The Holiday Kiss

by Maggie Dallen

  He’d looked up at that, his mouth still full of taco and his gaze oddly intense, like he was seeing me for the first time since he’d walked in. After he’d swallowed and taken a sip of his club soda, he started in on the questions. Where did the money come from, why didn’t everyone know about it, how did I know another academics program was the best use for it, etc.

  Our poor moms just looked back and forth between us as my answers grew shorter and snippier as his questions turned into a full-blown interrogation.

  I’ll admit I made matters worse by laughing when he said the school could use better pool facilities.

  This led to a whole battle about high school priorities and the fact that academics should always outweigh sports.

  I won’t recap the whole argument because I think it’s fairly clear which side we were each on and needless to say—we didn’t see eye to eye.

  He and his family eventually—thankfully—left our house and I’d thought the matter was over. Until I arrived at today’s meeting.

  That jerk had gone and stolen my grant money.

  I gave Taylor the rundown on all this and followed it all up with a sincere apology. We stopped in front of our next AP class and I met her gaze for the first time since I’d started talking. “I’m so sorry, Taylor. If we lose the grant money, it’s all my fault.”

  She gave me a little side hug that put my face right in her armpit. But since I was begging for forgiveness, I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s not your fault, Maya,” she said.

  My friend was always the kind one. She really was too sweet for the guys at our school. Whenever I tried to tell her this she rolled her eyes and told me I sounded just like her grandmother.

  If that were the case, her grandmother was a smart lady. Seriously, there were some people who were just too good for high school guys and Taylor was one of them. She was smarter, kinder, and far more generous than any guy at Briarwood.

  This was not the reason that I was single. I was nice, but not a saint. I was generous, but not to a fault. And while I was definitely smarter than most of the guys in our school, it didn’t really matter because I didn’t date high school boys. Not anymore.

  You see, I had a boyfriend. We were on a break while I finished up my senior year and he got through his first year at MIT, but we planned to rekindle our relationship once I was at Harvard and we resided in the same city.

  I’d been lucky to meet Brandon my freshman year, when he was a sophomore at a different high school. We were the perfect match. We shared similar goals and had the same group of friends. I wouldn’t exactly call it true love, but then I didn’t necessarily believe such a thing existed.

  Mom was the romantic in our little family. I was the voice of reason. So while I wasn’t prepared to discount the idea entirely, I didn’t embrace it either. To put it analytically, I didn’t have enough data to support either side of this particular debate.

  But I didn’t have to analyze the facts to know that I was still fuming over the disastrous meeting, not to mention severely disappointed. I’d been expecting a win before winter break. Something to celebrate while relaxing on the beach with my mom.

  Every Christmas since I was little my mom had been taking me to Puerto Escondido, a beach town in Mexico. It wasn’t too far from where she grew up, though none of her family lived there anymore.

  Sure, some kids loved the whole white Christmas thing, but for our little family Christmas meant sunning on the beach and shopping for useless trinkets to bring back as souvenirs.

  It wasn’t exactly traditional, but it was tradition.

  “Just enjoy your vacation,” Taylor said, as if she could read my mind. “And I’ll do the same.”

  Taylor’s family went further north to Canada every Christmas to see her grandparents. I shuddered at the thought of a winter without some sunny respite, but to each his own.

  “The good news is, you already got into Harvard and don’t need the extra credit,” Taylor said. “And my applications are all in so while this would have been a nice coup, neither of us need it. The upcoming classes will have to take up the fight for themselves if they want a STEM program.” Her tone had taken on that logical lilt that I loved so dearly. This right here was why we were friends. Her way of comforting me was to talk reason, not wallow in emotions.

  An excess of any emotions tended to make us both uncomfortable. When Taylor had moved to Briarwood in seventh grade it had been like finding the one coworker who was also allergic to dogs while working at a pound.

