“Oh, shit.” His face falls. “We’re moving too fast.” He runs a hand down his face. “We should have taken it slower last night. It was so good, though, and I was just—”
“It wasn’t only you. It was fast,” I admit, and his admission that it was good makes me hot all over again. “But it wasn’t too fast. I’d wanted to do that with you since I knew what sex was.”
A wicked smile pulls up one half of his mouth.
Sobering, I add, “I mean, it’s only too fast if…” I swallow. “If it’s just an over-the-holidays thing.”
He pulls back and looks genuinely hurt. “Is that a serious concern?”
“I don’t actually know, because you’re more private than Theo is about these things. But I’m definitely not like that.”
He toys with the strap of my tank top. “I would never do that with you, Mae. That’s not what this is.”
“This is complicated by a lot of things, but let’s start with the fact that our parents are best friends and we live hundreds of miles apart.” I chew my lip. “Sorry. I don’t mean to get all intense.”
“Are you kidding?” He bends at the knee so we’re eye to eye. “The only way to do this is to be open about it. Even if you feel like we didn’t move too fast last night, we definitely went from zero to sixty. Talk to me.”
I guess there’s no point delaying this conversation. “I know you want to tell everyone about us, but are you sure about that?” I slide my hand under the hem of his T-shirt, seeking warmth. He swallows a groan, and distracts me momentarily with a deep, searching kiss that makes an ache drop from my pounding heart into my navel. “I don’t want everyone to get overly invested before we even know what this is.”
From Andrew’s nod, I know I don’t have to explain myself. I grew up with a prime example of a relationship that didn’t work. Even the simplest of breakups can get messy, and I don’t want anyone here to feel forced to choose sides if this doesn’t work out perfectly right out of the gate.
Resting his lips just at the corner of my mouth, he says, “Then why don’t we just keep following this for a bit before we say anything to anyone? I’m so happy right now I feel hammered. But I’ll try to play it cool.”
The problem is, I don’t know how to do that, either. I’ve essentially handed my heart over to the person who’s had it on reserve for half my life, and I’m terrified that he doesn’t realize what he’s holding.
Footsteps come to a stop just a few feet away from where we’re hiding in the curtains, and Andrew goes still, eyes wide. My lungs turn to concrete.
“Hello, whoever is there,” Andrew says, wincing. “Was just, uh, checking this window lock.” As he reaches past me to rattle the lock, we stare wide-eyed at each other, probably both praying that it’s Kennedy or Zachary and we can pretend to be playing Sardines again.
But then a throat clears, and I have to admit neither of the twins would clear their throat and sound like a grown man.
“I know a good locksmith.”
Benny.
Andrew throws back the curtain, blowing out an enormous breath. “Oh, thank fuck.”
Benny laughs. “Should I even ask? What were you two doing in the curtain?”
I put a hopeful shine on my words: “Fixing locks?”
But Benny’s not having it. “Is that what the kids are calling it these days?”
“Making out,” Andrew says with a shrug. “But you are sworn to secrecy.”
“I feel like I’m carrying a lot of secrets lately.” Benny eyes me sideways.
Andrew notices and looks back and forth between the two of us. “What’s going on?”
I shrug like, Benny said it, not me.
“Mae’s going through some stuff.”
“Good or bad?” Andrew asks, turning to me, immediately concerned that I’m hiding something from him.
“Oh… I’d wager good,” Benny says, raising his eyebrows meaningfully at me.
Over Andrew’s shoulder, I give Benny the thumbs-up. Behind Andrew’s back, Benny does a dorky little dance of celebration. He stops abruptly when Andrew turns back to him. “But I was coming to warn you guys that Miles is looking for Mae.”
“And you knew to find us in the curtains?” I ask him.
Benny turns to leave and grins at us over his shoulder. “It was pretty easy to follow the giggles.”
* * *
I find my brother on the porch, sitting on the swing, scrolling through his phone. He looks up when he hears my footsteps and drops it into his jacket pocket, tucking his hands between his knees. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
It’s freezing out here, and fresh out of the shower, I feel like I’ve just stepped into a walk-in freezer. Teeth chattering, I cup one hand around my warm mug of coffee and use the other to zip my parka up to my chin.
“Benny said you were looking for me.”
Miles pauses, blushing, and in an instant I know what this is about. Why didn’t I see this coming?
I sit down next to him on the swing, bumping his shoulder with mine. “What’s up?”
“I was right last night, wasn’t I?” he asks, and then looks at me. My brother got our mother’s enormous eyes and he knows how to use them. He can make them round with innocence or narrow them in mischief. Right now, he winces a little, looking mortified to be asking me this but also, I know, hoping I won’t lie to him.
“Right about what?” I ask, wanting to be sure.
“That you and Andrew are hooking up.”
“Yes,” I say simply.
“Does Theo know?”
A defensive wave sweeps briefly over me. “No. And please don’t tell him. If we decide this is going anywhere, we’ll tell everyone ourselves.”
Miles nods at this and turns his eyes out to the snow-covered front yard. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing here?”
“Not really.”
“Because you know Mom will have no chill about this.”
