New Year's Kiss

by Lee Matthews

  The signing started at noon, but there was no end time listed. People were probably going to be lining up for hours beforehand, but how many books would he sign? How long would he stay to meet and greet his fans? I couldn’t imagine there were thousands of Adam Michel fans hanging out in Evergreen right now, but what did I know? Maybe people had traveled here for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Maybe there were people staying at this very hotel whose only purpose for being here was meeting Adam Michel. If I was going to check this one off my list, I’d have to get there early.

  And I was totally going to have to plan out what to say beforehand, so that I wouldn’t just turn into an incoherent puddle of goo.

  Once I’d made a note of the details on the bookstore website and closed my laptop, I was instantly bored. I had nothing to do. I could have read some more of Sense and Sensibility, of course, but there was no way I’d be able to concentrate right now. In just a few hours, I was going to be singing in front of dozens of people. In heels. And I hadn’t even picked out a song.

  Would it be dozens of people? What if it was hundreds? What if the entire resort came to this thing? And people from town? And people from other towns? What if all the Adam Michel fans staying at the lodge showed up? How popular was this karaoke thing, anyway?

  I looked around the room, my nerves forming a tangled web in my stomach. I had to find something to do. I couldn’t just sit around here all afternoon and freak myself out.

  I located the remote under a pile of Lauren’s clothes and turned on the TV, but a quick flip through the hundred or so channels revealed there was nothing on worth watching. There was always streaming, but I couldn’t think of a single show I was dying to see. Grunting in frustration, I turned off the TV again and tossed the remote on my bed. The silence was deafening. I glanced at the clock. Only a half hour had passed since I’d escaped from that awful lunch.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do for the next three hours?” I said aloud.

  I knew I should decide on a song to sing. Maybe…practice? The very idea tied my chest in knots and made me feel silly. Suddenly the room felt way too small. I grabbed my phone and walked out into the empty hallway, my heart pounding so erratically it was like a wild thing with a mind of its own. Leaning back against the wall in the cool hallway, I texted Christopher.

  Where are you?

  In my room. What’s up?

  What room#?

  115

  Can I come down?

  Sure. Everything OK?

  I think I’m having a heart attack.

  Come now

  I found my way to the elevators and hit the button for the first floor, then pushed myself back against the rear of the cubicle with my hands behind me and tried to breathe. It didn’t help that the piped-in music was a fairly psychotic rendition of “Carol of the Bells.” Repetitive, annoying, and shrill. The second the door opened, I flung myself into the hall and turned left. Christopher was standing at the door of his room, waiting for me.

  “Hi!” he said brightly. But as I got closer, his face slowly fell. “You look like you’re gonna barf.”

  “I might,” I said, pressing my phone between my palms. “Why did I decide to do this? I can’t sing in public. I can’t. It’s ridiculous. I can’t even do oral book reports. What made me think I could—”

  “Okay, okay, calm down.” Keeping his crutches clamped under his arms, Christopher reached out and placed his two large, warm, hands on my shoulders. Every inch of me responded. Suddenly all I wanted to do in the world was sink against his chest and let him hug me. What would that even feel like? It was an acute sort of longing I’d never experienced before in my life, and now I was even tenser. Like, if I didn’t get him to hug me, I’d explode. “Take a deep breath,” Christopher said calmly.

  I did. My lungs clenched.

  “Now let it out!” he said, giving me the slightest shake. I blew it out through pursed lips, turning my head slightly sideways just in case my breath was bad. But then I kind of started to hyperventilate.

  “Oh God. I think I’ve forgotten how to breathe!” I wailed.

  “Right. What you need is a distraction. Something to do until it’s time to go to the dinner,” Christopher suggested. “We can’t have you not breathing for the next two hours.”

  “Okay, but I tried that. Nothing worked.”

  Christopher smiled. “Did you try paper airplanes?”

  * * *

  • • •

  First, we had to find paper, which was harder than it sounded in a hotel where most people used text or email to communicate, and the gift shop had only small, gifty, journal-style notebooks. In the end, I wound up raiding my grandmother’s office again—luckily she was out at “a meeting with the legal team,” according to her assistant, Frank—and stealing a ream of printer paper. I brought it back to Christopher’s room, where he was propped up on his bed with his cast laid out in front of him and his laptop on his lap. He’d given me his spare key, so I was able to just walk in, and my heart caught a bit when I saw him there, his T-shirt pulled taut across his chest.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked.

  “Research.”

  He smiled and turned the computer around. On the screen, a pair of hands expertly folded a standard piece of bright blue paper into an airplane that looked like something out of an air force textbook.

  “Oh, cool. Now I wish I had something better than white.” I held up the package of paper dejectedly.

  “Don’t worry. I don’t think it’s the color that makes it fly far,” Christopher joked. “Here. Sit so we can watch this together.”

  Okay. Sure. Sit with him on his bed. That was something I could totally do and not be awkward about it at all.

