“Don’t be ridiculous,” Charlotte said, stepping around the car to join me as we stared up at it. “It’s just their house.”
“Hey, babe!” We both turned at the sound of Brendan’s voice. He stood in the doorway, arms spread wide.
Charlotte skipped ahead of me, practically bouncing into his arms. I’d only met Brendan once, but he was the first of Charlotte’s boyfriends I’d met that didn’t give me that skeevy feeling, which I’d become accustomed to with her other boyfriends.
His blond hair was buzzed so short, he nearly looked bald. But he had a nice face, a face that I realized then fit with his wealthier background. I think it was his skin that had tipped me off—how perfectly flawless he looked. Not a single blemish. Even his eyebrows were perfectly groomed. He was tall, lean, and his clothes looked like he’d put them on fresh for the occasion—not a wrinkle in sight.
I looked down at my jeans, at the hole in one of the knees. I’d worn high socks to help battle the cold that filtered through it, so yellow and black stripes peeked through it. At least I’d worn one of my nicer shirts, but because of the cold I was bundled up in an over-sized sweater and scarf that didn’t match any of my outfit.
Brendan smiled at me as he hugged Charlotte. “Trista, right?”
Nodding, I climbed the steps up to the front porch as he let Charlotte go. “Thanks for letting me tag along.”
“No big deal,” he said with a purse of his lips. He ran a hand over his hair, but there was no hair to push back into place. “All my cousins are coming up from Vermont, so it’ll soon be like Home Alone in here.” Wrapping an arm around Charlotte, he added, “But I chose the best room for you two, so don’t worry.”
I wasn’t worried about there being a lot of people, because I’d had plans to bunk in the room the entire time I was here, until I was able to go back to the inn. “Sounds great,” I said, forcing a smile as we followed him into the house and down a quiet hallway that was lined with photos of Brendan and, who I assumed to be, his brother; Brendan holding trophies for academic tournaments and sport tournaments; Brendan’s high school graduation with a thick gold sash around his neck; his college graduation, and several more that highlighted his many accomplishments. His success was intimidating. What did I have to compare it to?
I grew up in a decrepit trailer park with my druggie mom, dropped out of college when my best friend died, stayed in a relationship with a guy who didn’t really love me, and then got myself beat up by said druggie mom’s boyfriend before I drove to Maine with a car that ticked for nearly a thousand miles. It was a far cry from the successful life Brendan had lived, and it was another reason I didn’t tell anyone much about my background, and my family history.
“Here we are,” he said as he pushed open one of the many doors in the hallway.
The room was bright thanks to the large windows that faced the front and the yellow paint that covered every wall. Two identical twin beds were lined up against the wall opposite the windows, their fluffy white comforters looking inviting enough for me to face plant in the first one I saw.
“This is great.” I gave him a grateful smile as I set my bag on the floor.
Charlotte echoed me but in her Charlotte way, with much more enthusiasm. “I love it!”
“Why don’t you two freshen up and then come meet the fam.” He pointed down the hallway, the way we’d come in. “Just go past the stairs and follow the noise.
“Fantastic,” Charlotte beamed, closing the door when he retreated back down the hall. She turned and leaned her back against the door as she faced me. “This place is great, isn’t it?”
It was hard not to agree with her when she was smiling at me like that. But I still felt a little weird crashing on my friend’s boyfriend’s holiday weekend and I tried not to let it show on my face. “But freshen up? It was only an hour drive.”
“Well, I know that.” Charlotte flopped onto the nearest bed and sighed contentedly. “But I’m guessing he means our current clothes. You’ve seen how he dresses.”
“Like a mannequin in the mall,” I said, but it wasn’t an insult. He did dress nice, from the ironed black shirt he’d tucked into dark jeans to the matte black belt and fancy penny loafers. It was certainly different from the lazy holidays I was used to.
I opened my suitcase and thumbed through the offerings. I’d counted on spending most of the time in my room, with my face in a book or my fingers smudged with ink, but thankfully, Charlotte had convinced me to pack a couple nicer outfits.