The thing about moving home is that I went from independent adult back into kid mode. Mom still does most of the cooking because she loves it. She does most of my laundry because she uses the activity to unwind while she’s thinking about how to fix one of her paintings. Of course, I love these perks but they mean I can’t complain that she also never thinks twice before giving me her two cents on every aspect of my life.
“Trust me,” I say, “that is reason number one why I’m not saying anything yet.”
Miles takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I think Theo is in love with you.”
“What? No, he isn’t,” I say.
“How do you know?”
I laugh dryly. “Theo is used to everyone wanting him. I don’t. He’s the kind of guy who wants what he can’t have.”
I watch Miles absorb this information, and then he seems to understand, nodding slowly. “Okay. I just—I don’t want him to be upset.”
Kissing my brother’s temple, I tell him, “You’re a good boy.”
He pretends to be grossed out by this, pushing me away, but turns back before leaving. “Hang out with him today.”
“Why?”
“Because I think he misses you.”
chapter twenty-one
I suppose it’s fate, then, that Miles and Theo broke the bowl we always use to hold the scraps of paper for picking teams. Ricky grabs his cowboy hat instead and this time, when Theo’s name is pulled out, mine is the one that immediately follows. Andrew throws me a little womp-womp face, but I’ve got no doubt that he and Miles are going to crush the scavenger hunt; their team has the killer combination of Miles’s doe eyes and Andrew’s ability to charm a stranger into doing anything.
Which is good, because this year’s list is heavy on the video evidence, including:
A stranger singing “Jingle Bells”
A dog doing a trick
Someone reciting their Christmas list
A teammate performing an act of kindness
Theo comes over to me, ho
lding the list and smiling shyly, and it’s disarming. How can this self-conscious turtle be the same guy who licked my face and refused to talk to me the next morning? It’s impossible to reconcile. We used to text about everything—homework and school, his soccer practice and my art projects. He’d complain about the snow and I’d send him a photo of my mom’s garden, still in bloom. We haven’t done that for a really long time. I wonder if he misses it.
I really don’t want Miles to be right about this.
“Guess you’re stuck with me,” he says.
I smack his arm, laughing. Too high, Mae. Too fake. And Theo knows me too well for it to go over his head: he pulls back in mild suspicion. But he’s also not the kind of person to ask about it in front of everyone—or ask about feelings in general—so we’re left standing in awkward silence as the rest of the teams are formed.
And then we’re off—piling into Ricky’s van. Up front, Andrew puts on Nat King Cole’s Christmas album, and we all sing along badly, perusing our lists, making fun of Ricky driving like a grandpa, and already excitedly talking about how amazing dinner will be later.
We barrel into town, finding a parking spot in a small lot and tumbling out of the van and into our teams. With instructions to meet back at the van in two hours, Ricky releases us, reminding us to be polite, get permission before taking pictures of people, and “If you want to just give up now, that’s fine. Kennedy and I are going to win anyway.”
Theo turns his back to the rest of the group, and we form a two-person huddle. The feeling of being this close to him shouldn’t be weird—I know him just as well as anyone else in my life—but I can’t shake the heavy awareness. It isn’t just about hooking up with him in a past reality, or the fact that I’m now hooking up with his brother. It’s the layers of things that Theo doesn’t know, and the truth that I feel like I got to know him even better—and not for the best—the first time I lived this week.
He holds the list, scanning it with a finger. “We should start with the quick stuff. The candy cane prop,” he says, reading further. “A picture of us both wearing Santa hats. A picture of a moose on something.” He looks up at me. “These should be pretty easy.”
Especially since I know where to find most of these things, I don’t bother to add.
“Lead the way.” I smile up at him, but it’s forced. Everything feels forced between us. I hate it.
He turns, heading left from the van onto Main Street, and I look behind us to where Andrew and Miles are headed in the same direction, but crossing the street to give us some space. When our eyes meet, Andrew winks. It’s soothing, like water to a parched mouth, and the perfect reminder that even if we have to navigate this carefully, we get to navigate it together.
We kissed.
We had sex.
Things are really, really good.
I jog to catch up with Theo, linking my arm with his, feeling freshly buoyant.
“There she is,” he says, and grins down at me.
Before Park City became known as a popular skiing destination and home to the Sundance Film Festival, it was a mining town. Now nestled between two giant resorts, the small valley was discovered when soldiers stationed in nearby Salt Lake City set out through the mountains to find silver. When the railroad came through and word spread, it was flooded with prospectors in search of their fortunes.
Main Street still bears some resemblance to that old mining town, with old-timey storefronts and historic buildings, but instead of saloons and general stores the street is filled with trendy boutiques and restaurants, museums, and even a distillery. Park City is also money. With more tourists than residents in the area, the Hollises’ property is probably worth a fortune. No wonder they decide to sell.
Theo and I rack up a few easy photos for the hunt—a moose on a sweatshirt, a picture of a cowboy, a dreidel, a snowflake on an ornament. A photo of an object with the words Ho, Ho, Ho. We stop a couple on their way down the street and ask if they’d be willing to sing “Jingle Bells” for us. It takes a moment of awkward convincing, but thankfully they are game because I’ve already spotted Andrew and Miles getting video of at least four different people out on the street, and ahead of us, Ricky and Kennedy seem to be flying through their list. The benefit of having an adorable and precocious five-year-old as your partner.
