“Come here.” She hauls me up and into her arms and plays with my hair, and I snuffle into her shirt like when I was a little kid and I had a nightmare.
“You know,” she says, “Alexis is with her mom for Christmas.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So I had a talk with Dominic and he thinks a trip could be fun,” she says.
“What?”
She kisses the top of my head. “How about the three of us do Christmas in Miami this year?”
I cry harder, squeak out Aanya's name, and nod and nod and nod. Mom keeps me gathered up and says, “My poor baby, my poor lonely Taylor.”
Dominic and my mother get what they call a Honeymoon Suite—it's actually just one of the few king bed rooms left in one of Miami's few step-above-flea-ridden hotels—leaving me and Aanya to make our own. We decorate her room with red tinsel and stack our unopened presents between us and the door like a barricade and sleep together in her bed, me curled down at her feet like a cat. Nobody understands us and they don't have to, because they're not here.
We stay with them from a few days before Christmas until almost New Year's. Josey and Theo are home from their trip—they both say it was fun for about ten minutes and then nothing but exhausting, but at least Theo got some college interviews in around the state—and with their families. Jake's around during the day, and we bake cookies and I look away while they make out the same way I do when Josey and Theo get touchy. Well, maybe it's not exactly the same way.
Or maybe it is. Because I love Aanya, And people have been making jokes about me and Aanya for as long as I can remember. How we're always touching each other's hair and coming up behind each other and hugging from behind, and how—and this was what I was thinking when I was moving, this what was on my mind about starting a new life—Aanya was lucky she'd been dating Jake for as long as she had, because the two of us were bonded so hard that at this point no one else had a chance of getting in. I'd never find someone I wanted to live with because no one could ever beat how much I love Aanya.
Because that's what people said. That's what I thought. I thought someone was going to have to beat Aanya. That someone was just going to have to love me more. That I was going to have to love someone more.
And now I'm in this whole mess of best friends and girlfriends and boyfriends and new life and old life. And how am I supposed to compare all these people? To put them on some scale of who means what to me and how much?
Maybe I'm supposed to be seeing all these divisions. Maybe I shouldn't feel the same about looking away from Aanya and Jake—because I'm a little jealous, yeah, and also because they deserve their privacy, and their little world, and my respect—that I do about looking away from Theo and Josey.
Or maybe I should.
It's a very confusing Christmas, me and my new blended family, my stretching definitions of family, my stretching life that makes perfect sense to me some days and no sense others, my senseless love for everything but my own stupid , squeezed heart.
Aanya's parents throw a massive holiday party every year between Christmas and New Year's. When we were younger, this was our best opportunity for getting secretly “drunk”—mostly we'd sneak a small plastic cup of spiked eggnog to share, feel nothing, and proceed to placebo ourselves into giggly little nightmares—but obviously at this point both our lives provide much easier opportunities for that, and getting drunk in a house full of people our parents' age is no longer our idea of a great time. So the three of us—Aanya, Jake, and I—play like we're adults for an evening, greeting all of Aanya's neighbors like they're old friends when really I at least can't ever remember their names from year to year, laughing heartily with them about how much we've grown, saying the same stock phrases about college over and over because no one knows what else to talk to about to sixteen-year-olds.
I'm filling in a man who's so stuffy and old that I honestly wouldn't be surprised if he whipped out a monocle at some point that yes, I'm taking the SATs in the spring, no, I don't have a tutor, no, I'm not nervous (which is not altogether true, but I'm not going to unleash my neuroses on a guy who was probably on the Titanic, judging his way down), when Aanya comes and grabs me by the elbow and whispers, “Hallway. Now.”
Gladly. I excuse myself and follow her. “What's up?”
“If one more of my dad's friends asks my boobs another boring question, I think they might detach themselves and run away.”
“To be fair, it's hard not to look at your boobs in that dress,” I say, which is true, because they are pretty much entirely out there. I need to take that girl shopping for a bra that actually fits her, because that bra was the same size when I moved and her boobs were definitely not.
“I know, they're fantastic, but that's beside the point. Jake's waiting in the car.”
Yes please. “Where are we going?”
“Kevin's. Other Taylor says a lot of people are over there. A bunch are sleeping over so they're still going for a while.”
“Fantastic.”
We work our way to the door and pull on our shoes. Dominic appears, egg nog in hand, and says, “Where are you two going?”
“Friend's
