New Year's Kiss

by Lee Matthews

  I hesitated, at a loss. Did my sister expect me to bribe her? Offer to buy her a pair of shoes, too? It wasn’t like I was rolling in money. All I had on me was the cash my Nana and Papi had given me for Christmas. My mother refused to let me get a real job until I got my driver’s license, and I’d spent all my liquid funds on Christmas gifts. Lauren, meanwhile, had been working at Ultimate Beauty for the last year and socking away every paycheck for her European adventure. She’d given all of us handmade cards for Christmas. Which was nice, I guess, but still.

  “I—”

  “Hey, Type A! There you are!”

  Lauren turned around at the sound of Christopher’s voice. She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair—for a better look, I could only imagine. He made his way over to us on his crutches, deftly avoiding the small tables and chairs, and paused next to Lauren.

  “Let me just grab some coffee. I could go for one after that workout.” He looked at my sister and held out a hand, clamping his crutch under his arm. “Hey. I’m Christopher,” he said.

  Lauren smiled and shook his hand. “I’m—”

  “The evil sister, I know.”

  I snorted, then slapped my free hand over my mouth. Lauren’s jaw dropped, and she shot me a WTH look.

  “Christopher is coming with us,” I told her.

  “This guy?” Lauren pointed across her body at Christopher, her eyes on me. “The one who just called me evil?”

  “Well, you are a little evil,” I joked.

  Lauren smirked.

  “Yeah, and we’re gonna need a van, probably,” Christopher pointed out. “So I can prop up my leg.”

  Lauren’s eyes trailed from his sock-covered foot, sticking out of his cast, all the way up his body to his green, green eyes.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “But by the end of the day, you’d better take back that evil comment.” She put her sunglasses back on and pointed at me. “You get him his coffee and meet me in the garage in ten minutes. By the time you get there, I’ll have a van for us.”

  She turned and flounced away, leaving me shaking my head. I should have mentioned Christopher from the very beginning. The fastest way to my sister’s heart was with a hot guy.

  Downtown Evergreen was like something out of a dusty classic picture book featuring stories from a simpler time. Main street was a wide, two-lane road lined with flowerpots (currently holding decorated evergreen shrubs) and old-fashioned lampposts, each of these hung with a ball of holly and festooned with red ribbon. Colorful awnings adorned the mom-and-pop shops, which included an actual five-and-dime store, a stationery store called Write or Wrong, and a barbershop with the classic swirling striped barbershop pole. There was a Starbucks, and a couple of banks, but otherwise, it was as if time had stopped, and everyone who lived and worked there meant to keep it that way. The plate-glass windows shone, the wrought-iron trellises were freshly painted, and there wasn’t a stray bit of garbage anywhere. The only speck of anything on the sidewalks was the leftover salt from when the store owners had dealt with the ice that morning.

  “Where is this place, anyway?” I asked, following my sister up the hill, past where most of the shops lived. I kept looking back at Christopher, who was bringing up the rear, gamely navigating around other pedestrians with his crutches. The place was so jammed, Lauren had been forced to park in a municipal lot a couple of blocks outside of town, but Christopher hadn’t complained once.

  “It’s in an old Victorian house up here. It’s so cool. Wait until you see.”

  Lauren actually seemed excited. Maybe the way to my sister’s heart was actually through shopping. Could it be that there was more than one? Maybe I should stop waiting for my sister to stop treating me like crap and start offering to do the things she liked to do. This was, at least, more pleasant than most of the time we’d spent together lately. Although, it wasn’t like she ever offered to hang out with me at the bookstore or had come to one of the plays I worked on without being bribed by a parent.

  “We’re here,” Lauren announced finally, slightly out of breath. She clomped up the steps of the small home, which were painted a light lavender, and opened the door with a flourish.

  I looked up. The words SWEETS AND TREATS were painted on the front window of the pretty, gingerbread-style house. In the window display, shoes, purses, and jewelry were positioned on little glittering ski slopes, as if they were taking morning runs. “Isn’t this the place Loretta basically forbid us to go?”

