New Year's Kiss

by Lee Matthews

  “I like your style,” Christopher said, and quickly added more of the sugary blobs to his own cup.

  “The thing is,” I said, trying for a calmer voice, “I’m never going to get those few hours of my life back. I could have been doing something that was actually fun. Something new. Something I’d remember forever. Instead I’ve got something to think about to bore me to sleep when I have insomnia.”

  “Well, that’s not nothing. If it works, you could market that.” He blew on his cup.

  “You’re missing the point,” I said.

  “And what point is that?”

  I clicked the back of my tongue. “The point is I’m mad as heck and I’m not gonna take it anymore.”

  There was a flash of excitement across Christopher’s face. “What’re you saying?”

  I took another sip of my hot chocolate. “I’m saying, I have an idea. And it was inspired by you, really,” I told him, and then blushed. Because was that the dorkiest thing ever? But Christopher just seemed intrigued.

  “Go on.”

  “I am going to start doing more for myself,” I said. “But it can’t just be that. It can’t be so general. I need to make a list. A list of things I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done because I’ve been too shy or too scared or just too…too…Tess.”

  “Interesting,” Christopher said with a small frown. “A list?”

  “Yeah, I’m a list-maker,” I said, lifting my shoulders. “Totally type A and proud of it. If I make a list, I know I’ll actually do the stuff on it.”

  “All right, then.” Christopher put his cup down on the table and pulled his laptop from between the couch cushions and onto his lap. Her fired it up, stretched his fingers, cracked his knuckles, and then hovered his fingertips over the keyboard, looking at me expectantly. The mischievous glint in his eyes did melty things to my insides. “How many tasks are we putting on this list?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking ten.”

  “Ten? For an entire year?”

  “No, it’s not going to be a new year’s resolution,” I said, scooching back in my chair and pulling my knees up under the still-warm mug in my hands. “That’s the best part. It’s going to be ten things I resolve to do now. Before New Year’s. That way I’ll have a solid deadline. That way I’ll prove to myself I can do it—that I really can change. And I’ll take that feeling into the new year.”

  I hadn’t even really thought it through that far until I was saying it out loud, but as I heard the words coming out of my mouth, my heart swelled, and all the anxiety and anger I’d been feeling morphed into excitement. I felt like I really needed this. After everything that had gone on with my parents over the past few months, all the fighting and negativity and heartache, I needed something positive to take me into the new year. I needed a little bit of hope.

  “Wow,” Christopher said. “A list-maker who likes deadlines. You’re hard-core type A.”

  I laughed mid-sip and spurted a little hot chocolate over my knees.

  “That was classy,” I said, grabbing a napkin to wipe up the mess. My cheeks felt flushed.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” he assured me. He dabbed up a few droplets that had hit the table and then crumpled the napkin and tossed it at his open backpack on the floor. It landed perfectly. “Two points!”

  I smiled. “And the crowd goes wild!”

  Christopher grinned at me. “Okay, so. What’s going to be on this list?”

  He put his fingers on the keyboard again and looked me over expectantly. My shoulders slumped, and, just like that, my adrenaline oozed away.

  “I have no idea.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “What about skydiving? You could go skydiving,” Christopher suggested. He was sitting with both his casted leg and his healthy leg propped up on the table in front of him with pillows under his ankles and his computer on his lap, and had been taking notes diligently as we brainstormed, like my own personal assistant.

  I didn’t hate it, not gonna lie.

  I groaned and tipped my head back over the arm of my chair, my legs dangling over the other side. “It’s, like, negative ten degrees outside. No one’s going skydiving,” I pointed out, staring at one of the chandeliers overhead. Negative ten was kind of an exaggeration, but still. “Besides, that’s not really something I’ve ever wanted to do.”

  “Afraid of heights?” he asked.

  “More like afraid of death by splat,” I replied, and he laughed. I picked my head up, the blood rushing back to my temples. It made me feel good, making him laugh.

  “What about surfing?” he suggested.

  “In the snow?”

  “Snowboarding?”

  “Done that,” I told him.

  “Skateboarding!” He snapped his fingers.

  “Nope. I’ve skateboarded before. I used to do it all the time.”

  “Right. But you said you haven’t since you got hurt,” Christopher pointed out. “So maybe trying it again could count as a new thing.”

  I was touched he remembered, but I couldn’t imagine trying to skateboard on the always-wet-and-icy pavement outside the resort. Besides, I had promised myself never again after enduring that horrible pain and spending all those weeks in a cast. Thinking about it now, though, I did wonder what life would be like if I’d never given it up. Would I still be entering competitions? Would I have, I don’t know…gotten somewhere with it? Won trophies? Competed at Nationals? I had been pretty good at stunting. For a ten-year-old.

  The sliding doors to the lobby opened, letting in a whoosh of cold air, as well as a large group of loud, healthy-looking twenty-somethings toting their skis and boots. I watched them until they rounded the corner toward the Alpine Bar & Grill at the far end of the airy lobby, an odd pang in my chest. Would I ever be that confident—that comfortable in my own skin? When I returned my attention to Christopher, he was watching them too—wistfully.

