Together for Christmas (42 page)

“I thought Kristen was your favorite,” Heather said.

“I thought Heather was your favorite!” Kristen disagreed.

But their parents only shook their heads. “Nobody is our favorite. But there’s no point giving you both big egos.”

“You’re sisters,” their dad said with a definitive air. “You should get along. We didn’t want to make you feel competitive by comparing you with each other all the time.”

“That’s how sibling rivalry takes root,” their mom explained with a knowledgeable tone. “I read it in a book.”

In a book
. Kristen had never wanted to host a book-burning bonfire more than she did in that moment. “So you just never mentioned to
us,
individually, how you felt about us?”

“Well, not per se.” Their mom shot a baffled look at their dad. Then she shrugged, too. “You know we love you both.”

In increasing astonishment, Kristen looked at Heather.

“So you never did anything except praise the
other
one of us?” Heather echoed. “Whichever one of us wasn’t there?”

Their dad frowned. “It got tricky sometimes, too, believe me! Times like now, when you’re both here . . . it’s
impossible
to know what to say.” He looked around. “When’s the Yahtzee start?”

“When everyone is too blitzed to add up the die rolls,” Kristen said in a distracted tone, still astounded by this life-altering news. “Sketchy counting skills make Yahtzee more fun.”

Heather nodded in agreement. For the first time in a long time, Kristen felt a groundswell of solidarity with her sister.

Who knew that Heather had been struggling with feeling overlooked, too? Who knew that their parents
hadn’t
been ignoring Kristen’s accomplishments (if only to her face) not because they weren’t proud of her (as she’d feared) or wanted her to be more like their more celebrated daughter (as she’d
really
feared), but because they didn’t want to kindle sibling rivalry? As a strategy, Kristen thought, it was a major bust.

For her entire life, she’d believed everyone wanted her to be like Heather. Because if even her own parents wanted that . . . who wouldn’t? If even the two people who knew and loved Kristen best didn’t accept her as she was . . . who would? she’d reasoned.

But now all those doubts were reversed in an instant.

Because Kristen didn’t care whether random newspaper reporters or paparazzi or strangers on the Internet thought she possessed an insufficient amount of “Heather-like awesomeness” (an actual quote she’d gleaned from reading reports of her one-and-only adventure accompanying Heather to the Grammys). She cared if the people she loved thought she was awesome. She cared if
she
thought she was awesome. And in most ways, she did.

Feeling liberated, Kristen smiled.

Then she gave her mom and dad two big hugs. “I sure wish we’d talked about this sooner!” she said with a laugh. “I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.”

“Me too!” Heather exclaimed. Then she turned to Kristen with an intent look. “And speaking of heartache . . .”

Oh no. This could be trouble. Kristen had confided in Heather about what had happened with Casey, of course, but so far, she’d avoided the inevitable pep talk and/or “snap out of it!” conversation that usually followed in the aftermath of a breakup. She had a feeling her luck had just run out.

For all of Heather’s positive qualities, being reassuring was not among them. Frankly, she hadn’t faced enough obstacles in her life to be truly capable of empathy and encouragement.

All but proving it, Heather’s eyes gleamed with zeal as she said, “There’s something I have to tell you about Casey!”

Kristen held up her hands to ward off her sister’s dubious “sympathy.” “That’s okay. I’m fine with things now.”

“You’re
not
fine,” her sister insisted, “and I know the reason. First of all”—inexplicably, she broke off to consult a handwritten list—“there’s the question of my sex tape.”

Their dad blanched. “Let’s get more pie-in-a-jar!”

“Yes, let’s!” their mom agreed, and they hurried away.

Left alone with Heather amid the whirl of the party, Kristen eyed her sister. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to. It’s item number nine on my to-do list.”

“
You
have a to-do list?”

“Don’t look so surprised. It’s efficient.” With a brisk motion, Heather consulted it again. Then, “As I was saying, about my sex tape—Casey hasn’t seen it. I tested him.”

Kristen crossed her arms. “You tested him?”

Her sister nodded. “Yes. I gave him my accidental catchphrase from that dumb video, and he didn’t even blink.”

