“Your mom was going to start dinner soon,” he says, “but Benny told Theo and Miles to do it.” He sees the surprise in my expression. “Benny said something about you wanting us all to help out more.”
“How nice of him to give me credit while I was taking a monster nap.”
Andrew laughs, his throat moving with the sound. Slowly, quiet swallows us again as he sets the book down. I want to ask him about the way he held me on the sled. I want to ask him about the foot-hug under the table. I really want to ask him why he seems jealous of my ex.
“What’re you doing down here?” I ask instead. “There are about seven hundred more comfortable places to read in this house.”
“I came down to get you,” he says, “but couldn’t bring myself to wake you up.”
“So you just hung out nearby while I slept?” I ask, grinning over at him in the dim room.
“You were cute. You kept smiling in your sleep.”
“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.
“So,” Andrew says, taking a step back and sliding his hands into his front pockets. “Sardines?”
“Sure.” I muster up some enthusiasm. “Let’s do it.”
Sardines is Zachary’s favorite game, and Kennedy’s least favorite game, but she agrees to play it when he asks because, as she once said to all of us at the dinner table, “I don’t like standing close to people but I don’t mind standing close to any of you.”
Aaron got up and pretended he had something in his eye so he could go have a happy cry without her seeing it.
Zachary is explaining to Lisa how Sardines works, in an effort to convince her that she should play. Best of luck to you, kid.
Lisa scrunches up her nose. “So, we all get in a small space together and hide?”
“One of us goes to hide,” Kennedy says in her small voice, “and when someone finds them, they get into the place with them.”
Zachary does a snappy karate-chop dance combo, and one of his shoes goes flying. “The last person to find the hiding space is the last winner!”
“The loser,” Kennedy corrects. “Daddy and Papa call it the last winner, but really the last winner is the loser.”
Zachary shrugs. “I like to win.”