by Vivian Lux
She froze, finger still in her mouth. Her eyes darted to the side and I looked over her shoulder.
Rett was standing in the doorway. With Cal. They were both staring right at us.
Rett blinked a few times, like he was trying to mentally erase the image of his best friend macking on his little sister from his brain. I had no idea what Cal's face looked like because I pussied out of looking him in the eye.
"Hey guys," Rett said, clearing his throat. "Come on. It's time to open presents."
Harper turned on her heel and started following her brother. She hadn't said anything. Was she just going to pretend nothing had happened?
She paused in the doorway. There was a whole crowd, practically the entire fucking town it seemed like, there waiting for us to find our spots. I peered around behind her. For all anyone could see, I was just casually searching for a spot to sit, but her ear was close enough for me to whisper, "Sit next to me."
I couldn't see her face, not straight on, but I could see the color, scarlet, just like her dress, wash across her cheeks all the way up to the tips of her ears. If I thought I loved her before, that blush fucking cinched it. But she didn't turn and look at me like I expected. She didn't dart a quick reassuring smile over her shoulder, private just for me. And the longer we stood there, the more I wondered if I'd gone and fucked everything up. She viewed me as another big brother, always had. These feelings of mine, well they were pretty fucking perverted when you looked at them from that angle.
My heart started sinking and didn't stop until it reached my too-tight shoes.
She lifted her head, just a fraction, but it was enough to send her hair dancing around her shoulders. She walked into the room.
What else could I do? I followed her, feeling like a shitheel.
"You guys can fit," Brynn called loudly. "Right here, there's room." She slapped the bit of exposed cushion next to her, and for some reason Rett jumped like he'd been shot, but whatever, the guy always was getting startled by shit. I went and sat next to my other best friend's sister, the one who was pretty and funny but I could somehow look in the eye without feeling like the earth was opening under my feet. What the fuck was up with that, anyway?
"Thanks," I mumbled to Brynn, and sort of squirm-shimmied my way onto the couch. The McCabes were already starting to exchange gifts with some of the older crowd, and I tried to pay attention appreciatively as old Mrs. Feathergill expounded about some dusty relic from her antique shop, currently being held at arms length by Mr. Green, my old history teacher. Xavier Tully, the guy who'd bought my family's old homestead and turned it into a B&B was laughing really loudly with Cole Granger while Old Man Melton groused audibly about something to his long-suffering granddaughter Autumn. But all this was just background noise not even worthy of my attention because Harper had just sat down next to me and delicately, almost innocently, placed her hand on my thigh.
My dick seemed to be reaching for her and she had to fucking notice, but she just slammed back her drink. "Slow down there, kid," I whispered.
"I'm not a kid," she murmured back. "I'm a grown-ass woman who makes my own decisions." Her hand fluttered on my thigh a second. "I swear I come home and everyone still thinks I should be wearing pigtails. I'm twenty-five now for God's sake and I've got a really great career..."
She blinked and sort of sagged back on the couch, all the bravado draining from her stance. "Whoops," she sighed. "Sorry."
I was so busy staring at her lips that it took me a moment to realize why she thought she'd screwed up. "Oh, me? Nah." I waved my hand. "I was ready for something new anyway. Actually, I've got an interview the day after New Year's so...things are looking up."
She smiled. "That's the day my parents are renewing their vows, are you going to have to miss it?"
I shook my head emphatically. "No way, kid." Then I ducked and shot her a grin. "I mean, no way, grown-ass-woman-who-makes-her-own-decisions. I'll be there for sure."
"I'm glad," she said and sank back further into the couch, smiling happily. She lifted her empty drink to her lips. "Fuck it," she sighed. "I'm way too comfy to move. Will you judge me if I just suck on the ice cube?"
"Will you judge me if I watch?" I asked her.
Her eyelids fluttered and that beautiful rosy blush spread across her cheeks again. Then she lifted her chin slightly and tipped the glass against her lips. I watched, fucking nailed to the spot, as the ice cube slid between her lips and her cheeks hollowed as she sucked and all the while she kept her green eyes fixed right on me.
