Maybe This Christmas

by Susannah Nix

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, tirades, opinions, exaggerations, prevarications, and dubious facts either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons—living, dead, or otherwise—is entirely coincidental.

  Maybe This Christmas. Copyright © 2019 by Susannah Nix

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without written permission from the author.

  FIRST EDITION: October 2019

  ISBN: 978-1-950087-03-7

  Haver Street Press | 448 W. 19th St., Suite 407 | Houston, TX 77008

  Edited by Julia Ganis, www.juliaedits.com

  Contents

  1. Alex

  2. Lucas

  3. Alex

  4. Lucas

  5. Alex

  6. Lucas

  7. Alex

  8. Lucas

  9. Alex

  10. Lucas

  Acknowledgments

  Check out REMEDIAL ROCKET SCIENCE

  About the Author

  Other Books by Susannah Nix

  On Sale Now: FALLEN STAR

  One

  Alex

  December 25, 2010

  She could see the campfire from the parking lot, with two dozen or so people milling around it. The party was in full swing already; she was one of the last to arrive.

  Alex got out of the car she’d borrowed from her mom—a 1997 minivan they’d had since she was five—pulled on her denim jacket, and walked down to the sand. A nearly full moon hung in the sky overhead, casting a silvery glow over the Gulf of Mexico.

  The sound of laughter reached her over the crashing of the waves, and she stopped for a moment to watch her friends. They’d been spending Christmas night together like this since their freshman year of high school, ducking out of family gatherings after the last of the Christmas dinner dishes had been washed and escaping to Pelican Beach at the east end of the island.

  This was the last Christmas she and her friends would all be together like this. After this year, everything would change.

  Alex had lived on Beaufort Island all her life, in the same mint green house on Bell Street with the same rusty porch swing. But in a few months she’d be leaving the Gulf Coast barrier island, along with most of her friends.

  It was their senior year of high school, and they were graduating in June. Over the next few months they’d find out what colleges they’d been accepted to and where they’d be going in the fall. Almost all of them would be leaving the island at the end of the upcoming summer, driving over the bridge to the mainland and setting off for bigger and brighter cities than their poky beach town.

  It seemed both a million years away and right around the corner.

  Someone had started singing a Christmas song—badly. Other voices joined in, mangling “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

  Then Lucas started singing. He stood out from the others because he had an incredible voice, like something you’d hear on America’s Got Talent. He was in theater with Alex, but he was also in choir, both at school and at his church. When Lucas started singing in his clear, pitch-perfect baritone, everyone else went quiet and quit goofing around.

  Lucas always had that effect on people. He gave off this quiet intensity that made people take him seriously. He never told anyone what to do—he wasn’t bossy or imposing—they just seemed to do whatever he wanted without being asked. Like he exuded natural leadership pheromones or something.

  The first time Alex had met Lucas O’Hara, she thought he was a dweeb, but only in the way that everybody’s a dweeb when they’re twelve. She’d also thought he was sort of cute, but in a boring, uptight, slightly dorky boy-next-door sort of way.

  That was six years ago, when they were in middle school, before she got to know him. Now she didn’t think he was the slightest bit boring, or uptight, or dorky. But she did still think he was cute.

  Alex listened for a minute, standing alone on the beach, unnoticed beyond the circle around the fire. When the song was over, she joined in the chorus of clapping and cheering as she stepped into the firelight.

  Lucas walked toward her with his arms flung open wide. “Alexandra!” He was the only person on earth besides her grandmother who could call her by her full name and live to tell the tale.

  Alex met him halfway, and he wrapped her up in a hug that lifted her off the ground. He was taller than she was now, which felt strange because they used to be the same height. Last year he’d had a big growth spurt and shot up from five seven to five eleven. Puberty was a hell of a thing.

  Lucas spun her around twice, then set her back down in the sand, giving her arms one last squeeze before letting her go. Gabby hugged her next, and then Linh. All of Alex’s best friends were here: Chris, and Oscar, and Farley, and some others who weren’t best friends but were still friends. They were her people.

  Someone put a beer in her hand, and someone else turned on some music. Gabby dragged Alex over to an empty pair of camp chairs, near where Oscar’s younger sister Ana was making s’mores.

  “Did you have trouble getting away?” Gabby asked over the Neon Trees song blaring out of the speakers.

  “Not much,” Alex answered. Her mother always looked aggrieved when she left the house on Christmas Day, but Alex’s sister was old enough now to want to go out with her friends too.

  They’d both stuck around long enough to help with the cleanup and watch A Christmas Story, as was their family tradition. Alex’s dad had been snoring in his chair and Mia had already left to go to a movie with her friends when Alex’s mother had reluctantly surrendered the keys to the minivan.

  “Chris wouldn’t come out until the Cowboys game was over.”

  Gabby and Chris were twins, but their similarities ended at their superficial physical resemblance. Chris was the star quarterback of the football team, the first black student council president in the history of their high school, and as extroverted as they came. Gabby played cello in the school orchestra, hated PE class, and was much quieter and less outgoing than her popular brother.

