In A Holidaze(45)

I shrug, biting my lips. “Why not a parrot?”

“A cool parrot on your arm or back? Maybe.” He points finger guns down at his crotch. “But a parrot—here? Right next to your dick? Why?”

I’d respond, but this has fried the part of my brain that makes words. As soon as Andrew looks up at me, he can see it all over my face. “Did I fluster the lady?”

“A bit.” I reach for a dish towel, intent on drying the dishes I assume he’s going to start washing, but he takes two steps closer, cupping my face.

“You’re making this expression like you’re not sure this is really happening.”

“That is a frighteningly accurate assessment.”

He rests his lips on mine, smiling.

“We have dishes to do,” I mumble against his mouth.

“We’ll do them in the morning,” he mumbles back.

“We aren’t going to want to do them in the morning.”

Nipping at my bottom lip, he growls and turns away. “Fine. Be logical.”

He moves over to Ricky’s old cassette-playing radio on the counter and snaps a tape into place, hitting play with a clunky click. Sam Cooke filters from the small speakers, quiet enough that I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make its way down-or upstairs, and even if it does, it’s Sam Cooke, not Ozzy Osbourne; we’re probably safe to assume we’ll be left alone.

Don’t know much about history . . .

Andrew sings quietly, washing the dishes, and the first couple of times he hands me something to dry he gives me a flirty smile, but then we get into a quiet rhythm after a few minutes; we settle into the best combination of lifelong friends and new lovers.

He rinses his favorite unicorn mug and hands it to me to dry. “You want to hear a story about this?” I ask.

“Hell yes I do.”

“When I painted it, I wrote ‘Mae plus Andrew’ in white and then painted over the whole thing in pink.”

He gapes at me, taking it back and immediately flipping it over. “You did not.”

“I did.”

He holds it to the light, squinting. “Oh my God, there it is!”

We lean together and he points, outlining the letters with his index finger. He’s right. The raised shapes of the letters in thick paint are barely visible.

“I knew it was my favorite mug for a good reason.”

I laugh. “So dorky.”

“Uh, no, Mae, it’s awesome.” He leans over, kissing my cheek. “So I guess you weren’t kidding,” he says, “about your crush.”

“Of course I wasn’t kidding.” When I turn to look at him, he leans in again, brushing his mouth over mine.

And if this one could be with you . . .

We fall back into a rhythm with the dishes, and I don’t realize we’ve shifted so that we’re touching until his arm slides down mine as he reaches into the sink to wash the final platter, but we make eye contact afterward. I’m infatuated with him beyond distraction. This is everything I’ve always wanted: to be here, exactly like this with him—and maybe we aren’t “together” in a defined sense of the word, but we’re already undeniably more.

A second thought sinks into me like a weight dropping in a warm lake: I am happy. I have never been this happy in my entire life. Maybe Benny was right and I’m finally being me.

I lean over and kiss his neck. “Let that dish dry in the rack, I’m going to put away the spices and stuff.”

I grab the jars of oregano, parsley, and some mix called Pasta Sprinkle and tuck a few unused cans of tomatoes under my arms, ducking into the walk-in pantry. Behind me, the water shuts off, and I turn just as Andrew comes in after me, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“What are you doing?”

“Being sneaky.” When he closes the door behind him, his smile is swallowed by the shadows and still somehow the brightest thing in this small space.

“Do the Hollis men have some sort of closet fetish I should know about?”

“Isn’t this what the holidays are all about?” he asks. “Kisses under the mistletoe? Making out in a pantry?”

“Nosy relatives.”

His mouth is only inches away when he laughs and slides his lips over mine. Like a dry-erase board swept with a cloth, I am wiped free of any other thought. There’s just the feel of his kiss and his arms coming around my waist, my own hands sliding up his chest and around his neck.

I want to ask him, the words are at the tip of my tongue—Does this kiss feel like the best kiss ever?—because to me it does. And it isn’t just because it’s Andrew, it feels clearly like the perfect kind of melting together; his mouth just seems to fit against mine. We kiss the same.

He moves from my mouth to my jaw, and lower, pressing these perfect sucking kisses to the sensitive skin just over my pulse, moaning against me. The sound puts me in a rocket ship and launches me to Jupiter. In a flash, I imagine the sight of his head between my legs.

The idea of watching him do that makes me both shy and ravenous; my libido has turned into a fanged monster. Andrew doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest by how I pull him closer and kiss him deeper, by my sounds and the intensity of my grip. Here in the dark pantry, I can pretend we’re alone, that there aren’t eleven other people in this house. I send my hands up under his shirt, seeking the soft, warm skin there, skating over his ribs with my fingertips.