The Christmas Ball Read online

  “Share—what?” She dropped her suitcase by her side, looked up at me with wide eyes. “Oh my goodness. I haven’t done that in… uh…” She scratched her head. “Ten years, I guess.”

  I wondered if I could say the same thing. I’d shared beds with other girls since then, but I was pretty sure it was a different way from what she was thinking. “I’m not really much of a bed-sharing person either,” I said, my breath shorter than I’d hoped. “Don’t worry. I’m comfortable with the floor.”

  Her face lit up. “Oh! We could just alternate. That’d be fair, right?”

  I stared at her. Seriously? What was that enthusiasm like she was still just a kid? She flushed bright red and said,

  “Uh. It was just a thought I had. Maybe it’s weird.”

  She was seriously too adorable for words. I wasn’t sure how I’d manage this month. “We could do that,” I said. “But I expect the bed to be made when you’re done with it.”

  She looked down, still red. “Oh… yeah, definitely. I’m a little forgetful, but I’ll try to make sure.”

  I swallowed. What was I going to feel like every other night, climbing into a bed Alice Richmond had just been sleeping in the night before?

  I couldn’t believe she was here in front of me. I’d spent ten years remembering her fondly. It took me another three years after dancing with her to realize I liked girls, and then looking back, that feeling I’d had then of just wanting desperately to hold her close, the way I’d felt so warm and safe lying next to her in bed, it was obvious she had been my first crush.

  I realized I was staring at her, and she was still staring at the floor. I snapped out of it. “We should go help get things ready.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course,” she said. “Wow, it’s really this event again. I’m kind of nervous.”

  She was nervous? For crying out loud, I was the one who had to dance with Alice Richmond again. And she’d had the nerve to grow into someone this impossibly beautiful. But I had to be the cool one here, had to act like I wasn’t completely freaking, so I straightened my back and said, “We’ll be fine. Just relax and try to have a good time. Are you nervous about the ball?”

  She winced. “Uh, maybe.”

  I bit back a laugh. “Are you going to reject your dance partner again in front of everyone?”

  She blushed so bright I think it was actually luminescent. “I mean… I don’t know… it does seem kind of weird that we’re just supposed to kiss people because Aunt Gina picked them for us.”

  I was really thinking the same thing. There were other people I’d prefer to kiss.

  I willed the thought out of my mind. “Well, you don’t have to,” I said, playing it cool, heading to the door before I could say anything I might regret. “You’re your own person, Alice, and you don’t have to dance to their drumbeat.”

  She breathed out. “Yeah. Thanks. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

  I really doubted we were on the same page.

  ∞∞∞

  I’d forgotten how much I liked Seth, and by that, I mean not at all.

  The ballroom was full of people, nonstop chatter, kids running around. On one side of the room, a Christmas tree was going up, and there was garland going up around the perimeter of the room. One person was hanging up stockings by the dozen, squeezing them all around the massive fireplace until I figured it had to be a fire hazard.

  But even with all those people—Alice included, who stuck close to me in the chaos—it unfortunately wasn’t enough to distract me from Seth.

  He honestly looked the same as he did when he was thirteen, just bigger, and… greasier. He was tall, too skinny, with a long triangular face and the kind of goatee no halfway-decent guy ever sported, and the way he swaggered towards me in his suit jacket and white button-down, which he’d taken button-down too literally and had undone the buttons way too far down—just the way he stood made me feel a little ill.

  “Oh,” Alice said, with a tone like she found a loose piece of garbage, and that was it.

  “Lisette,” Seth said, holding his hand out to me. I leaned back. “Is it really you? I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a magnificent creature in my life. To think my partner would have become such a beautiful woman…”

  I managed, somehow, not to gag. “Seth,” I said. It took a while to find the next word. “Hi.”

  He swooped in and took my hand, lifted it up to his slimy lips, and kissed my hand. It took everything in my power not to wrench it back. “Ah, Lisette, mi amor. How am I supposed to wait until the ball? How badly do I wish to take you in and have this dance with you right now.”

  Alice grabbed my wrist and squeezed so hard it hurt. “Hi, Seth. So good to see you again.”

