Constellations, Coffee & Chandler | q.h

sixteen

Chapter 16
happy birthday quinn

| Chandler |

"What are you doing?" I turn around to see the guys on the ground amusedly watching me as I try to hold my balance on the porch roof. "I'm decorating," I gesture to the mess of lights in front of me. "It's October, why the hell are you putting the Christmas lights up?"

"Carson they're going to be on the fall setting, it's for thanksgiving." I grab an autumnal wreath from the top of a bin, tossing it down to Carson as he gives me an unimpressed look. "Why are you like this?" He groans as I give him a sickly sweet smile. "Don't you and the Brady Bunch have somewhere to be?" I can tell they're going out based on the fact that they're not wearing sweatpants or swim trunks. The small army of polo-clad boys look like actual humans, not drunk or hungover, and wearing normal, everyday clothes for once.

"We're going golfing, don't fall off the roof, I'd hate to find you dangling from a string of lights when we get home," he smirks as I give him a sarcastic laugh back.

"Go have fun with your boring golf game, I'll be here decorating and making it look cute so I can hold my position as the favourite of the family," I wave my hand trying to get them to leave as Carson lets out a loud laugh.

After having spent the past 5 days at the house with the boys I was happy to get out and spend time by myself, the most I had gotten of me-time these past couple of days was when I was sleeping, even with the guys trying to give me some distance. Now with the boys out of the house for the day, I'm free to do whatever I so desire without the fear of them being there. I wasn't about to go walking around the house with no clothes on, but I was about to autumn-fy the heck out of this house.

Unfortunately, my parents have never thrown out a single thing we've ever made, so we have more than enough thanksgiving and Halloween-themed decorations, despite how horrible they may be. Our kindergarten paper-leaf garlands, cut-out pumpkins, and popsicle-stick skeletons - I refuse to actually use any of them, mostly because my mom will bawl her eyes out at the sight of them, but so will I.

I've now successfully, or almost successfully managed to avoid both crying, the boys, and crying in front of the boys for 2 days. I'm pretty proud of myself. Yeah, I've had to continue to wake up at the ass crack of dawn to run and have breakfast before any of them woke up, and had to strategically plan when to move around the house based on if they were out or not, but I haven't had the awkward experience of having a real conversation with any of them yet. All-in-all that's all that really matters.

Seeing as the guys will be gone for the rest of the day, thank God, I'll have the entire house to myself. I'll finally finish these stupid, but cute decorations, and start bringing out the fall throw pillows and blankets my parents hate, hopefully I'll even have time to make cookies or something.

But for now, I'm stuck, dealing with a tangle of cords and strings of lights, which no, don't need to be up for thanksgiving, but I'm going to do it anyway just because Carson felt the need to call me out on it. I had managed to convince mom to take me into Kelowna yesterday, giving me a day away from the boys and a day in the craft stores, so we have a plethora of decorations for the house. My parents might hate having to take them down when we leave before we can help, which is always on purpose, but my little cousins adored it, and at this point I couldn't not decorate.

The lights admittedly are taking me longer than planned. At this point, I'm not even convinced there is a fall setting and I should just give up. There's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to string all the lights around the house, so I guess I'll just settle for the porch. I won't say that they look that good, but they're up and that's what matters, dad can fix them in a couple of weeks when he properly puts them up for Christmas.