Snowed In [#JustWriteIt]

Chapter Six

"Right. Suuuure. Now, let us begin!" Dion invited grandly as he swept out his arms in a grand gesture.

"Begin..." Sydney prompted.

"Decorating the café for the Christmas celebration! We've got lots to do you know! Chop, chop!"

"I swear you have me here to do slave work," Sydney muttered jokingly. If she was honest, this wasn't bad at all.

"Wha... how did you catch onto my nefarious plots? Now I'm going to have to kill you Sydney. Come here and don't struggle." Dion said with a straight face.

No sooner than a second after the last words left his mouth, his serious façade crumbled and he began dying of laughter. Sydney shook her head and began ripping open old cardboard boxes. She extracted the countless decorations that filled each box to the brim, ignoring the laughing hyena behind her.

She found the Christmas tree decorations and set them near the undecorated tree. She bit back a smile when she turned and saw Dion rolling around the ground, still laughing. He was weird, she decided.

Sydney continued digging into the boxes, struggling to rip through some of the more thickly taped boxes. She mentally envisioned the view of last year's party and pulled out some of the reusable stickers.

"Does this have to look the same as last year?" she called to a panting Dion.

"Nope!" he chirped from behind her, still letting a few chuckles escape his lips.

She nodded and settled into her artistic mode. She pulled out a few snowflake stickers and began pasting them on the windows. Decorating was a surprisingly relaxing task and she found herself a calming rhythm.

Ten minutes later, Sydney heard a few soft snores. She closed her eyes and held in the laughter that threatened to leave her lips. When she turned around, she was greeted by the sight of Dion fast asleep on the floor.

She sighed softly and let out a few muted chuckles. He looked so adorable when he was asleep. His brown hair was falling over his forehead messily, barely brushing his eyes. Her fingers itched to brush it away but she quickly squashed the cheesy thought. There was no way her sister would ever hear of this, she would pounce on it and squeal about love stories and ships.

Sydney could not resist sneaking another glance at the boy on the ground, following the angular contours of his face. His lips parted slightly as he drew in a few more breaths. She felt like a stalker staring at him. Actually, she was a stalker to stare at him like this.

She shook the thoughts out of her head and began threading green, red and white streamers everywhere on the ceiling. It was a bit of a struggle to climb up the ladder and tape another piece of streamer on the ceiling but she made do.

Sydney let her mind wander as she worked. She thought about last night's question Dion had posed her. About her self-doubt. Her lip curled upward in distain. There wasn't anything meaningful to her reasons and she knew that if she were to explain everything to Dion, he would call her whiney. It had happened before with another friend and Sydney was certain Dion would not hesitate to do the same thing.

She finished taping twists of Christmassy streamers around the café and moved onto cutting out paper snowflakes to string from the ceiling as well. She began imagining how Dion would react to knowing that he was her crush. She guessed that he would either take it as a joke, run away screaming, gently break it to her that he didn't feel the same way or maybe, just maybe, he'd smile and tell her that he reciprocated her feelings. She shook her head at the last one. That wasn't going to happen and she refused to get her hopes up like that. It would only end in tears.