I dressed in black slacks and a white sweater. It was simple, but Charlotte had smiled approvingly as she changed into a knee-length, long-sleeved red dress with black nylons and black ankle boots. She always dressed with such thought, something I’d noticed about Claire too. I brushed my hair, which was now past my shoulders and bleached blonde again, while Charlotte reapplied her eyeshadow and lip gloss.
“Have you met his parents before?”
She rubbed her lips together and then made a kissy face in the mirror. “Yep. They’re great.” But Charlotte said that about nearly everyone. Even people who weren’t great. It made me a little anxious, to be the sidekick in this situation, but Charlotte and Brendan had both acted like it wasn’t weird for a stranger to spend time with an unfamiliar family on Christmas.
I followed Charlotte down the hall and around the curved staircase, following the noise that seemed to echo off the wooden floors and up to the high ceilings. The family room was large, with a wall of windows that faced the backyard and a ceiling that stretched so high that Charlotte could’ve stood on my shoulders and still been several feet from touching it. Candles were lit across a white brick fireplace where over a dozen stockings hung. A large evergreen tree was tucked into a corner, white lights blinking all around it. Brendan, spotting us from the recliner he was stretched out on, stood up and joined us by the entryway. “Hey, everyone,” he said, stopping the chatter of the ten or so people around the room. “This is Charlotte—I know you’ve met her, Mom and Dad—and Trista, Charlotte’s best friend.”
The best friend part prickled me a little, not because I was unhappy with being called her best friend but because it surprised me. I didn’t have a best friend, but if I did Charlotte wouldn’t be it. And I realized how ungracious that was, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like Charlotte. It was because a best friend, to me, was someone you shared deep things with. Not someone who skimmed across the surface of your life.
“Hello.” A woman I assumed to be Brendan’s mom approached us and smiled at me before giving Charlotte a hug. “So glad you two could join us.” She had a calmness about her, and I instantly felt at ease around her. She tucked a long blonde strand behind her ear. “It’s going to get wild in here pretty soon, so I’m pleased you arrived early before the chaos.”
Charlotte hooked her arm around mine and pulled me tight, as if she was trying to illustrate our sudden best friend status. “That’s what Brendan said,” she said with a smile in her voice. Charlotte seemed a little different around her, like she was more subdued and yet more affectionate at the same time.
“I can’t wait, Mrs. Waterhouse,” I said with more excitement than I felt at the prospect of being surrounded by even more strangers.
Brendan’s mom put her hand out to me. “Call me Elizabeth,” she said. “There will be more than one Mrs. Waterhouse here soon, so no need to address me so formally.” She nodded toward the dining table. “Help yourself. There’s a mimosa station and some hors d’oeuvres.”
Brendan steered us toward the table where there was a whole station for mimosas. Different bottles of champagne, schnapps, and four different kinds of orange juice in glass pitchers were surrounded by tall glasses with orange slices on the rims. “My mom likes her mimosas.” Brendan laughed as he handed me an empty glass. “How would you like it?”
“Uh. . .” I held my glass and stared at all the options, not even sure how to begin. My Christmases had never included mimosas, so they weren’t ex
actly something I was used to.
“I got this,” Charlotte said, taking my glass and beginning to assemble mimosas for both of us. As she did, I looked back at all the people in the family room, sitting along a fluffy-looking sectional, on the floor with mimosas in hand, or peering out the windows as they chattered. Christmas music was playing on a low volume; from speakers I couldn’t see. Above the fireplace was a large portrait of Brendan, his mom, and who I assumed to be his dad and his brother. I couldn’t tell for sure from this far away, but it looked like it was a painting, not a photograph.
I’d only been there for ten minutes, but already I was so far out of my element that I looked at Charlotte a little desperately. “I feel weird,” I whispered as I stood beside her.
“Don’t feel weird,” she said in a voice that was not a whisper. I elbowed her in the arm that wasn’t holding a mimosa.
