She angled one brow, the kind of expression that used to get answers out of me in college when I tried to pretend I wasn’t into someone. She didn’t clarify. She just held my stare until I felt heat crawl up the back of my neck.
My attention slid back to the tree. Adrian lifted a stuffed reindeer over his head like it was a sacred relic. Ethan looked like he was pretending not to smile. Miles made a quiet trumpet noise with his hands.
Liv stepped closer. “Maren.”
“I… We haven’t…” My tongue knotted. There was no good script for this. There wasn’t even a bad one. “I don’t know what to call it.”
She hummed, like she’d been expecting that. “They care about you. I can tell.”
I stared at her, stunned. Her words cleaved through every flimsy excuse I’d been circling for weeks. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t even pretend she was wrong.
For weeks I’d known things had gone beyond being just physical with them. It was the reason Ethan’s harsh reaction cut so deep the night Emma ran off. Why I quit. And it was why, when he showed up at Liv and Jonathan’s apartment, I went back.
She linked her arm through mine, guiding us a little closer to the tree where the kids were now cheering because Adrian had just granted someone “official elf status” with a plastic candy cane scepter. Warmth swelled through me at the sight. The kind that scraped an old ache I hadn’t acknowledged. The kind that made breathing feel like walking a tightrope.
“I’m crazy,” I murmured, barely trusting myself to say it aloud. “I’ve lost the plot and it’s derailing my life. Tell me I’m crazy.”
Liv patted my arm like she was humoring a child who’d declared she wanted to live on the moon. “Of course you’re crazy. But that’s what happens when we fall in love.”
My pulse stumbled, heart lurching so hard it cracked my chest wide open with a kind of clarity I hadn’t felt.
In some weird way, my brain’s way of dealing with it was to send me into a nervous, shaky laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Liv turned to me fully, Santa shenanigans forgotten, and took hold of both my arms as if to shake some sense into me. “For years I’ve watched you go on and on about this life plan, sacrificing so much of yourself as long as the right boxes got ticked. But Maren, as your best friend, I need to tell you… Fuck that plan.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
“Fuck it,” she repeated under her breath. “You’re glowing. You’re… I don’t know, looser. More free with yourself. And even though you were a mopey bastard while crashing on my couch, it was clear that you’d changed. For the better. Ask Jonathan if you don’t believe me. He’s a dimwit on the best of days, but even he noticed. You’re happy. Don’t let something you wrote in a diary a hundred years ago steal that from you.”
But before I could react, the steward called out to gather the room, her voice cutting through the hum of laughter. Kids scurried toward the front, clutching their gifts, and the energy shifted into something expectant as everyone moved to listen.
The steward delivered her thanks, then rallied everyone into a carol that shook the garlands on the walls. After that, the afternoon slipped into a warm blur of kids unwrapping gifts, games erupting on the floor, and the men scattered across the room in their own little pockets of chaos-in-disguise joy.
By dusk, coats were tugged on again and half the mittens had gone missing. We shepherded everyone toward the exit, and when the doors opened, the cold swept in all at once. Snow drifted down in wide flakes, catching in the kids’ hair as we stepped out into the early evening.
“Everybody in.” I stood by the van and watched the kids march inside one at a time.
Ethan started up the engine and met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Ready to go home?”
There was that word again. Home. It fluttered into my heart like a wayward snowflake, and settled there, magically warm as it melted and took hold.
“Ready,” I replied, smiling at him.
“Mouse! It’s a mouse!” The serenity was pierced by Emma’s shrill voice. She jumped with her feet up on her seat, and Will yanked his legs up too.
Sadie, surprisingly composed, held up her hand and revealed the source of the commotion—a tiny, twitching mouse tucked into her mittened grip. The reaction was instantaneous. Screams, yelps, and curses collided into one another. In the frenzy, Sadie dropped the mouse, and that only amplified the hysteria.
“Oh, my God, out, out. Everyone out.” I corralled them through a panicked scramble for the door.
Within seconds, everyone tumbled out of the van and onto the icy sidewalk, snow sticking to jackets and hair as pandemonium reigned. At that moment, Liv was just leaving the orphanage and stepped onto the sidewalk.
“Is everything okay? What happened?”
A tiny squeak answered for me. The mouse darted out of the van, and skittered across the street, disappearing into the snowy blur.
Ethan sighed heavily, massaging his temples. “I never thought I’d have to say this, but no wild animals in the car, okay?”
“But he was my friend.” Sadie looked up at us, her big eyes misted over, bottom lip trembling.
