I move on instinct, setting the stack of linens on the bed and stripping off my coat before coming around to sit beside her. It’s a small piece of furniture, suited to the space but not so much to either one of us, who’re both above average in height, and definitely not so much if we’re trying to avoid more of the physical contact that had seemed—at least to me—to fill up the Dreyers’ living room with pheromones.
“Maybe it’ll clear.” I watch the space where the cream wool of her coat presses against the starched blue cotton of my shirt.
She purses her lips, her expression doubtful. She sits forward, takes off her coat, and tosses it over the arm before settling again. Back at the house, she’d been the one trying to cheer me, to contain my frustration about my having gotten us into this mess. But now that she doesn’t have to put a face on for anyone, I can see how upset she is. It hurts to see her this way, but it’s also a reminder. Kris can show me this because—even in spite of the way it’s been between us since that kiss—we’re friends. We’re that close; we know each other that well.
“Hey.” I nudge her lightly with my shoulder. “Tell me what you’d be doing. If you were with your family right now, I mean.”
She rolls her head my way, looks up at me through dark-lashed eyes, her mascara a little smudgy. She gives a halfhearted shrug. “The usual stuff.”
“What’s the usual stuff?”
“You don’t like Christmas. I saw you drink that hot cider. You made this face.” She pulls her lips to the side, scrunches her nose slightly. This time, I laugh.
“I didn’t.”
“You did. You only kept drinking it to wash down the cookie.”
“It was dry!” I nudge her again, and themissing, it’s less now, the way it always is when we spend time together this way. As more than colleagues. “Anyway, I want to know. The usual stuff.”
Kris takes a deep breath, and the action sinks her closer to me, her head almost resting on my shoulder. “Well, we’d make cookies. They’re my grandmother’s recipe, sour cream sugar cookies, with vanilla frosting. They’re not dry at all.”
I shift, pushing myself farther into the seat, resting my own head against the back of the cushions. “Cookies, all right. I’d try them.”
She snorts, and it sounds like the rare times she’s gotten a little tipsy around me—one late-night delay at an airport bar, one too many beers during a ballgame. “My dad’s a singer, did you know that?”
“I did.” She told me once, not long after we first met, out at a bar in Houston with Ben. He may have asked all the questions, but I remember all the answers. Mac Fraser. Classically trained at a conservatory somewhere in Ohio. Now, singing for fun in an eighties cover band, playing on Thursday nights at some dive bar outside of Lansing. His favorite song is “Eye of the Tiger.”
“So we sing, usually on Christmas Eve. Most of us are terrible, but he and Malik are so good they drown the rest of us out.”
“Singing,” I say. “Sounds awful, but okay. What else?”
“Kelly and I, we watch Hallmark movies. Alotof them. You know what Hallmark movies are?” She too pushes back into the cushions, sets her feet—narrow and high-arched in the black tights that wrap her long, shapely legs—on the edge of the coffee table. I’ve already forgotten the question, which is okay because she keeps talking.
“Basically, one hundred and twenty minutes of pure sugar, right into your eyeballs. Cupcake shops, Christmas parades, some zany dog with a jingle bell collar. Happily ever afters. They aregreat.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Sounds like it.”
She nudges me this time, but doesn’t pull back after she leans. She’s fully resting against me, her head heavy on my shoulder. “Lots of snowed-in scenarios in these movies. You wouldn’t believe it.”
I shrug. “Guess I would, now.”
She laughs, quieter now, and we settle into silence. The restless sleep of the last week, the early morning, the travel, the stress of everything from the day—I can feel it catching up to me, maybe to both of us. My eyes droop slightly, the weight of her body warm and comforting. There’s only a couple of lights on in here, one above the kitchen sink, one small, shaded fixture beside the bed I’m still trying not to think about.
“Jasper,” she says.
“Mmm?” I know I should get up, know I should deal with that bed, convince her to get in there alone. But it feels so good here, quiet words between us and soft cushions beneath our bodies. So close to my fantasy that I wonder if I’m already dreaming.
“How come you don’t go home? For the holidays, I mean?”
I resist the urge to shift, to move away from her, though my eyes blink open, and I stare up at the still ceiling fan above us. I clear my throat. “I’m not welcome there.”
I feel her head tip to look at me, but I keep my eyes on the ceiling. I think she’ll ask me why, but she chooses a different tack, a smarter one—one that’s more likely to keep me talking. “What’d you used to do, then? When you were welcome?”
I take a deep breath, closing my eyes again. It’s been so long since I’ve been there for a Christmas, almost seventeen years. “Mostly we celebrated Christmas Eve.” Too many chores to do in the mornings, no matter what day it was. “My dad’s brothers and their families would come out to the ranch. All fifteen of my cousins.”
“Wow,” Kris says. “Must’ve been fun.”
My lips tug into a smile, in spite of myself. “Could be, yeah. We made a lot of trouble.” No running in the house, no snacks before dinner, no shaking the packages, no going out to the stables. Every rule, we broke, and almost always I’d be the ringleader. Because back then, that’s what I was used to being.