Her hand was still on my leg and I was two seconds away from leaning in and kissing her, when suddenly she and I were both jostled. "Sorry," Cal mumbled as he slid against our legs and landed at Harper's feet. "Couldn't find a place to sit, can I fit here?"
She laughed and looked down, amiably widening her stance so Cal could lean against her leg. She lifted her hand from my leg and rested it on his shoulder, her fingers lightly petting his stupid argyle sweater.
Cal murmured his thanks and then, I swear to fucking Christ, that asshole, my best friend, looked me right in the eye and grinned.
Chapter Seven
Harper
The room stopped spinning somewhere around eight-thirty in the morning.
I woke up and carefully made my way to the guest bathroom, then knelt by the toilet. But the moment I could've used to puke had passed a long time ago and my stomach yielded none of its contents. The time to puke and save myself this hangover was probably some time last evening. Probably the time I spent sandwiched between Cal and Gray, glued to the spot with happiness and too drunk with desire to move or do anything to help myself. Like get bread, or drink some more water. With Cal's head between my legs — and yes, every inch of me was aware of how perverted that sounded — and Gray's warming bulk pressed up against me on the side, I'd spent the entire gift exchange in a state of acute arousal. The only thing that kept me from leaping at one, or both of them was the fact that Brynn was seated beside Gray and my stupid, overbearing brother was next to her.
So I spent the night in delicious agony.
But my early-morning agony was quite different.
I got up and stumbled back to the bed, vowing not to move again until the icepick dislodged from my brain. I closed my eyes...
"Oh God," I winced as the guest room was suddenly flooded with light.
"Well, you look as bad as I'd expect," my brother's voice rumbled from the door.
"Really? With the lights?" I groaned.
He chuckled and mercifully shut them back off again. "Here," he said, walking into the room. Each footfall of his feet on the floor boards sounded like the house was about to come down around me. "Drink this, and swallow this," he commanded.
I opened my eyes weakly to see him sitting at my bedside holding a tall glass of water and a fistful of aspirin. I tried to dive for them, the world lurched, and then I decided to move much more slowly. I shoved the aspirin in my dry, cottony mouth.
"What are you even doing here?" I croaked. "Did you sleep over or something?"
Rett shrugged. "Didn't feel like going home to an empty house last night," he said. "Drink your water."
I dutifully drank the entire glass of water, which sat heavily in my stomach, roiling around.
"I haven't done this since high school," Everett observed. "Taking care of my hung over baby sister before our parents find out."
He stood up again, and went to the window and yanked open the curtains.
I rolled over and groaned, then grabbed the pillow and smashed it against my face. "My God, why are you being so annoying?"
"Your absence is beginning to be noticed," Rett said. "I'm just covering your ass."
"You're telling me Mom and Dad have never considered I might be hung over?"
"Mom and Dad still think you read those children's books you write," Rett said dryly. "If they saw you right now, they'd probably stage an intervention. Come on," he said, slapping the comforter. "Get up, I'll take y
ou out to breakfast so you can avoid them."
I groaned, and whined, and complained bitterly, but somehow I managed to get myself assembled into something that resembled a human. I brushed my teeth, piled my ratty hair on top of my head, and gazed at myself in the mirror. With my schlubby sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants, I looked more like an undergraduate then a successful New York author. Truth be told, I probably looked more like a high schooler than anything else.
Rett was waiting for me down the back stairs. He called out some excuse to Mom and Dad about sibling time, and then hustled me into his truck.
I sagged into the seat and rested my head against the cool window. "I guess I owe you, kind of," I said. "Where are we going? Bob and Lou's?"
"Who else is going to be open the day after Christmas?" Rett said. "The rest of the world still treats this like a regular business day, but here in Reckless Falls it's still 1953."
