Alice sits next to Nolan, who pushes the blanket off his legs.
“Nolan, put your arm around her,” Aunt Sheila directs. “Isn’t this lovely, your first official portrait as a couple!”
Alice hopes her smile doesn’t look like a grimace as Nolan obediently drapes his arm around her shoulders. He seems to be touching her as little as possible, but his arm is still heavy. Alice tilts toward him so the picture doesn’t look tremendously awkward, but she’s pretty sure whatever Aunt Sheila manages to get will look more like a hostage photo than a happy couple celebrating their first Christmas together.
Although she’s honestly not sure which of them will look like the hostage and which like the hostage taker.
“Now how about a kiss?”
Alice blanches. “Oh no, no, no.”
“Just on the cheek, dear,” Aunt Sheila says, flapping her hands at them in aget on with itmotion.
Alice looks desperately around for backup, but Babs is standing next to Aunt Sheila, her hands clasped under her chin, beaming at Nolan like watching him kiss Alice is all she’s ever wanted for Christmas. Even Marie is grinning, holding her own phone up now. Steve and Uncle Joe seem unmoved, largely fixated on the football game, and Alice can’t see Van but she can feel her presence—distressed, disapproving. Disappointed.
She turns to look at Nolan. She’s never been this close to him before. She tries to call up her feelings from three weeks ago, when she’d have given anything for the chance to be hereunder his arm, to get this close to his face, to have a picture of them together that she could stare at for the rest of her life.
She’d been in love with him, as much as it’s possible to be in love with someone who barely knows that you exist. She’d writtenAlice Altmanin the margins of more than one piece of paper, and she may have even practiced a signature.
This whole fucked-up situation is because she thought he was pretty and then she wanted to make his family happy. He’s still pretty, and right now his family is nearly crying tears of joy at the thought of him pressing his chapped lips to her cheek for half a second. And she did give him mouth-to-mouth, so it’s not like they haven’t almost made out before, right?
She nods at him, and he doesn’t look thrilled about it but he leans in too, and Alice turns her face, closes her eyes.
It’s a barely-there press of lips to skin, and it’s over in a second. She hopes the Altmans all think she kept it chaste—her hands in her own lap, her failure to kiss his cheek back, no coy smiles or flirtatious whispers—because making out with him in front of his mom and aunt and baby sister and their Instagram audiences is weird, instead of the truth, which is that the idea of his tongue in her mouth is kind of turning her stomach. She decides not to dwell on why he gave it so little energy and enthusiasm himself; her self-esteem probably can’t take the hit of knowing precisely how revolting he finds her.
She tries so hard not to think about how she’d have kissed Van in this situation, how she’d have turned her head back at the last second to find Van’s lips with her own, how her body would have sunk into Van’s without a thought, how Marie would’ve had to smack them with a spatula to get them to stop kissing. How Van would have leaned in, smiled into Alice’s lips, grasped her waist like she never wanted to let go.
She hates that she thinks about how Babs might have turned away, her face tinged with discomfort at the sight of her daughter kissing a woman, instead of the rapt bliss she has right now watching her son do it.
—
It’s less than half an hour later that Alice’s phone buzzes in her pocket during a quick breather before caroling. The boomer men are napping, Marie and the boomer women are digging through the costume closet for “special bobbles,” whatever that means, and Van is tucked in the corner of the living room, as far away from both Nolan and Alice as she can possibly be without raising suspicion.
Alice pulls her phone out and sees a text from Isabella. She quickly tilts her phone, making sure Van and Nolan can’t see her screen.
Um, what the heck is this?the message reads. Alice clicks on it and sees that Isabella has sent her a screenshot from Marie’s Instagram account. It’s two pictures of her and Nolan—one where they’re both smiling awkwardly at the camera, and the other of him kissing her cheek. Alice zooms in. The kiss looks about as uncomfortable as it felt, not particularly warm or intimate, and you can see Steve’s knee in the corner. But the caption is what really makes Alice’s heart sink:My Christmas miracle of a big brother and my brand-new almost-sister.There are a couple emojis, both of the Christmas and joyful variety, and Alice simultaneously wants to die and to scoop Marie up in her arms and hug her for a hundred years.
Shit,Alice writes back.
He kissed you?
His aunt made us for the picture,Alice types quickly.It was awkward.
Yeah I can tell. But still. What about the plan?
Funny story about that.Alice presses her lips together, trying not to laugh at the absolute mess she’s made of her life.I gave them the whole speech, and they were like, lol no.
Isabella sends three question marks before she writes,What does that mean?
Alice sends a shrugging emoji.They basically rejected my rejection of them. Literally came to my apartment today and kidnapped me to spend Christmas with them.
Oh,Alice adds,remind me that I have presents for you guys!
Isabella’s quick reply,DO NOT TRY TO DISTRACT ME,makes Alice laugh, and Van looks over at her. They’re all ostensibly watching football but mostly trying not to touch each other.
“Isabella,” Alice offers, lifting her phone a little bit. “Being her usual ridiculous self.”
“I liked her,” Van says, almost smiling.