  Ana handed Alex a s’more. Alex was still full from her mother’s pecan pie, so she passed it on to Gabby. Nearby, Linh and Oscar were talking about the SAT. They both wanted to go to Texas A&M—Oscar for engineering and Linh for veterinary medicine.

  Everyone had spent most of November and December scrambling to get their college applications in—except Ana, who was only a sophomore. Gabby was applying to music schools and Chris was applying to all the top football schools. Farley was probably headed to Yale like his lawyer father.

  Alex and Lucas were the only ones who didn’t have a clear idea of what they wanted to do. She was applying to a bunch of schools around the state, and even one or two long shots farther away, but it was hard to pick a top choice when you didn’t even know what you wanted to study.

  Unlike most of her other friends, Alex had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up. All she knew was she wanted to get out of here and see the world. To live somewhere other than the mint green house on Bell Street with her parents.

  Freedom. A change of scenery. New experiences.

  She couldn’t fucking wait. Not that she wasn’t wistful about losing all her friends, but she was also excited to get the hell out of here.

  Lucas was in the same boat as far as college applications and life aspirations went. They’d talked about it, just the two of them, when the others weren’t around. How weird it felt not to have a preference, and how almost anywhere would be an improvement over staying in Beaufort.

  They were applying to all the same schools. Secretly, Alex hoped they’d end up at the same
place. They hadn’t said that part out loud to each other, but she was pretty sure Lucas felt the same way.

  Alex didn’t really have a best friend so much as she had a best friend group. But if she was forced to choose just one person to be her desert island best friend, she’d definitely choose Lucas.

  He was the friend she felt closest to, and the one who seemed to understand her better than anyone else. She drove him to school every morning and back home after drama rehearsals every evening. They spent a lot of time talking and texting, just the two of them—more time than she spent with any of her other friends.

  She hadn’t planned it that way, but that was how it had worked out. Because they were in drama together, but also because they happened to have a lot of the same classes. It was just the way their schedules had shaken out. Linh was in Bio II and Chem II this year, and Oscar was in Honors Calc and Physics II. Both of Chris’s electives went to football, while Gabby’s went to orchestra and an independent music study period. Farley was in drama with Alex and Lucas and had used his other elective for yearbook because he said it was a good way to meet girls.

  Alex and Lucas had both had a free elective this year after Drama IV, so they’d decided to take Photography I together, just for the hell of it. They hadn’t learned a thing about photography, but they got to spend a lot of time roaming around the school during sixth period on the pretense of taking pictures.

  “Look at those two.” Gabby pointed across the fire, to where Oscar was sitting in the sand talking to a junior named Sarah. Alex didn’t know Sarah very well, but she was pretty and seemed really into talking to Oscar. They were leaning toward each other, and Oscar’s arm was almost-but-not-quite around her. “Do you think he likes her?” Gabby asked.

  Alex looked at Gabby, narrowing her eyes. “What if he did?”

  “Maybe he’ll ask her to prom.”

  “Maybe you should ask him to prom.”

  Gabby snorted. “Yeah right.”

  “Just admit you like him, Gabs. And then go over there and do something about it.” Gabby had been acting weird about Oscar for months, but refused to admit there was anything going on.

  “We’re just friends.”

  “Sure you are,” Alex said. “But you could be more than just friends.” Oscar was cute, and sweet, and smart. He’d be perfect for Gabby.

  She bit down on her bottom lip. “I don’t think he wants that. I think he likes Sarah.”

  Alex looked over at Oscar again. “Or maybe he’s only talking to her to be polite, while secretly wishing he was talking to you.”

  “If he wanted to talk to me, he could come over here and do it.”

  “This is Oscar we’re talking about. He doesn’t know how to talk to a girl he likes. Remember when he tried to invite Jessica Bucek to his birthday party and ended up spilling a forty-ounce Coke all over the both of them?”

  “He’s not having any trouble talking to Sarah,” Gabby pointed out.

  “Which tells me he doesn’t actually like her. I’ll bet if you went over there he’d get all tongue-tied and clumsy.” Sarah was pretty, but she wasn’t nearly as pretty as Gabby. Oscar would have to be crazy not to like Gabby.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Why?” Alex asked.

  “Because if he doesn’t like me like that, it will ruin our friendship.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “It does,” Gabby said, “because if I find out for certain he doesn’t like me, I won’t be able to be friends with him anymore.”

  Alex wanted to tell Gabby to be brave and tell Oscar how she felt anyway, that she’d never know unless she tried, and wouldn’t it be sad if they were both silently pining over each other all year but never said anything, and then they graduated and Oscar went to College Station and Gabby went off to San Francisco or New York or wherever had the best music school for cellists, and they missed their chance?

  But Alex didn’t say any of those things, because she understood exactly what kept Gabby from doing it. She knew just how terrible it would be to offer your heart to someone only to find out they didn’t want it, and how you’d never be able to go back to being friends after a rejection like that, and maybe it was better to never know if you could have had more than to ruin the good thing you already had.

