Chapter 13

Autumn rapidly gave way to winter. We didn’t get snow, but we did get the freezing cold temperatures and gusty winds. Two weeks after my episode of ‘Meet The Parents’, Nao had come to dinner at our house and charmed both my mother and father. “Now I understand what all the fuss was about,” said my dad, leaning in conspiratorially and giving me a ‘thumbs-up’ when Nao had excused herself for the bathroom. My mum offered Nao a ride home afterwards. Apparently, Nao got the ‘concerned mother’ version of the same spiel I got from her dad. She giggled as she recounted how my mother had matter-of-factly told her “I’m far too young to be a grandmother.”

Nao and I settled into a routine of school, training, nightly phone calls and getting together on the weekend to study at each other’s houses or to go to a movie. Our last swim meet before the Christmas break was at the end of November and both of us topped the podium repeatedly. Unfortunately, there were no team bus shenanigans this time as the venue was only forty-five minutes from our school. Once the holidays began, that was a different story.

My folks and I were going to spend Christmas with my sister and her husband, staying until after the New Year. We’d leave home on the Saturday morning of Christmas Eve and return early January. My folks took Christmas and family time really seriously, so there was no way I was getting out of it. But with school out for three weeks, that meant that Nao and I had a little less than a week of free time together before I went away.

There was nothing we wanted to see at the cinema (all the good films come out on Boxing Day anyway), so we spent the first two days burning through our holiday assignments (division of labour helped) before spending the last few days hanging out at each other’s houses with a bag of trashy ‘Ten Weeklies for Ten Dollars’ videos from the rental store. They were perfect movies to dissect in their terribleness, and we would cuddle on the couch, cracking each other up with our best parodies of Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show (“If there can be only one, why couldn’t it have been the one with a proper Scottish accent?” “HAW HAW HAW HAW!!”). Of course, they were perfect movies to ignore too. We didn’t have complete privacy; Nao’s mum was usually at her house and my mum had taken over the kitchen table with her marking again, so there was no removal of clothing, but I could still feel the results of Nao’s gruelling training regime in the pool through her clothing. And sometimes we would just sit watching, my arms around her, squeezing hands occasionally or leaning in for a soft kiss. Then came the night before Christmas Eve when my parents and I would leave for my sister’s place.

“Thank you for such a wonderful dinner, Mrs Connor,” said Nao. We were sitting around the table at my house.

“Thank you, Nao,” beamed my mother. “I don’t get to cook Christmas dinner this year, but I just had to get it out of my system.”

“It was excellent. We don’t usually do a fancy Christmas. New Years is more the traditional annual holiday in my house,” replied Nao. “And the food is really different. Thank you for inviting me over.”

“Well, we’re going to be away for a week and a bit,” said my dad. “Jimmy would sulk the entire time if we didn’t let him spend the last evening with you before we left.”

“Oh, thank you for not embarrassing me in front of my girlfriend,” I said.

“Fath-” he began.

“Father’s prerogative, I know,” I cut him off. I stood up, “Let me take these into the kitchen for you, mum.”

“Oh, thank you, honey. Actually, your father and I need to duck out for a moment,” said my mum.

“We do?” asked my dad, confused.

“Yes, because we need to fill up the car, and you wanted to check the tires before we left.”

“We can do that tomorrow on the way out,” he said dismissively.

“But the petrol will be cheaper tonight,” said my mum pointedly to my dad, giving him a look. To me she said, “We should only be about thirty minutes. Can you and Nao finish clearing the table and load the dishwasher?”

“Oh, sure,” I said.

My mum grabbed her purse and hustled my dad out of the kitchen. “The service station is literally next to the onramp,” I heard him begin before the door closed behind them.

“Well now I know why you’ve been so easy to train,” teased Nao. “You’ve had excellent conditioning at home.”

“Well, my dad likes to live by the maxim ‘Happy Wife, Happy Life’,” I cracked.

It took us barely five minutes to scrape the plates, load the dishwasher and wipe down the table.

“What now?” said Nao.

“Come with me.”

I led her into the living room where mum and I had set up the Christmas tree two weeks earlier. Originally, she hadn’t planned to put it up because we were going to be away for Christmas, but when I explained to her why I wanted to, she helped me untangle the lights and dress it properly. It had also become a convenient temporary dumping ground for Christmas presents before we loaded them into the car for the trip to my sister’s place. I sat Nao on the sofa and stood in front of her. She was gorgeous. The room was lit only by the tree lights and the flickering glow from the woodstove in the corner. Her almost-black hair shone slightly, the sides of her bob cut swept back and held in place by red ribbon. It matched the red V-neck sweater and plaid woollen skirt she wore over black turtleneck and tights. She looked at me inquiringly as I reached under the tree and pulled out a mid-sized box.

“I can’t be with you for our first Christmas together, so I wanted to give this to you before we left,” I said, handing it to Nao.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s an old laundry detergent box filled with torn up newspaper,” I said, sitting next to her.

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously. Open it.”

Delicately she pulled at the foil ribbon and undid the paper.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “You weren’t kidding.” She was holding a box of summer breeze fragrance Surf laundry powder. Biodegradable and hypo allergenic. For front load washing-machines.

“Look inside.”

Nao opened the top of the box, a faint soapy smell filling the air. Strips of newsprint appeared. She picked at the paper hesitantly, then suddenly looked up at me, her eyes wide. I smiled.

Nestled amongst the newspaper was a small black velvet jewellery case. She removed it tentatively, putting the detergent box on the floor.

“Open it,” I said softly.

Nao opened the case to reveal a small pendant attached to a fine chain of white gold. The pendant was made of two half loops, offset in a kind of S-shape with a very small diamond set between them. Nao’s birthday was in April, and diamond is the birthstone for that month. I had seen this whilst being my mother’s baggage carrier during her Christmas shopping. My mother had approved of the design, although according to my father (who in his capacity as a chemistry lecturer had a passing interest in mineralogy) the diamond wasn’t a very high grade one, but it was natural. For me that was more important; there was nobody else like Nao, and I wanted to give her something as unique as she was.