by K L Hughes
“Oh my God. Breathe already, woman.” She massaged Fiona’s back as if attempting to entice the frozen organs to do their damned job again. It worked. Fiona’s lungs spasmed back into motion, and the air she had only just helplessly sucked at finally shot down into her body in a glorious rush of sweet relief.
“Holy shit,” Fiona said, voice shredded and gritty. She coughed and took another deep breath, then leaned into Lizzie’s shoulder before she even had time to process what she was doing. Lizzie didn’t seem to mind. She pulled Fiona even closer, resting their heads together, and continued her rhythmic massage.
“You can say that again.”
“Holy shit.” Fiona released a long stream of breath and closed her eyes for a moment. “Michael should’ve warned me that I’d spend the weekend being tackled by his sister.”
“Yeah, but then you wouldn’t have agreed to come,” Lizzie said, tilting back enough to look at her.
Fiona caught her gaze and found herself ensnared. If you only knew, she thought. Being repeatedly tackled by Michael’s hilarious, adorable, sexy-as-sin sister would have been a much more enticing incentive than the “great food” and “my smiling face” he promised instead. She felt her tongue swipe over her bottom lip, felt her body rock her the slightest bit forward. She functioned without thought or choice as if she’d suddenly become a remote-controlled robot, and Lizzie McElroy held the remote.
They drew close enough that Fiona could feel Lizzie’s breath on her face, smell the lingering traces of cinnamon on her tongue from the baked apples they’d had at breakfast. Her own breath hitched when she felt Lizzie’s warm fingers rest against her sternum and then slide upward. They skated over Fiona’s collarbone as their noses brushed, and Fiona’s eyes fluttered closed. She didn’t know what she was doing, only that it was foolish, foolish and perfect. She didn’t want to stop.
“Liz? I heard a crash. You still alive?”
Fiona’s eyes flew open again. She and Lizzie rocketed apart with such force that the back of Fiona’s head smacked against a cardboard box shoved into a corner. She heard the thump of Lizzie’s body against the opposite wall, followed by a loud curse. The next moment a tall shadow appeared in the doorway.
“Sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. I told your momma not to send the shortest of the bunch.”
Fiona blinked, eyes adjusting to the sudden change in light, and realized the shape in the doorway was Charlie Sr. She thought to what had only just almost occurred, what the man could have walked in on instead, and her stomach clenched in protest. Guilt washed through her like murky water, a cold omen.
“Thanks for stating the obvious, Dad,” Lizzie said with a grunt. “Help me up, will ya?”
He bent and hauled his daughter up by the arm. Once she was on her feet, he brushed a bit of hair out of her face and dusted off her shirt. “You okay, hon? Didn’t bust your tail again, did you?” He chuckled as he turned to help Fiona up as well. “Hate to have to spend Christmas in the ER.”
“I’m glad my broken butt amused you so much, Dad, but I’ll have to disappoint you this time. My tail’s just fine.” Lizzie looked around at the mess of boxes on the floor. “Don’t know that I can say the same for the gingerbread kits, though.”
“Ah.” He waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll make it work.”
“Yeah, tell that to Mom. She’s liable to break my tailbone for me.”
He laughed, then looked at Fiona. “What about you, hon? You all right?”
“I’m all right, I think. I’ll probably be sore in the morning, though.”
“Well, you aren’t a true McElroy ’til you’ve busted your ass a time or two.” He nodded toward Lizzie. “This one’s a testament to that.” He bent and gathered up a couple of the boxes. “I’ll take these down. You girls got the rest?”
“Yeah, we’ll get ’em,” Lizzie said. “Thanks for the help.”
“Welcome.” He shuffled out of the closet and down the hall, leaving them alone again. They stared at one another for only a moment before the silence ruptured around their laughter. They each threw their heads back and let the sound tear its way free until they hurt in new, better ways.
“Is your mom really going to be that mad?” Fiona asked once they calmed again.
“She’s not going to be happy, but if we’re lucky, all the gingerbread pieces will still be intact, and we’ll get off scot-free. We should grab a few of the extras, though, just in case.”
