“FELIZ NAVIDAD, BABY!”Bastien shouts. I swear and fall over, because I was crouching on my kitchen floor, trying to remember if I stuck some extra mugs behind the pots and pans or just had a weird dream that I did.
I swear, but I do it quietly because if Bastien’s here, that means everyone is here and I cannot start my first Christmas hosting gig off by swearing in front of my mom.
Everyone streams in, already talking. Bastien is saying something about my apartment, and my mom is already giving me cooking instructions, and Thalia is telling Caleb where to put things down, and I still haven’t found the last two mugs yet. It’s probably too late now.
It’s so chaotic that I don’t even realize Madeline has come in until Bastien shouts “JAVI, DID YOU MAKE THE COAT RACK?” at me like it’s at least the third time he’s asked. I’ve got a spoon in one hand and a potholder in the other—I own potholders?—look over to answer him, and she’s over there, hanging her coat on it.
“YEAH,” I shout back, the only currently viable volume. In another moment, I’m out of my kitchen, the spoon and potholder lost, walking toward where Madeline and Gerald are still hanging hats and coats.
“Yeah, he made it,” Bastien is telling them, head turned away from me. “JAVI—oh, shit, you’re right there. Did you make the hooks, too?”
“No, those are from…around,” I say, because Madeline’shere, in my apartment, and she’s on her tiptoes looking at this one coat hook that’s wrought iron, I think, and shaped like a mermaid, her tail curving out. I got it before I knew she likedmermaids, but I did hope she’d like it. “That one’s from that weird thrift store in Norfolk that the SPCA runs. Near Ocean View.”
“Wait, the one on Bayview? I love that place—it’s so weird. I almost bought, like, a five-foot-long painting of some thoughtful-looking seagulls perched on a wreck once. But then I didn’t, and when I changed my mind and went back it was gone.”
She’s wearing an emerald-green sweater dress over black tights, her hair down around her shoulders, a big chunky gold necklace with red stones around her neck, and she looks so good it’s hard to think.
“Yeah, you gotta move fast on that stuff,” I agree and realize that Bastien and Gerald have both moved on. “You know, thrift stores, it’s not like they’ve got more in the back. That’s my favorite coat hook, too. I’m glad you like it.” I’m rambling. “Do you want to come in? There’s coffee, though I couldn’t find all my mugs. It’s fine—Bastien can drink it out of his hands.”
Now she’s laughing, and her cheeks are pink, and my hands are jammed into my pockets, and I feel like there’s a spotlight on me as well as a neon sign above my head that’s got an arrow and saysTHIS MAN WANTS TO BANG HIS STEPSISTER. AGAIN.But no one’s looking right now, so I get away with it for a few more minutes.
“Thanks for hosting, even if it was at gunpoint,” she says, and then my sister shouts something at me, and chaos reigns again.
Whatever I wasafraid would happen doesn’t. My family all manages to keep it together, and Gerald and Madeline are polite and low-key as ever. Bastien, Thalia, and I only get into one fight where we pelt each other with balled-up wrapping paperfrom our Secret Santa exchange, which my mom watches with outright exasperation and which Madeline and Gerald watch with curious bafflement.
Caleb, Thalia’s boyfriend, has, like, sixteen older brothers or something, so he can practically meditate while this shit happens.
(“Four,” Thalia says to me later, rolling her eyes after I mention this fun fact to Madeline while we’re setting the table. “He hasfourolder brothers.”
“You’ve only got one, and you’re not handling it well,” I tell her, and she throws a napkin at me and then immediately asks for it back, which I think proves my point.)
I do see Gerald grab my mom’s butt when he thinks nobody’s looking, and I leave the room so fast I walk into a wall. I believe that my mom deserves an active and healthy love life, or whatever, but I also might die if I think about the specifics.
“Hey, Javi,”Madeline calls later, when I’ve taken a break from the nonsense to hang out with Zorro in a corner. “Is this real?”
She’s over at the corner near my bedroom, where the Lost Mountain Motor Lodge sign is propped crookedly against the wall, a pile of other things propped against it.
I put Zorro down and walk over to her, and he follows me, complaining.
“I mean, did you make it for an installation or something? I could see you doing a ‘Bigfoot the Motel Manager’ art experience.”
“I should write that down.”
“First one’s free.”
“No, I didn’t make it,” I finally say and glance over my shoulder at the rest of the apartment. Gerald and Caleb are doing the dishes and probably bonding over how weird my family is. My mom and Thalia are on a couch having some intense-looking discussion, and Bastien’s in my favorite chair, scrolling on his phone.
“I stole it,” I finally say, and her eyes go wide.
“Fromwhere?” she whispers, looking from me to the sign and back.
“From the Motor Lodge,” I say, pointing at the name. “Where else?”
“How did you steal a motel’s entire sign?” she asks, all skeptical, her eyes narrowed. “Are you fucking with me?”
“It was already condemned,” I admit. “I did have to break in and haul it out of a bathtub, but it was like three days before they leveled the place. It was stealing, but notstealingstealing.”
She tilts her head, considering for a moment, and reaches out one finger to touch the bubbling, peeling paint, then slides it along the underside of theOinMountain. There’s a tight feeling between my shoulder blades, and I look away before I have to face the fact that I’m jealous of a motel sign.