  “It must really suck, being stuck here all day watching everyone go in and out to their activities,” I said.

  “It’s not the most fun I’ve ever had,” he said. “But I gotta say, this last hour or so has gone by pretty quickly.”

  “Yeah?” I said, feeling warm.

  “Yeah.” He lifted one shoulder. “Thanks for including me in this. It’s fun.”

  Someone dropped their skis with a clatter, and a few people laughed and cheered. “Okay, there is one daredevil-ish thing I’ve never gotten up the guts to do around here,” I told him.

  “What?” Christopher looked intrigued.

  “I’ve never skied one of the black diamond slopes.” I bit my bottom lip, already regretting having said it out loud. Because now he was typing it into his computer. And I was terrified of the black diamond slopes. The one time I had skied over to the top of one of those trails, the wind had whipped up and pelted my face with a spray of ice pellets, as if the gods themselves were trying to warn me away. I had retreated to the Little Green Lodge for some soup and then taken one of the yellow trails down.

  But every year since then I’d promised myself and my dad and Lauren that I was going to try, and every year I’d backed out. It was starting to get old.

  “That is the perfect number nine,” Christopher said.

  “That’s not how you broke your leg, is it? Was it on a black diamond?”

  Christopher kept typing rapidly, as if he were writing the great American novel, rather than adding one item to a short list. His eyes were focused on the screen, his brow creased adorably in concentration.

  “Christopher?”

  “I’m trying to pretend I didn’t hear you,” he replied.

  “Ugh! I knew it! Take it off. Forget I said anything.”

  I got up and made a grab for his computer, but he pulled it away, holding it up and out of my reach with
his broken leg propped up between us.

  “Nope! Nuh-uh! No take-backs!”

  “We never said no take-backs! What is this, second grade?” I reached across his body, trying to avoid knocking into his cast, but that tipped me off-balance and I tripped. My stomach swooped and I tried to stop myself, but there was no good spot to brace my hands, and just like that, I sprawled across Christopher’s lap.

  Oh, God. Oh, GOD!

  “Too bad you didn’t put this on your list,” he joked. “Because I bet you’ve never face-planted on a dude with a broken leg before.”

  Heart pounding, I carefully pushed myself away and sat down next to him on the couch. Our shoulders were touching, and my skin felt like it was on fire underneath my sweater. “Nope. Definitely never done that before. Sorry.”

  “It’s really okay.”

  He put the laptop down on his other side and looked over at me, and I realized our faces were only inches apart. I could see every little line on his lips and smell the berry-licious scent of his shampoo. My pulse ticked up and then, out of nowhere, someone started singing directly into my ear.

  “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.”

  Startled, I turned around and grabbed the back of the couch with both hands. There was a group of eight carolers, all decked out in ugly Christmas sweaters, busting into song in the middle of the lobby.

  I locked eyes with Christopher, and we burst out laughing.

  “Christmas is over!” he shouted.

  “SO over!” I added.

  But the carolers just kept singing jauntily, huge grins plastered on their faces.

  “Ugh, how can anyone be that happy?” I grumbled, sinking down on the couch until my butt was practically dangling off the edge.

  “It should be outlawed,” Christopher agreed jovially, scooching down next to me.

  Our shoulders pressed together again, and just like that, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling.

  “Look, if you must know, I didn’t break my leg because of the black diamond slope,” he said. “I broke my leg because I went skiing with a couple of idiot kids I barely knew, and one of them decided it would be funny to play bumper boards.”

  “What? Someone pushed you off the trail?” I demanded. “Who? Did you murder him?”

  “Ummm…no. I wasn’t really in the condition to take someone out right then.” He chuckled. “But my parents are trying to get him fired.”

  “Wait a minute. He works here?” I sat up straighter, indignant. “Where does he work? Is he our age? Do you want me to talk to Loretta?”

  “No! No, no, no. Honestly. My parents are all over it,” he said. “And besides…I kind of think the whole thing is stupid. My parents are being super dramatic about it, and I wish they’d just let it go.”

  I blinked. “So, you don’t want him fired.”

  “No. I mean, yeah, I guess. The guy’s an asshole, seriously,” he said. “And I hope I never lay eyes on the jerk again. But…I just don’t feel the need to make a big thing out of it, you know?”

  “But he broke your leg.”

  “Yeah, and it sucks. But it’s not like I’m looking for revenge or something. I don’t know. It’s just not me.”

  “Wow,” I said. “You are very evolved.”

  “Not really. I still like a good fart joke now and then.”

  I laughed and settled back into the couch, scooching down next to him again. We both looked at the laptop screen where the cursor blinked on the line under 9. Ski a black diamond slope.

  “Okay, only one more,” Christopher said, turning his head to look at me. I could smell the sweet hot chocolate on his breath. “What’s the last thing on your list going to be?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, scanning numbers one through nine. “Why is this so hard?”

