Tale Of Hidden Embers

Christmas meant a house packed with two tight-knit families and one big meal they all survived. Now the kitchen stood wrecked, the sink still shiny from scrub after scrub. Christina plopped onto the couch, wine glass in hand, while Karina flopped down beside her. "Can you believe how little those two helped?" Christina griped, kicking off her slippers. Karina snorted. "Pretty sure the only thing they lifted was a fork." They kept trading eye-rolls, each story about their husbands one-upping the last. Upstairs, Lia sat cross-legged on her bed scribbling the night into her diary. "Worst Christmas on record," she wrote, the words heavy. She wanted to tell Karina everything, spill the secret that she liked girls, but timing felt impossible. The house hummed below her, loud and careless. Later, when everyone finally went still, the quiet pressed in. She crept down, pajama pants brushing the carpet, hoping for one honest talk. The living room glowed from a leftover string of lights. Karina stood half-undressed, curves lit like a crooked joke. Lia froze in the doorway; the scene screamed exactly what it was. Silence hung until Karina yanked a shirt from the couch. "You weren't supposed to see that," she muttered, covering what she could. They stumbled through an awkward back-and-forth until the words landed flat and final: Karina would be the one to take Lia's first time. No one else needed to know.