Kiss Her Once for Me (26)

The woman I met last Christmas Eve is standing ten feet away across an ornate dining room table in a goddamn ski chalet. For almost a year, she’s lived exclusively in my memories and in my webcomic panels, but now she’s here. Ten feet away. And I have her grandmother’s orange lipstick on my cheek.

“Meemaw! Lovey!” She pulls her grandmothers into one joint, enthusiastic hug. “Merry Christmas!” she says in that voice. That voice. Low and rough, like the feeling of her callused fingers on the back of my neck. Loud, like she’s never afraid to take up space. “I brought rice cakes!” She holds out a cookie tin, and both grandmas absolutely lose their shit.

She hasn’t seen me yet, vibrating with nerves and sweating profusely beside her brother, our hands still intertwined. Five minutes ago, I was surrounded by the loving embrace of three older women, pleasantly contemplating the possibility of falling in love with a man who might let me be part of his family traditions. And then, Jack.

Jack’s outside voice. Jack’s heavy-footed stomp. Jack once again barreling into my life without warning. She’s not wearing her glasses, and her eyes burn so bright in her face, I feel myself heat up beneath my clothes.

Paul Hollywood barks three times, and as I turn to face him, he leaps up onto his hind legs, pressing his front paws to my thighs and bodychecking me backward into the table. I release Andrew’s hand and stumble directly into Katherine’s floral centerpiece.

“Jacqueline, darling. Please control your dog.”

“Hi, Mom.” Jack plants a kiss on her mother’s cheek. Then: “Paul Hollywood, sit.”

The dog promptly drops his butt onto my feet. Jack glances up, and I watch as her dark brown eyes pass over my face. They narrow, barely, her mouth ticking in the corner. “What—?”

Andrew steps between us. “Jacqueline, this is my fiancée. And this is my sister.”

The fire keeps crackling and Bing Crosby keeps singing and Paul Hollywood’s tongue keeps wagging, but I feel like the entire world grinds to a halt in my bones. Jack is looking at me, and I’m looking at her, and I’m waiting for her to say something, anything, to give us away.

Confusion flickers across her beautiful face. I would give anything for her to be less beautiful than I remember.

“Hi,” Jack says, outstretching a hand toward me. “Sorry, I think I missed your name.”

The world starts spinning again, tilting, knocking me sideways with its centripetal force. Does she not remember me?

What if she doesn’t remember me?

What if, to Jack, I was one of many nameless, faceless women she brought back to her Airstream? What if to her, what happened between us was ordinary and entirely unremarkable, and she forgot about it instantly, while I’ve been carrying it around in my heart for a year?

That would be… even more humiliating than what happened the morning after.

“It’s—it’s Ellie,” I stammer, and I wait for recognition to jar across her features.

“Ellie,” she repeats, as if the name means nothing to her. Then her skin envelops mine in a handshake. Her hand is cold and callused, and I don’t look down at the familiar shape of it. I tell myself to feel nothing, standing in this cabin, shaking the hand of this woman who doesn’t remember me.

“And this is… Dylan,” Andrew says, and I quickly drop Jack’s hand. Andrew is gesturing to someone who must’ve come in with Jack, but I was too distracted to notice. They wear steel-toed boots and what appears to be a homemade anti-fascist T-shirt with an illustration of a beheaded Alexander Hamilton. I take in the rest of them: giant gauges, the faintest stubble along a fine jaw, at least three facial piercings, and a neck tattoo of a knife against brown skin.

“Oh, hi!” I say to Dylan Montez, Jack’s childhood best friend.

Dylan eyes me skeptically. “Are you okay?” they ask in a scratchy voice, and I wonder what’s worse: the way I’m blushing or the way I’m sweating.

I press the back of my hand to my forehead. “Low blood sugar, I think.”

Low blood sugar and seeing the ghost of one-night stands past.

“Don’t worry. Dinner is almost ready,” Katherine announces, darting into the kitchen with Lovey on her heels. Meemaw quickly follows, muttering something about another batch of sangria in the fridge.

“It’s nice to meet you.” I outstretch my hand again, this time toward Dylan. “I’m Ellie.”

Dylan stares down at my hand like it’s something grotesque they wouldn’t touch in full PPE. Then, slowly, their eyes flit up my body. They seem thoroughly unimpressed by what they see. Still, they refuse to take my hand, so it dangles there like a dead fish between us.

“Dylan.” Jack releases a warning puff of air. “Tone down the open hostility just a bit.”

“What?” Dylan holds up two hands apologetically without actually looking remotely apologetic. “Come on. Andrew brings home some woman we’ve never heard of and we’re just supposed to act like that’s normal?”

Andrew pinches the bridge of his nose. “I knew you were going to be like this,” he mutters under his breath.

“You knew I was going to be weird about you bringing home a fiancée out of the blue? Wow. Very astute, Andrew.”

“When would I have introduced the two of you!” Andrew raises his voice. “We haven’t even seen each other in six months!”