Dedicating this chapter to my wattpad friend Lydiad55. Go & check out her books... just like her, her books are awesome too. :)

A/N - It was originally a very long chapter & I decided to cut it in half. So, the next part would be uploaded soon. :) Enjoy!

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CHAPTER - 7

NIGHT HAS JUST BEGUN

I met Adam's curious gaze the moment I stepped back into the apartment after dropping Kim at her hotel. I knew he was waiting for Kim to leave and shower me with various questions that were running through his mind. He looked like a perfect interrogator with his hands behind his head as he sat comfortably on the blue couch and his legs resting on the table in front of him.

Shutting the door behind me, I released a mouthful of air before facing him and gave him an innocent smile. He raised his left eyebrow in response and I ran my hand through my brown hair. Realizing that the questions could not be avoided any further, I sat down on the recliner opposite Adam and chose to look at the brown wall past Adam's head.

"You owe me an explanation, Keith." He pointed out calmly, trying not to sound rude. "When I asked you to postpone the trip by two hours, you replied with a 'not possible' and now you have postponed it for a week. One whole week; seven days and that too for a girl." His voice rising with every word he said, showing that he was losing his cool.

For some strange reason, the brown wall and the patterns on it appeared to be extremely interesting to me. "I don't know, okay? I guess, I just want to spend some time with her," I answered very calmly, looking at one of the patterns that looked like a broken egg.

"What do you mean by spending time with her?" he asked, removing his legs from the table and leaning forward to keep his elbows on his knees. "Do you like her?" he asked.

My eyes snapped to him, losing all interest in the broken egg design and I started laughing at his absurd question. "Are you crazy? Where did that come from?" I asked between my laughs.

"Then why would you postpone such an important trip for her?" he countered question me.

I looked straight in his eyes when I stopped laughing and copied his posture. "I met her after a very long time and I just want to hang out with her. Not the way we 'hang out' with other girls, but the way we hang out with each other," I told him the truth.

"From where do you know her?" he asked, tilting his head to his left.

"When I went to Miami after senior year," I answered.

He nodded thoughtfully and narrowed his eyes at me. He asked with accusation his voice, "Why am I hearing about it now, after more than two years? Why didn't you tell me about her when you came back from Miami?"

That's right! I never told anyone about Kim and the adventurous night I had spent with her. Maybe because I was too embarrassed to tell my friends that I sacrificed sex for a tomboy and I peed on a stranger's door in the middle of the night, or maybe because I wanted that night just as a memory that belonged to me and not to be shared.

I sighed heavily and answered all his questions, "It was nothing important. I met her on my last night in Miami and really enjoyed it. She is really cool. Just like us; she is one of the boys. Hanging out with her is like hanging out with you. I'm not ditching anyone, Adam. You and my family are the most important people in my life and nothing can change that. I just want her to enjoy her stay here because it's obvious that Laura would be busy with her boyfriend and Kim would have nothing to do. I'm just repaying her for that night, in my way. That's it."

He looked at me for a moment, absorbing everything I just told him and stood up. He nodded thoughtfully and said, "Alright, but there is one thing that's bugging my mind since I met her." I nodded, indicating him to continue. "Is she a lesbian?" he asked, frowning a bit.

A chuckle escaped my lips and I asked, "Why would you think that?"

"Dude, she didn't drool seeing this," he said, smirking arrogantly and pointing towards his face with his forefinger.

I laughed as I remembered the time when I had thought the same thing because of the same reason and stood up to stand near him. I didn't bother answering him and pulled him into a hug, which took him by surprise. "People rightly call us brothers." I chuckled.

**************

"No, mom; there is nothing like that, I just have um... a big project," I said, running my hand over my face. I was lying to my mom and I hated this.

Adam snorted. "Project named Kim." I shot him a glare and he shrugged as he sat on the counter.

"Are you sure you can't bring that project here? We can celebrate Christmas together and the rest of the time you can work on your project," mom offered on the other side of the line. She sounded sad, making me feel guilty.

"I'm doing this project with a partner, mom. I can't bring him with me there. It's not possible," I told her in a low voice.

"Does this 'not possible' carry the same meaning as it did in the afternoon?" Adam asked faking innocence. I shot him a glare and mouthed 'Shut up' which made him smirk evilly.

"Is that Adam with you? Oh, I'm so glad that at least he is coming," mom started and I unintentionally rolled my eyes and threw my head back at the words that were about to come out of her mouth. Adam noticed this and sprinted towards the couch where I was seated. He grinned as he took the phone from my hand, which I happily handed to him and he put it on speaker. We both knew that the unstoppable blabbering of my great mother was about to start and it did.

"Hailey would be so happy to see him and so would be Brian. Oh, I'm so excited to see them. They are about to reach in an hour, I should really get back to the kitchen. You should have seen Mrs. Miller's face when I told her about Hailey's wedding. It was green like the cartoon that you used to watch when you were kids. Do you remember how we used to keep movie nights for Hailey and you? Oh, I miss those days so much. By movie, I remembered that Susan's daughter Ella is an aspiring actress. You remember them, don't you? Ella is coming back as well for this week and it would have been wonderful if you could have met her, but you won't be able to make it. I'm so sad that you're not coming, Keith," she finished, finally.

Adam and I tried to stop our laughter with every change of topic she did. It was amusing and funny to see how both mine and his mother had a talent of talking about diverse topics and then finally coming back to the topic at hand.

