My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(14)

He takes the coat from her. Nods. Then puts it around her shoulders. Pulls her back against his chest. All of that damask: it’s heavy. There’s snow inside and out.

Fenny is surprisingly solid for someone who mostly isn’t here. She wonders if she is surprising to him, too.

His mouth is just above the top of her head, blowing little hot circles against her hair. She’s very, very cold. Ridiculous to be out here in the snow with this ridiculous person with his list of ridiculous rules.

She’ll catch her death of cold.

Cautiously, as if he’s waiting for her to stop him, he puts his arms around her waist. He sighs. Warm breath in her hair. Miranda is suddenly so very afraid that it will stop snowing. They haven’t talked about anything. They haven’t even kissed. She knows, every part of her knows, that she wants to kiss him. That he wants to kiss her. All of her skin prickles with longing. Her insides fizz.

She puts her sewing kit back into her pocket, discovers the joint Elspeth gave her, Daniel’s lighter. “I bet you haven’t ever tried this, either,” she says. She twists in his arms. “You smoke it. Here.” She taps at his lips with the joint, sticks it between his lips when they part. Flicks the lighter until it catches, and then she’s lunging at him, kissing him, and he’s kissing her back. The second time tonight that she’s kissed a boy, the first two boys she’s ever kissed, and both of them Honeywells.

And oh, it was lovely kissing Daniel, but this is something better than lovely. All they do is kiss, she doesn’t know how long they kiss, at first Fenny tastes of chocolate, and she doesn’t know what happens to the joint. Or to the lighter. They kiss until Miranda’s lips are numb and the justacorps has come entirely off of her, and she’s in Fenny’s lap and she has one hand in Fenny’s hair and one hand digging into Fenny’s waist, and all she wants to do is keep on kissing Fenny forever and ever. Until he pulls away.

They’re both breathing hard. His cheeks are red. His mouth is redder. Miranda wonders if she looks as crazed as he looks.

“You’re shivering,” he says.

“Of course I’m shivering! It’s freezing out here! And you won’t come inside. Because,” Miranda says, panting, shivering, all of her vibrating with cold and with want, want, want, “it’s against the rules!”

Fenny nods. Looks at her lips, licks his own. Jerks back, though, when Miranda tries to kiss him again. She’s tempted to pick up a handful of wet snow and smush it into his Honeywell face.

“Fine, fine! You stay right here. Don’t move. Not even a inch, understand? I’ll get the keys to the Tiger,” she says. “Unless it’s against the rules to sit in old cars.”

“All of this is against the rules,” Fenny says. But he nods. Maybe, she thinks, she can get him in the car and just drive away with him. Maybe that would work.

“I mean it,” Miranda says. “Don’t you dare go anywhere.”

He nods. She kisses him, punishingly, lingeringly, desperately, then takes off in a run for the kitchen. Her fingers are so cold she can’t get the door open at first. She grabs her coat, the keys to the Tiger, and then, on impulse, cuts off a hunk of the inviolate Christmas cake. Well, if Elspeth says anything, she’ll tell her the whole story.

Then she’s out the door again. Says the worst words she knows when she sees that the snow has stopped. There is the snow-blotted blanket, the joint, and the Mars-bar wrapper.

She leaves the Christmas cake on the window ledge. Maybe the birds will eat it.

*

Daniel is still asleep on the couch. She wakes him up. “Merry Christmas,” she says. “Good morning.” She gives him his present. She’s made him a shirt. Egyptian cotton, gray-blue to match his eyes. But of course it won’t fit. He’s already outgrown it.

*

Daniel catches her under the mistletoe when it’s past time for bed, Christmas night and no one wants to go to sleep yet, everyone tipsy and loose and picking fights about things they don’t care about. For the sheer pleasure of picking fights. He kisses Miranda. She lets him.

It’s sort of a present for Elspeth, Miranda rationalizes. It’s sort of because she knows it’s ridiculous, not kissing Daniel, just because she wants to be kissing someone else instead. Especially when the person she wants to be kissing isn’t really a real person at all. At least not most of the time.

Besides, he’s wearing the shirt Miranda made for him, even though it doesn’t fit.

In the morning, Daniel is too hungover to drive her down to the village to catch the bus. Elspeth takes her instead. Elspeth is wearing a vintage suit, puce gabardine, trimmed with sable, something Miranda itches to take apart, just to see how it’s made. What a tiny waist she has.

Elspeth says, “You know he’s in love with you.”

“He’s not,” Miranda says. “He loves me, but he’s not in love with me. I love him, but I’m not in love with him.”

“If you say so,” Elspeth says. Her tone is cool. “Although I can’t help being curious how you’ve come to know so much about love, Miranda, at your tender age.”

Miranda flushes.

“You know you can talk to me,” Elspeth says. “You can talk to me whenever you want to. Whenever you need to. Darling Miranda. There’s a boy, isn’t there? Not Daniel. Poor Daniel.”