  Because, you see, Briarwood was teeming with emotions. Junior high had been a cesspool of angst. Cliques had formed, friends had parted ways, crushes had developed, along with new fledgling relationships. Couples seemed to be created and destroyed within the course of a few heartbeats, but the brevity of these relationships did nothing to dampen the grief.

  More than once I’d had to back out of a girls’ bathroom in horror because I’d walked in on a girl crying. Sometimes multiple girls.

  Then came Taylor. Wise, kind, logical Taylor. It’s not like she and I didn’t have emotions—of course we did, everyone does, that’s just science. It’s the human condition, like it or not. But we shared a mutual belief that emotions could be controlled, at least to some extent. One could indulge them or one could put them in their rightful place. One could get sucked into the drama that was junior high and then high school, or one could concentrate on the future.

  I managed a smile for Taylor’s sake, because she was right. I didn’t need this win, I’d just wanted it. This emotional turmoil wasn’t so much about losing the grant money as it was my anger over how it was stolen. Nothing that a week on a beach wouldn’t fix. A week in which I wasn’t forced to hear that low, booming voice or see that cocky smile.

  Yes, this vacation was exactly what I needed.

  Chapter Two

  Luke

  Some days it was good to be me. And today? Yeah, today was one of them.

  My team was on track to make it to state. Again. Thanks to me. We were almost halfway through senior year and the rest of the year looked like smooth sailing for classes. And now I’d gone and scored some money for my teammates—a sort of one man legacy in case there was any doubt that I was going to be remembered and revered as a swim team legend.

  Not to mention, seeing that look on Maya’s face had me in a great mood as I headed to my next class.

  “She looked pretty pissed,” the kid beside me said.

  I looked down at him. Kyle, that was his name. Sometimes it was hard to remember with these underclassmen, they all looked the same with their eager smiles, like they were just desperate for attention.

  Kind of like puppies, really, and I’d always been a dog fan. I had to resist the urge to pat him on the head, but I did give him a grin. After all, Kyle had done the legwork. I’d called him up and told him what I was proposing and he did the research to back it up.

  And rightfully so. I mean it would be him and the kids beneath him who inherited the fruits of my genius. The least he could do was crunch the numbers and write up the proposal.

  “Are you really—” Kyle started. He stopped talking abruptly.

  I looked down, a little surprised to find that the puppy was still at my side.

  And he was blushing. It was adorable, really. And a little weird. This kid needed to hit puberty in a big way. But he had the makings of a decent swimmer if those hormones would ever kick in and give him the muscle mass he needed.

  “Are you really dating her?” he finished.

  “Her who?”

  “Maya.”

  I stopped in my tracks. We’d just hit my locker so I made a beeline toward it, students moving for me as I cut across the stream of people rushing to class. “What are you talking about?”

  And then it clicked. My parting shot, the one solely intended to make Maya do that scowling, pursed lip look that made me smile.

  “No, dude,” I said with a laugh. “Of course not. I can�
��t believe you fell for that.”

  He was smiling now too, and looking more than a little relieved that his idol wasn’t screwing a nerd. What a dumb kid.

  Kyle shrugged, clearly trying to cover up his idiotic question. “I don’t know, I mean she’s kind of hot.” He sounded uncertain. And well he should. Maya Rivero was a lot of things, but hot wasn’t one of them. Pain in the ass? Absolutely. Stuck-up? Without a doubt. Hot? Hell no.

  “I mean, she’s kind of got that sexy librarian thing going on, right?” Kyle offered in a last ditch effort to look cool.

  I turned to him in horror. “Librarians aren’t sexy, Kyle. Have you seen Mrs. Crabtree?”

  Mrs. Crabtree was the head librarian at Briarwood and she was ancient. Kyle laughed, as I’d known he would.

  “Good thing you’re not trying to get with her,” he said, still loping along beside me after I grabbed my books and headed down the hall. “She was pissed.”

  I assumed he was referring to Maya and not Mrs. Crabtree, who, despite her name and age, was sweet as could be.