"Well, it's the off-season," I pointed out. It was true. As we rolled to the center of town, I noted how most of the stores were closed up, the store owners heading somewhere warm for the winter months. Either that, or they'd given over their stores to seasonal renters, giving rise to a strange mélange of merchandise. The ice cream shop was now some sort of sweater store, and the lake cruises storefront had been turned into some sort of outdoor excursion place.
"Hey, is that Cal's place?" I asked as we passed.
Rett nodded. "He mostly just does it out of his house, bookings and such, but rent is so dirt cheap in the wintertime that he figures it's good to at least have a storefront on Main Street. With signage and all that. Good way to grab the people who were coming for skiing, right?"
"Right," I nodded. Then I regretted nodding.
We rolled up into the parking lot of Bob and Lou's. I pulled out my phone and snapped a quick picture, posting it to my Facebook page. Someone I’d never met before, but who had commented on all my pages, immediately commented on how picture-perfect it looked, strung with Christmas lights gleaming in the snow with the white-dusted hump of Whaleback Mountain behind it.
Of course it was, because I framed it that way. Cropping out the dumpsters in the back and the parking lot full of dirty melted snow. "Ha," I said out loud.
Rett looked at me. "You on your phone?"
"Posting something to my page," I said shaking my head. "I swear, I feel like I spend more of my life online then I do in real life."
"Why the hell you do that?" my technophobe brother asked.
I shrugged. "Image, I guess."
"What would they do if I went onto your page and told them how you used to dance around to Britney Spears videos with cantaloupes in your bra?"
I smacked him in the shoulder. "I'd probably lose my job, asshole," I chastised him as we hurried into the warmth of the diner." "My publishing company owns my image, and I'm contractually obligated to not do anything that would embarrass them."
"Sounds awful," my brother said, signaling to the hostess that there were two of us.
I shrugged. "It's part of the territory I guess. Besides, I don't really get much opportunity to do something that would be considered embarrassing. Swear to God, I spend about fifteen, sixteen hours a day working. I haven't got time to do anything other than sleep and go to the bathroom."
"I remember you doing some pretty embarrassing things in the bathroom," Rett observed.
I smacked him again, laughing, but part of me was still stuck on the fact that I had to check in, even when I was supposed to be having Christmas time with my family. There was very little in my life now that wasn't calculated for maximum likes and reader interest. Everything was so polished, especially if Cecily got her hands on it. Harper McCabe, Children's Book Author definitely wasn't me anymore. She was some kind of polished perky little automaton. And it was Harper McCabe, Children's Book Author, who was heading back to the City in less than a week to accomplish her lifelong goal of getting her work on television.
I just wasn't sure if Harper McCabe, Children's Book Author and I shared the same goal.
If ever there was a person that was good for brooding with, it was my brother. Rett didn't talk much, never had. He kept his words to himself, except when it came to giving me shit. It was a trait he learned from our father, who only spoke when he had something incredibly meaningful to say. You'd think it would be annoying, but Rett's silence had a sort of reassuring quality to it. Comforting, like an old blanket that smelled like home. I'd spent a lot of time just talking at him, growing up. Expounding on my ideas for books, whole worlds I wanted to build, and his silence never seemed like he wasn't listening. In fact, I was fairly certain that he absorbed more then most people just by virtue of taking the time to be still.
I was on my third cup of coffee when I looked up to see Autumn Melton walking by. She'd been a grade above me at Reckless Falls High, and I remembered hearing last night that she and her high school sweetheart Cole Granger had gotten back together two Christmases ago.
She smiled when she saw us and hurried over. Her red hair was also piled on top of her head and I grinned to think that maybe she was feeling similarly hung over. "Good morning! you guys are up. I'm impressed," she said, wavering slightly.
"Merry Day after Christmas," I said. "You have off today?"
She nodded. "Yeah, the primary grades are off for the next ten days," she said, doing a happy little shimmy.
"Awesome, have a great vacation," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "It's could not be less of a vacation. I'm spending most of it doing wedding planning." She clapped her face into her hands. "I'm sorry, I swear I try to talk about other things, but it's like just creeps up into my consciousness and suddenly I'm talking about the fucking wedding again. It must get so boring for the people around me."
