In a Holidaze

by Christina Lauren

  “Let’s move on,” I say, pushing forward.

  Andrew laughs. “Okay, good idea.”

  “You can travel anywhere, where do you go?”

  He doesn’t even have to think about this conversational pivot: “Budapest. You?”

  “Besides here?”

  Andrew rolls his eyes. “Yes, besides here.”

  “Okay, fine.” I mentally scroll through postcard images of various locations, feeling vaguely uninspired by my own game. “No idea. Maybe Hawaii?”

  “You have the entire world to choose from and you go to Hawaii?”

  “What’s wrong with Hawaii?”

  He shrugs. “It just feels so easy. What about Tahiti? Mallorca?”

  “Sure, they sound nice.”

  Andrew laughs. “Okay, it’s settled. With that attitude, I’m in charge of all of our future travel.”

  The words settle heavily between us, and we both go still.

  “I made it weird,” he says finally, grinning over at me.

  I burst out laughing, relieved that this time it wasn’t me. “You totally did.”

  Our laughter dies away and silence engulfs us. I don’t know how to read the mood. I told him how I felt, giving him an opening to reciprocate, but he didn’t. And yet… there’s a strange understanding blooming between us.

  “Okay, I have an idea,” he says. “No speaking for five minutes. Let’s just look up at the tree together.”

  “And hope we don’t get our faces eaten off.”

  He bursts out laughing again and then wipes a hand down his face, saying playfully, “God. Why can’t you ever be serious?” He wipes at his eyes. “Okay. Five minutes.”

  I follow his lead and focus on the tree. “Five minutes.”

  As odd an idea it is, it’s also brilliant. It saves me from having to think about what to say, which is good, because my mind is a mortified blank sheet of nothing.

  For the first thirty seconds or so, I feel like I’m drowning in the sound of everything else in the room and the contrasting quiet between us. But then the stilted awareness dissolves, and I can focus on the lights, the dangling gold ornament just to my right, the laminated picture of Theo and Andrew as little kids hanging on the branch nearby. I can focus on his warm, easy presence next to me. Andrew’s arm presses along the length of mine and we just lie like that, breathing in tandem.

  His stomach growls, and it makes me giggle again, and he shushes me. I turn to look at him, and he’s already looking at me, and with a knowing twinkle in his eyes, he lifts his finger to his lips and whispers, “No talking. I just want to be under the tree with you.”

  chapter fifteen

  December twenty-second. Still here.

  And today’s theme—Sled Day—is my favorite. Unfortunately, I can imagine a million ways the universe might give me a failing grade and send me back to the start: An enormous tree branch on my head. A boulder thrown in my path. Comedic music as a backdrop while the camera captures me—the lone holiday tourist—caught at the center of an avalanche.

  With trepidation, I set my feet onto the cold basement floor.

  The house is quiet as I shuffle across the kitchen to stand in the window—my breath fogs up the cold glass in front of me. The gently falling flakes from last night transitioned into a full-blown storm while we slept, and the world has turned wintry white. Trees bow under the weight of fresh snow. The mountains wear sparkling, powdery caps. I’d never get tired of this view.

  Lisa’s cookie bars are still on the counter, so I pick up the plate and dump them straight into the trash, covering the evidence with yesterday’s coffee grounds, and start a fresh pot. What do I have to lose?

  On a roll now, I get breakfast started. Why wait for Mom to get up?

  The smell of coffee and cooking meat is like a siren call and people slowly tumble in. Soon the TV is on in the other room, the theme music to How the Grinch Stole Christmas! filtering through the house.

  “Thank you for getting this started, honey.” Mom pulls her hair back into a bun, slips on her Mrs. Claus apron, and takes the wooden spoon from my hand, wordlessly telling me that she’ll take it from here.

  When I stand over the sink, I see Andrew already outside and shoveling the driveway. He’s got a beanie tugged low over his hair but even from here I can see his cheeks flushed against the cold, the way his coat stretches across his back. The coat is thick, but I can easily imagine the way his muscles shift with the effort he’s taking to dig the shovel beneath heavy piles of—

  “Mae, honey, can you hand me the—oh.”