  “Where are your parents?” I asked casually, while simultaneously imagining them walking in to find a strange girl on their son’s bed with him and freaking out.

  “Oh, I have my own room,” he said. “Also they had to go to a meeting. We’re not meeting up until dinner.”

  “A meeting?” I asked.

  His face reddened slightly. “It’s a long story. Even when we’re on vacation, my parents somehow find ways to attend meetings. They’re chill like that.”

  Not that he was bitter or anything. I couldn’t blame him, though. My dad did travel for work a lot, but when we went on vacation together, he was always super focused on us—on making family time family time. Sometimes it was actually a little much. But seeing the look on Christopher’s face now made me glad my father was always so involved. At least I never felt ignored.

  “You okay over there?”

  It wasn’t until Christopher spoke that I realized I’d sort of frozen in place and was hovering next to his bed awkwardly.

  “Fine,” I said, swiping my ponytail over my shoulder, all casual-like. I dropped the paper on the desk and walked around to sit down on the opposite side of the bed, my pulse racing. Christopher and I were entirely alone, in his private room, with the door locked and the shades half-drawn. And yep. I was about to crawl into bed with him.

  Well, not exactly, I told myself. The bed was completely made. And all we were doing was sitting there to watch YouTube instructional videos. I had to think of it like it was a couch. And Christopher was just a friend. And we’d been assigned by old, smelly Mr. Walton back home to work on a physics project together. No big deal.

  So, I sat. Well, perched, really, my feet still on the floor. Which meant I had to twist uncomfortably to face the computer.

  “Can you even see from over there?” he asked.

  I laughed. “Um, no.” It was a king-size bed. I was basically three feet away from him. I swung my legs up onto the bed and scooched over until we were so close our shoulders touched. His skin was so warm, even through the fabric of our shirts, and my face lit up like one of the Chris
tmas trees in the lobby. I forced myself to stay still. To concentrate. To really listen to what the guy on the computer was saying about precise folds and even wings.

  “This doesn’t look that hard,” Christopher said finally. “We can totally do this.”

  Was he kidding? These paper airplanes were like tiny works of art. I remembered going to an origami party once in middle school and ending up in tears because I couldn’t get my corners precise enough. Type A me couldn’t handle not being good at something that required precision.

  “Totally,” I echoed, lying through my teeth. “But where are we going to fly them from? He says finding a high throwing point is key.”

  “We could go outside, I guess,” Christopher said. “Use one of the decks or balconies?”

  I looked past him out the window, where the tops of the evergreen trees swayed.

  “It’s too windy,” I pointed out.

  “Okay, but if the wind catches it, it’ll fly really far,” he countered.

  I gave him an admonishing look. “That feels like cheating.”

  “Well, your family owns this place, right?” Christopher said, setting the computer aside and turning to look at me. I tried not to be distracted by the fact that he was so close. That his breath smelled like peppermint. That we were on a bed, and he was very ill-equipped to run away. “I mean, yeah, my family comes here every Christmas, but you must still know it better than I do. Is there anywhere indoors that we could use as a launching pad?”

  I tore my gaze away from his lips and closed my eyes, thinking. There was the restaurant and the ballrooms and the kitchen, the gym and the spa and…

  Then, it hit me. “I’ve got just the place.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Around the indoor pool there were two floors of open hallways overlooking the water. Guest rooms lined the far side of the hall, but the inside was made up of a half wall so guests could look over and see people swimming. Christopher and I set up our launching spot just outside the elevators on the third floor. Overhead, the ceiling was made up of skylights, lending a killer view of the bright blue sky, with wispy clouds chasing one another from pane to pane. Down below, about two dozen people lounged in cushy chairs, reading magazines and books or playing on their phones, while a whole gaggle of kids splashed and screamed in the crystal clear water.

  “This is perfect,” Christopher said, glancing over the barrier. “Let’s do it.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t expect there to be so many people down there,” I said, chewing the inside of my cheek. “I don’t want to bother anybody.”

  “I can take care of that.” Before I had even registered what he’d said, he whistled loudly, and the noise rising up from around the pool all but stopped.

  “What’re you doing?” I whispered, smacking his arm with the back of my hand.

  “Okay, we need to work on this hitting problem you have,” he said quietly. “Unless it means you like me, in which case, I’m cool with it.”

  I blushed like crazy. Oh my God, he was right. Isn’t that what they always said? That if kids pushed each other around on the playground, it meant they were crushing on each other? Ugh, could I be more obvious? I clasped my hands behind me and promised myself I’d have better control.

  Christopher, however, just smiled. “Hi, everyone!” he called out to the people down below, waving like a princess on a parade float. “My name’s Christopher, and this is Tess. Wave to the people, Tess,” he directed.

  I managed a meek wave, resolving to murder Christopher for this later.

  “We’re going to do a little science experiment that involves paper planes, so if you see anything fluttering toward you, you’re not under attack, it’s just paper. Cool?”

  For a long moment there was no response, and then some little kid called up, “If we catch them, can we keep them?”