Fiona smiled as she listened to Lizzie talk. “You know, when I first met you, your accent wasn’t super pronounced, but the longer we’ve been here—”
“The twangier it gets?” Lizzie resituated the stepladder and bounded up it again. She grabbed two more boxes and passed them down to Fiona, who set them to the side. “Yeah, it happens every time I come home. Even happens if I just have a particularly long phone call with my mom sometimes.”
“Yeah, Michael’s the same way. Since we’ve been here, his has gotten so much thicker. It reminds me of when I first met him. He sounded like a good old country boy back then, and he still does, but it’s flattened out a bit since he’s lived in St. Louis.”
Once on the ground again, Lizzie began collecting the discarded boxes and restarted the stack she’d built in Fiona’s arms before everything went topsy-turvy. “And let me guess which accent you like better.”
“I actually like his true accent, your accent.” Fiona shifted under the boxes and popped her chin over the top so she could see. “Really, I do. I think it’s cute.”
“Uh-huh,” Lizzie said, her tone disbelieving. “Cute. Sure.”
“I do!”
“You’re from LA, so I don’t believe you. When I moved to LA, I couldn’t get people to leave me alone about my accent. I still can’t. I swear I can’t say a single word to a single person in LA without them immediately being like, ‘Whoa, where are you from?’”
“Which is ridiculous considering LA is like the melting pot of accents.”
“True.” Lizzie paused at the end of the hall and turned to look back at her. “You good?”
“Yeah.” The boxes’ corners poked at her arms. “I can’t really see anything without propping my chin on top and choking myself, but I’m good.”
“Well, don’t choke yourself. Just follow the sound of my voice.”
“You’re just as short as me and carrying the same number of boxes, though. How can you see?”
“I can’t. I’ve just got this entire house memorized. Trust me. Come on.” She continued onto the main hall that led to the staircase. “So, what part of LA are you from?”
“I mostly grew up in Culver City, until I was, I don’t know, twelve or thirteen, I think. Then, we moved to Pasadena.”
“Did you ever go to that huge flea market they’re supposed to have there?”
“The Rose Bowl? Psh. Listen, if you knew my mom, you wouldn’t even have to ask me to know that the answer to that question is yes.”
“Hey, my mom would be eating that shit up, too. She loves a good flea market, though I feel like the California version is probably worlds apart from what we have here.” She paused. “Okay, I’m stopping. Don’t ram me.”
Fiona quickly stopped and propped her chin on top of the boxes for a moment to make sure she wasn’t on top of her. Then she noticed the stairs. “Oh my God. I forgot about the stairs.”
“It’s okay. We’re just gonna do one at a time and not break our necks. Deal?”
“Considering I’d really like to keep my neck intact, yes. Deal.”
“Okay, here we go.” Lizzie took one step down, peeping around the side of her stack. “One down. Five million to go.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. No.” Michael’s voice floated up from the bottom of the stairs. “This is a disaster waiting to happen.”
“No way. We totally have it.”
“Um, I know
you, and I know Fiona, and neither one of you is going to make it to the bottom of these stairs alive.” He hopped up to meet them. “So, just let me help you and be grateful. How about that?”
“Well, if you’re so helpful,” Fiona said, “why did we just spend the better part of fifteen minutes using a stepladder? Your tall ass could’ve done the whole thing for us.”
“While we sat on the couch by the fire sipping hot chocolate,” Lizzie said, handing two of her boxes to Michael.
Fiona passed off two of her boxes as well, and Michael stuffed them under each of his arms. “Or while we sat on the floor right outside the closet watching you do all the work and not falling on our asses.”
“While sipping hot chocolate.” Lizzie grinned over her shorter stack of boxes and followed Michael down the stairs. “Basically, I’m saying I don’t care where we sit as long as there’s hot chocolate.”
“Win the House-Off, and Mom’ll reward you with a huge hot chocolate.” Michael jumped off the bottom part of the stairs like a hyper child and landed with ease. “With extra cool whip on top.”
Lizzie carefully stepped off the last stair and trailed after him toward the kitchen, Fiona on her heels. “I told you to stop calling it a House-Off.”
