Together for Christmas

by Lisa Plumley

  Unsteadily, he put down his beer bottle. He whipped out his cell phone. He poked at the menus. He waved his phone in their faces. “Look. That’s her. She’s beautiful. See?”

  Walden and Talia both looked at the photos he’d offered.

  After the first three, Talia recoiled. “Yikes!”

  But Walden only nodded knowingly. “Nice! I especially like that one where Heather’s wearing a bathrobe and pink calamine lotion on her face.” Appreciatively, he took another look. “And that one, where she’s laughing at the TV and dribbling popcorn.”

  Fondly, Alex looked at the photo. “Yep. I love it. It’s so ‘her,’ you know what I mean? It just makes me smile.”

  He and Walden both nodded. Talia crossed her arms.

  “You two are nuts, you know that?” She chanced another glance at the photo Alex was brandishing. “If you had pictures of me looking like that,” she warned Walden, “I’d ditch you.”

  “Uh-oh.” Alex elbowed Walden, giving him a mischievous look. “Better not show her your cell phone, dude.”

  “Or my computer. That’s where I archive the videos.”

  “Yeah. I’m pretty sure every guy has a stash like that.”

  “What?” Talia shrieked, looking appalled. “I thought men’s ‘stashes’ were porn! You mean you’re secretly archiving all those ‘impromptu’ videos you take of me? But I don’t wear make-up or strike a cool pose or even look normal in some of them.”

  “That’s what makes you look real and lovable, baby.”

  Even as Walden said it, Alex was nodding in agreement.

  Talia shook her head. Then she glanced sideways, spied someone else in the party crowd, and hauled her over.

  “Heather, back me up,” Talia said to her newly grabbed compatriot. “Candid photos are the worst, right?”

  Caught in the midst of their conversation, Heather went still. She blinked at Talia, glanced at Walden . . . then saw Alex.

  While Heather gazed longingly at Alex, Walden hastily filled her in on the discussion so far. He ended with, “. . . but it’s all from a place of love, of course. Every guy knows that.”

  Eagerly, Alex nodded. His gaze never left Heather’s face.

  “I do love you, Heather!” he said. “I was scared you wouldn’t love me back, because I’m not famous or anything.”

  “Fame is overrated.” Looking giddy, Heather took his hand. “I’m planning to throw away mine, in fact. That’s item number three on my new to-do list.” She glanced at Alex’s cell phone photos. Admirably, she didn’t even flinch. “Do you think I can use some of those snapshots, now that I know what they’re for?”

  “Everything I have is yours,” Alex swore. “I love you.”

  Heather beamed. “I love you, too, amore mio.”

  Alex looked at her in confusion. “You speak Italian?”

  “I had to learn something new once I mastered all those Words of the Day,” Heather said with a shrug. “It turns out, I love knowing stuff! I can be smart. Thanks to you, I learned that about myself. Also,” she added, “‘learn Italian’ is number twelve on my new to-do list. I’m turning over a new leaf.”

  Happily, Alex kissed her. “Any way I can help with that?”

  “Only by being you,” Heather assured him fondly. “And by forgiving me for doubting you. Also, you could help me track down my sister. Because someone from the bank is here to give Kristen her new paperwork showing that her diner mortgage is in the clear.” She nodded toward a bespectacled man standing near the mulled cider bowl. “That’s Ernesto. He’s a very nice man.”

  As Walden, Talia, Alex, and Heather glanced toward him, Ernesto the Banker spotted them. He waved a big manila envelope.

  “Kristen will definitely want that paperwork,” Walden said.

  Talia agreed. Then she looked at Heather. “What did you mean, you’re going to throw away your fame?” she asked.

  “Oh, that.” Joyfully linking arms with Alex, Heather nodded. “Well, it turns out that my holiday TV special was so overbudget and behind schedule that there was just no way to make it work. So Shane and I talked about it, and we came up with a whole new plan!” She leaned conspiratorially nearer. “We’re breaking the news tomorrow. We’re going to broadcast an entirely new live performance—a real homecoming performance—streaming online, independent of the TV network and the production company and all the traditional media. I’ve already given back the money they gave me for my TV special to pay for the overages we ran up, because that’s item number four on my to-do list,” she went on. “I’ve decided it’s time to just have a little faith in myself—without all the fake stuff my management insisted on. Also, we’re going to sell DVDs ourselves afterward from my Website, for five dollars each.”