  Lauren rolled her eyes, and I flinched, waiting for the put-down that I knew, from experience, was on the tip of her tongue. But then Christopher arrived behind me—I could smell the fruity scent of his shampoo—and Lauren stopped herself. Clearly she didn’t want to look like a jerk in front of him. Hanging out with Christopher was turning out to have so many benefits.

  “Come on,” Lauren said. “They have the cutest stuff. Unless you want to buy a pair of sensible pumps from one of the middle-aged-lady stores downtown.”

  “You definitely don’t want to do that,” Christopher offered, eyes twinkling.

  I went up the stairs and held the door for Christopher, who made his way ever so slowly toward us. He winced with each step, and I started to feel very guilty about this whole endeavor. But then, he was the one who’d insisted on coming along. Almost as if he wanted to spend time with me and would endure anything to do it.

  My heart did a little pitter-patter dance at the thought.

  “You’d think they’d be required to install a ramp,” he muttered under his breath as he finally arrived, a sheen of sweat across his forehead. “Isn’t that, like, a law?”

  “Are you all right?” I asked. “We don’t have to do this. I feel like you should be home in bed.”

  “Probably.” He gave me a heart-stopping grin. “But why the heck would I want to do that when I’m about to watch you try on shoes?”

  The weird thing was, it was clear he really meant it.

  * * *

  • • •

  Half an hour and about twenty pairs of painful shoes later, I was about ready to give up. Why? Why did high-heeled shoes exist? And why did anyone want to wear them—ever? My calves ached and my toes were pinched and there was a blister forming on the back of one of my heels. And this was just from trying them on. I honestly couldn’t believe Loretta walked around in shoes like this all day. Were her feet made of steel?

  Lauren was texting on her phone, and Ainsley—the salesperson who had been gamely running up and down the stairs to the stockroom for new pairs—looked desperate as I kicked off the latest pair—strappy torture devices covered in silver glitter. Honestly, it felt as if someone had taken a hacksaw to the tops of my feet.

  “I think you’ve tried on every pair that’s lower than three inches,” Ainsley said, biting her bottom lip, which was painted a deep shade of purple and outlined in black. “If you were willing to go a bit higher, I could—”

  “No. She can’t handle higher,” Lauren said, shoving her phone away. “Trust me on this. You ever seen a baby giraffe video?”

  Ainsley’s plucked eyebrows rose. “Oh, really?” she said, and scrunched up her face. “That bad?”

  “That bad,” Lauren confirmed.

  “Hey, I am not a baby giraffe,” I grumbled, and they both looked at me hopefully. “But I really don’t want to go above two inches,” I said with an apologetic shrug. Honestly, if I’d only tried on two-inch pairs so far, I was pretty sure three inches would actually kill me.

  “I’m sorry,” Ainsley said. “I really don’t have anything else I can show you.”

  Lauren tipped her head back and groaned.

  “Wait! What about these? Do these count?” Christopher came out from behind one of the shelves with a boot in his hand. It was a tall brown boot with a fairly slim, but not ridiculously slim, high heel.

  “Count f
or what?” Lauren asked. “Why are we even doing this again?”

  I had somehow found a way to get through the last hour without mentioning the list to my sister. Now she and Ainsley were eyeing me with interest, as if I was about to make some sort of deep confession. I didn’t care what they thought they were waiting for, though. I locked eyes with Christopher. He lifted one shoulder, saying it was up to me. And it was up to me, wasn’t it? It was my list. My idea. My goals. I could decide what counted as “high heels” and what didn’t.

  “Yes, those do count,” I said. Partially because I was sick of this whole exercise already and partially because the boots looked like something I might actually wear again—as long as they didn’t do further damage to my already pissed-off feet. They were a very lush shade of tannish-brown, and they looked soft.

  “I’ll get them in your size!” Ainsley announced, hoofing it for the stairs once again. “I’m totally skipping the gym after this.”

  Lauren laughed. “Do you remember that time Mom took us shopping for back-to-school shoes, and the saleswoman told her I had fat feet?”

