Christmas Cousins: Quinn, Ellis, and Amory (Southern Scandal Book 3)

by Julia McBryant

  But Daddy isn’t here. Everyone’s laughing at him again, and his cousins are so goddamn mean. He curls up under the covers with his bear, takes off his sweater and balls it up so he can smell it, and begins leaking tears. Amory busts in the door.

  “Quinn.”

  Quinn ignores him.

  “Quinn, baby.”

  Then fucking Delia comes in. “Cousin, we were only teasing.”

  “You’re always only teasing!” It comes out as a yell. “You can’t tell me Baylor didn’t know what was going to happen, and then she made fun of me, and y’all are so goddamn mean. I wanna go home.”

  She sits down next to him. “Quinnie.”

  “Go away.”

  “Quinnie. We love you.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Quinnie, Baylor loves you. I know she didn’t know Calhoun would drink. She never would have said it otherwise. And she was teasing because Thor told her everyone knew about the whole thing with Ellis and you and Amory and no one cared anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, it didn’t feel funny and it wasn’t funny.”

  Delia stretches out on the bed with him. “Remember when we were little and Baylor teased you about your hair that time your mom gave you that awful bowl cut?”

  “Why are you reminding me of this?” That was like, the worst haircut in the history of worst haircuts.

  “Because, cousin. I want you to tell me what happened next.”

  “You mean, after I cried my eight-year-old eyes out?”

  “Yes.”

  Quinn buries his face in Ellis’s sweater and sighs. “Baylor saw me crying and she was so upset she made me sad that she got a bowl, put it on her head, and cut all her hair off. She came and found me and said, ‘See, cousin? Now we look exactly the same and it isn’t that bad.’ And her mama beat her ass for it, too, and she didn’t even cry because she said it made me feel better and it was worth it.”

  “She loves you so much. She’ll die when she finds out you’re crying down here. You know she broke down earlier today? She said she thought she’d never have friends like you and me do, and this was the best party, because for a little while, she could pretend like she did. She seriously thought you would laugh just like Amory did.”

  “QUINN! GET UP HERE!” He hears Wills dimly from upstairs. “I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND, QUINN! BAYLOR’S STUPID SORRY AND WE NEED YOUR GODDAMN HELP!”

  “C’mon, Quinn.” Amory hauls him to his feet. “That’s our cue.” He and Delia basically force Quinn up the stairs, where — what the fuck? They’re taking the lights and the ornaments off the enormous Douglas fir.

  “What?” Quinn probably sounds sulky and he doesn’t give a fuck.

  “Help us get this tree down to the beach.”

  Oh, fuck. Suddenly, Quinn knows exactly what they’re doing. He grins. “We’re gonna burn that motherfucker down, aren’t we?”

  Wills tugs at the tree. “We have to save Christmas. Everything sucked and the only way to make it unsuck is some grand, insane gesture that —”

  “We’re gonna give this tree a Viking funeral.” Lucky and Thor heave it out of the tree stand. Quinn, Amory, and Delia get their coats. All of them are still wearing Santa hats with their names on them. Someone touches him on the shoulder.

  “Quinnie?” Baylor’s voice sounds higher than usual. “Were you crying?”

  “What’s it look like, Baylor?”

  “Quinnie, I thought you would laugh.”

  “Yeah, well, you have a shit sense of humor.”

  “Quinnie.” She pulls him back. Amory glances at him but keeps walking. “You know how I am. You know I’ve always been like this. I can’t — it’s the stupid socially awkward part of my ADHD. I can’t tell, Quinnie, until I make a total mess of everything. I love you. I honestly thought you would laugh. Seriously. I never, never, never want you to be sad.”

  Quinn realizes Baylor’s crying.

  “I always fuck up and I’m so sorry, Quinnie.”

  His heart sort of breaks. He straightens the Santa hat on her head. “Remember the time you cut all your hair off because I was crying?”

  She smiles a little. “Yeah.”

  “I really loved you for that. It made me feel less alone.”

  “I always feel alone, Quinnie.”

  He feels the tears coming again. “Me too.”

  “But you have this whole group of people who love you so much.” Her eyes are wide behind her tears, shiny with them.

