Kiss Her Once for Me (44)
“Off Belmont, near Thirty-Fourth.”
“Even closer. Perfect. We can leave Gillian here, and I’ll come back for her when the snow clears. Does that sound like an okay plan?”
For the first time in five minutes, I’m able to catch my breath. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess… that works.”
She hops off the tailgate, and as a natural product of our new distance, our hands fall apart. The absence of her closeness feels conspicuous on the right side of my body, in all the places the cold air can now reach now that she’s not pressed there.
She shakes the snowflakes from her hair before turning back to face me. “Do you think you can trust me to get you home, Elle?” she asks with that quarter-moon smile softening the angles of her face.
And two surprising realizations hit me at the same time.
First: that I did, inexplicably, trust this woman I’d only known for a few hours.
And second: that I really, really wanted to hold her hand again.
Chapter Twelve
Monday, December 19, 2022
Jack is avoiding me.
At first, I thought I was just being sensitive—reading into things in our relationship that weren’t really there, like I’d done last year.
When we all got back to the cabin after the snowball fight, everyone separated to do their own thing. The grandmas went to warm up in the hot tub, Katherine disappeared into the kitchen to prepare the beef tenderloin for the bibimbap she was making for dinner, and Andrew went off to something called “the exercise room,” because apparently maintaining his hot bod required several hours of weights and cardio every day. Dylan and I decided to lounge in the living room—me working on the next episode of the comic, them working on lesson planning for after winter break. And Jack—she awkwardly hovered for a few minutes before grumbling some incomprehensible excuse as to why she needed to flee to the Airstream.
And I thought, Sure. Who doesn’t need alone time to recharge?
But it got weirder.
For movie night, Meemaw made popcorn and cranberry mules, and in an unwavering display of our coupledom, Andrew and I snuggled under a quilt on the sectional sofa. Jack sat in an overstuffed chair on the far side of the room, but she kept restlessly fidgeting. She only made it to the narwhal scene in Elf before she leapt out of her seat and announced she was going for a run.
At eight o’clock at night.
In the snow.
When we woke up this morning, Katherine proclaimed that despite what the schedule said, we wouldn’t be going to get the Christmas tree today, since she wanted to wait until Alan arrived tomorrow. Instead, Jack made pancakes for breakfast… and then didn’t eat them, claiming she was still full from dinner the night before.
When Jack asked Dylan if they wanted to take Paul Hollywood for a walk together, and Andrew and I decided to tag along, Jack abruptly decided she was “gonna sit this one out.”
And every time I went into a room for the past day, Jack promptly went out of it. For the past twenty-four hours straight, Jack has refused to look at me, refused to talk to me, and has barely left the Airstream.
I should be relieved. I’m not here for Jack; I’m here to convince everyone I’m in love with Andrew for two hundred thousand dollars.
Why am I not more relieved?
Unfortunately for Jack, the agenda for the afternoon is Christmas cookies: six hours, and as the resident expert in baking, she can’t excuse her way out of it.
Personally, five minutes into the process, and I’m already confused by the mechanics. “Is there usually this much weed involved in the cookie-making process?”
Dylan looks up from where their deft fingers are rolling an impressively large joint. “Do you usually bake Christmas cookies sober?” they ask, sounding horrified by the thought.
I glance around the kitchen, at the ingredients Jack neatly laid out on the counters, at the family in their matching red aprons that say “Christmas Cookie Crew” with their names hand sewn across the top. Judy Garland is singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
“I have never done any of this before,” I admit.
The family all turns their heads to me in shock. “You’ve never made Christmas cookies before?” Meemaw asks.
Katherine, who is completely unfazed by the weed on the counter next to the chocolate chips, claps her hands together. “Well, isn’t this exciting!”
“You’re definitely going to want to be high, then,” Dylan drones. They raise the rolling paper to their mouth and lick the edge. When Dylan slides the joint between their lips, Andrew leans forward to light it without prompting. He cups a hand close to Dylan’s mouth until it catches, and I watch as Dylan stares up at Andrew through their lashes, taking a sharp inhale.
Andrew steps back. Dylan rubs the back of their neck before passing Andrew the joint.
The rest of the family appears to be oblivious to this sexually charged scene. Katherine is distracted by grabbing me an apron. She’s written my name in Sharpie on a piece of masking tape over what I imagine is the name Alan. Before I know it, I’m wearing an apron and the joint has made it around the entire kitchen to me. I stare at it between my fingers for a moment before deciding to lift it to my mouth. I can’t remember the last time someone offered me an honest-to-God joint. Undergrad, maybe?
My inhale is shallow, only letting a little smoke into my lungs before I exhale. Still, it’s been so long, I feel an immediate rush of blood to my head, followed by a slow decompression in my limbs, like I’m a piece of Ikea furniture and someone has taken a monkey wrench to all my screws and loosened them just a bit. The joint has made its way around the kitchen to everyone but Jack. I turn to face her.