I raised an eyebrow.
“Impressive,” he commented, reaching up to push up his own eyebrow. Whenever he let go, it fell. “I could never get that right.”
I shrugged. “Party trick.”
“Anyway”—he took a deep breath, as if coming up with some sort of way to say what he was about to say—“what I’m really trying to say is that there’s a hockey game on. I know a bar just down the street. It could be a fun time. Do you really want this to be the end of your night?”
Josh already passed the server his card effortlessly as he passed by. I tried to reach out to offer to split our check of what was likely overpriced holiday drinks, but it was too late.
“You in?”
I glanced down at my lifeless phone again on the edge of the table.
No notifications. No emails. Yet I should really get back home. Get back on the hunt. Work on the freelance projects that needed to be done sooner than later so that, hopefully, I’d attract new clients.
My stomach growled.
Josh grinned as if my body had answered for me. “Pretty please? Come on. You know it’s my treat. And I can’t stand to let my little sister down.”
Is that who he couldn’t stand to let down?
“Think of it as a thank-you for letting me crash on your couch for the last month.” He stood up as he pulled on his coat, waiting for me to do the same. The server came back with the check, and he signed off without glancing at it. “They have fantastic wings. Better than baked artichoke cream bruschetta. Actually, maybe my sister has a point; that sounds amazing. But still, you want to mix up your boring practice date to a night you might actually enjoy?”
He reached for my coat on the back of my seat and extended it to me with raised eyebrows and waited. “You only live once, remember?”
four
“You only live once.”
It was something about what Josh had said—“Life’s short”—that hit me in a strangely familiar way. Not just because it was true, but because I’d heard it before.
It sounded almost exactly like the motto I had given myself when I left the suburbs for the first time at nineteen, dragging a rolling suitcase, stuffed with too many pairs of plaid pajama pants and three different holiday sweaters I couldn’t bear to leave behind. I was determined to make the most of everything.
To say yes. To show up in a way I hadn’t all throughout high school or before that, when I was just trying to make it by.
Although, if I was being honest, I thought Gina had said it first.
She was always ahead of the times.
She was also the one who had guilt-tripped me into coming back home with her for Christmas during our first year of college, even though I’d been looking forward to having the shared dorm room all to myself. I had planned on a quiet week with bad TV, stolen cafeteria snacks, and finally catching up on sleep.
But then Gina had called, laying it on thick in a way that she knew would get to me.
“My mom’s making her homemade peppermint bark. You know, the peppermint bark. The one you single-handedly ate an entire tin of?”
That was the bait.
Then came the guilt.
“You’re basically the more emotionally stable daughter my mom wishes she had. Are you seriously going to rob her of that joy?”
I should’ve. I really, really should’ve.
Because when I showed up on the Huttons’ doorstep, trailing behind Gina with a weekend bag slung over my shoulder, the wide-eyed surprise on Mrs. Hutton’s face told me everything I needed to know.
No one had told her I was coming.
“I wanted it to be a surprise!” Gina squealed when I shot her a look sharp enough to cut tinsel.
