Page 103 of The Christmas Yes List

His kiss is warm against the winter air, an inhale of pine and frost and clean cold. His mouth is soft, deliberate—like he’s afraid of startling me back into myself.

I hesitate for half a heartbeat. Then I do something I don’t usually do.

I lean in too. I kiss him back—bravely. Deep inside the tree. Holding on to our branches, while holding on even more firmly to each other.

Because if there’s one thing I know in this moment, it’s that I’ve fallen for James.

And nothing anybody says now can stop me.

Chapter 14

“I’m going to have to stop you.”

Genie paces back and forth in front of me while I sit on the bed of my guest room. Her hands are on her hips. She looks like a mad boar.

“Stop what, precisely?” I say.

“Stop you from being in love. There is no being in love.”

“I wouldn’t say I’m in love. I’m in like. Solid like.”

“Is that any better?” she cries. “That’s worse. That’s the infatuation stage. That’s the nonsensical, totally illogical period of time where you’re blind to his faults and the fact that he is evil and just twiddle your hair while he does something ‘massive’ like opening a door or hanging up a picture for you.”

“You went on and on when Peter did those things for you early in dating. When he put up that picture frame on your wall and you raved for days like you forgot you had arms.”

She thrusts out the arms in question. “See what I mean!” she cries. “Look at where I got my material!”

“What? You are with Peter. You two are perfect together.”

“Obviously, but that’s not the point.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“The point is, I was an idiot. If he had a whole wall of bleeding shark heads in his living room, I would’ve glanced at them and said something like ‘Well, don’t you have the cutest ideas.’”

“But he didn’t have a wall of shark heads in the living room.”

“I’m saying he could have.”

“But he didn’t.”

“He had a whole bookshelf of animated collectibles,” she says. “And one could argue that’s worse.”

I shrug.

“Regardless, when you let yourself fall into the infatuation stage, that stage lasts, like, eleven months.”

“According to . . . ?”

“Well-known wisdom,” she snaps. “And during that time—which you will not fully have by the way, given he’s going back to New York—you’re in a mental state where you are unreliable. You need people outside to keep you grounded.”

“Maybe . . . make my decisions for me,” I say.

She nods enthusiastically. “Yes.”

“A suitable partner.”

Her nods become ecstatic. “Yes.”