  Walden was surprised. “Five dollars? That’s pretty cheap.”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Heather agreed. “But I remember what it was like to be struggling financially. That was my real down-home background, growing up. I want to help out my fans. I want to restart my career in an authentic way, with no Auto-Tune, no lavish sets, and no fake outs. Just me singing.”

  While they all stared in amazement at her—having never heard anything quite so down-to-earth come from Heather’s mouth—the former diva herself spotted someone else in the crowd.

  “Whoops! There’s my mom and dad, talking to Kristen,” Heather said. “I have to go ask them something about their@Heather_Hotline Twitter account.” She stopped and looked at Alex. Then she kissed him. “Don’t go away, cutie. I’ll be back.”

  While Heather left, Alex mooned after her. Then he turned back to Walden and Talia with a sheepish grin. “She’ll be back!”

  “Yep,” Talia confirmed wryly. “That’s usually how love works. It’s hard to keep a relationship going otherwise.”

  “Aw, don’t be so hard on him,” Walden said, making his dreadlocks sway as he nudged his chin toward Alex. “He doesn’t know what’s hit him yet. I haven’t even told him about the secret guy code of always letting your girl win at board games.”

  “Hey.” Talia gave Walden a censorious look. “I totally smoked your butt at Scrabble the other night.”

  “Whatever you need to believe, baby,” Walden said. “Next you’ll be telling me that KATIPO really is a real word.”

  “It is!” Talia insisted. “It’s a poisonous spider native to New Zealand. I heard a comedian making a joke about it.”

  “Well, everybody knows all the best educations come from watching YouTube comedy videos,” Walden joked. “I stand corrected.”

  Then, because Walden knew he did stand corrected—and was only preserving his pride, which Talia generously allowed him to do—Walden gave his favorite Scrabble expert a wink, slapped Alex on the back, and went back to enjoying his first-ever Christmas in Kismet. And he couldn’t have been happier to be doing it.

  Kristen knew that something unusual was up when she glimpsed Heather barging over to where Kristen was talking with her parents at her Yuletide party at the diner. Because instead of just jumping in and dominating the conversation in the divalike way she usually would have done, Heather actually hung back for a second—with respect and consideration and absolutely no glam squad—and waited for a natural lull in the dialogue.

  Then Heather jumped in with both feet. But only to say . . .

  “Did you just tell Kristen you’re proud of me?” Heather blurted, gazing in apparent astonishment from their mom to their dad and back again. “I could have sworn I just heard—”

  “Of course we did,” their mom said. “We always do.”

  “We do always do that,” their dad agreed, nodding.

  “They really always do that,” Kristen added morosely. “Seriously. They cannot stop talking about how incredible you are. Have you not seen their bragtastic Twitter account?”

  “Yes, but—” Heather shook her head, clearly skeptical. “I thought that Twitter account was to repay me for all the trips and things I give you,” she said. “And I want you to
shut it down, by the way, because thanks for helping me and everything, but you deserve to enjoy your retirement. And the important thing is,” she went on breathlessly, “that all you ever say to me is how Kristen did this clever, amazing thing or that ingenious, talented thing, and how superproud you are of her!”

  Kristen gawked, not believing a word of it. “They do not.”

  “Oh, they do, too!” her sister said with a vehement nod. “They won’t shut up about their ‘smart, accomplished’ daughter.”

  Their parents shrugged. “You are smart and accomplished, Kristen,” their mom said. “So are you, Heather.”

  “We’re proud of both of you,” their dad added with another shrug. “And we’ll shut down that Tweety account tomorrow.”

  Kristen stared, dumbfounded. She’d been moping around all day, missing Casey, but frankly, this incredible news cheered her up. “Mom! Dad! You could have told me this! I thought you were only proud of Heather. You can’t shut up about her.”