Given Heather’s triumphant tone, Kristen could tell she was supposed to be impressed. But she was a little distracted by wondering . . . If she’d been so wrong about her parents, was she
also
wrong about Casey? Was she wrong about why he’d wanted to spend time with her? About how he truly felt about her?

It was possible, Kristen realized, that she’d jumped to all the wrong conclusions about Casey. Worried now, she gazed longingly toward the diner’s exit. If she left right this minute and drove to the regional airport in Grand Rapids, Kristen calculated, she could be on a plane to California by midnight.

“Okay, good,” she told Heather. “I guess that means Casey passes my boyfriend litmus test with flying colors. Now I’ve—”

“You don’t believe me,” Heather judged correctly, surprising her. “I get it. Fair enough. Watch this.”

She turned to the closest male, a friend of Avery’s. In a breathless, seductive tone, Heather said, “Giddy up, cowboy!”

To Kristen’s further surprise, the man reacted by opening his mouth in an O, turning bright pink, then scurrying away.

“Sorry!” he blurted. “I’ve got to be somewhere private!”

Kristen watched him leave in bafflement. But Heather wasn’t confused at all. “He has a boner,” she confided to Kristen. “So many men have watched that sex tape so many times that it has an immediate Pavlovian effect on them. They can’t help it.”

“Oh, come on!” Kristen gestured. “Maybe he was thirsty!”

“
Casey
didn’t even bat an eyelash. He hasn’t seen it.”

Well. That kind of made Casey her dream man, Kristen realized, for an altogether unexpected reason. “Okay. Fine,” she said with a wave. “Not that it matters anymore, since—”

Since I’m potentially flying to California to be with Casey right now,
Kristen was about to say,
to apologize for unfairly accusing him of things he probably never intended and maybe to try reconciling with him
(if she was lucky)
and maybe even to try kissing him,
but her sister interrupted her before she could.

“It does matter! And there’s more.” Eagerly and seriously, Heather checked her to-do list again. “Did you know that Shane Maresca and Casey grew up in the same foster home? At least part of the time, until Shane was adopted by this family who—”

“Yes, Casey told me about that,” Kristen said, beginning to feel impatient with Heather’s impromptu Oprah impression. She half expected her sister to thrust a microphone in her face and ask her to “share.” “Casey told me that Shane got what
he
wanted for Christmas one year, and he had a hard time getting over it. I guess that’s what caused the rift between them.”

“
That’s
putting it mildly!” Heather exclaimed. “Do you know what it was that Casey wanted—and Shane got—for Christmas?”

“Actually, I could just ask him.” Kristen hooked her thumb toward the diner’s exit. “I’m thinking of heading out to—”

“
A family!
” Heather burst out in a sympathetic tone. “When Casey was fifteen, he wanted a
family
for Christmas. Apparently, he had it all planned out. When the adoption interviews came, Casey was going to say that all he wanted for Christmas was a home and family of his own—because it was true, and because I guess he was quite a charming, scrappy little bugger, even then, and he knew he could pull it off—but then during the interviews, Shane went first, and he stole Casey’s line.”

Poor Casey
. Kristen could just imagine him as a scrawny, needy, determined and inventive kid, believing and hoping he could ace an interview like that. After all, he
was
good with people. Breathlessly, she waited. “And? Then what happened?”

“Oh, I thought you were on your way out someplace.”

“Heather!”

“Hey, transformation doesn’t happen overnight.” As though demonstrating that fact, Heather gave an impudent grin. Then she continued her story. “So then Shane got adopted into this superrich, ultra-swanky family and left the foster home forever, and Casey stayed behind—being teased by the other kids for choking at his interview. When the right moment came with his potential adoptive family, Casey couldn’t say a single word.”

Aghast, Kristen stared at her. “That’s awful!”

“Yeah. Supposedly, Casey didn’t ever admit wanting much of anything, so once the other kids realized he desperately wanted a family, they were pretty merciless about it. Little jerks.”

I don’t usually let myself really want something,
Kristen remembered Casey saying, looking troubled and alone.
But with you, I couldn’t help it. I really wanted you.