“Thanks,” I hissed.
“Just relax.” She handed me a mimosa. “Drink, because if this many people make you nervous already, it’s only going to get harder when this room actually fills up.
She wasn’t wrong. Just a couple hours later, the house was packed to the gills. The hallway with many doors, where Charlotte and I were staying, was suddenly so loud that even sitting in my room wasn’t peaceful. If anything, it only made me more anxious, keeping a watchful eye on the door every time I heard footsteps thunder down the hallway.
I wondered if I’d have felt more comfortable if I’d grown up with siblings or with larger family get-togethers during the holidays. But for the last ten years, my holidays had been spent with my grandpa, sometimes my grandma, and sometimes my boyfriend. I was used to opening presents and then spending the rest of the day lumped on the couch, watching every holiday movie on cable television. There hadn’t been socializing, no mingling around with groups of strangers, wearing a plastic smile the whole time, even when you were repeatedly bumped into from behind so hard that you nearly lost balance.
The first day, Charlotte had left me to sit in our room with my ear buds in my ears the whole time while she got to know Brendan’s family. I wasn’t upset by that, in fact I relished the alone time, even if the noise from the younger kids was enough to have my eyes darting to the bedroom door every few minutes. I couldn’t write, not with music in my ears and all that noise interrupting any deep thoughts I may have tried to consider.
The second day, Christmas Eve, the entire family did a white elephant Christmas. I sat on the side, watching how they all laughed until the point of crying with some of the gifts. Charlotte had participated, receiving a lightsaber, which she used to poke at Brendan playfully. Brendan had told us that they did this every year, because summers were too busy to spend any considerable amount of time together, so winter was the only time they got together.
After the older adults had retreated to the family room, Brendan and his brother Chris took Charlotte and me to the pool house. It was separated from the house by a stone walkway, set off at one corner of their massive backyard. Three sides of the building itself were completely glass, and on our approach I could see all the lights that cast different colors over the pool water through the windows.
Chris stepped up beside me, bumping into me companionably. “Did Brendan tell you about the time I shot one of those windows out with my BB gun?”
The windows looked to be at least five feet in height, three feet in width, and I couldn’t even guess what they must have cost. “No,” I said, glancing at Charlotte and Brendan as they huddled together just ahead of us. “How’d you manage that?”
Chris looked over his shoulder back to the house. “Don’t tell Mom,” he said on a laugh, “but the story I told her is that I tripped and the gun went off.” He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“What’s the truth?” I shivered on the walk across the stone pavers, but there was only about six inches of snow around them. I was glad I’d insisted on wearing sweats over my swimsuit, especially when I saw how freezing cold Charlotte was in just her bikini a few feet ahead of me.
“The truth was that I wanted to be wicked cool. Brendan is a little older than me, and he’s always succeeded in everything he set his mind to. But me?” He pointed to his chest. “I’ve always had to work for everything. So when I saw this bird fly by, I thought, ‘How bad ass would it be if I brought this bird to Mom for dinner?’”
I laughed, trying to imagine how anything Chris could kill with a BB gun would make a sufficient dinner. “How old were you?”
“Oh, this was just last summer.” But then he flashed a grin, nearly identical to Brendan’s. “Just kidding.”
“Thank god. I was about to feel bad for laughing.”
“I was nine years old. Total bad-ass age. So when the bird flew by the pool house, I didn’t even think—I just lifted my gun and aimed.”
“Did you get the bird?”
“Hell no. It flew off without a care in the world, while I watched the glass split and then shatter all over the grass.”
“Did it shatter in the pool, too?”
“No, see,” he put his hands on my shoulder to turn me when we reached the pool house in a gesture that I knew was innocuous, but it still made me freeze up. No man had touched me since Doug, and before that, Jude. If Chris sensed the way I bristled at his touch, he didn’t show it. “Look.” He pointed at the window. “It’s double-paned. So I only destroyed the outside pane.”