  I startle, turning to find my mother standing beside me. “What? What’s ‘oh’?”

  She struggles to look oblivious. “Nothing. Just needed”—she grabs a spatula from the drying rack—“this.”

  “I was just looking at the view while I clean up.”

  “Of course.”

  I turn on the water, rinse a clean dish again. “It’s pretty out.”

  She lifts a brow and glances at the window. “It is pretty.”

  I give her a look. Indulging my mother in this kind of thing will only lead to disaster. “The snow.”

  Feet shuffle behind us, and a groggy Theo mumbles, “Did it snow?”

  “It did.” Mom looks at Andrew once more, and then gives me a playful smirk before walking away. When I turn back to the window, Andrew is looking up at the house, and when our eyes meet, he throws a cheeky little wave.

  My face flushes and I return the wave before turning off the faucet. I have no idea if he caught me watching him, or if I just caught him watching me, but my heart is pounding. No matter what he said last night, I don’t think we’re going back to normal anytime soon.

  * * *

  I’m sure no mother alive would be surprised by how long it takes us to get out of the house. Is every family such a mess? Miles walks in on Aaron in the shower and slips on the bathmat in an attempt to flee. Kyle can’t find his boots. Ricky can’t find his keys. Kennedy doesn’t like pants, and Theo gets sidetracked looking for WD-40 in the basement because his truck door is squeaking. When we’re all finally ready, we pile into our small caravan of vehicles for the short drive up the mountain. Once we step out of the cars, the wind is bitingly cold; we’re no longer protected by the thick trees near the cabin. In the end, Kennedy is glad she wore pants.

  Bundled head to toe, we hop on the ski lift and watch as the trees and sledders on the slopes grow smaller and smaller beneath us. It snowed way more up here than in the valley, and the view is glorious. The sky is crystal blue, and the air is clear and smells like cold and pine, the storm having knocked down any lingering haze.

  The wind at the top is brutal, and we all bend into it as we negotiate who is sledding with whom. Dad hovers, waiting for me to climb on board with him, but the truth is that I’m pretty sure he wants off the hook anyway.

  Dad is a terrible sled partner. He can drive a car as capably as the next guy, but he’s like a nervous grandmother on the sled. Reactive and anxious and jittery. More often than not we end up tumbling over sideways, which makes Dad feel justified in his trepidation. We’ll spend the rest of the descent slowly scooting our way down the mountainside, with Dad’s heels dug into the trail and his hand liberally working the brake, while other sledders get run after happy-screaming run down the slope.

  With Kyle standing to the side, already shivering in his one thousand layers of clothing, I decide to channel Fuck-It Mae.

  “Dad, do you really want to do this?” I ask.

  “Of course,” he says, unconvincingly.

  “You don’t even like sledding.” I point to a teeth-chattering Kyle. “Why don’t you two go hang out in the lodge?”

  Kyle shuffles closer. “Did someone say ‘lodge’?”

  Dad frowns at me. “Don’t you like sledding together, Noodle?” But it’s a half-hearted guilt trip at best. The idea of being in the lodge instead—hanging with Kyle and drinking spiked cider near a roaring fire—has quickly capture
d him.

  I lift my chin. “Go.”

  They don’t need to be told twice: Dad and Kyle hop on the ski lift and head back down the mountain toward warmth, food, and booze.

  Miles is already off, flying down the hill solo. Mom and Lisa are riding together. Aaron has Kennedy, Ricky has Zachary, and a quiet hush falls over the ten-foot radius around me, Andrew, and Theo as we do the math: there are two sleds remaining, one single-rider and one two-person.

  These guys are both well over six feet tall; they couldn’t share a sled even if they wanted to. At five foot five, I know I’m going to ride with one of them, and usually I’d ask Theo to go with me because I would be nonverbal with nerves if I rode that closely with Andrew.

  But now, the thought of settling between his spread legs, of his arms banded around my waist and his breath in my hair doesn’t make me nervous. It makes me hungry.