  “Sometimes I still —” He wipes his face. “Nevermind. But it’s Christmas? Christmas is about family, and you’re my cousin.” He takes her hand. She squeezes it hard. “C’mon. Let’s go burn this fucker down.”

  They’re singing “O, Christmas Tree” when he and Baylor catch up. No one knows another verse, so Quinn starts singing his favorite, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Audie catches her other hand. They follow the tree over the dune, Amory somewhere ahead of them, everyone singing as loudly as they can, and no one can really sing, and it doesn’t matter. They belt out “Jingle Bells” and “Frosty the Snowman,” and Amory comes to stand behind him. He wraps around Quinn. “I love you,” Quinn hears, just above the singing and the crashing waves.

  “I love you, too.”

  He kisses Baylor on the cheek. “I love you, cousin.”

  Her eyes widen. “I love you so much, Quinnie.” She looks like she might cry again. But then Henry’s pouring kerosene over the tree.

  “Wills, you have to make a speech!” Lucky yells.

  Wills pauses. Quinn tightens his grip on Baylor’s hand.

  He grins. “I LOVE YOU ALL AND IT’S CHRISTMAS AND THAT’S WHAT CHRISTMAS FUCKING MEANS!” He touches the long lighter to the tree and it goes up like — like something Quinn’s never seen before, a whoosh and a fireball and a crackling, and everyone dodges back and sort of yells, then it settles to a crackling burn they still can’t approach. Amory hugs him. He hugs Baylor. He hugs Calhoun and he hugs Audie and Henry, Wills and Lucky and Thor and Delia and Crispin and Isa, all the people he loves, all the people who love him. It’s Christmas, and Quinn isn’t alone. Quinn isn’t curled up and scared, but part of something, woven into the fabric of his friends, and most importantly, he has his cousins, and he holds hands with both Baylor and Delia and hugs them hard. They fight and they tease but they’re his.

  And they’re his in a way that no one else on Earth can be. They stand with him and look innocent when Grandfather harangues them. They understand having to sit at the kids’ table. They remember being small with him. They are his and he is theirs. Quinn hugs them tight. He’s probably ignoring his boyfriend but what the hell. He has Amory all the time. He doesn’t always have his cousins.

  Someone, and he’s pretty sure it’s his boyfriend, who’ll take any opportunity available to break into song, starts singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Quinn and Delia crack up. They used to annoy the hell out of everyone with this song on Christmas day, and no one could tell them to shut up, because it was a Christmas carol. When they couldn’t remember whatever was leaping or laying or drumming or whatever they just made something up. Everyone tries to hit the notes in “O! Holy Night.” Quinn remembers the only good part of the Christmas Eve service he and Delia and Baylor were dragged to year after year, sleepy and excited, the girls with their hair done up and Quinn in his suit: the same soloist sang “O! Holy Night,” in the most beautiful voice. Quinn would lean his head against Baylor or Delia, close his eyes and listen. They all stumble through “Merry Christmas (War is Over), and Quinn has a memory there, too: he and Delia and Baylor driving in his Stingray in his teens to buy a last-minute present for someone on Christmas Eve. It came on the radio, and Baylor knew all the words.

  She still does, tonight.

  Quinn grins and grins and hugs everyone, but especially Baylor and Delia.

  It’s beautiful, this Christmas, his friends and his cousins around him, the people who love him all around. The tree crackles. The so
ngs rise into the night. He kisses Amory and hits Audie’s pen.

  Quinn’s grinning like a madman when the cops show up.

  It’s exactly the way Quinn imagined: Mag Lites in his face and angry people behind them and “What are you kids doing?”

  He grabs Baylor’s hand on one side and Delia’s on the other. “Ah, fuck,” his boyfriend mutters.

  Audie steps up, oh god, Audie’s probably high as the proverbial kite, and please god don’t let him be holding that pot. “We’re closing down a Christmas party, officer.” Audie manages this like it’s totally normal to douse a Douglas fir with kerosene, light it up like its own miniature forest fire, and stand around shouting John Lennon’s protest Christmas carols at it while spectacularly drunk and passing a vape pen.

  “Y’all’re all violating Tybee noise ordinances and I suspect you’re all intoxicated. All y’all walk a straight line.” He uses his giant-ass police boot to drag one out in the sand.

