The Loose Ends List(27)

“I’m sorry. About your dad.”

“Thanks. It was a long time ago now.” He gets up and grabs a bunch of towels. He lays two down over me and covers himself. “So let’s talk about Maddie.”

We talk for hours. I tell him about my friends and Connecticut and the lake club summer I was supposed to have. I talk about Gram and all the amazing things we’ve done over the years. I show him constellations, because there are millions of stars painting the sky above us. I tell him how I wish I could be close with my brother like we were before he got weird and angry.

He tells me how he half grew up in Italy and that now he’s in university in London, where his dad was born and raised. He loves soccer and surfing and has had a lot of girlfriends but none of them stuck. He brushes my hair out of my face and looks into my eyes and smiles as he talks. He tells stories about his crazy drunken friends, and I tell him they would get along swimmingly with my E’s.

“I have a million questions,” I say, sliding closer as the chill of early morning sets in.

But my questions can’t compete with Enzo’s hands pulling me toward him or his warm lips or his arms wrapping us together in beach towels. Never have I ever had the best kiss of my life with a ridiculously hot guy on a secret ship beneath a dense band of stars. There aren’t enough jelly beans for this one.

The screech of a deck chair wakes me up. We actually fell asleep making out. The pool maintenance guys are escorting Skinny Dave past the Grotto. He’s disoriented and having a hard time standing.

Enzo sits up and rubs his eyes. He looks at me and smiles.

“Welcome to the Wishwell,” he says. “It’s always an adventure.”

He walks with me to the elevator and kisses me good-bye when the doors open on my floor. “Bye, Girl in the Purple Dress,” he calls. The doors shut before I can answer.



We get Lane’s invite just as Janie is grilling me about Enzo. Friends, please join us in the ballroom at 8 pm sharp for a pajama party to celebrate Paige’s birthday with her two favorite things: a campfire sing-along and chocolate. Shh. It’s a surprise. Wear your PJs.

“This is so cute,” Janie says. “Lane is adorable, the way he carries Grace around in that pouch thing.” She jumps on my bed. “So did you fool around? Like fool around, fool around?”

“We made out.”

“That’s it?”

“I mean, like, for hours. I have chafe from his stubble.”

Gram texts, Vito invited us to his cabin to see his Christmas village. Meet me in ten.

“Gram is the bossiest cruise director,” Janie says. “I’m hungover. I’m really not in the mood to see Vito’s Christmas village.”

We meet Gram and Wes in front of Vito’s wing.

“Where’s everybody?” I say.

“Who knows?” Gram says. “It’s like herding cats.”

The hallway blinks with colored lights. We knock softly. Vito’s daughter Karen lets us into the cabin where Vito is in an oversized recliner (or maybe it appears to be oversized because he’s undersized), covered with a red-and-green blanket.

A Christmas village, piled with fake snow, snakes around the cabin. I’m mesmerized by the lights, and tiny people ice-skating, and elves in moving sleds, and gumdrops, and candy cane trees, and miniature stacks of presents.

Vito is an elf peeking in on Christmas.

“Vito, your cabin is magical,” Wes says. “This is fantastic.”

I sit on a chair next to a fully decked tree. The glowing angel tree topper’s skirts change color every few seconds. Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” comes on, and suddenly I’m back in Gram’s apartment, drinking hot chocolate and playing with her Austrian advent calendar with the moving reindeer.

“Welcome to my fantasy.” Vito lifts his arms and pulls at his tinsel-wrapped oxygen tank. “I’ve always thought, wouldn’t it be nice if it were Christmas all year long? And now it is.”

Janie and I sit on the floor, and Gram and Wes sit on either side of Vito as this old, withered man shows us decades of family Christmas photos. “…And this is Rockefeller Center—we always took a trip to see the tree. Oh, we got all the kids on Santa’s lap for this one,” Vito says in his Queens accent. He holds a picture to his chest. Karen and his other daughter, Roberta, come over with plates of Christmas cookies.

“It’s our grandmother’s recipe,” Roberta says. “Would you believe Francesca has them deliver these wonderful cookies every morning?”

We eat cookies, and Wes tells the story of the time when he was four and decided to yank off Santa’s boot while Santa was doing story time at the library. He ran down the street in the snow, his mother chasing behind, and threw Santa’s boot in the river.

“That’s disturbing,” Gram says. “Crave attention much, Wessy?”

“I probably thought it was funny.”

“You would have gotten the belt if you were my kid,” Vito says.

“That’s a festive thing to say, Father Christmas,” Wes says. Vito laughs until he starts hacking and can’t stop.

Karen and Roberta walk us out. “Thank you for humoring Dad,” Roberta says. “He always loves a fresh audience.”

It’s ninety degrees out, and I can’t stop humming “White Christmas.”