The Twelve Days of Dash & Lily(27)
Dash shrugged. “Guess not.” Boys never say what you want them to. It’s probably the only lesson I’ve learned in life. “But we could go to your aunt’s instead. Mrs. Basil E. texted me to invite us to come over for dinner and play Cards Against Humanity after with her and Grandpa and—”
“You text with my great-aunt?”
“Yes. Does it matter?”
I shrugged. “Guess not.” Then: “Cards Against Humanity is such a rude game.” Mrs. Basil E. had never invited me to play that game with her before.
“I know. That’s why I love it.”
—
Finally. Good Lily was behind me.
Hello, Naughty Lily. You’re fun.
Naughty Lily wore a short black skirt with black leggings and thigh-high black boots, and a cropped—yes, cropped—Christmas sweater, red and gold and green with two auspiciously placed glitter ornament decorations sewn across the very tight chest.
“Did Langston see you wearing that?” Dash asked when I took my coat off, right after he rang the doorbell to Edgar Thibaud’s townhouse.
“Do you like it?” I asked, trying to sound sexy but sounding more desperately shrill. (Naughty Lily would need more practice to acquire sexy voice tones. Her innate Shrilly refuses to die.)
“I guess I’m happy you’re finally feeling the Christmas spirit,” said Dash.
“What’s your sweater?” I asked him.
He opened his coat, revealing…a plain green polo sweater with a white oxford shirt peeking out from the collar.
“That’s not really a Christmas sweater,” I said.
“You’re not looking carefully enough.” He pulled the oxford collar out from its tuck in the sweater’s neck. I looked more closely and saw a quote from A Christmas Carol written in alternating red and gold ink in Dash’s handwriting across the bottom edge of the collar. Marley was dead: to begin with.
The door opened as my face peered into Dash’s neck. From the other side of the door, Edgar announced, “Lovebirds PDA’ing already? The eggnog hasn’t even been served yet.”
Dash pulled away from me and closed his coat. “I don’t PDA, Edgar.”
Edgar winked at Dash. “Of course you don’t. Welcome, party animal.” He eyed me up and down and said, “Loving your sweater, Lillers.”
Edgar wore a sweater picturing Jesus wearing a birthday hat in the shape of a slice of upside-down pepperoni pizza and the words BIRTHDAY BOY written across the Chosen One’s chest, which Edgar had paired with pink-and-gray argyle pants and black-and-white saddle shoes. It’s impossible to overstate how grossly mismatched his outfit was, kind of like Edgar in his own house.
His parents are, like, the 1 percent of the 1 percent, hedge fund managers with bazillions of bucks and no time to spend on their son. Mrs. Basil E. also lives in a townhouse, but hers is musty and arty and sort of falling apart. Very welcoming. Edgar’s is like an architectural magazine showpiece, with severe, minimalist furniture and million-dollar pieces of art on the walls. Very intimidating and cold.
“?‘Lillers’?” Dash whispered in my ear as we walked up the marble stairs to the second level. “Please.”
“Your friends arrived ahead of you,” said Edgar. “Fun kids. They’ve already hit the eggnog, as you can see.”
And there in the center of the drawing room were Boomer and Sofia, wearing matching Christmas goose sweaters, dirty-dancing as a hip-hop song blasted from invisible speakers. They were laughing and kissing as they butt-shimmied nearly to the ground, then knocked butts, their ease and joy in each other readily apparent. I wished Dash and I could be like them. Twerking for the sake of the twerk, and not caring who watched, because they were too wrapped up—literally—in each other.
“Eggnog?” Edgar asked Dash. “It’s spiked with Father’s vintage Jack Daniel’s Sinatra Century Limited Edition.”
“Yes, please!” said Naughty Lily. I looked at my Young Blue Eyes—Dashiell—hoping we could imbibe some naughtiness together. Clink our frothy glasses and then share a Sinatra Century Limited Edition–flavored kiss. Or twenty.
“No thank you,” said Dash. Shoo be do be DARN.
In a baby voice, Edgar asked Dash, “Would wittle boy wike some pwain yogurt instead?”
Dash touched the side of his nose and asked Edgar, “Jack Frost nipping at your nose?”
His nose wasn’t running that I could tell, but Edgar fell for the bait and pulled a handkerchief from his argyle pants pocket and blew into it. Then he said, “You guys in for Spin the Dreidel later? Winners get to make out in my parents’ bedroom, under the Motherwell. Ha-ha, get it?”
Our host went to find his eggnog decanter as Dash and I inspected the room. The party was in full swing, yes—but there were only about a dozen people there, a totally mismatched collection of people. Me, Dash, twerking Boomer and Sofia, Cyril doing the hustle with Isabella Fontana, a retired cookbook editor who’s one of my dog-walking clients and really should have been more mindful of her recent hip replacement surgery, and some samba-dancing, drunk Korean party kids whom I recognized from Edgar’s ramen-emergency FaceTime call, which had precipitated my soul-searching journey to Staten Island. The partygoers ranged in age from about seventeen to seventy, and wore sweaters with snowmen, angels, Santas, elves, reindeer, and Christmas cats. Edgar stood against the wall, in front of the party table with an ice sculpture of two kissing geese as its centerpiece, admiring the odd collection of mismatched people and their mismatched sweaters. He’d never looked more alone to me than in his own house. A prince with no kingdom.