  “What?” I cried. “No way.”

  Christopher tilted his head, trying to get a look at Lauren’s feet, but she made a show of tucking them under her chair. I kind of couldn’t believe that Lauren would have said anything unflattering about herself in front of a guy.

  “You don’t remember that?” Lauren picked up a bracelet from a table next to her chair and tried it on. The rhinestones flashed in the sunlight, streaming through the tall windows across the way. “I burst into tears and threw a fit.”

  “Really?” I had zero recollection of this event. “How old were we?”

  Lauren narrowed her eyes and added another bracelet. “I think I was seven, so you were five.”

  “What did mom do?”

  “She went into this whole lecture about how the woman was trying to indoctrinate her girls into societal norms of beauty and weight and she should be ashamed of herself.”

  “Yeah, that sounds like mom,” I said with a laugh. Then I remembered I was mad at my mother, and I felt a sour sort of burning around my heart. “I can’t believe you remember that.”

  “I was so psyched that when I got home, I wrote it down. What I could spell of it, anyway.” She sighed, took off the bracelets, and put them back on the table. “Our mom’s the coolest,” she told Christopher.

  “Sounds like it,” he replied. “I’m bummed I don’t get to meet her.”

  “Whatever. It’s not that big a loss,” I muttered.

  Lauren turned, as if she was about to ask me what I meant by that, when Ainsley came barreling down the stairs. “Got ’em! Size ten!”

  She strode over to me and opened the forest green box, then removed all the plastic and paper from inside the tall shaft of the boots. I sat down and held my breath as I carefully pushed my right foot into the first boot. If these didn’t work, I had no idea what I was going to do. Other than go buy a pair of middle-aged-lady pumps from a store downtown. I zipped up the boot.

  “How does it feel?” Ainsley asked.

  “So far so good,” I replied, wriggling my toes. I was relieved to discover they could actually move. Meanwhile, it seemed like everyone around me was crossing their fingers and toes. Possibly even the woman behind the register over in the corner, who’d been helping every other customer who came in while Ainsley dealt with me.

  I zipped up the other boot and stood. There was the tiniest wobble, but then I straightened and realized I felt almost solid. It was still weird, being a whole two inches taller, but I didn’t feel quite so…not me as I had in all the hard, toeless, patent heels I’d tried on before.

  “Do the walk,” Lauren instructed.

  I walked down the length of the throw rug that encompassed the shoe area of the store, then back again. Nothing hurt. Well, aside from that heel blister, which had been throbbing even before I’d put on the boots. I paused at the far end, then pivoted to look back at three expectant faces. Excitement bubbled up inside my chest.

  “They’re good!” I declared.

  “Woo-hoo!” Ainsley cheered.

  Then Lauren’s phone rang. She looked at it and grimaced. “It’s Loretta.”

  My heart thunked. Were we caught? Lauren picked up.

  “Hey, Loretta! How’s—”

  I heard Loretta’s angry voice shouting through the phone and I looked at Christopher, who had blanched.

  Yep. We were definitely caught.

  * * *

  • • •

  “She was annoyed because we missed some kind of family portrait day or something,” Lauren said as she drove the van at top speed back toward the resort. “I thought you said you double-checked the schedule.”

  In the back seat, Christopher braced himself against the wall at his side and the seat back behind him. In my lap, I held the red plaid paper bag with my new boots inside. In the end, I hadn’t had to buy Lauren her own pair of shoes, but I had gotten Ainsley to throw in one of the bracelets my sister was admiring. It was the least I could do.

  Now, I had to grit my teeth against my nerves. “I did double-check. I saw nothing about family portraits. And could you try to not kill my friend back there?”

  Lauren shot me a mischievous side-eye. “Friend?” she whispered. “Or more than friend?”

  “Shhh!” I blushed.

  “Ooooooh!” Lauren teased. “I knew it!”

  “Knew what?” Christopher called out.

  “Nothing!” both Lauren and I responded, Lauren in a singsong and me in a strained wail.

