Ruin Me

74. Give me

Christmas, it seemed, had come quickly this year, it felt like barely yesterday I'd been sat with my dad munching on our turkey at Thanksgiving and now it was the night before Kings Bridge officially broke up for Christmas. We'd decided to save exchanging presents until tonight to cover up some of the sadness at parting. Although I didn't have Christmas break for another week, the boys were all parting ways tomorrow morning to their various homes to be with their families. Thankfully, I'd arranged to visit them over varying parts of my two week break, a few days with Mitch before Christmas, Sawyer on Boxing Day and Nico after New Year's Eve. Grey was the only one I hadn't been able to fit in, his whole family were jetting off to some Greek island for the entire three weeks of his winter break. He'd offered to fly me out for New Years but I hadn't been able to accept that, I'd feel like I owed his family and owing his stepdad wasn't something I wanted on my conscience. Knowing I would be able to see them made me dread the holidays a little less and dad had insinuated that he had something special planned for both Christmas and new year both of which I was spending with him. It would be another of our firsts.

"Please can we just open them," Nico was like a small child, bouncing up and down on his crossed legs in excitement. We'd encircled the pile of presents in the middle of the floor all labelled with their intended recipient. I could tell who'd wrapped most of the parcels; Mitch's were awkwardly wrapped but neatly so, Sawyers in a fancy gold paper were perfect, Greys were haphazardly taped up with brightly coloured Christmas wrapping while Nico's literally had newspaper scrunched around them in an attempt to disguise the presents with our names written over the news of the day in black sharpie.

"I think we should open them before Nico explodes," Mitch observed, "because I'm not cleaning Nico's guts off your walls Cara."

"Nice image," I scrunched my nose, "shall we all just take one?"

Nico needed no more encouraging, he reached straight in and snatched a present with his name on, going by the wrapping it was from Mitch.

"Why don't you be a little quicker with that Nico," Grey used his expert sarcasm, "we're all so bored of waiting for you."

Nico stuck out his tongue, his fingers already under the wrapping ready to rip it open.

"I guess it's every man for himself then," I shrugged and plucked out my first gift, from Sawyer.

Each of the boys also took out a gift and at once began to tear away the wrapping, which with some of them was not difficult. With the presents from Nico the wrapping simply fell off when you picked them up. Whereas Sawyers presents you needed a degree in engineering just to take of the sellotape it was bound so tightly.

"Wow," I flicked through the pages of Sawyers present, it was a book full of piano pieces, there were beautiful illustrations on every page and the title of each piece were all emboldened in elaborate gold.

"Do you like it?" Sawyer seemed anxious, "I can take it back if you want?"

"Of course not," I shook my head scared at the thought of it being taken away, "I love it."

The next round of presents brought hiking boots from Mitch, I stared at them in amazement, they were made of thick black material and had turquoise trimming. They looked expensive.

"I had to sneak into your room to find out your shoe size," Mitch admitted with a slight blush of the tops of his cheeks, "hopefully they fit."

"They're too much," I shook my head, "they must have cost you a lot."

"Not really," Mitch shrugged casually, "but feet are worth investing in, I'm not going to let you go on any more hikes without proper footwear."

"Thanks Mitch," I gave a small smile knowing I couldn't argue with him, I reached over and gave him a hug of thanks.