  Christopher shrugged. “Sure. Knock yourself out.”

  “Cool!” The kid and some others cheered, and then Christopher turned to grin at me. “Problem solved.”

  “You’re crazy,” I told him, pulling the first paper airplane out of the backpack where we’d stashed them.

  “You’re not the first person who’s told me that.”

  I wondered who else had called him out for his shenanigans in the past. It was weird, knowing that he had a whole life somewhere other than here. That he had friends and maybe even a girlfriend, and a bedroom and a school and a basketball team. All of which he’d be going back to in a few days when I went back to Philly. Maybe that was part of the charm of meeting someone on vacation. It felt as if they’d been created just for you. But it wasn’t true. And for a moment, I felt weirdly depressed. And jealous of all the people in Princeton, NJ.

  “Tess?” he prompted.

  I shook myself out of it. We were on a mission here.

  “Get the timer ready,” I instructed.

  Christopher pulled out his phone and opened the timer. I readied the airplane and he counted me down. “Okay. Three, two, one. Let ’er rip!”

  I tossed the airplane, slightly up and as straight as possible, just as the instructional video had recommended. But I knew it was wrong the second the plane left my fingers. The paper shot up for half a second, then took a nosedive and plummeted, spiraling toward the pool. It hit the water, and a kid in a SpongeBob SquarePants bathing suit shrieked and flung himself toward it.

  “Yeah, that didn’t work,” I said.

  “Nope. Five and a half seconds.” Christopher held up his phone to confirm.

  I clucked my tongue. “What’d I do wrong?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was the plane,” he suggested. “It could have been too front-heavy. Try one of those little short ones.”

  I carefully dug through the pile of planes until I found what he was looking for. It was a squat little plane that seemed a bit front-heavy to me as well, half the page having been folded into the upper half. But the guy on YouTube had said it was guaranteed to fly the farthest, so who was I to argue? YouTubers knew everything, right?

  “Give it a try,” Christopher said.

  I chucked the little plane. He hit the timer. And the plane dropped like a stone onto the head of a mom almost directly below where we were standing.

  “Sorry!” I called out, mortified.

  The woman waved up at us, carefree, and turned the page in her book, folding the airplane into it to use as a bookmark. No harm, no foul.

  “This isn’t working,” I grumbled, still embarrassed.

  “It’s okay!” Christopher chided me. “We have like ten more to try. Don’t give up yet.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “I just hope I don’t kill anyone in the process.”

  Christopher laughed. “I don’t think paper planes can kill people,” he said. “Maybe give a nasty paper cut, but death is not even on the list of possibilities.”

  I managed a laugh in return and tried the next plane. It lasted eight seconds. The next, ten. The next, two. That one nearly took someone’s eye out.

  “All right. I’m done. This was a stupid thing to put on the list anyway.” I started to zip up the backpack, feeling flustered and frustrated and like I’d made an idiot of myself in front of a guy I was really starting to like. I flung the bag onto my shoulder and glanced at my phone. We’d wasted an hour, so that was something. At least I hadn’t given one thought to karaoke in all that time.

  But, oh crap, now I was thinking about it again. What was I going to sing? What if my voice cracked? What if my heel turned in those stupid new boots and I went careening off the stage into someone’s shrimp scampi?

  “No, no, no. You can’t give up!” Christopher said, reaching out unsteadily and grabbing my arm. “Come on, Tess. The whole point of this list is to make you feel better. To make you feel like anything’s possible, right
? How are you going to feel if you give up on the very first thing?”

  I looked into his eyes, and he looked so sincere my heart thumped. The expression on his face was almost desperate. It was as if he was more invested in this whole experiment than I was. Maybe he was. Before I had come along, Christopher had been bored out of his mind, looking at a long week off with nothing to do but watch bad videos on his computer and wishing he’d never agreed to go snowboarding with perfect strangers who were apparently jackasses. I wasn’t doing this just for me anymore. I was doing it for him, too. And I kind of liked that he cared so much. Most people probably would have thought that this whole exercise was lame, but Christopher was all in.

  “Okay, fine,” I said, putting the bag down again and extracting a plane at random. It was a fighter jet–style plane, with a skinny end and two wide wings. I’d even drawn stars on the wings of this one, to pass the time while Christopher was folding another. “One more.”

  “That’s definitely the one.” He nodded and readied the timer. I took a deep breath, pulled my arm back, and let the plane fly. This one felt completely different from the first one, and the second it left my hand, my heart seemed to soar right along with it. The plane sailed up and out, and then, almost as if caught on a breeze, it circled around until it was flying parallel to where we were standing. One of the kids down below noticed and pointed up.

  “Oooh! Look!”

  The other kids in the pool stopped what they were doing to watch, and I was sure that the second they noticed, the plane would dip and crash and disappoint them all, but it didn’t. It just kept flying, circling slowly down, until it finally came in for a landing right alongside the shallow end of the pool. Christopher clicked the timer. He stared at the screen.