  “No fair keeping secrets from the dude in the back!” Christopher shouted, and Lauren and I laughed. It felt good to laugh with my sister. Better than I would have ever admitted.

  “Anyway, she wants us to go to some Frank Sinatra dinner to make up for it.” Lauren gave a massive eye roll. “It’s, like, all the pasta you can eat and some old dude singing some dead dude’s songs.”

  “That I remember seeing on the schedule,” I said.

  “Sinatra and Pasta!” Christopher shouted. “It’s actually a pretty fun time. We go every year.”

  “I’m not so sure about this friend of yours,” Lauren said quietly. “He has questionable taste.”

  “Hey! I picked out the boots!” Christopher pointed out.

  “You heard that?” Lauren demanded.

  Crap. Did that mean he’d also heard the “more than friend” comment?

  “Lauren, I can’t go to dinner tonight. You have to cover for me.”

  Lauren was so shocked she almost drove off the road. “Wait a minute, what? Did we just drive through some sort of wormhole? Tess wants me to cover for her?”

  “Oh my God! Can we not make a big deal out of this?” I demanded, glancing back at Christopher.

  “It’s actually fine,” he assured me. “Sinatra and Pasta is at, like, six p.m. The karaoke party doesn’t start until nine. You can do both.”

  “The karaoke party? That’s what you want me to cover for?” Lauren was clearly thrown. “But you don’t sing.”

  “I do now,” I said, determined. Up ahead, the sign for Evergreen Lodge, shaped like—what else—a forest of evergreen trees, loomed. “Tonight, I wear heels and sing karaoke.”

  Lauren took the turn so fast, the van’s tires squealed. “Oh yeah. Definitely a wormhole,” she said.

  It was the longest afternoon of my life. Loretta insisted that we sit down for lunch with her, and then spent the entire meal grilling us about school and grades and friends and “significant others” until I felt like I’d been turned inside out. Lauren seemed to be taking it even worse, what with the third degree about this “ill-advised year off” she was planning to take. Loretta told her that if she insisted on backpacking through Europe, Loretta could at least provide her with a list of hotels wh
ere she could pick up “respectable” jobs along the way and “do something useful with her time.”

  “I have a lot of friends in this business,” Loretta told her, touching her napkin to her lips, which were somehow still perfectly outlined and lipsticked. “We boutique hotel owners like to support one another.”

  “Oh, Dad already gave me a list of contacts at all the Galileo hotels, just in case,” Lauren said with a confident smile. We both looked at Loretta, sure that this would appease her. But Loretta, instead, went very still.

  One thing no one in my family ever talked about was the fact that my father had left Evergreen Lodge behind for a prestigious job at the international Galileo hotel chain. In his position as legal counsel for Galileo, he got to travel all over the world, which he never would have been able to do working for Loretta. But sometimes, like right then, it was pretty clear that Loretta wasn’t happy about it. Me and my mom; Dad and Loretta. Our relationships were definitely complicated.

  “Fine,” Loretta said finally. “That’s that, then.”

  Lauren and I exchanged a look, unsure of what to do next.

  And then Loretta recovered and launched into all the ways that Lauren could get lost or assaulted or murdered and told her that she’d better pack pepper spray. By the end of the lecture, Lauren was holding a fork like a shiv and looked like she wouldn’t mind committing murder. Or maybe stabbing herself in the ear so she wouldn’t have to hear any more.

  Mercifully, once we were done eating, Loretta let us go. She had meetings all afternoon and told us we could have some time to ourselves, provided we meet her for the Sinatra and Pasta dinner at 6 p.m. sharp. Lauren shot out of her chair like it was equipped with an ejector seat, and I went right back to our room to practice walking around in my new boots.

  That had lasted all of about ten minutes. Then I’d opened up my laptop to look up the details of the Adam Michel signing in town on New Year’s Eve. I had heard about Adam’s autobiography ages ago on his Instagram, but hadn’t realized it was coming out this month. What were the chances that my favorite singer of all time was signing his book at the rinky-dink bookstore in Nowheresville, Vermont, on the exact week that I was here? It was like fate, and I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me by.