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“I thought you were reading.” He shrugs, and I laugh. “How Edward Cullen of you.”
He frowns. “Who?”
“Oh my God, Andrew, no. We cannot remain friends.”
“I’m just kidding. I know the guy from The Hunger Games.” He bursts out laughing when my horror deepens. “You look so insulted! Is that your test to weed out the bad ones?”
“Yes!”
Still laughing, he stands and waves me up. “It’s a good thing I’ve always been an excellent student.”
Oh.
“Come on.” He takes my hand. “I told the twins we’d play Sardines before dinner.” In the darkness, his eyes shine wickedly. “I’m hiding first, and I have a killer spot.”
chapter seventeen
After the secluded, dark basement, it feels obscenely bright in the kitchen, like we’re walking onto the set of a salacious talk show. My guilt complex is behaving as though we were naked and rolling around on the scratchy basement carpet. Everyone looks at us expectantly when we emerge from the downstairs, and I’m sure it’s just my imagination but I can’t help but feel that a suspicious hush has fallen over the room.
I wave, like an idiot. “Hey. Sorry I fell asleep.” I point behind me, down the stairs. “After we were talking. And playing cards. You know.”
Miles screws his face up. “Thanks for the update.”
He tugs at the strap of a floral apron around his neck and picks up a can opener. Granted, it’s a sort of fancy version of a regular can opener, but my brother turns it around in his hands like it’s a complicated rocket engine part salvaged from NASA. Are we really entrusting this fetus with dinner preparation for thirteen people?
Andrew starts to explain to him how to use it, but I stop him with a hand on his arm. “No. He will learn through the suffering.” I turn to give the same warning look to my mom, but she seems perfectly content at the kitchen table with a glass of wine in one hand and a paperback in the other.
Miles looks like he would very much like to give me the finger, but then his expression clears and a smirk pulls at his mouth. “Dude.” He points upward. “You two are under the mistletoe.”
In unison, Andrew and I turn our faces up to the doorway overhead. Miles is right. The festive sprig is now hanging from a red ribbon pinned into the doorway.
“I didn’t know that was there,” I burst out defensively.
“I didn’t either.” Andrew looks down at me, and even when his mouth isn’t smiling, his eyes always are. Does the clock stop? It sure feels like it. Of all the times I’ve imagined luring Andrew under the mistletoe, never once did the fantasy include half of our respective families standing nearby.
“You guys could each take one step backward,” Theo says gruffly, but it’s pretty hard to take his anger seriously when he’s wearing Mom’s Mrs. Claus apron. “You don’t actually have to kiss.”
Except, I think we do. Let’s not break the rule.
Andrew lets out a nervous laugh, but his eyes hook to mine. Slowly, he bends. His lips—oh my God, his perfect lips—land on mine in the purest kiss, ever, in the history of time. Andrew straightens, and I focus on keeping my spine rigid so I don’t lean into him for more.
It was perfect, but it was nothing. Barely lasted as long as one of my agitated heartbeats.
A flash bursts nearby, followed by Lisa’s muttered, “Damn it. I missed it.”
Miles scoffs. “That wasn’t a kiss.”
I immediately regret all those times I told my brother he’s an idiot; very clearly he is a truth seer with the emotional intelligence of Yoda.
“Dude, it’s fine,” Theo growls.
But we’re in our own little bubble now. Andrew laughs quietly. “He’s right. It wasn’t really a kiss.”
Andrew. Kissed me. On the mouth. I shrug with feigned indifference, keeping my voice low. “It was fine.”
“I promise you,” he whispers, “my goal for our first kiss was not ‘fine.’ ”
“Okay, well,” I say, heart shoving itself up into my throat. “Try again.”
He quirks a brow, eyes darting down to my mouth and back up again.
“Are you gonna kiss her?” Zachary yells down the hall.
We turn to find at least six pairs of eyes watching us with vibrating intensity, and every cell in my body lets out an aggrieved groan. A chorus of conversation breaks out all around us.
Kyle laughs. “I think interrupting a mistletoe kiss is bad luck.”
“God, they’re so young,” Aaron stage-whispers. “I want to be that young again. Making out under the mistletoe. Staying up until three in the morning. Tying my shoes without getting winded.”
“They weren’t making out,” Dad scoffs, and then adds with less certainty, “Were they?”
Why do I like my family again? Even if Andrew was intent on doing the kiss over, the moment has been doused with several proverbial gallons of ice water.
