It took a little over four hours, but finally, my apartment started looking like Christmas.
Correction — our apartment.
At least, that's what Val called it after she declared I didn't have "the aesthetic coordination or emotional sensitivity required to handle something as sacred as Christmas décor."
Which is why, for the last few hours, I'd mostly stood back as she took full control, orchestrating the living room like a battlefield general armed with tinsel and fairy lights.
The tree came first — a real one, of course. Val wouldn't have it any other way. The living room smelled faintly of pine as she fluffed the branches and layered them with gold ribbons and snowflake ornaments, humming under her breath like she was decorating for royalty. She tied small red bows onto the ends of the curtains, arranged the gift boxes (empty, of course — "it's for symmetry," she'd said), and placed a glittering reindeer figurine near the window "because every reindeer deserves natural lighting."