  “Really?” Heather appeared strangely pleased. “They can’t?”

  “We’re proud! So what?” Their parents seemed befuddled. And a little bit harassed. “What’s wrong with that?”

  Kristen exchanged an awestruck look with Heather. She could tell that her sister was as stunned by this as she was.

  “I thought Kristen was your favorite,” Heather said.

  “I thought Heather was your favorite!” Kristen disagreed.

  But their parents only shook their heads. “Nobody is our favorite. But there’s no point giving you both big egos.”

  “You’re sisters,” their dad said with a definitive air. “You should get along. We didn’t want to make you feel competitive by comparing you with each other all the time.”

  “That’s how sibling rivalry takes root,” their mom explained with a knowledgeable tone. “I read it in a book.”

  In a book. Kristen had never wanted to host a book-burning bonfire more than she did in that moment. “So you just never mentioned to us, individually, how you felt about us?”

  “Well, not per se.” Their mom shot a baffled look at their dad. Then she shrugged, too. “You know we love you both.”

  In increasing astonishment, Kristen looked at Heather.

  “So you never did anything except praise the other one of us?” Heather echoed. “Whichever one of us wasn’t there?”

  Their dad frowned. “It got tricky sometimes, too, believe me! Times like now, when you’re both here . . . it’s impossible to know what to say.” He looked around. “When’s the Yahtzee start?”

  “When everyone is too blitzed to add up the die rolls,” Kristen said in a distracted tone, still astounded by this life-altering news. “Sketchy counting skills make Yahtzee more fun.”

  Heather nodded in agreement. For the first time in a long time, Kristen felt a groundswell of solidarity with her sister.

  Who knew that Heather had been struggling with feeling overlooked, too? Who knew that their parents hadn’t been ignoring Kristen’s accomplishments (if only to her face) not because they weren’t proud of her (as she’d feared) or wanted her to be more like their more celebrated daughter (as she’d really feared), but because they didn’t want to kindle sibling rivalry? As a strategy, Kristen thought, it was a major bust.

  For her entire life, she’d believed everyone wanted her to be like Heather. Because if even her own parents wanted that . . . who wouldn’t? If even the two people who knew and loved Kristen best didn’t accept her as she was . . . who would? she’d reasoned.

  But now all those doubts were reversed in an instant.

  Because Kristen didn’t care whether random newspaper reporters or paparazzi or strangers on the Internet thought she possessed an insufficient amount of “Heather-like awesomeness” (an actual quote she’d gleaned from reading reports of her one-and-only adventure accompanying Heather to the Grammys). She cared if the people she loved thought she was awesome. She cared if she thought she was awesome. And in most ways, she did.

  Feeling liberated, Kristen smiled.

  Then she gave her mom and dad two big hugs. “I sure wish we’d talked about this sooner!” she said with a laugh. “I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.”

  “Me too!” Heather exclaimed. Then she turned to Kristen with an intent look. “And speaking of heartache . . .”

  Oh no. This could be trouble. Kristen had confided in Heather about what had happened with Casey, of course, but so far, she’d avoided the inevitable pep talk and/or “snap out of it!” conversation that usually followed in the aftermath of a breakup. She had a feeling her luck had just run out.

  For all of Heather’s positive qualities, being reassuring was not among them. Frankly, she hadn’t faced enough obstacles in her life to be truly capable of empathy and encouragement.

  All but proving it, Heather’s eyes gleamed with zeal as she said, “There’s something I have to tell you about Casey!”

  Kristen held up her hands to ward off her sister’s dubious “sympathy.” “That’s okay. I’m fine with things now.”

  “You’re not fine,” her sister insisted, “and I know the reason. First of all”—inexplicably, she broke off to consult a handwritten list—“there’s the question of my sex tape.”

  Their dad blanched. “Let’s get more pie-in-a-jar!”

  “Yes, let’s!” their mom agreed, and they hurried away.

  Left alone with Heather amid the whirl of the party, Kristen eyed her sister. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I want to. It’s item number nine on my to-do list.”

  “You have a to-do list?”