I could see the separation between the two windows as I followed him through the French door entrance. “That’s lucky, I guess.”
“I guess. Mom didn’t see anything lucky about it though.”
“No, I imagine not.” I gave him a smile. “I bet that was expensive to replace.”
Chris shrugged like it was no big deal, and I realized that was one of the comforts of having money—expense wasn’t a worry. I’d never had that luxury, and still didn’t. Maura didn’t treat me like a peasant, but after providing room and board, I didn’t exactly receive a large paycheck. I made just enough to float me until next payday, but with no backup plan if there was a problem. I envied Chris a little for that—not for the fact that he had money, but for the fact that he wasn’t weighed down by the burden of money.
The pool was one of those above-ground pools, but there was flooring built around it so that it felt in-ground. Against the only wall that was without windows were a few doors to what I assumed were bathrooms. Between two of the doors was a bar built into the wall, which was where we found Charlotte and Brendan, already mixing drinks.
“What’ll you have?” Brendan asked as I took a seat beside Charlotte.
“Just water is fine, thanks.”
“Get me a beer, will you?” Chris asked from behind me.
Brendan tossed him a bottle and Chris popped the top off of it on the edge of the bar counter. I felt like maybe he was trying to impress me a little, but I had zero romantic interest in him. Not that he wasn’t attractive; he was. He looked like his brother, but a little broader, like he played football or something of that nature. But I wasn’t interested because I wasn’t looking for anything. If I couldn’t be with Jude because I didn’t know who I was, I certainly couldn’t casually date anyone else.
I watched as Brendan tapped a few buttons on the wall and the pool house transformed from a brightly lit room to being dimmed, with the lights in the pool the brightest and lights under the bar top being the only light to guide us around the pool house. Music poured from three wall-mounted speakers above the bar and Charlotte clapped gleefully. In a different circumstance, I might’ve found it exciting too, but I had the feeling that I was on a double date of sorts with Brendan’s brother, and that made me itchy.
“There is a bathroom through here,” Brendan said, patting on the middle door. “Down there is a towel room, and it’s a bit warmer than in here, so you dry off quickly.
“What’s that room?” Charlotte asked, pointing to the third door at the other end.
“Storage and the water heater.”
“This is so nice, you guys.” I was glad Charlotte was doing all of the talking, because I definitely felt like I was on uneven ground around Chris.
“We know how to party,” Chris said behind me, and Brendan smiled at him. The look they exchanged made me feel a little uncomfortable, or at least more uncomfortable than I had already been feeling. “Help yourselves to whatever. I’m getting in the pool.”
And not three seconds later, he was jumping into the pool, sending water all over us and the windows.
“Come on,” Charlotte said, grabbing my hand and pulling me with her through the door to the bathroom. Once we were safely on the other side, Charlotte pulled her hair up into a high pony in the mirror. “Chris is cool, right?”
I narrowed my eyes, but not in annoyance. “Chris seems nice, sure.” I glanced back at the door for a second before turning to her again. “But I hope he’s not under the impression this is a date or something.”
“Don’t be silly,” Charlotte said, pushing loose strands of hair back and pinning them with bobby pins. “It’s not a date at all. We’re in their house, swimming at their pool.”
Her nonchalance didn’t ease me even the slightest, but she did have a point. “Okay. I just wanted to make sure he wasn’t expecting anything.”
“Even if he was, all you’d have to do was say no.”
She made it sound easy, like words had that much power. But I knew from experience that sometimes saying no wasn’t enough in the ears of someone else. “Okay,” was all I said to her instead.
“Take off your sweats and let’s go.”
Charlotte was thin, with the faintest trace of muscle definition in her stomach. Standing next to her really made me feel like a whale, which was why I was glad I’d opted for a tankini suit with shorts.
“What is this, the nineteen-twenties?” Charlotte asked as she tugged on the fabric that covered my stomach.
“Some of us aren’t as comfortable with ourselves,” I said, the bite of bitterness sharp even to my ears.
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