  How does it make Andrew feel, though? Yes, he followed me under the tree last night, and yes, he seemed to like being there. But the very last thing I’d ever want to do is put him in an awkward position, now that he knows how I feel.

  Before I can offer to go with Theo, Andrew steps forward, grabbing the rope for the two-person sled and giving me a little waggle of his brows. “Wanna ride with me, Maisie?”

  I require no arm-twisting. “I do.”

  If Theo is at all annoyed, it doesn’t show, because he jumps in front of a couple in their twenties, hops on his sled, and takes off down the slope with a whoop. Thank God.

  Andrew drags me out of my thoughts. “Why aren’t you wearing a hat?”

  I reach up, touching my hair. “Shit.” I left it in the car. Not only is it insanely cold out, but my coat doesn’t have a hood. Once we hit full speed on the sled, my ears are going to turn into icicles.

  Andrew pulls his from his head and tugs it down over mine, but I protest. “Mandrew, you don’t have to give me yours.”

  He lifts his hood up and grins at me. “My lice will like your hair better anyway.”

  “Gross.” I lean in to plant a thank-you kiss on his cheek, connecting with the soft, chilly stubble there.

  I’m suddenly glad that Theo is already halfway down the mountain, that my mom isn’t here to give me her little raised eyebrow, and that the people behind us have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.

  I pull back and he grins at me, but suddenly there’s an obvious awareness there, because while I hug him all the time, I don’t kiss him that often. Now I don’t know where to look. My gaze wants to sink to his mouth, but that would be a terrible choice because I worry it’d be stuck there, immobile. Too late. His lips are red from the wind, full like usual, totally fascinating. When I drag my attention back up to his face, Andrew’s eyes seem extra bright out here, more intense than usual.

  “What was that for?” he asks.

  “The hat?”

  “Well, for the record, I’m always here for kisses.”

  Pardon?

  He breaks the tension and sits down, sliding to the back of the sled and patting the space between his legs. My pulse trips. “Climb aboard, Maisie.” Andrew looks up at me, and my heart does an aching nosedive. “There are adventures to be had.”

  It was one thing to hug him, but it’s an entirely different experience sliding between his strong legs, feeling one of his arms around my waist and the low vibration of his voice in my ear.

  “Ready?”

  No.

  I nod, leaning back just a little, and Andrew releases the brake, lifts his feet to bracket my calves, and pushes off with his free hand. We work together, humping the sled forward in a way that makes me want to explode in embarrassment because it is beyond sexual, but then we are gaining speed, sliding faster and faster down the hillside.

  His arm tightens around me, and without thinking I grab on to his legs, holding them tight, leaning back into him. I can feel the sturdy weight of his body behind mine, the way he grips me with his thighs. I’ve always known Andrew to be kind, generous, and playful. But the way he engulfs me on the sled makes me aware of his physical strength and brawn. A flash of an image tears through me: Andrew’s bare legs, his stomach clenched, head thrown back in pleasure.

  I nearly swallow my tongue, brought back to the present only when he calls out happily in my ear, whooping and laughing as we really start flying down the slope. There’s none of the uncertainty I feel sledding with Dad, none of that unbalanced sensation that we could tip at any time. With Andrew behind me I feel safe, balanced, and centered. I want the ride to last forever.

  “You good?” he shouts above the whipping wind.

  “Yeah!”

  A small pause, and even though we are surrounded by the screams of other sledders, the sound of wind, and the ski lift, I can almost hear his breath catch.

  “I’m gonna say something,” he calls above the fray.

  I squint into the bright sun, and we lean to the side in unison to steer our sled around a sapling. “Okay!”

  His mouth comes right up beside my ear. “After what you said last night, I thought you were going to kiss me back there. Really kiss me.”

  It’s my turn to lose my breath. I can’t turn around and look at him, can’t read his tone.

  “Like on the mouth?” I call out over my shoulder, but my voice disappears into the wind as we go screaming down the mountain.

  Andrew leans forward, spreading his hand across my side, pulling me closer into his body. When he speaks, he sounds breathless. “Yeah, on the mouth.”