  “Maya’s always pissed,” I muttered. At least, around me she was. We’d been going to school together since forever and I’m not sure I’d ever seen her smile, or laugh, or do anything else normal girls do.

  She was a freak. A smart freak, no doubt, but a freak nonetheless. I could handle freaks, but it was that self-righteous, snotty vibe that made it impossible to be around her. She looked down on anyone who wasn’t heading to the ivy leagues and God forbid someone enjoy something other than academics. Sports? Forget it. You might as well have declared yourself a mindless Neanderthal. I’d never talked to her about music or the arts, but my guess was they ranked just as low on her list of values.

  Kyle laughed beside me and he sounded more than a little like a hyena. The sound was disconcerting enough to drag my mind from that negative place. But Kyle was apparently obsessed. “Yeah, I didn’t think she was your type.”

  “I don’t have a type,” I said. It was true. I was an equal opportunity kind of guy. I liked girls. All girls. Any girl.

  Well, any girl who didn’t have a superiority complex and a giant stick up her butt.

  “Yeah, why would you go for a chick like that when you could have anyone you want?” Kyle’s tone held the sort of reverence that I liked to hear among my underlings. To be a great team captain, I required a certain amount of obedience and awe from the little twerps who showed up thinking they were bigshots. Most likely they had been back in junior high. But when they joined the high school swim team…well, they were in my pool now and I made sure they all knew it.

  As if to prove Kyle’s point, my friend Melody walked past us and gave me a flirty smile. She made sure to stroke my arm as she said, “Hi Luke.” She ignored Kyle’s existence, and I couldn’t blame her.

  Melody was one of the girls I hooked up with off and on and she was a sweetheart. A terrible gossip, but a nice girl overall. If I did have a type, which I didn’t, that would be the extent of it. I liked girls who were friendly, easy to be around, but who made no demands. I had a team to lead, not to mention classes to ace and friends to hang out with before we all went our separate ways. No one had time for a clingy relationship.

  Besides, on top of all of that, I had a home life to deal with. My typically easy, normal home life had gone to hell this year. My little brothers needed me at home more than ever since my dad wasn’t living there anymore.

  Sure, we saw him every other weekend and on the occasional weekday, but my little brothers were struggling with the whole divorce thing and they needed a man around the house. They needed their big brother.

  I loved my little brothers, but the whole situation was crap. My mom was all kinds of manic these days—sometimes I’d hear her crying in her bedroom after the boys were down, and other times she’d come home with this crazy giddy excitement, making plans for upcoming social events like she was about to take over the world and not host a barbecue for our neighbors.

  On those days I knew she’d been hanging out with Lila, Maya’s mom. I liked Lila. She was a cool lady as far as moms went. She had a quick smile and a good sense of humor.

  I had to assume that Maya was adopted.

  Seriously though, I liked the effect she had on my mom. I think when my mother looked at Lila she saw hope. My dad’s affair had hit her hard. My brothers didn’t know that he’d had an affair—they were too young, and they had yet to figure out that if you stood in just the right spot near the air duct in the basement, you could hear everything anyone said in the dining room.

  So yeah, I knew, but my mom didn’t know that I knew. The divorce took its toll on everyone, but I swear I saw my mom wilt right before my eyes. She put on a good show for my brothers, but I watched her confidence take a nosedive, and that was where Lila came in. After spending time with her, my mom looked more like herself again. She looked hopeful and excited for the future.

  As far as I was concerned, she could spend every waking minute with Maya’s mom and if that meant I had to see Maya at the occasional interminable, torturous dinner, I’d take one for the team.

  Of course, I came to regret those words in a big way. You see, there was “taking one for the team” and then there was enabling insanity.

  Taco dinners were one thing, but what came next fell into a whole other league of crazy. That evening it became clear that while Maya and I were battling it out over grant money, my mother’s friendship with Lila had entered the Twilight Zone. That was the only explanation.

