“I wonder if he’s as skinny and weird as I remember,” Gen says.
“Hey,” I say.
I wait for Hattie to cattily agree with Gen, but she’s silent. She hasn’t spoken a single word on the subject of Josh since Halloween. Maman shoos them both downstairs. My stomach is in knots. I can’t decide which of his parents scares me more.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Maman says, reading my mind. “His father will love you. His mother will learn to love you. You’re intelligent, charming, and kind.”
“Of course you think that.”
“I would never describe your younger sister as charming.”
That gets me to crack a smile.
“Come on. Don’t you want to see what your boyfriend looks like in a tux?” Maman nudges me before whisking away. She calls out from the top of the stairs, “Joshua, mon cher. Lovely to finally meet you.”
“Great to meet you, too.” There’s a smile – that professional, political smile – in his voice. “It’s hard for me to believe, but your home looks even better than your windows at Bergdorf Goodman. I saw them last week. They’re extraordinary.”
She laughs. “Don’t you know exactly what to say.”
My legs turn gelatinous. Until this moment, I honestly don’t know if I believed that I’d see him tonight. Excitement overtakes my nerves. I grab the jewelled clutch borrowed from Maman, dash from my room, and promptly freeze at the top of the stairs. Josh looks immaculate. His tuxedo is not a rental. He’s saying something to my dad and wearing his trustworthy, son-of-a-senator face. And then he follows my father’s upturned gaze, and absolutely everything about him changes as he stops talking mid-sentence.
Josh weakens.
There’s a lump in my throat. It looks as if he’s so grateful to see me that he’s in physical pain. The feeling is reciprocated. The house vanishes, the voices disappear, and the air holds its own breath. Our eyes remain locked as I descend. Closer. Closer. Our hands outstretch, our fingers are about to touch—
“Green and red.” My dad gestures from my dress to my hair. “You look just like Mrs. Claus!”
The needle scratches across the record. Everyone turns and stares.
He blushes. “I meant Christmas. She looks like Christmas.”
“You can’t tell a girl that she looks like a holiday,” Gen says.
“He was right the first time,” Hattie says. She’s standing on the periphery, as far away from Josh as possible. “You look like an old lady.”
“Isla.” Josh’s voice catches on my name. “You look beautiful.”
Because I see it in his eyes, I feel it in my heart. He takes my hand. His skin touches mine, and he’s real again. And then we lose restraint, and he sweeps me into an embrace and kisses my cheek. And then again. I hug him. He squeezes me too hard in return, but it’s wonderful and perfect and sublime.
Dad examines Josh with a renewed distrust. “When will you be home?” he asks me.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
“The gala is usually over by midnight, so she’ll be home no later than that,” Josh says. “Would you like to speak with Brian? He’s our driver-slash-security tonight.”
My dad brightens at the mention of security. He peeks through our curtains and then waves at someone down on the street. Brian, I assume. “That’s okay.” He scratches his thick beard, worries somewhat assuaged. “Midnight it is.”
I make a move for the front door. “Don’t want to be late.”
“Wait!” Gen holds up her phone. “Just one picture.”
“Two,” Maman says, reaching for her own.
I groan with embarrassment, but Gen cuts me off. “Oh, come on. It’s not every day that my little sis gets all dolled up.”
“What do you mean? Isla wears a stupid dress every stupid day,” Hattie says.
“Manhattan. Darling. Shut your mouth,” Maman says.
A dozen pictures later, Josh and I are out the door and in the hall. As soon as we turn the corner – away from the gaze of the keyhole – I throw my arms around his neck. He leans into me but quickly pulls back. “Your lipstick.”
“I don’t care.”
Josh pushes me against the wall. We kiss with everything we have, tasting each other, aching for each other. His lips are cracked with winter. He’s brushed his teeth recently, and his mouth is sharp and clean. His hands slide across my back and down my hips. Our kissing grows more intense, frenzied from longing. A tremor runs through my body into his, and he bursts apart from me, gasping for breath.
“Your parents,” he says. “They’ll be watching from the window. Waiting for us to appear.”
We stumble downstairs, laughing and hurrying. He wipes off the lipstick from his mouth, I wipe it off the skin around my mouth, and then we stroll out of the building as if we’ve been deep in conversation. I’m sure we look guilty as hell. I glance up to the window, between the bare limbs of the climbing rose, and Maman and Gen wave down happily. Dad gives a brisk nod. Hattie isn’t there.
A solid-looking man with stylish grey hair and a security earpiece opens the backseat door of a black town car. It’s the same man who took the package from me at Josh’s house over Thanksgiving. “Good evening, mademoiselle.”
“Oh! You’re Brian.”
He gives me a wide grin. “It’s nice to see you again. You look enchanting. Easy to see why our boy here talks of little else.”
I glance at Josh, pleased, and he shrugs in a “what did you expect?” way.
We climb into the car, but as Brian moves towards the driver’s side, Josh’s smile drops. “This isn’t my usual mode of transportation, you know.”
“I don’t know,” I tease. “Seems like the two of you spend a lot of time together.”
“Well, yeah, but usually at home. Or my dad’s office. I don’t want you to think that I’m always…chauffeured around like this. I take the subway.”
I soften. “It’s okay. I wasn’t judging you.”
“I know, I just—”
The driver’s side door opens, and Brian slides in with a surprising amount of elegance and pizazz. He turns out to be a great storyteller, which is helpful, because it keeps me from wishing that this posh car were even more posh – say, a limousine with a partition for privacy – because all I want to do is re-jump my boyfriend. Instead, I touch up my make-up. I don’t want to arrive looking like a dishevelled floozy. Even though that’s probably what his mother thinks about me anyway.