There was a knock at the door of the old brownstone.
When Henry Page went to answer it, he saw his daughter standing there in in a jacket that was way too light for an east coast winter snowstorm. Her boyfriend Jeremy was standing right behind her with their luggage in hand as they both shivered in the heavy flurries that were beginning to fall as the day went on. The neighborhood had already gotten a foot of snow by that point and the taxi that had dropped them off had barely made it down the street to complete the task.
"Merry Christmas, Dad!" Mackenzie said to her father, as her boyfriend echoed the sentiment.
"Merry Christmas guys!" Henry responded, pulling them both in for a hug as he ushered them into the warm coatroom of the house.
Mackenzie and Jeremy shook off the snow as they walked into the warmth of the fireplace-toasted home.
Henry pulled his daughter in for another hug as she reciprocated the love in kind.
This had been the first time they'd seen each other since Mackenzie had gone off to school on the other side of the country that fall for her freshman year at Stanford University.
She'd met a nice guy who was a sophomore in the same department and the two had now been dating for the last four months, and so she decided to bring him home to meet the parents.
Even though he'd already hugged him, Henry reached his hand out formally to shake Jeremy's hand.
"Nice to finally meet you in person, Jeremy!" Henry said, his easy-going warmth always on display.
"You as well, Mr. Page!" Jeremy responded.
Henry smiled at this, "No, no, not Mr. Page. That makes me feel like I'm still at work. Call me Henry."
"You got it, I can do that." Jeremy said as they shucked their shoes and jackets near the door and came into the large living room and main area of the house.
Oliver, the family husky, came bumbling into the room to meet them where even more passionate licking and tail wagging commenced. Once he'd sniffed out the new boy and draped himself fully over his much missed Mackenzie, their ten legs moved them further along.
It was midafternoon and the kitchen was already sizzling and simmering with the various smells of a delicious home-cooked Christmas Eve dinner.
Rebecca Page bustled this way and that among the copper pots and pans of their large, recently redone kitchen. She dropped her oven mitts to the side when she saw her daughter and boyfriend enter.
"Hey Becca, look what the cat dragged in!" Henry announced as she scurried excitedly over to see her daughter. They all said their hello's and introductions were shared all over again as she wrapped them both up in large, home-cooked hugs.
Mackenzie gave her boyfriend a quick tour of the house and then the two retired to her room to drop off their bags and change into comfier clothing as they refreshed themselves from the stresses of holiday travel.
Henry dropped off some towels at the door and then headed back towards the kitchen and family room. The Page house wasn't naïve. Even though his daughter was only 18 and her boyfriend only 19, there wasn't any silly sort of expectation that they wouldn't be allowed to share a room. Henry and his wife Rebecca had never been prudes about things and they'd had no problem whatsoever when Mackenzie had asked to go on birth control in her freshman year of high school. They were just glad she was being safe and honest with them.
Eventually the two returned in comfier attire and they both took a seat at two of the barstools surrounding the huge kitchen island where the dinner trappings had started to appear en masse.
Henry cracked open a beer for Jeremy and himself while Mackenzie poured herself a glass from the bottle of chardonnay her mother had been using both to cook with and to drink.
"It's so good to be home," Mackenzie said as she finally allowed herself to really relax for the first time since finals prep had begun some three weeks earlier.
"It's great to have you home, sweetie!" Her mother said, as they clinked their wine glasses.
The family caught up on all things pertinent—jobs, the various challenges provided by their different fall classes, the neighborhood, the extended family.
No stone was left unturned.
Henry in particular was thrilled to have his daughter back home. While she and her mother had always been close, Mackenzie was undeniably a Daddy's girl. They had been very tight knit growing up and he was looking forward to reconnecting over the next week during her break.
One thing was for certain, while she might always be his "little girl", it was impossible to miss the fact that Mackenzie had grown up quite a bit over the last year.
She may have bloomed late, but she had most definitely bloomed.
Henry couldn't help but notice the way her body filled out the old pair of sweats she had picked from her room to wear around the house. The once loose-fitting gym pants now clung tightly to her roundly-attentive butt and dipping curves. Her old cotton t-shirt also protruded more than Henry seemed to remember it having once done as the swell of her chest reminded him of the way Mackenzie's mother had looked they'd first met in college. She really was a flower that had blossomed from the same vine.