“And I told you I’ll call it whatever I want.”
“Okay, but House-Off sounds stupid. Fiona, tell him it sounds stupid.”
Fiona set her boxes on the kitchen counter with a relieved sigh. She then rested her elbow on the top one and lay her head in her hand. “It sounds stupid, Michael.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m on the side of truth.”
“Okay, but how is Gingerbread-House-Building Competition any better than House-Off?”
“Well, for one,” Lizzie said, “the former is self-explanatory.”
“And the latter sounds like some kind of pest repellant.” Fiona picked up a napkin from the kitchen counter and chucked it at Michael. It caught in the air halfway to him and drifted back down to the surface, harmless.
“Oh, yeah?” He snatched the failed missile from the counter. “I’ll show you a pest repellant.” The napkin proved a rumpled but effective weapon once he rolled it into a ball between his palms and threw it back. It bopped Fiona’s forehead, right between her eyes, then rolled down her face and chest. She barely had time to process the hit before Michael sprang around the end of the counter and tackled her. “How’s this for pest repellant, huh?”
Fiona squirmed under Michael’s tight hold as he encased her with his long, skinny arms, scooped her off the floor and swung her this way and that. “Help,” she squeaked, pushing at his hands and kicking her legs wildly around. Both were pointless endeavors, as nothing she did could break his hold. He then tossed her over his shoulder, her ass pointing toward the ceiling while her head flopped at the base of his back, and shot toward the glass double doors leading from the kitchen to the backyard. “Lizzie!”
“No, stop,” Lizzie droned, though she didn’t move a muscle to help. She was clearly enjoying the show too much. She leaned against the counter and smiled as Michael toted Fiona off toward the wintry hell waiting outside the doors. “Help. Someone. Anyone.”
The glare Fiona sent from where she limply hung, having given up the fight, was the best she could muster in her current state. “I thought we were friends,” she called piteously as Michael jerked open the kitchen doors and ran into the cold. The humid, icy air hit her face like a thousand tiny needles pricking at her skin, and all she could do was brace herself for what she knew was coming.
With a grunt, Michael heaved her over his shoulder and tossed her into a snow drift that had gathered near the large trunk of a tree stripped nude by the season. It took only about ten seconds for the white, wet mound now cradling her to begin leeching through her thin clothes and soaking into her skin. Her teeth began to chatter almost instantly. “Oh,” she said, voice shaky, “you’re dead.” She struggled to sit up, found it impossible, and collapsed back into the snow. “You’re s-so dead.”
Michael laughed, unthreatened, but at least did Fiona the courtesy of flinging himself down into the drift with her to share the miserable cold. “Ah, come on,” he said, rolling toward her. He pitched an arm and leg over Fiona’s body and squeezed her tight against his chest. “Don’t be like that. It’s not so bad.”
Fiona snuggled up to him as close as she could, gripping the front of his shirt and burying her freezing face in his chest. He was so warm. “F-fuck off.”
“She says as she cuddles me.” He loudly breathed several hot puffs of air onto her ear. “Is that helping? Are you warm yet? No? Would it make you feel better if I threw Lizzie in the snow, too? She didn’t even try to help you, after all.” When Fiona nodded against his chest, he rolled off her and started to stand. Fiona’s grip in his shirt stopped him. “Okay, you gotta let go, or I can’t go anywhere.”
“I’ll die,” Fiona said, though she uncurled her fingers and let him go anyway.
“Be right back. Don’t die.” He popped onto his feet and shivered. “Shit, it’s cold.” Fiona sent him the same glare she’d shot Lizzie’s way and tried to conjure up a plan for sweet revenge. Her brain, however, was a block of ice, thus entirely uncooperative. All she could think was that if she closed her eyes the way she wanted to, she might fall asleep like all the people dying from hypothermia in the movies did. Only there was no one there with her to shake her shoulders and scream, Stay awake, Fiona! Fight it! You have to or you’ll die!
God, she was dramatic. If she wasn’t a popsicle incapable of anything beyond shivering, she’d roll her eyes at herself.