  I stare ahead of us, and the figures on the slope start to blur. My eyes water with the cold wind.

  His voice is quieter, but everything else has fallen away somehow, and I can hear him perfectly. “You’ve never been for me, Maisie. I never knew you were an option.”

  “What do you mean?”

  We hit a bump and veer to the left, and his fingers tighten at my waist. When we straighten out, he doesn’t let go; if anything, he tightens his grip, pulling closer and wrapping more of his arm around me. His fingers curl, brushing just under my jacket.

  His breath comes out warm against my neck, voice shaking: “It never occurred to me that you might be mine.”

  chapter sixteen

  Two hours later and the impact of that first ride down the slope still hasn’t dimmed; I hear it—It never occurred to me that you might be mine—as clearly as if Andrew’s said it again right into my ear, even though he’s sitting next to me at the basement card table and not holding me tight as we sprint down a mountain.

  For the first hour of the sledding trip, I didn’t feel even the slightest bit cold. I was a campfire inside, a roaring inferno. Eventually, though, my fingertips went numb and my butt was almost dead from the chill of the wooden sled beneath me. Now back in the cabin, we’ve holed ourselves up in the basement—Theo, Miles, Andrew, and me—to escape the cloying heat of the roaring fire upstairs, as well as the roaring cackles of our parents engaging in some preholiday day-drinking and catching up.

  Theo shuffles a deck of cards absently while we all decide what we’re in the mood to play. Under the table, a socked foot finds mine, and the other foot comes around it, gently trapping me in a foot-hug. A careful peek belowdecks tells me it’s Andrew, and I suddenly feel like I’m wearing a wool sweater in Death Valley. Clumsily, I reach down, tugging my sweater up and over my head. It gets tangled in my hair clip, and Andrew has to shift forward to help extract me.

  It means that he pulls his feet away, and once I’m free, I catch him biting back a knowing smile.

  “Thanks.”

  He holds my gaze. “You’re welcome.”

  I take a few deep drinks of my sparkling water to cool this ridiculous fever. You’d think I’d never been touched by a man before, good God.

  Looking at me from beneath his lashes, Andrew reaches up, scratching the back of his neck.

  “Today was fun,” Miles says, and tries to take Theo’s beer, but is instantly smacked away. “I’m glad you talked Dad into
just heading for the lodge. If I had to ride with Mom this year, I think I would have bailed.”

  “Thanks for taking one for the team and sledding with Mae,” Theo says to Andrew, and then smirks at me. “Worst sled steerer ever.”

  I glare. “Hey.”

  Andrew gives a magnanimous shrug. “I’m a humanitarian.”

  I smack him. “Hey.”

  His eyes sparkle when they meet mine, and the smiles fade into that same buzzing awareness. I finally blink down to the table. We rode the slope about six times, and I guess I’m grateful that nothing was as loaded and heavy as that first ride down, because I probably would have had some internal combustion issue and ended up back on the plane from a heart attack. There was plenty of Andrew being Andrew: he sang terrible opera on one trip, swore he closed his eyes the whole way down on another, and said hello to every other sledder we passed on a third, but it was just normal again. Which I loved, and hated.

  Turns out, where Andrew is concerned, I apparently like heavy and loaded.

  “We need to call ourselves something other than ‘the kids,’ ” I say, breaking the quiet. Theo sets down the deck of cards in the middle of the table. “ ‘The kids’ are the twins now.”

  “Aren’t the twins ‘the twins’?” Miles asks.

  “We could be called the ‘kid-ups,’ ” I suggest, laughing, and Andrew beams over at me, thrilled with this suggestion.

  Andrew slides the deck of cards closer to him, tapping, shuffling. I watch his fingers, trying not to think about his hands and how big they are. He has long, graceful fingers. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a man’s nails before unless they were dramatically unmanicured, but Andrew’s are blunt, clean, not fussy. I think I’d like to see those hands roaming and greedy all over my bare skin.

  Theo clears his throat and my attention flies away from Andrew’s fingers, guiltily.