  Shit shit shit. Quinn can’t walk a straight line.

  Turns out none of them can.

  “Can’t let Audie do this alone.” Amory kisses Quinn and steps up to talk to the cops. Calhoun is standing with them, and he and Baylor and Delia have to comfort him while Quinn’s stomach drops and flips and he keeps looking at his own boyfriend standing under the swirling blue lights.

  Audie and Amory return. Amory holds up his hands. “Okay. Here’s the deal. Half of us get disorderly conducts and public intoxication. We pick. Audie’s taking it and so am I. We need four more.”

  Quinn would start yelling at his boyfriend not to take it, but it’s useless; Amory’s going to do what Amory’s going to do and that’s the sacrificial lamb thing. “If Amory’s doing it, then so am I.” He steps up and away from his cousins. Baylor and Delia yank him back.

  “You can’t. Ellis will murder you.” Delia puts her hands on her hips. “You’re not doing this. I know how you deal with anxiety. You have to walk up to those blue lights, you’ll have a panic attack and pass out.”

  “She’s right. You can’t.” Baylor glares at him. “You are no way taking the drunk and disorderly, Quinnie.”

  “You will absolutely make yourself sick waiting for court.”

  “You’ll climb the goddamn walls.”

  “I know you.” Baylor takes his hand. “Quinn. You’ll flip out. We’ll do it.”

  “No fucking way am I letting two girls do this instead of me!”

  “You are if it’s us!” Delia glares this time. “We’re not girls. We’re your cousins. We’re not some random girls that walked off the street. We’re not even like Isa. It’s us.”

  Baylor steps forward. “I am the drunkest person here by at least a bottle of vodka.” She walks up to the cop cars.

  “Goddamn her!”

  “I’m next, cousin, so deal with it.”

  “Delia, you can’t.”

  “I totally can.”

  “I will not let you do this.”

  “Quinn. I will look these officers in the eye and tell them to fuck themselves. You’ll want to cry. We both know it. It’s okay. Look. You wanna get real? I had two parents who loved me and took care of me and you had — what you had. No wonder we turned out the way we did. And you’re so much better than you were, you are, but you get freaked out, and it’s not your fault. You need my help and you need Baylor’s help and goddammit fucking take it. That’s what we’re for.”

  Quinn wants to cry at this bald assessment of their lives. Delia’s right. “When I called you drunk in the middle of the night from that party, you came and picked me up without a word at three am. You remember that time you and I, we drove all the way up to Columbia to get Baylor when her boyfriend broke up with her and she just wanted to hide? She called you and we got in the car right away, and we drove up and got her and kept her at your freshman year apartment and fed her. She didn’t want to see anyone. She just wanted to sit with you and I and play video games and eat take-out and we did nothing else with her.”

  Quinn nods.

  She hugs him hard. “Let me take this for you. We love you, cousin. Let me do it. It’s Christmas.” Delia kisses him on the cheek and walks away. Quinn actually starts to cry then.

  “They love you.” It’s Calhoun, standing behind him. “You’re so lucky, Quinnie. I always wanted cousins. I was always so, so jealous of you and Delia.”

  “Thanks, I guess.” Quinn wipes his face for the how many-ith time tonight? God, he’s like a fucking water fountain.

  “And now you’ll have Baylor down here, too. Wow.”

  Quinn smiles. “Yeah.”

  The cops don’t cuff them, but they write everyone citations: Amory and Audie, Baylor and Delia, Crispin and freaking Isa, who says that there’s no reason she can’t do it, so she might as well. They have to show up in court at some point.

  Ellis is going to kill them dead.

  Once the cops leave, Wills and Henry shove the tree out into the ocean. It keeps burning, the kerosene refusing to douse. Everyone’s silent as they watch it burn and bounce over the waves.

  Audie finally speaks. “That was the best Christmas party ever. And I have to show up at court because of it.”

  “I hope y’all let me hang out again.” Quinn hugs Baylor. On her other side, Audie squeezes her hand. Of course they’ll let Baylor hang out again. She’s one of them now.

  “Oh, Tannenbaum, or whateverthefuck.” Henry looks out at the tree. “Oh, Tannenbaum.”

  They all decamp to the house and separate into their rooms.