It’s not even that I care about winning, but this activity is doing an amazing job of taking my mind off the increasingly shrill voice in my head telling me that everything is on the verge of falling apart.
I can’t quite put my finger on why that feeling is rising, but it is; that twinge of panic is growing. Yes, everything is different and for the better. But I’ve never trusted my own decisions, and when you get everything you’ve ever wanted, you don’t know exactly how to manage it. I wanted Andrew, but it isn’t as simple as kissing him and being happy. If there were only some indication, some wink from the stars that I’ve got it all sorted, I could maybe breathe. Right now, I just want to get through December 26—past the point where I’ve ever been before—before I can relax and know that everything is settled. That I’m here to stay.
With a few items checked off our list, Theo stops in front of one of the small shops. “I need to grab a couple of things for my parents.” I follow his attention to a window display filled with fancy cooking gadgets, spice mixes, and kitchen knickknacks.
Honestly, a kitchenware store seems like the last place he should be shopping for Lisa, but just down the block, I see Andrew duck inside a storefront. Without Miles—who’s probably doing some of his own late shopping. My heart grows three times in size. “I’ll just be down there.” I point. “I have some shopping to do, too. Meet me there in twenty?”
If Theo saw his brother go in, he doesn’t let any reaction show. With a little lift of his chin, he urges me to go, and it’s all I can do not to sprint to Andrew.
* * *
The window is lit up with an old feather Christmas tree and an assortment of antique toys. I step inside to a blast of warm air and holiday music, and make my way through aisles of retro electronics and worn furniture, stacks of old records and used kitchenware, searching for Andrew.
I find him in the back of the shop, turning an old record over in his hands to read the song list on the back.
“Hey, you.”
He turns, and when he grins, the world around us briefly glimmers golden.
“Hey.” Glancing around us first, he leans in and gives me a quick kiss. “How’s it going with Theo?”
“It’s fine,” I say, picking up a record out of the box he’s perusing. “A little tense. Not sure why.”
“Probably because you’re sleeping with his brother and he has no idea.”
I glow inside at the casual mention that we’re sleeping together, but guilt shadows the edges. “I feel like I’m lying to him.” And then I remember: “Oh. And Miles knows.”
“Knows we…?” Andrew looks mildly horrified and makes a vague sexual gesture.
Laughing, I say, “I don’t think he knows more than that we were kissing in the pantry.” Off Andrew’s look, I add, “Oh, come on. He’s seventeen, not seven. And he asked me point blank.”
Andrew gives a regretful wince. “Poor Miles.”
“He promised he wouldn’t say anything, but I feel like it’s just a matter of time before everyone figures it out.”
“Especially when I come visit you in Berkeley in a week because I can’t stay away from you.”
I beam up at him. “You what?”
“Maybe?” he says, grinning winningly. “Would that be weird?”
I bite my lip, shaking my head. “I feel like everything is about to change.”
“Yeah?”
“Miles is leaving for college in a few months. I’m going to have to find a new job.” I smile up at him. “Me and you.”
“We could brainstorm the job thing together,” he says. “What are you thinking?”
I shrug, gnawing my lip. “Something artistic. I
could freelance graphic design until I figure something out.”
“I could see if there’s anything we need at work,” he says. “Website stuff?” He shrugs, and it’s clear he has no idea how any of that works, but it’s endearing anyway. “I can ask.”
“That would be amazing.” I smile up at him. “I know I should be more nervous about not being employed, but…”
But it’s hard to worry when he’s right here. Every time I start to panic—about the time jumps, about my job, about telling my parents any of this—looking at him immediately calms me down. That has to mean something.
Almost as if he knows what I’m thinking, Andrew looks at me, eyes searching. He steps away from the records and turns, cupping the back of my head and pulling me into a kiss. My thoughts go from Oh, this is happening, to Oh, I need this man’s hands on me immediately.
He tilts his head, his tongue brushes mine, and he lets out a quiet, vibrating sound. Everything about the way I hear it and feel it and taste it reminds me how it felt to be totally immersed in him last night. I stretch, wanting to press as tight to him as I can, even though in the back of my mind, I’m scrambling to hold on to the filmy awareness that we’re in public and our families could be anywhere. His hands slide down my waist to my hips, and he pulls them flush to his before he seems to remember where we are, too, and shifts his hands away.
With his thumb brushing the underside of my jaw, he presses one final kiss to my lips and then pulls back, grinning. “Well, that got dirty fast.”
I swallow, feeling warm and definitely unsteady. “You almost just got laid in a souvenir shop.”
Andrew’s eyes flare and then he takes a deep breath, getting some physical distance. “Don’t tempt me.” He goes back to looking through the records. “I need a second to, uh…” He exhales slowly.
“Didn’t realize talking about our brothers would get you so worked up, Mandrew.”
He laughs. “I assure you, sweetheart, it’s your proximity.”
I absorb this and it feels like taking a hit of a drug. “Everything is so much better this time.”