She’d wanted him, too. But she hadn’t been able to stand there, scared and defenseless, and admit it. Not then, she hadn’t. What she
had
been able to do, Kristen realized to her horror, was accidentally goad Casey in the worst possible way.

You can’t even say it,
she’d remarked, too full of sadness and suspicion and hopelessness to hold it in. In contrast to Gareth’s trust-and-courage philosophy, Kristen had held up her fearfulness like a shield . . . then she’d bludgeoned Casey with it.

“I’ve got to get to Casey,” she said, gazing around her crowded diner with a new sense of urgency. “I’ve got to go!”

“But your party is happening here,” Heather said with wide, disingenuous eyes. “Your ideal Christmas is happening
here
.”

At that, Kristen shook her head.

“Christmas doesn’t happen at a big party full of people,” she said, finally realizing why immersing herself headlong in Christmas hadn’t made her feel better. “It doesn’t happen beside a cut Douglas fir—or three—or atop a big pile of wrapped gifts. It doesn’t happen in a church. It only happens when at least two people who love each other come together to celebrate. And that means, this year, my Christmas can’t happen here in Kismet.”

“Right-o.” Busily, Heather scratched off an item on her to-do list. She gave Kristen a satisfied glance. “That was item number one on my list. Making you realize that.”

“It was not!”

“Yes, it was!”

“Let me see.” Making a quick sideways move, Kristen grabbed for her sister’s to-do list. She missed. “You are
not
this good at helping people,” she said in exasperation. “Despite introducing me to Ernesto, letting me know my bank troubles were sorted, getting the fraud charges dropped against Talia and Walden, footing the bill for this party, getting Mom and Dad to admit their non-sibling-rivalry tactics—” Kristen broke off.

She gave her sister a suspicious frown.

Heather only rocked on her heels, looking tickled. “Yes?”

“Wow. I guess people really can change.”

And if
Heather
could become generous and helpful . . . the sky really was the limit, Kristen realized. Next, she’d be making everyone declare month-old fruitcake as their favorite food.

Speaking of which . . .

“I don’t know if
you
can change that much,” Heather declared contrarily before Kristen could complete that thought. “After all, you
love
Christmas. You love snow and evergreens and icicles and decorations. You love Burl Ives ditties and tinsel and mistletoe and even those gross ribbon-shaped hard candies that Grandma Noble used to have every Christmas.”

For a second, they both stopped to fondly recall their much-missed maternal grandmother.

“My point is,” Heather went on doggedly, “I don’t think you can survive Christmas in the sunshine, near the beach, without everything that makes Christmas Christmas. It’s antithetical to everything you’ve ever wanted out of life.”

“Antithetical?”

Heather shrugged. “I’ve been learning a few new words.”

“Aha.” Kristen nodded, feeling oddly proud of her sister—and unusually close to her, too. “But the thing you’re missing is that
Casey
is my Christmas now. Without him,” she said, “everything else just . . . loses its magic.”

All at once, Kristen became aware of a stunning silence in her diner. The holiday jingles had quit playing. The boisterous crowd had quieted. Even the clanking of glasses had stopped.

Uncertainly, Kristen looked around. As one, her family and friends gazed back at her, beaming as if they’d just won the lottery. Which was silly, because Kristen knew
she’d
just won the lottery—if she could earn herself another chance with Casey.

“Go get ’em, Kristen!” Avery cheered, her fist in the air.

Everyone else joined in. Too late, Kristen realized that she’d pretty much just made a public love declaration to a man who wasn’t even there, didn’t like Christmas . . . and could make her forget to breathe or think or understand basic arithmetic with one of his dazzling smiles. Casey was just that amazing.

He was also just that far away, too. Disheartened, Kristen considered the journey ahead. “Thanks, everyone. But I’m not even sure I can get a flight to California this close to Christmas. The airport’s going to be crazy.”

“Oh yeah.” Heather made a regretful face. “That’s true. And I gave my place on my chartered private jet to Shane. He left for L.A. this morning.” As an aside, she added, “He was item number five on my to-do list. I’m pretty sure I reformed him.”

At this point, Kristen would put nothing past her sister, including reforming a notorious “anti-fixer” with a mile-wide competitive streak and a dangerous excess of charisma.