  “Oh my god.” As soon as Quinn shuts the door, he turns to Amory. “Ellis is going to kill us.”

  “Oh, whatthefuckever. I’ll deal with him.”

  “You’ll deal with him?” Quinn strips off his clothes. They reek of smoke.

  “I’ll tell him everything. Just let me handle it. Can we like, go to sleep now? I hate cops.”

  “Yeah.”

  They cuddle up together. Quinn sprawls out on Amory’s chest. “You did good with your cousins.”

  “They’re my cousins.” There’s nothing else to say.

  In the morning, Baylor asks for the vacuum, and then everyone’s cleaning the house from top to bottom before they clear out. Quinn helps strip the beds; Amory packs up Christmas ornaments.

  “Bye, cousin.” Delia grabs him around the waist before she heads out with Lucky and Thor.

  “Bye, cousin.” Quinn turns around and hugs her. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too. I love you even when you’re a brat.”

  “I love you when you make me crazy and I love you when you get arrested and I even love you when you date Lucky Jasper.”

  She laughs, and swats at him, and walks down to the car.

  The three of them are some of the last to leave. Amory and Crispin carry boxes of ornaments downstairs, and Quinn’s messing with the dishes when Baylor says goodbye to Wills. He hugs her hard.

  “You come back anytime. We’re all here when you move to Savannah in the fall.”

  Baylor smiles really big. Her eyes shine. She blinks hard and hugs Wills again.

  He and Amory drive her back to his parents’ house. She hops out of the Cherokee. “I guess this means bye for now.” Quinn pulls her suitcase out of the back.

  “Isa said something to me. If you want, Amory, she says you can move in with Ellis and them, or Delia can finally move in with Lucky, and I can move in with her in August.”

  Amory grins. “You can totally have my space, if you want it.”

  “So I have a place to live already when I come down. And I have friends.” Baylor beams.

  Quinn hugs her hard. “But you always have me and Delia.”

  Baylor looks like she might cry. “I always have you and Delia, Quinnie. I love you. This was like, the best Christmas party ever. And you made it that way. I even got a maybe-sorta boyfriend out of it. Thank you so much.”

  “You also got a drunk and disorderly.” Quinn grins.

  “Yeah, well. You w
in some, you lose some. At least you know you’ll see me soon.”

  He hugs her again. She texts her mom to open the front door, hugs them both one more time, and tells Amory no, she can carry her own stuff inside.

  “I like her a lot.” Amory watches her go.

  “Yeah. She’s pretty awesome.”

  “No, really, even for more than being your cousin. She’s cool.”

  Quinn nods. “That’s Baylor.”

  Ellis is waiting for them with chicken noodle soup, he’s texted, but when they come in, he side-eyes them. “You two smell like smoke.”

  “We set the Christmas tree on fire.” Amory keeps eating. Quinn stays silent. He’s not entering into this conversation.

  “Oh, that’s fun. That’s a great way to finish a party.”

  “Yeah. We all sang carols and it was pretty awesome.”

  “Awww. That’s so sweet.”

  “It totally was. Until the cops showed up.”

  “WHAT?! WHAT WAS THE LAST THING I TOLD YOU BOYS?!”

  “Dude, chill with the dad mode.” Amory continues eating as if nothing has happened.

  “Don’t you tell me to chill with the dad mode! Quinn! What happened?”

  Oh, fuck.

  “Um, ask Amory.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Amory was more of, um, a direct witness?” He pushes his soup away and takes a big drink of tea. The winter sun slants down through the kitchen windows.

  “Quinn.” Ellis’s voice deepens into a warning tone.

  “Um, the cops came and told us we had to pick half of us to get drunk and disorderlies and the ones who took them were Isa and Baylor and Delia and Crispin and Audie and um, Amory.” He says it all in a rush and looks at the table.

  “AMORY!”

  “Would you’ve rather Quinn took one?” Amory is still eating.

  “You are in so much trouble, boy. Repeat the last thing I said to you.”

  “Don’t get in trouble.”

  “And you did.”

  “But Audie said, and I quote, ‘I wouldn’t let many guys top me but my knees would hit the ground for Ellis.’” Quinn looks up. “And pretty much everyone agreed they wanted to bang you, to a person, man and woman, except the Jasper twins and they’re straight.”