass. "I vote we make this a tradition."

"What?" Alice asked. "Debating which way we should forever ruin the innocence of gingerbread houses?"

"Yeah!" he said. "Or, well, at least getting drunk off wine and doing something festive. Maybe next year we can see who can eat the most advent calendar chocolates?"

"Sounds good to me." Alice smiled and popped an M&M into her mouth before sighing. "It's too bad Emily has to visit her dad in Vancouver."

"Believe me, I know," Blaise said and slumped over the table, staring wistfully at the snow drifting through the night's sky. "I miss her already..."

"You're so lame," Alice said and flicked an M&M at Blaise's face, making him scowl at her.

"Sorry, Miss Bitterness," Blaise said. "While I understand that you're going through a rough time right now, I think I deserve to be a little happy over the scarce luck in my dating life for once."

"Hey, trust me, I couldn't be happier for you two," she said before winking. "Doesn't change the fact that you're lame."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Blaise said pulled the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and he smirked when Alice's eyes lit up. "Are you back on these again?"