Episode 1113: Merry Christmas Baby

She was old enough not to need him or anyone else accompanying her on a Christmas shopping trip but she’d shown up at his place that morning insisting she needed him to come along, cajoling him into buying gifts, too.

Xavier had fully intended to sit out the holiday, between playing an inadvertent part in Sebastian’s accident and finding himself so far on the outside with Ava that he hadn’t seen her since that day and hadn’t felt one bit like celebrating.

Count on Tansy to recognize his emotional spiral and drag him out of it, drag him out into the world, spending the day talking, laughing and getting into the feel good spirit of giving. Yeah, it might not seem such a daunting job to be a father to someone like her.

Jesse closed his laptop without even venturing past the homepage of the genealogy website. Every so often he thought about it. Tracking down his biological father. But not to bond with him. He already had a dad he’d bonded with, he couldn’t do better than Bowie.

He did kind of want to thank his biological father though. He’d been the donor, right? Who else could have been? That only made sense.

Did the guy know who he was to Jesse? Did he understand how much he’d done for him?

When he watched his brother meticulously attach stockings to the ends of their beds like he’d been doing since they were little kids. When he thought about earlier in the evening, going on a walking tour of Christmas lights with Caroline and her younger sister then coming home to his parents making pancakes for Christmas eve dinner as had become a weird semi-tradition in their house. It was moments like this when life felt genuinely good, when Jesse just really wanted to thank the person most responsible for him still being alive.

Episode 1114: Shining Star