  So Gabby and Alex stayed where they were, drinking their beers and watching Farley dance and sing along to a Katy Perry song. Farley was such a goofball, hamming it up, he made them both laugh despite themselves.

  “Like a G6” came on next and Chris joined in. Chris was a much better dancer than Farley. He had an athlete’s grace and command of his body, not to mention actual talent, whereas Farley was just clowning around. Farley was always clowning around.

  Soon a bunch of people were dancing with them: Lucas and Oscar and Linh and Ana. When Pink’s “Raise Your Glass” started up they all sang along, even Alex and Gabby, because who could resist singing along with that song?

  After a while, when the singing and dancing died down, Lucas came over and stood beside Alex. “You want another beer?” he asked.

  She tilted her mostly empty can of Lone Star. “Not really.” She’d have to drive herself home, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she was staying.

  “Do you want to walk down by the water?” Lucas asked, and Alex’s heart gave a traitorous squeeze inside her chest.

  “Okay.” She tossed her beer can at the trash as she followed Lucas down the beach to the water’s edge.

  It wasn’t too cold tonight. Christmas on the Gulf Coast was unpredictable, and could vary from shorts weather to freezing temperatures, but tonight it was only a brisk fifty degrees with the wind coming off the water.

  “How was your Christmas?” Lucas asked.

  “Fine.” Alex’s sister had gone into a sulk because she hadn’t gotten the exact model of hair straightener she wanted, her mother had been snippy and stressed because the oven thermostat was on the fritz, and her father had mentally checked out as soon as they’d finished opening presents this morning. So pretty much exactly like every other Christmas. “How was yours?”

  “Good.” Lucas stopped where the sand was wet and flat, and gazed out at the dark waves. “It’s always good.”

  His light brown hair formed a perfect curl at his hairline, right in the middle of his forehead, and Alex wanted so badly to run her fingers through it. She always wanted to run her fingers through it, but had never worked up the courage. It felt a little too intimate. That wasn’t how they normally touched each other.

  They were both quiet for a few minutes, gazing out at the lights of the shrimp boats and container ships that twinkled along the horizon, and listening to the roar and crash of the waves in front of them. Alex could barely hear the music playing at the campfire from here. She wondered if there was a reason Lucas had brought her down here. He seemed uneasy. Nervous, even, which was odd. Lucas was never nervous. He didn’t even get stage fright on opening night.

  “Is everything okay?” she asked him.

  He turned to look at her, and in the moonlight his blue irises seemed to sparkle. “Yeah.” He gave her a smile that was a little too wide. “Everything’s great.”

  “Liar.” She could always tell when he was lying. It was one of her only talents. He didn’t lie very often; he was a freakishly honest person in general. Mostly he only lied about himself, and only when he was feeling something he didn’t want to talk about.

  “How do you always do that?” he said, laughing as he shook his head.

  Lucas might be the closest thing Alex had to a best friend, but she wasn’t certain he felt the same way about her. Everyone seemed to be Lucas’s best friend. He had a way of making whoever he happened to be with at the moment feel special. He was an equal opportunity best friend.

  But maybe…

  Maybe Alex was at the top of his list the way he was at the top of hers, and that was why he’d asked her to take a walk away from the others.

&nb
sp; She dug a hole in the sand with the toe of her tennis shoe, and watched it fill up with water while she waited for him to tell her what was on his mind.

  “I guess I’m feeling a little wistful about the fact that this is our last year,” he said after a while.

  “I am too,” Alex admitted.

  He looked at her again, and this time his smile was relieved. “I knew you would be.”

  She tried to put a positive spin on it. “But it’s exciting too. We’re all going off on new adventures.”

  “Yeah.” He looked down at his feet and kicked a shell into the frothing water. “I guess it feels like this is the last time we’re all going to be together like this.”

  “We have months left of school, and then all summer before everyone leaves. Piles of time. Eons, practically.”

  “I know. But next Christmas everything will be different. We won’t be together like this ever again.”

  “Sure we will. Everyone gets a winter break. It’s like a month long at most schools. We’ll all be right back here next year. You’ll see.”

  “But it won’t be the same,” Lucas said. “College changes you. Everyone will be different when they come back.”

  “I won’t,” Alex said, because it seemed like what he needed to hear. “I’ll be exactly the same. Always.”

  “Promise?”

  “Sure.”

  Lucas was looking at her intently, and it was making her uncomfortable. Because when he looked at her like that, it was impossible to ignore his mouth.

  He had a beautiful mouth. If she was more artistic, she’d want to sketch it. She’d actually tried, once, but it had come out looking like two bananas sixty-nining, which wasn’t at all what she’d been going for.

  Lucas’s lower lip was full and just a little bit pouty, but not so much that he seemed sullen. As great as that was—and it was truly great—his upper lip was her favorite. It had this amazing curve to it, like something from classical art. It was the kind of curve YouTube makeup videos tried to teach you how to fake with pencils and foundation. But Lucas didn’t use pencils and foundation. He was just born that way, with a perfect curve and a hint of pucker. It was the kind of mouth that screamed to be kissed.