Mackenzie had dark brown hair that which she wore straight with cute bangs. She had sort of a modern Kelly Kapowski-vibe going on—the tiny, pert nose, the puffed lips, the dimples. She was cute and sexy at the same time.
For the briefest of moments, Henry felt strangely jealous of Jeremy. His daughter really had transformed into a freshman heartbreaker.
As the night wore on, dinner was had; more stories too. They watched out the window as the snow piled up on the back fire escape while the alcohol inside flowed freely and they fell back into their familiar family routine with Jeremy along for the ride.
There was a roast beef with mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and freshly baked Crescent rolls and even more conversations. They laughed at old anecdotes and regaled their guest with embarrassing stories from Mackenzie's youth. This was to be expected of course. What was family for, after all?
It was 9:00 PM when they'd finally finished the stellar meal. When it was time for the dishes to be cleaned Henry insisted they sit still and relax while he attend to the table clearing. Mackenzie joined her dad anyway as her mom and boyfriend chatted away at the dining room table.
She followed him into the spacious kitchen carrying a stack of plates and forks and he immediately connected his phone into the kitchen Bluetooth stereo and put on a classy Christmas playlist.
When 'Baby It's Cold Outside' came on in the middle of him degreasing a pan, he looked over at his daughter and smiled. Some Christmas traditions were unavoidable. She smiled back at her dad as she placed her stack of plates on the island and skipped over to him as she placed her hands on his shoulders. They exaggeratedly danced around the tile floor as they giggled with each other like always.
As a kid, this song been a favorite of Mackenzie's each new Christmas season, and for the first few dances her father had ever asked of her, she'd been standing atop his loafers as he moved spinning around the family room much to her childhood delight.
As they danced now, they each traded off singing the male and female parts back and forth to each other and laughed at their successful and unsuccessful spins and dips.
As she looked up at him, she had to admit, the guy still had it. Mackenzie's father was a spry looker at 42. He and her mother had gotten pregnant while in college together, and he was rather young compared to most of Mackenzie's friends' dads.
He looked like a younger Roger Sterling from that show 'Mad Men'—something that her friend's in high school loved to bring up with her whenever they felt like teasing her for having a "Hot Dad." The silver in his hair was only starting to show through and he still had an impressively full set, which he parted in a similar way to the founder of the fictional advertising agency on the show. His weekly squash matches and obsessive cardio had kept him in peak condition. Mackenzie could only hope that her eventual husband still looked like that in his forties.
Henry easily lifted Mackenzie up onto the counter by the sink as he continued to wash the dishes as the music crooned on to another Sinatra-like Christmas number. She laughed in merriment as she rubbed her head slightly.
"Hey Dad, any chance you have any of your prescription headache medicine lying around somewhere?" She asked suddenly. Mackenzie may have gotten her deep blue eyes from her mother, but her painful migraines had come directly from her dear old dad.
They were the types of headaches that would knock her out for an entire evening if she didn't catch them in their infancy. Luckily she'd gotten very good at recognizing the signs over the years, thanks in large part to her father's own lifetime of trial and error in regards to his own versions of the auras.
"Ah, yes, there is a white container on the bottom shelf of my medicine cabinet, these are the smaller pills—you take two at a time." He said as Mackenzie jumped off the counter and headed upstairs toward her parent's master bedroom.
Before she left though Henry added," and Mack, would you grab me a couple too? Probably better safe than sorry considering how much wine we've been drinking," he reasoned.
They'd both had their fair share of horrible headache black holes over the years, 'better safe than sorry' was a household credo by now.
Mackenzie danced down the hall to her parent's room as the Christmas music carried throughout the house. She walked into their bathroom and opened up her dad's medicine cabinet, grabbing an unmarked white bottle and snagging four of the round, white pills out of the case. She returned quickly and filled up two Mason jars of water from the filtered water-dispenser on the fridge door, and then handed both the pills and the water to her dad.
They clinked glasses as they downed the pills and then finished their cups. Those too were thrown into the dishwasher along with the remaining silverware and plates.
Soon the kitchen was passable enough for clean and Henry placed his arm around his daughter's shoulder as they walked back out to the dining room table.
The next hour or so was spent on board games and card games and vanilla bean ice cream and puff pastry pie crust. Jeremy was already onto his fifth Stout and Mackenzie's mom had dipped into her next bottle of chardonnay.