The creak of the kitchen door opening sounded like a distant echo. Lizzie’s voice followed, a phantom vibration from another life. “Oh my God. Did you just leave her out th—What? No. Michael, I swear to God. No! I only have a T-shirt on!”
“So,” he said. “So does Fi. Besides, this is what you get when you abandon new friends in their time of need.”
“I will kill you for this.”
“Shoulda been a better ally.”
Michael’s steps crunched heavily in the snow, then Lizzie landed with an oomph beside Fiona. “Oh, fuck me!” The words hissed through her teeth as she immediately rolled toward Fiona and wrapped around her like a koala bear clinging to a eucalyptus tree. Fiona didn’t mind a bit. In fact, she welcomed the tight hold. As she’d done with Michael, she buried her face in Lizzie’s chest, not caring a bit that the move effectively placed her right between Lizzie’s ample breasts. Lizzie didn’t seem to mind either. She shivered against Fiona and buried one hand under her hair. “It’s cold as hell out here.”
“You b-brought this upon yourself,” Fiona said, voice muffled against the material of Lizzie’s shirt.
“Goodbye, cruel world,” Lizzie shouted toward the sky. “I hardly knew ye.”
“Jesus, you two like to lay it on thick, don’t you?”
Fiona felt Michael’s hand clutch her arm like a life raft. The next thing she knew, she was being hauled out from between Lizzie’s breasts and up from the icy depths of their shared three-foot-deep snow-drift grave. She hung like a rag doll over Michael’s shoulder again as he ran her back in through the kitchen door. Warmth washed over her like a blessed rain, seeping through her frosty wet pants and T-shirt and into her chilled skin. Michael dropped her onto a stool at the kitchen island then headed back out for Lizzie.
“Warmth!” Lizzie sighed and held herself as she shimmied into the seat beside Fiona a minute later.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Fiona said, drawing her legs up onto the chair, knees against her chest. “It could be a mirage.”
“You’re right. We’re probably still outside, dying.”
Michael dragged a chair over between them and sat. “Y’all realize I was laying in the same snow, right? And I’m
fine.”
“You’re bigger,” Lizzie said. “You have, like, two extra feet of body mass.”
Fiona scooted her chair closer to the other two, leaning toward them for more warmth. “We’re so tiny.”
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “Why didn’t you put us by the fire?”
“You try lugging two heavy bodies back and forth,” Michael said with a laugh.
Lizzie shrugged. “Hey, you made that choice all on your own. If you’re going to start something, see it through to the finish.”
“All right.” Michael hopped up from his chair and grabbed three coffee mugs from the living room. “Since I’m so nice, I’m going to make you guys some hot chocolate.”
“That’s not a courtesy.” Fiona unfolded herself and stood. “It’s an apology. Don’t confuse the two.”
“Yeah,” Lizzie said. “You owe us.”
“Fair enough.” Michael took the cocoa mix down from a separate cabinet. “Where you going, Fi? Don’t you want your apology chocolate?”
Fiona headed toward the hall. “Of course I do, but I’m going to die if I don’t get out of these damp clothes. I’ll be back down after I change.”
“Oh, me, too.” Lizzie stood from her chair. “Good idea.”
“Weak,” Michael said, “but fine. Don’t take too long, though, or it’ll get cold.”
Cutting through the living room made for an unfortunate dilemma. Lizzie’s parents, along with Lily, Madison, and Grandma Sophia, were all seated by the fire. As soon as Fiona and Lizzie entered the room, they became the center of everyone’s attention.
“Hey, you two.” Rosie waved them over. “What was all that hollering about? Michael giving you a hard time?”
As much as Fiona liked Rosie, she hadn’t stopped shivering once since Michael brought her back inside. She was desperate to be out of her damp, cold clothes and into something dry, warm, and preferably long-sleeved. The goosebumps on her arms weren’t likely to subside for a decade otherwise. Still, she was there to charm the family as Michael’s darling new girlfriend, so she conceded a few steps, drawing closer to the couch, yet kept close enough to the foyer that she could make a break for the stairs at the first opportunity.
