Life in Color ✔️

24~ Christmas

"Wake up!" A distant voice cries.

I roll over, throwing an arm over one of the twins. I need sleep.

"Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" Saffron tries again, bouncing up and down on the bed, making me feel sick in the process. After a few solid jumps she lands on Sage with a thud.

He groans in pain, hugging his stomach. "I guess that's what I get for trying to delay Christmas."

A whine escapes my mouth, it's not even eight am. Hasn't this child heard of sleeping in? After a solid mental pep talk on the importance of making today special, I pull myself out of bed. After admiring the twins sleeping faces, I shake them awake.

No man shall be left behind in the beautiful grasp of sleep.

Saffron barrels down stairs so fast I almost miss her reaction to the gifts. We still do Santa for her and last night, at 1:30 in the morning, I really debated just telling her the truth to save us the hustle, not that Sage was bothered eating all the cookies. Seeing her face; however, always makes it worth the hassle.

The twins are just as pleased, maybe even more so, with their gifts. I bought them both skateboards, knowing how much they loved using Sam's. Now, I only hope they wear the helmets I got them too. For Sage, I splurged into the money Uncle John sends me each month and bought him a new wood bat, his last one broke a while back. He's already named her Tina. There are somethings in life I decide it's better not to question.

"We have one more gift." Sage says, pulling an envelope out from behind the tree. I wrinkle my eyebrows as he hands it to me. Slowly, I open it up, struggling to read the words on the paper.

"Oh my God." I whisper in disbelief, my eyes rescanning the paper.

"Do you like it?" The twins ask, peering over my shoulders.

"Yes! How did you guys even manage to get them?" They bought me tickets to the Florence and the Machine concert. Tickets sold out in minutes, I checked.

"Uncle John may have helped a little." He admits sheepishly, tugging on his sweatshirt.

I grab Sage and pull him in for a hug, completely surprised he would even think to give me a gift like that. "I love it, thank you."

I order them to start cleaning up, double checking to make sure nothing valuable gets thrown away. The last thing I need is for someone to realize something's missing after the trash has been taken out.

"Who are you gonna take with you?" Silver asks, handing me my crutches.

I shrug, "Sage or Stella probably." They're the only two that appreciate my type of music, not that Sage would ever admit it. It ruins his street credit, or so he claims. I wasn't aware he had any to begin with.

"Why not Ashton?" Silver counters, pulling me to my feet.

I roll my eyes, "I don't think Ashton would enjoy the music as much as I would." Rap and country are the only two genres he listens to, much to my dismay. One can only hear nonsense rambling and stay sane for a short amount of time.

Silver shakes his head, muttering "Whatever." underneath his breath before heading off to the kitchen. Sometimes I wonder what goes in his mind.