Finding Home (Complete)

21. Thanksgiving.

"Anna said that my piece was a hit amongst the board, it'll be published in the December newsletter and posted to their website!" I don't even bother to hide my excitement as I run into the kitchen, nearly taking out Taylor in the process.

Liam, Whitney, Marcus, Jordan and her have been slaving away at Thanksgiving dinner for hours. I snuck away to check my email after putting my green bean casserole in the oven. I'm not even sure anyone noticed my absence.

"That's fantastic, Han!" Liam wrapped me in a half hug as his hands were covered in turkey juice from basting when I walked in. I shuddered hoping to escape the embrace spotless.

"I'm happy for you and everything, but your slacking on dinner rolls and my hands are cramping!" Marcus whined from the counter. When he looked at me, I managed to stick my tongue out at him as I walked over.

"You poor thing, what are you going to do when Jordan smartens up, meets a girl and moves out, leaving your ass to cook for yourself?" I hear Jordan chortle from his duties across the room as Marcus turns to slap the cool bread dough in my hands.

"Easy, microwave." He shrugs. I roll my eyes and start separating the dough into small bits to twist into the tiny crescent shapes.

A quiet lull falls over as between the clangs of lots and pans, and Taylor stirring the gravy as the soft scrap of the wire whisk hums loudest in my ears. It smelled amazing in here, and my mouth was watering thinking about sinking my teeth into everything.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, not only do I get to not care about overeating any and everything; but afterwards it was the official start to Christmas season. Liam fell into letting me go crazy after Halloween but him and Jordan had a strict "no tree before thanksgiving" rule, but little do they know that sucker will be standing tall in the main window in less that eight hours.

"Anyone hear if Max was coming?" Jordan asks, breaking me from my trance. I can feel everyone's eyes shift to me without even looking up. To be honest, the last few weeks of not seeing him was torture. His texts never stopped and honestly it was the only thing keeping my sane in this crazy mess.

"Uh, I don't know, he never answered me." Liam says in such a tone that I know he's waiting for me to chime in. I wipe my hands and turn to find that, in fact, everyone had stopped working and were now staring at me.

"I asked him and he said he didn't know. He still hasn't had the chance to settle things." It was no secret that once I blathered to Whitney, within a day's time, our whole inner circle knew about Max and I. Surprisingly no one objected and were genuinely happy to possibly have their friend out of the clutches of that evil witch. But as I had said, he hasn't talked to Mr. Davenport yet, and I was growing impatient.

"I'm going to grab the beer from my truck, I think we've all worked hard enough to dig into them." Marcus grabbed the keys from the counter, once he left, slowly noise resumed from people going back to cooking.

Whitney takes Marcus's place next to me and starts helping me break up the dough. We've had thanksgiving here with our group every year since my parents died. I missed it terribly when I was away, and I was excited to be here this year again. The only missing piece to having truly everyone here again was Max. The constant reminder only hardened my heart the more I thought about it.

"How are you holding up?" Whitney asks low enough to keep the conversation between her and I. Liam had already exited the kitchen to turn on the football game as most of the prep was done. The only thing left was just waiting for everything to be cooked fully and placed in its proper serving dish.

"I'm okay." I half-lie not looking up at her. I didn't want to spoil my mood any more by concentrating on how much I truly missed Max. Something about realizing how he felt all these years, made what little time we had shared together mean more. It now meant that missing him hurt much more, there was no more convincing myself my feelings were one sided.