  Christopher narrowed his eyes. “What about food? Is there something you’ve never tried that you’ve always wanted to try?”

  Oh my God. That was it!

  “Sushi!” I cried. “I’ve always wanted to try sushi.”

  “Raw fish?” Christopher shuddered, sticking out his tongue in mock disgust. “Why would anyone want to eat sushi?”

  “Like, everyone in my school eats it,” I told him. “But if someone asked me out to a sushi restaurant, I wouldn’t even know what to order. I’d be the loser ordering chicken teriyaki or whatever.”

  It was my parents’ fault, really. They were total meat-and-potatoes people. If we went out to dinner as a family, it was almost always to some kind of steak restaurant, or one of the Italian places near our house. Basically the only fish I’d ever had was in fish sticks.

  “Put it down,” I said, nodding at the computer screen. “Eat sushi. That’s number ten.”

  “It’s your stomach.” He typed it in and hit Save. “And we’re done. I think it’s a pretty solid list, if I do say so myself.”

  I stared at his computer screen as the carolers launched into the eight maids a-milking verse. It was a solid list, but I thought I’d be more excited about it. For some reason I felt meh. Like it wasn’t really real. There was something anticlimactic about this whole moment. But what did I expect? A bright light from the heavens shining down on Christopher’s computer? Angels singing an aria?

  Well, I did have carolers.

  “So…when are you going to get started?”

  “I feel like we need to do something,” I said. “To make it official.”

  “Like what?” he asked. “A blood oath?”

  “Um, no,” I said. “Although I’ve never taken one of those, either.”

  He snorted a laugh. “What then? What makes a list more official?”

  I scoured my brain until it landed on an idea. “I’ve got it,” I said, and reached around the side of the couch for his crutches. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Five minutes later, the two of us were standing in the middle of Loretta’s large, beautifully decorated private office, with its striped wallpaper and gleaming oak desk, watching the list print out. As soon as the paper dropped into the tray, I grabbed it and brought it over to the machine in the corner.

  “What is that thing?” Christopher asked, leaning into his crutches.

  “This,” I said with a smile, “is Loretta’s laminator. I used to play with it all the time when I was little. She let me laminate all the menus for the Easter brunch one year, and it was, like, the best day of my life.”

  He whistled, as if impressed. “Wow. You’re a wild woman, Type A.”

  I grinned, kind of loving his new nickname for me. It made me want to come up with one for him, like Mr. Chill, or something, since he was so blasé about the idiot who had injured him. But Mr. Chill sounded like a super villain. I’d have to work on it.

  “Hey, once you laminate something, it’s sacred,” I told him, firing up the machine. “You can’t change a document once it’s been sealed.”

  He tilted his head and somehow, even that small gesture, made my heart hitch. “I see your point. So, let’s do it.”

  “Okay. Here goes nothing.”

  I fed the sheet of paper into the laminator. It made a soft whirring sound, and, ever so slowly, the list came out the other end with a fine, clear coating of plastic around it. Holding the still-warm document between my fingers, I inhaled the scent of fresh plastic and felt a zing of excitement all through me. Everything was going to be different from this moment on.

  “One question,” Christopher said. “If the list is now officially unchangeable, how are you going to check stuff off when it gets done?”

  We’d purposely left space at the end of each line for a check mark so I could keep track of what I’d accomplished. Luckily, though, I’d already thought this part through. I went over to Loretta’s desk
and opened the top drawer. Inside was a drawer organizer, with slots for pens, pencils, paper clips, rubber bands, and Post-its. A place for everything and everything in its place. Christopher hobbled over to me and looked down. He gave an impressed whistle.

  “Now I know where you get your type A from.”

  I picked up a permanent marker and uncapped it. “This will write on lamination, no problem,” I told him.

  He nodded, impressed, as I recapped the pen. “So let’s get started on this thing.”

  “Wait…now?” I asked, looking up at him over the top of my all-important list. “We just made it official.”

  “Yeah, but didn’t you say you wanted to get all that done before the new year?” He lifted his chin in the direction of the list, and my heart thunked into my stomach.

  “Oh. Ummm…”

  Christopher looked at his wrist, where there was no watch.

  “Yeah, you’ve basically got less than four days.”

  TESS’S NEW YEAR’S BUCKET LIST

  Make a paper airplane that actually flies (20 seconds at least)

  Sing in public

  Strike up a conversation with a stranger

  Wear high heels outside the house

  Make out with a guy whose last name I don’t know

  TP someone’s house

  Get Adam Michel’s autograph

  Get a short, stylish haircut

  Ski a black diamond slope

  Eat sushi

  When I woke up, the sun was shining through the slit between the heavy curtains, and I could already hear people shouting and squealing out on the ice rink. Lauren was snoring facedown into her pillow with a line of drool just beneath her mouth. For half a second, I considered snapping a photo of my perfect sister in such an imperfect state to use for later blackmail opportunities, but then I realized I was in too good of a mood.