I laughed and then groaned as my head still throbbed. "No, it's really exciting. So happy about you and Cole."
She nodded. "Yeah, that's the thing. Me and Cole, that's great. I can't wait to marry the guy and you know, be married. But it's the wedding stuff, all this stupid nonsense for the day itself that makes me crazy. I never thought I'd be the kind of person to care about cake knives, but all of a sudden I'm freaking out over cake knives!"
Her voice had taken on a little bit of a wild quality, forcing my brother to finally look up from his plate. "How about Derek and Aria? How are they doing with their wedding plans?" he asked, causing me to raise my eyebrow at his strange lapse into gossip. "Do you know?"
Autumn sighed, her shoulders unwinding a little bit. "Oh it's going to be so cool. Their wedding's gonna be at the Falls in October."
"Oh, that'll be so pretty," I sighed. "With the foliage and all?"
Rett winced and tapped his chin philosophically. "You know, October weather can be dicey around here."
"Rett!" I swatted him. "No one wants to hear doom and gloom about weddings."
"I'm just saying, I've trick-or-treated in the snow before."
"We all have," added Cole Granger, walking up to us and snaking his arms around his soon-to-be wife. "Hey guys. Surprised to see you up and about."
"Seems to be a running theme," Rett said, darting his eyes significantly at me.
Cole graciously ignored my brother’s dig. "Well, since you are, you should come out to the lake front. It's the Polar Bear Plunge!"
"You're kidding me!" I said. "I've never been awake early enough to actually catch that."
"Well you're actually just in time. We're meeting my brother and Jesse Klingman there in a few minutes. You should come on by!"
I laughed. "The Polar Bear Plunge, holy crap, any idea who's doing it this year?"
"Gabe Foster always does it. I'm pushing my brother in, whether he wants to go in or not."
"My money's on Derek drowning you if you try that," Rett observed. I smacked him.
"And, I don't know, a bunch of people," Cole went on with a grin. "Actually, isn't Grayson Abbott signed up?"
"What?" my brother and I sputtered in unison.
Cole smiled wider. "Yeah so, we'll see you there, okay?" he said, helping Autumn back into her coat.
We waved goodbye and then sat there staring at each other, dumbfounded.
"He said nothing about doing this at the party," I said. And I would have known since I spent most of the night pressed up against his thigh, I didn't add.
"Probably signed up spur of the moment, knowing him," Rett said.
I threw a couple of twenties down on the tabletop and stuck my tongue out at my brother as he growled at me for paying. "Come on," I urged him. "I gotta see this."
Chapter Eight
Callum
"Bye. Have fun! You're a fucking nutbag!" I called as I waved to Grayson.
He grinned and shot me both middle fingers, then went trotting off the join the rest of the complete idiots as they readied themselves to jump into a frozen lake. Voluntarily.
I opened the liftgate of my pickup and hauled myself up there to sit and watch as volunteers in rowboats broke the ice up at the shoreline into big, jagged chunks. This was sheer lunacy.
This morning, as I suffered through a killer hangover, I resented the hell out of Gray for signing up to do something so stupid as the Polar Bear Plunge.
But then again, one of the basic tenets of being a good friend is this: when your best friend is doing something completely idiotic, you show up to cheer him on.
"Yo, Cal!"
I looked up, surprised to hear Rett's voice. I figured he'd be working, or doing chores, or alphabetizing his DVD collection. Something finicky and no fun at all.
"Hey, Cal!"
I sat up straighter and grinned. There she was, looking as sunny as the bright morning sky.
"Morning' Harper," I said, trying and failing to keep the big, dumb grin off my face. "I didn't think you guys would want to see this."
"Are you kidding me?" Harper said, trying to hop up and sit next to me. I extended my hand and hauled her up easily, and she flopped down next to me with a grin. "I've always wanted to see this. And with Gray doing it, I doubly want to see it."
