My insides smoosh, then riot. “What doesthatmean?”
“It means…if I ever want you to go somewhere, I just have to bring Bart with me? I don’t know, Madeline, just enjoy it.”
“Why do you want to drag me to hell?”
“That’s not—I did not even remotely say that.” He’s trying to act all offended but smiling too much to be believable. I have to look away from him and his ridiculous face. I look at Bart, at the stupid mistletoe, at the orange glow of the old sodium-vaporstreetlights, at the other decorated houses on the street all done up like gingerbread houses or Santa’s workshop.
I try not to think about Javier showing up at my front door one night, with a giant skeleton in tow, and saying,Come away with me. It’s an act of nonsense I don’t even want.
“You kinda did,” I say, and I get to watch him roll his eyes. “Why’d you bring me here, then?”
It’s not to kiss me under the mistletoe—I know that much. Even if it’s there, just beyond the gate, taunting me. Even though there’s no one else out here to see us. It’s a stupid, silly thought, and I try not to think it as Javi goes quiet and swallows.
“I thought you’d like it,” he says after a beat and shrugs. “It seemed like—a big weird skeleton lit up like radioactive terror Santa Claus would be right up your alley.”
He’s dead fucking right, of course. Javi probably clocked my love of outlandish, weird shit the moment we met, and when I took the mermaid lamp, and it only makes me squirm a little bit that he can tell so easily. It’s not like he’s going to find my notebook doodles I made during history class and make fun of me for the rest of the year or findonemagazine cutout and tell everyone I want to fuck cartoons. Javi’s not even acknowledging the existence of this mistletoe, and if he’s not bringing it up, I’mdefinitelynot bringing it up.
“Of course I like it,” I finally say. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Oh, everyone,” he says, grinning like we’ve got a secret. “The tourism board. The chamber of commerce. Wells’s HOA. This is his house, by the way. His next-door neighbor over there”—he tilts his head—“especially hates it. Wells actually put Bart up to spite him.”
“And it worked?”
“Like a dream.” Javier looks over at me, smiling and softly lit, and I wish it didn’t make me want stupid things.
Later that night,after we’ve all said goodbye to everyone, said it again, and then one more time for good measure while trying to leave, I spot my scarf across the back of a chair. Javier’s in the kitchen, fully visible from where we are, and his collar’s unbuttoned and his sleeves are rolled up his forearms as he unloads the dishwasher, his hair pulled back off his face.
All I’ve had to drink is virgin eggnog—we’ve never talked about it, but people seem to mostly avoid drinking around Javier—but it’s been an odd two days after an odd couple of months, and I’ve spent so long not thinking about the things I want that I give in, just for a moment. Because he looks fuckinggoodlike this, casual and relaxed, putting plates away and laughing with his brother and his sister. He looked good yesterday in that closet and he looked good earlier tonight staring up at a giant skeleton, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I might think Javier looks good all the time.
I wonder, for half a second, if he’s beenlooking goodfor anyone else lately, which isn’t my business and which I don’t care about, but—I wonder. Lately I’ve been running down a lot of batterieswondering, trying to fuck myself with my vibrator at the same angle he managed, but my arms aren’t long enough so I come face down on my pillow with one knee hitched up and I’m still not quite satisfied.
“You ready, Mads?” my dad asks, and I instantly stop thinking about vibrators.
“Yeah, areyou?” I give my scarf one last glance as we head for the door.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAVIER
The next morning,I wake up the usual way: to Zorro headbutting me directly in the face. We go back and forth for about fifteen minutes because in a post-Christmas miracle, I don’t have to work at either Calhoun Insurance or Blooming Blossoms today—he headbutts me, I pet him, he’s not pacified—and I finally roll over and throw the sheets off when he escalates to biting my hand.Literallybiting the hand that feeds him, because for all their majesty and snootiness, cats are dumb as rocks.
“Okay, okay,” I tell him, sit up, and he prances out of the bedroom like he’s really taught me a lesson.
One of my small victories in life is charging my phone in the kitchen instead of next to my bed. Yeah, it’s next to the coffee maker, so it’s the third thing I look at in the morning instead of the first, but I take what I can get. That means I’ve got my elbows on the counter, wearing a flannel robe that’s seen better days, listening to Zorro crunch on kibble, when I see Madeline’s text.
Madeline:Hey, I think I left my scarf over there last night. Can I swing by this morning and get it?
Madeline (thirty minutes later):no worries if not, I can also grab it when we see you this weekend.
I have to read it at least three times, glancing at the clock on the microwave to double-check the time and then comparing that to the clock on my phone to corroborate before remembering that I could look at that clock in the first place.
Swing by this morning. I don’t read into it. I will not read into it. A scarf is a scarf is a scarf, even if she was kind of flirty last night, maybe, and we took a nice walk to a giant skeleton. A giant skeleton that waspracticallywavingmistletoe at us, which I swear wasn’t there the last time I visited. Hopefully she didn’t notice and think that I took her there solely for mistletoe purposes, which I didn’t.
Me:Sorry, just woke up. Sure, come by whenever.
Madeline:Thank you so much! Be there in twenty.
She doesn’t even say if she’s coming alone. Is she coming alone? Fuck.
