“If you like.” He withdraws enough to see my face. “I get to stay forever.”
I frown.
“Didn’t help?” he guesses, the laugh lines around his mouth deepening.
“I’m trying to figure out a way to trick you into staying. A loophole. If you go, I won’t be this happy anymore, which means you’ll have to come back. Every time you go away, I’ll be unhappy again, so you’ll have to keep coming back to me over and over.”
His sad smile is enough to dash my hopes. “I’d be happy to let you trick me, if it worked that way,” he says, tapping my nose. “I wish there was a loophole. I’m so sorry there isn’t.”
“But if you go... what will I do?” It’s not about the things. Idon’t care about the things anymore, which I think he knows. What use do I have for thousand-dollar purses and yachts when the person who gave them to me is gone?
He wipes a wayward tear from my cheek. “We’ll have to muddle through somehow,” he says lightly. Then he pulls away, like he can’t take being this close to me.
We walk and walk, my toes numb in my boots, ears stung by the frozen air. The snowflakes up in the streetlights tremble in their orange slant, and slowly, Christmas music expands into the atmosphere, ringing clear as bells. Dancers spring out of the snow in colorful costumes—a girl and a Nutcracker Prince, a court of snowflakes in starlight skirts, a Sugar Plum Fairy. They’re on the edge of transparent, almost ghostly.
“I love a good musical,” he confides. His holiday cheer momentum is a train without brakes, barreling downhill. There is no stopping it. All I can do is brace myself for the crash.
One of the dancers leaps so close that I can taste the mint in my mouth. “Amazing.”
To the orchestra rising from the opposite side of the street, he calls, “Play us out!”
Trumpets, horns, and violins swell.
We walk home in the night, our pair of umbrellas spinning off snow like sparklers, as he covers me in the merry and the bright.
And something else—
Another feeling, one that burns long and low rather than the flashes he was designed for, and which he never planned, that has awakened with such a power that there can be no possibility of it being rewound.
*
Chapter Eighteen
IT’S TRADITION FORus to watchIt’s a Wonderful Lifebefore bed on Christmas Eve night, so that’s what we’re doing, piled together in the living room. Hall and I are on the floor, sharing a turkey sandwich. I look at Grandpa, as it’s tradition for him to shed a tear when the movie ends. But he’s serious and sharp-eyed, watching Hall and me.
“Can I sleep in the living room?” Avenue asks.
“No, Santa Claus won’t come if you’re out of your bed.”
“But I’m not in a bed. I’m in a sleeping bag.”
“I can’t go to bed unless I’m wearing purple socks,” says Ichabod, opening the floodgates.
“I can’t go to bed unless Ichabod’s wearing red socks,” says Octavian.
“Why can’t I watchEuphoria?”
“Can I have some cereal?”
“I just saw a hamster! It ran into the laundry room.”
“Is it true there’s a miniature town in the basement andGrandma will make us live down there forever if we leave our dirty shoes in the hallway?”
Honeysuckle Lou attaches herself to Athena’s leg and screams that she’s never going to bed, ever. She wakes up Adrian, who wails, and Marilou kills several children with her eyes. Grandma threatens to shoot Santa Claus off the roof with her crossbow if they don’t all pipe down, which only makes them cry more.
“Actually, I have a present for everyone,” I announce before the chaos gets its feet off the ground. “An early one.”
I haven’t had time to wrap them, so they’re still in the plastic they arrived in today thanks to next-day shipping. Only Mom knows about this present, as I needed her help figuring out everyone’s sizes. Moms have a knack for knowing everything, especially last-minute.
