Knox’s voice reaches me as a warm, distant rushing, but I hear what he says, and carry it with me into sleep, packed up tight within my heart.
“Falling asleep next to you, then waking back up next to you.”
35
Christmas Wishes and Mistletoe Kisses
Knox
Paisley and I are lying on the floor in front of the fireplace.
The fire is crackling, and the radio is playing “Last Christmas.” She’s put her head on one of the sofa cushions and is leafing through her copy ofSkate Magazine. Her feet are lying on top of my thighs, and she keeps on wiggling her toes. Between us there’s a plate of gingerbread cookies. I have to hold myself in check so as not to eat them all within a few minutes, but, man, is it a challenge. Paisley needs an eternity to just eat one of them. She nibbles at it for fifteen minutes and then stops every time she loses herself in an interesting article.
She turns a page. “Could you please stop staring at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you wanted to devour my gingerbread man.”
“But you eatsoslowly!”
“No. I’m just not as greedy as you.”
I groan, lean my head against the sofa and grab my phone. It’s time I answered some of my messages on Instagram before Dad has a breakdown and finally hangs that content creator around my neck.
Paisley puts her magazine to the side and looks at me. “Whattime is everything starting tonight?”
I’m right in the process of reading a fan’s fucked-up message telling me she wants to give me five children. “No idea. Ask Gwen.”
“She’s not responding.”
“I think around seven.”
It’s Christmas Eve. For as long as I can remember, it’s been a tradition for a few close friends in Aspen to meet at Kate’s Diner for a nice dinner. It started with my and Aria’s families, because Mom, Ruth, and Kate were inseparable. After Wyatt’s parents died, I started bringing him and Camila along. William’s been there all along, too, because he’s lonely, though he’d never admit it.
“Is Aria coming, too? I’d love to meet her.”
I delete another let-me-bear-your-children message and put my phone away. “I’m afraid she is.”
Paisley hops over to me, puts her head in my lap, and looks up at me from below. The deejay is talking about increasing snowstorms and drops in the temperature before introducing the next song: Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me.”
“What do you mean you’reafraid? I thought you were friends?”
“We are. But it’d be the first Christmas after the whole thing with Wyatt. It’d be the first time they saw each other again. No idea if he knows she’s coming. Or how he’ll react.”
“Oh. How long were they together?”
“Five years. Maybe even six. They got together during high school, they were fourteen, I think. They were joined at the hip. When his parents died, next to me, Aria was the only one who took care of Camila and him. She did everything for him.”
Paisley takes my hand and strokes the individual knuckles as if wanting to paint them. “Why’d he cheat on her? Didn’t he love her?”
I have to laugh. If Wyatt ever loved anyone, then it was Aria Moore. “He definitely loved her. But, no idea. It was a difficult time for him. His parents were dead, and he and Camila just totally lost their shit. Drank themselves half to death, took drugs, did everythingjust to not have to think about it. I don’t think that Wyatt really knew what the hell he was doing back then.”
“That’s awful,” Paisley says. “And so he lost her, too, without really knowing why?”
“Well, I told him why. But he couldn’t remember.”
Paisley looks into the fire. “Gwen feels awful about it.”
