Page 19

JOSH

I’ve decided to skip Christmas this year. Turns out I’m not in the mood, so I figured, fuck it, I’ll just eat junk food, watch movies, and be lazy, and honestly, that doesn’t sound too bad right now. I’ve been a hamster in a wheel for years, so doing nothing will be a novel experience.

Since I’m nothing if not committed, I spend the next two days in bed. I don’t even go outside because there’s way too much holiday cheer out there, so I’ll just order everything I’ll need to be delivered to my doorstep and stay put until January.

I get an occasional message from friends, but everybody’s busy with holidays, and a lot of those messages contain photos of people having fun and some form of season’s greetings, so eventually I just ignore it when my phone pings.

The only exception I make is when Beth FaceTime’s on the morning of the twenty-fourth.

“ Merry Christmas! ” she shouts with a wide smile. She holds out a glass of champagne and clinks it against the phone camera. She’s a bit too enthusiastic, possibly a bit tipsy, so some of it splashes on her phone.

“ Oh, shoot, ” she mutters, and then I can only see darkness and hear a whooshing sound, so my best guess is she’s drying the phone against her clothes.

She’s back on screen thirty seconds later.

“ Saved the day, ” she announces happily. “ Merry Christmas. ”

I grin at her. “I’m pretty sure it’s the twenty-fourth still?”

“ We went out with Tim’s high school buddies. I’m a wee bit drunk, and now I live in the moment and do what I want. Why are you still in bed? ”

I flop down on my back. “Because there’s no school today, Mom.”

She grins. “ What’s the plan? ”

I shrug. “You know. Hang out and stuff.”

“ Deliah and Steve said they asked you to go to their place, but you haven’t answered. ”

I saw the message, but I haven’t figured out yet how to say I’m not in the mood without coming off as pathetic.

Beth tilts her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “ What’s up? ”

Instead of going with something normal and vague like ‘Nothing much,’ I blurt out, “Gabriel kissed me.”

A great choice considering since that’s information I should keep to myself, and also there’s the tiny, little fact that it didn’t really happen.

There’s a moment there when I think the call has frozen because Beth doesn’t move at all.

“Beth?” I say after a little while. “You still there?”

Her eyes are still narrowed. “ Just trying to puzzle out how that happened. Did you two finally figure out all that hate you have reserved for each other is actually unresolved sexual tension? ”

I start to deny that, but then I shut my mouth.

Is it?

Fucking hell, you two didn’t kiss. It was all in your head!

“There’s unresolved sexual tension?” I repeat, because I’m a dumbass and can’t seem to stop digging the hole I’m currently neck-deep in.

And if we’re being honest here—and let’s, because it’s only me—there might be a note of hope in there tone too. Just a little bit.

“ I’m pretty sure half the people in our high school figured you two were having scorching hot hate sex on the down-low. ”

“Well, we weren’t.”

“ But you are now, ” she says slyly.

“A kiss, Beth. It was just one kiss.” Not even that if we really get technical about it. Still, even now when I know I made the whole thing up, it feels real. It’s really annoying how I actively have to remind myself that it was all a dream, and my brain seems to have trouble accepting it.

“ And? How was it? ” Beth asks.

I slump even further into the mattress and sigh gloomily. “Too good.”

“ I wasn’t aware a kiss could be too good. ”

“You live and learn.” I sigh again and stare at the ceiling.

“ If it was good, do it some more. ”

“I can’t.”

“ Why not? ”

“I… It’s just not happening. It’s complicated.”

“ People keep saying that, but for God’s sake, most things aren’t. Just don’t make your life complicated yourself. ”

I’m not sure why that hits me as profound. Profound enough that I’m rendered speechless for a bit.

“That’s… kind of wise, actually.”

“ Yeah. I get all deep when I get some champagne in me. ”

I laugh, and she grins at me.

“ I miss you. ”

“Is this the mushy stage?”

I don’t hear what she says next because there’s a knock on the door.

I frown and wait a bit.

After a little while, there’s another knock.

“Hey, there’s somebody at the door,” I tell Beth. “I better go see who it is.”

“ Love you, ” she says before I end the call.

I look around the room. It’s messy. Not so terribly messy that you’d feel the need to wear a hazmat suit to enter the apartment, but it’s definitely not as nice as I usually keep it.

Another knock echoes through the apartment.

“Coming,” I call out.

I take one more look around. I guess my grandparents are just going to have to deal. In the grand scheme of things, considering I’ll have to tell them I didn’t get the job and I’m quitting law school, they’ll have worse problems to occupy their minds than the state of my apartment.

I grab a T-shirt and pull it over my head while the knocking starts up again.

There’s a chance my grandparents have already found out about everything and that’s why they’re so impatient.

I rake my fingers through my hair and smooth my palms over the front of my shirt before I have to call it good enough.

I pull the door open.

“Hel—”

My voice dies.

Standing behind the door? Not my grandparents.

Definitely not my grandparents.

It’s Gabriel.