Christmas Dinner

Christmas Dinner
Published	September 20, 2013 (2013-09-20)
Page count	8
Major characters	Lucy, Paulo
Locations	Paulo’s house
Chapter navigation
← Family Comix	Store Credit →
Read in the BCI Members’ Library

Christmas Dinner is a non-canon Bittersweet Club International-exclusive comic in the Another Path storyline. Paulo walks Lucy, eyes firmly shut, a full hour to a surprise: a candlelit spaghetti dinner, a bottle of wine, and a house with no parents in it.

Partial synopsis

Paulo leads Lucy along with her eyes closed while she grumbles that he might steer her into a pole. When he lets her look, they are standing outside his house. Lucy responds, “You got me your house?” His dad is away for a few days tending a sick aunt and has left Paulo to tidy the place for Christmas. Paulo has set a candlelit table for two with plates of spaghetti and a bottle of wine. Two more candles burn on top of the old television. The wine is Paulo’s Christmas present, and he wants to share it with her.

Paulo’s dinner follows an earlier confrontation. In the Another Path continuity, Mike still gives Lucy almost the same speech that he gives her in December. Afterward, Lucy walks to Paulo’s door instead of going home alone. Now Paulo has set out to make this Christmas look nothing like the last one. Whether spaghetti, candlelight and a whole bottle of wine between two teenagers can manage that is another matter...

Character dynamics

Paulo’s idea of tidying the place up for Christmas.

• Paulo and Lucy: In the main comic, Paulo brings Lucy a Christmas cake but cannot get past her front door. Here, the night of Another Shoulder went differently, and Paulo and Lucy are a couple. After Mike insults her that December, Lucy walks to Paulo’s door rather than going home alone. They still needle each other. Lucy complains about Paulo’s directions but keeps her eyes closed until he tells her to look.

Trivia & observations

• Lucy’s “hound thing” is her name for the shared-spaghetti-strand scene in Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. Lucy and Paulo borrow the two dogs’ routine as two cats.
• Paulo insists his dad thinks he’s “VERY responsible”, but Rodrigo does not say so himself. In Rodrigo’s appearance in Piece of Cake, he answers his son’s questions about girls from behind a newspaper.

Related chapters

• Another December: Although published after this comic, it covers the preceding December confrontation. Mike delivers his “parasite” speech in this continuity too, and Lucy runs to Paulo’s house afterward.
• Another Path: The storyline’s opening comic and its branch point. Paulo gives a different answer on the night of Another Shoulder, which is how the two ended up a couple in the first place.
• Piece of Cake: In the main comic, Paulo brings a Christmas cake to Lucy’s house, where Jordan turns him away at the door twice. In this comic, Paulo instead brings Lucy to his house and has dinner waiting for her.