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“When I was little, I used to get sick all the time in winter. Ear infections and colds like clockwork. Even with all the flu shots and everything. So my mom would make me wear thermal layers and puffy jackets and earmuffs everywhere, even those trapper hats with furry earflaps. Think of the puffiest jacket imaginable, then multiply it by three. And don’t get me started on those gloves with so much padding that I could barely move. My parents wouldn’t even hear of fingerless gloves.”
He makes a sympathetic face.
“It felt like wearing those school-spirit foam fingers. I eventually grew out of it and stopped falling routinely unwell when I was like, nineteen? But it’s hard to forget how uncomfortable it was and the way I could never dress cute like the other girls. It’s why I hate being stifled with heavy coats now.” She grins. “Your scarf is the exception, though. It doesn’t constrain me. It makes me feel...”
Safe. Protected. Yours.
Elisha strangles the impulse to say any of that. She clears her throat. “Warm.”
“I’ll always loan you my scarf if you need it,” says Ves. He smiles crookedly, although she’s unsure whether it’s due to her explanation or the DayQuil. “Even if you don’t need it. You look cute in my clothes.”
Okay, those butterflies are in full freaking flight now. She resolves to ransack his drawers later, borrow his softest shirts and maybe sneak a pair of his boxers to wear to bed. That impulse could be the DayQuil talking, too.
“I’m sorry my secret isn’t very exciting,” Elisha murmurs, bringing his wrist up to her lips to press a soft kiss against his pulse. “Pretty anticlimactic, huh?”
Ves’s inhale rattles, and she flatters herself that it has more to do with her touch than his sickness.
When he speaks, his voice is rough. “For the record, nothing you could ever tell me about yourself could be anticlimactic. I will take any random crap info about you. You can tell me that your favorite color is pink and your favorite food is Italian and your favorite hobbit is Samwise, and I promise you that I will be fucking fascinated because it’s you.”
She snuggles closer, needing to feel the warm, solid feel of him. If he weren’t sick, she would be climbing him like a pine tree. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” His voice is soft, wistful, like he really wishes he could kiss her right now after all. His palm skates up her jawline, caresses her cheek, all to finally tuck her hair behind her ear.
“Lavender. Thai. Pippin.”
“What?”
“Favorite color, food, hobbit.”
He laughs under his breath. “That last one doesn’t surprise me one bit.”
She turns her face just enough to drop another kiss on his wrist. “Tell me yours now.”
He looks bemused. “My what?”
“Why you don’t date over the holidays.”
The happiness in his eyes promptly extinguishes. He looks in the other direction. “Oh, that.”
“Hey.” She cups his chin, draws him sweetly to her. “You don’t have to.”
Suddenly, she wishes she could take her question back. Does she really need to know? It doesn’t matter in the end, does it? After all, the one thing he doesn’t do, he’s doing it now with her. She’s the exception, not the rule.
“The holidays have never exactly been... easy for me,” he says finally. “It started because of my parents. Mom wanted to do all the family Christmas traditions we’d always done, and Dad, well, he just didn’t want to be part of the family anymore. It was different when I came here. And I don’t just mean Christmas was better that year. Maeve made everything better. I wanted to stay here forever.”
He bites his lip. “When I went back home, I found out my parents had decided to send me to boarding school. I didn’t want to go, but they were suddenly fighting less so I thought if I did as they wanted, we’d be a family again.”
His eyes shutter, and Elisha hates so much that it’s because of her nosiness. Silently, she squeezes his hand. It can mean whatever he wants it to mean: the strength to continue the story or the space to say nothing.
Eventually he says, “But that’s not what happened. And by the time I realized it, they were already living separate lives. Even though we lived in the same city, I saw Arun’s parents more than mine. They welcomed me into their family. He was in my year at school, so I spent most holidays with them, even the ones I didn’t celebrate. I even asked my mom if I could go live with Maeve, but she got pissed at me, and by then, I was practically one of the Iyers, so I stopped asking.”
Elisha’s heart squeezes. If Ves’s mother had said yes, Elisha would have grown up with him. Played street hockey with the other kids in the cul-de-sac, snuck out of the house as moody teenagers. God, she would probably have had the biggest crush on him. The thought makes her insides squirm.
“This sounds incredibly weird,” says Ves. “But I don’t think I’ve ever had a traditional Christmas with both my parents since I was six, and I can barely remember it. And inevitably, when you’re dating someone, they want to know about your parents. Sometimes it’s even first-date material, just to make sure you’re both on the same page about family values.”
Here he pauses, pain flitting across his face, a reminder of a reopened wound. “But if you’re really, really unlucky,” he says softly, “someone will invite you home for Christmas and their family will grill the shit out of you. Then, they can’t or won’t wrap their head around your dysfunctional upbringing, because they don’t want to accept that this is just how some families are. This is how both my parents choose to be, and nothing will ever change them.
“But the women I’ve dated always think there’s hope. That maybe they can bring my family back together. They think if they meet my parents, we can clear it all up in one conversation, like my feelings and memories were just one big misunderstanding. But this is real life.” His laugh is bitter. “You don’t always get a happy ending, not even at Christmas.”