Once Adam's mother told him to take care of himself, then she told him how gardeners take care of plants. Plants reminded her of roses which are her favorite flowers, which reminded her of plants that died in her garden a few years back, which reminded her of her dead Aunt and she started crying. She stopped when Adam assured her that he would take care of himself.

I removed the phone from speaker and kept it between my shoulder and ear by tilting my head. "Yes, mom, I'm sad too," I told her, still trying to control my laughter. Adam chose a better option as he ran to his room and started laughing loudly there. We were not laughing at my mom, we were laughing at our mothers mind-blowing talent of connecting links.

She sighed on the other side. "Take care, son," she said in her caring motherly tone.

My laughter faded away and got replaced by a smile. I missed her. "I will."

"Yes, you better take care. Adam's mom had a rose plant that died a few years back because it wasn't taken care of properly. It is the - " she started again. I mentally groaned and wondered if our mothers did this intentionally.

I cut her off and said, "Mom, Adam is leaving. I'll talk to you later."

"Okay; bye," she said and hung up, finally.

I shook my head lightly and kept my phone in my jean's pocket. I looked at the time at the wall clock and noticed that it was almost six in the evening, I still had one hour to meet Kim. "Are you ready to go?" I called Adam and on cue he came out of his room, looking completely fresh.

"Yup," he answered, picking up his suitcase. He glanced towards mine and smirked. "Happy unpacking." I groaned in response and followed him as he went downstairs and reached the spot where his car was parked. He turned to look at me when he kept his suitcase inside. "Are you sure about this?" he asked me.

"Positive," I answered and he nodded. We pulled each other in a man-hug. "Merry Christmas," I greeted him.

"Merry Christmas!" he grinned and sat in his car, eventually driving away to Hendersonville.

 **************

The entire town was lighted up with different colors of lights. Though the main color that dominated the town was red, and green closely followed it. I watched as almost everybody passing me was dressed in red; be it red sweaters or red Santa caps or red gloves or red mufflers. It was all red. I looked down at my attire to see the black jacket above my green T-shirt paired with black jeans and shoes. I was not completely out of the crowd. I leaned against my car as I waited patiently for Kim to come out of the hotel that was decorated extravagantly. I looked at the time in my phone to see that it was five minutes past seven.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry." Kim's apologetic voice made me look up from my phone. She was wearing a green checked overcoat paired with her black jeans.

I smiled a bit and said, "It's okay." I opened the passenger seat door for her and she raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "What?" I asked her. She shook her head, dismissing the topic and stepped inside the car.

Within half an hour, I parked outside one of my favorite places in Nashville. We stepped out of the car once I parked it safely at a side and walked towards the restaurant. The restaurant was decorated with lights, making it look brighter. An employee was dressed as Santa Claus and he was welcoming everybody inside; laughing and greeting the customers.

Kim was walking by my side and just as we were about to enter the place, my eyes met Santa's black eyes for a second. I squinted my eyes to have a proper look at the person as he quickly averted his gaze to look at Kim and laughed, but this time the laughter was nervous. He again looked at me and a huge grin spread on my face as I recognized the person immediately. "Good evening," he greeted, though his voice came out as squeaky instead of joyful.

"Lee?" I questioned my black eyed friend whose Uncle owned the place.

He avoided my gaze and laughed nervously. "No, my child. I'm Santa," he corrected me, pointing to himself. I smirked and brought my hand to his face and in an instant removed his white beard. "Keith!" he hissed, snatching the beard from me. He quickly fixed it and was again Santa Claus while I laughed at seeing one of my close friends who was famous like Adam and me as the player in our college, like this.

"You look great," I told him between my laughs and caressed my hand on his fake belly. He slapped away my hand, glaring at me which made me laugh more. "I can't take you seriously when you are our 'Uncle Santa'," I told him, pinching his cheeks playfully.

"Stop flirting." Kim's voice broke my attention from my embarrassed friend, but that didn't stop my laughter.

"What made you do this?" I asked, faking sympathy while all I wanted to do was click a picture of him like this and traumatize him for all his life.

He rolled his eyes and huffed. "The guy who was to be Santa, fell ill and Uncle Ben made me do this. I mean, C'mon, do I even look like Santa Claus?" he asked incredulously.

"You look cute," Kim answered from beside me and our heads snapped in her direction.

"Really?" Lee asked, smirking. The white beard and mustache did a perfect job at hiding his smirk though.

She was about to answer, but I chimed in, "As cute as my Uncle from Houston." This made him frown and I grinned. "See you later, Lee." I started moving towards the door, but his voice stopped me abruptly.

"Keith, why aren't you at your ho-" I cut him off quickly before he could say the word 'home'.

"Hahahaha! Merry Christmas," I said in a fake cheery voice.

"You should switch roles with him; you are doing this better," Kim suggested and I shot her a sarcastic smile.

Ignoring her, I again caressed Lee's belly and asked, "How many balls have you filled in here?"

He groaned. "Get lost."

I laughed and complied with what he said, only I got inside the restaurant instead of getting lost. My eyes swept through the area in front of me and my lips twitched up in a smirk when my eyes landed on the perfect scenario of Karaoke in front of me. The night had just begun.

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A/N -

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5th January 2016 - Edited! :)