  I arrived home from swim practice to find my mom frantically running around with two large suitcases lying at the bottom of the stairs. My brothers were flying around the living room throwing pool toys and floaties at one another.

  “What the—Mom, what’s going on?”

  My mom lifted her head and I swear she had crazy eyes. Like, full-blown crazy. I wouldn’t have been overly surprised to see pinwheels spinning in her eyes like some crazed cartoon character. “We’re going to Mexico,” she said. Her grin was terrifying, and her follow-up laugh bordered on hysterical.

  “We’re doing what?”

  I should point out that we were definitely not a family of travelers. My little brother, Kevin, got carsick, and Adam had a bladder the size of a peanut, so even a three-hour road trip to visit my grandparents felt like an epic trek to hell by the time we got there. We’d only ever flown once, and that was with my dad to see some of his family in Canada. And that was the only time we’d all left the country.

  Until now.

  We weren’t just leaving the country, I got the feeling we were fleeing the country. “What? Why?” I was kind of sputtering and my voice sounded weird so I stopped trying to follow my mom around the house and stopped in front of her so she couldn’t get around me. I paused to take a few calming deep breaths. “What is going on here?”

  “Well, I was talking to Lila,” she started. “And she seemed to think it might be a good idea to go on an impromptu trip for the holidays.”

  I growled at the mention of Maya’s mother’s name. Remember all those kind thoughts I’d had toward her? I was rapidly taking them back. Who did she think she was to interfere in our family’s business?

  My mother wasn’t quite making eye contact. “You know the holidays are never easy on anyone, and this year will be tough on…on all of us.” Her eyes darted to my brothers and I felt a stab of pain.

  Despite my mom’s attempts at keeping up a cheerful attitude and my determination to be the man around the house, my brothers were not handling the divorce well at all. They were weirdly emotional about stupid stuff and acting out in ways they never had before.

  I mean, I wasn’t loving this whole transition from Cleaver family to Modern Family but I was old enough to get it. Besides, at least half my friends came from non-traditional families so it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen my fair share of divorces from the kids’ points of view.

  We both looked over when Kevin got Adam in a headlock and they both fell t
o the floor. When I looked back at my mom, she gave me a pleading look and I knew what she was trying to say. It was all there without her having to say it. Back me up on this. Help me out. This Christmas is going to suck no matter what so let’s at least try to distract ourselves from the fact that our family and our traditions will never be the same.

  Okay, maybe her eyes didn’t say that last part. Maybe that was me. It was what I’d been thinking for weeks now as we prepared for the holidays and my friends all talked about the visitors coming to town or the trips they were taking to visit family.

  I’d just kept silent. I guessed I’d just assumed we’d do some version of what we’d always done. And that meant staying in Briarwood, going to church, the big dinner with my mother’s sisters and their families. But then, of course, there was usually a trip two towns over on Christmas day to my uncle’s house. That uncle was my dad’s brother and I hadn’t really thought about how that would go down. Like, how weird would it be to show up at his house without my dad?

  Weird. The answer was weird. Probably super awkward, especially for my mom. I’d never even liked that uncle all that much in the first place, and he and my mom had never been close.

  And it was a no brainer that dad wouldn’t be joining us. This was not what they called a friendly divorce. There was no kind, peaceful “conscious uncoupling” for my folks. It had been dirty, messy, and filled with contentious anger all around.

  Even if my brothers didn’t see or hear the worst of it, they’d very clearly picked up on the anger and the pain that were so prevalent in our house.

  The house my mom wanted to take them away from. Looking at it that way…well, it still seemed insane to go all the way to Mexico. But I at least kind of understood where she was coming from.

  I let out a long sigh and my mom’s crazy smile faded to something far more normal. “Sorry, sweetie, I know this is a little…”

  “Nuts?” I offered.

  “Last minute.” She arched her brows, giving me a hopeful look that tugged at my heartstrings, like she no doubt knew it would. “But you’ve always talked about trying surfing, right? Maybe this is your chance.”