  “Don’t look so surprised. It’s efficient.” With a brisk motion, Heather consulted it again. Then, “As I was saying, about my sex tape—Casey hasn’t seen it. I tested him.”

  Kristen crossed her arms. “You tested him?”

  Her sister nodded. “Yes. I gave him my accidental catchphrase from that dumb video, and he didn’t even blink.”

  Given Heather’s triumphant tone, Kristen could tell she was supposed to be impressed. But she was a little distracted by wondering . . . If she’d been so wrong about her parents, was she also wrong about Casey? Was she wrong about why he’d wanted to spend time with her? About how he truly felt about her?

  It was possible, Kristen realized, that she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions about Casey. Worried now, she gazed longingly toward the diner’s exit. If she left right this minute and drove to the regional airport in Grand Rapids, Kristen calculated, she could be on a plane to California by midnight.

  “Okay, good,” she told Heather. “I guess that means Casey passes my boyfriend litmus test with flying colors. Now I’ve—”

  “You don’t believe me,” Heather judged correctly, surprising her. “I get it. Fair enough. Watch this.”

  She turned to the closest male, a friend of Avery’s. In a breathless, seductive tone, Heather said, “Giddy up, cowboy!”

  To Kristen’s further surprise, the man reacted by opening his mouth in an O, turning bright pink, then scurrying away.

  “Sorry!” he blurted. “I’ve got to be somewhere private!”

  Kristen watched him leave in bafflement. But Heather wasn’t confused at all. “He has a boner,” she confided to Kristen. “So many men have watched that sex tape so many times that it has an immediate Pavlovian effect on them. They can’t help it.”

  “Oh, come on!” Kristen gestured. “Maybe he was thirsty!”

  “Casey didn’t even bat an eyelash. He hasn’t seen it.”

  Well. That kind of made Casey her dream man, Kristen realized, for an altogether unexpected reason. “Okay. Fine,” she said with a wave. “Not that it matters anymore, since—”

  Since I’m potentially flying to California to be with Casey right now, Kristen was about to say, to apologize for unfairly accusing him of things he probably never intended and maybe to try reconciling with him (if she was lucky) and maybe even to try kissing him, but her sis
ter interrupted her before she could.

  “It does matter! And there’s more.” Eagerly and seriously, Heather checked her to-do list again. “Did you know that Shane Maresca and Casey grew up in the same foster home? At least part of the time, until Shane was adopted by this family who—”

  “Yes, Casey told me about that,” Kristen said, beginning to feel impatient with Heather’s impromptu Oprah impression. She half expected her sister to thrust a microphone in her face and ask her to “share.” “Casey told me that Shane got what he wanted for Christmas one year, and he had a hard time getting over it. I guess that’s what caused the rift between them.”

  “That’s putting it mildly!” Heather exclaimed. “Do you know what it was that Casey wanted—and Shane got—for Christmas?”

  “Actually, I could just ask him.” Kristen hooked her thumb toward the diner’s exit. “I’m thinking of heading out to—”

  “A family!” Heather burst out in a sympathetic tone. “When Casey was fifteen, he wanted a family for Christmas. Apparently, he had it all planned out. When the adoption interviews came, Casey was going to say that all he wanted for Christmas was a home and family of his own—because it was true, and because I guess he was quite a charming, scrappy little bugger, even then, and he knew he could pull it off—but then during the interviews, Shane went first, and he stole Casey’s line.”

  Poor Casey. Kristen could just imagine him as a scrawny, needy, determined and inventive kid, believing and hoping he could ace an interview like that. After all, he was good with people. Breathlessly, she waited. “And? Then what happened?”

  “Oh, I thought you were on your way out someplace.”

  “Heather!”

  “Hey, transformation doesn’t happen overnight.” As though demonstrating that fact, Heather gave an impudent grin. Then she continued her story. “So then Shane got adopted into this superrich, ultra-swanky family and left the foster home forever, and Casey stayed behind—being teased by the other kids for choking at his interview. When the right moment came with his potential adoptive family, Casey couldn’t say a single word.”

  Aghast, Kristen stared at her. “That’s awful!”