  I almost laughed. At least I could tell from her tone we were on the same page about this guy, if nothing else. I pulled my hand away, the feeling of his smarmy lips tingling. I had to struggle not to wipe it off. “Well, I suppose you’ll have to be patient, now, won’t you? It will mean more if you have to wait for it first, anyway.”

  Alice squeezed harder.

  “Ah, but of course you are correct, mi amor. But rest assured, I will be practicing nonstop so that I can make you proud. When you dance with me… sparks will fly.”

  Yeah, maybe. If I push you off hard enough. “I can’t wait. But for now, Alice is my partner, you know.”

  Seth smirked at her. “Ah, Alice. I haven’t seen you since last year.” He returned his gaze to me and I shuddered a little. “A lively woman, a fierce and independent soul almost like mine. But I doubt she has dedication for you as intense as mine, my dear Lisette.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Alice said, her voice light, her grip not as she tugged me away from him.

  Seth laughed. “Do you think so?”

  I looked over at Alice just as she got the most dangerous look on her face. “Watch me,” she said, and then she slipped her hand down to mine, lifted my hand up, and I think my entire brain short-circuited as I realized what she was about to do.

  I forgot how to breathe for a second and just watched wide-eyed as Alice lifted my hand to her face and kissed the back of it. The feeling of her lips on my knuckles sent my heartrate through the roof, and when she let go of my hand, I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

  Alice was flushed a little. But she was grinning victoriously at Seth, who—for his part, he just laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Was this just Richmond humor?

  “Well, so I have competition,” he laughed. “Try not to let her charm you too much, Lisette. Do wait for me, mi amor.”

  She already had charmed me too much. My head was still spinning. She’d kissed me on the hand just like that. “We’ll see about that,” was all I managed somehow to say.

  “C’mon, Lisette,” Alice said, her voice shaking a little too. “Let’s go set up the tree.”

  Right. Tree. The tree. Christmas tree. It was Christmastime and there were trees. Right.

  I was doing fine. Just totally, a hundred percent fine.

  Chapter 3

  Alice

  I just kissed Lisette.

  I wanted to scream and hit my head into the box of ornaments we were working on, but I didn’t want to go to the psych ward. Even if I felt like I needed it.

  Instead, I just hyper-focused on the process—one ornament, fit on the hook, hang it on the tree. Get into the process and forget the fact that I just kissed Lisette.

  I’d just—Seth had the nerve to smear his greasy lips on Lisette’s hand, which, if I didn’t mention, was beautiful! And then he’d acted like he liked Lisette better than I did. He did not. And the next thing I knew, I’d just…

  I couldn’t stop reliving the sensation. The soft skin of Lisette’s hand against my lips, and then half a second later, my brain screaming what the fuck are you doing. I hadn’t had an answer for it. I was still working on the answer for that one.

  “Alice,” said a voice from next to me, jerking me out of my reverie. My dad, a chunky guy wh
o always wore a charcoal polo shirt—he must have had twenty of them—was handing me a ribbon. “Don’t know where your mind’s running off to, but take it, baby girl.”

  I was not a baby. “Oh, yeah,” I said, taking the big spool of red ribbon. I wrapped it around the bottom of the tree, unspooled the ribbon, and handed it around to the other side.

  Lisette’s hand came around the corner to take it, fingers brushing along mine, and I gasped at the touch, dropping the ribbon. Lisette and I both dove for it, and she grabbed it off the floor just as I went for it, coming down halfway on top of her, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her hand.

  She looked up at me and I think my heartrate went about ten times too high when she met my gaze, maybe six inches from my face.

  “Sorry,” I said, pushing away from her. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to land on you.”

  She looked down, staring hard at her hands. “No… don’t worry about it.”

  She stood up, her legs a little shaky, and I just wanted to hide under the tree and never come back out. I hadn’t managed a day and I’d already freaked her out with me.

  I was never good with girls, but I was never this bad. Of course, it was with the biggest crush of my life.

  “You okay?” my dad laughed as he took the ribbon from the other side of the tree, handed it to me higher up. “You’re getting nerves, Alice!”

  He loved to state the obvious. “Nothing,” I blurted. “It’s nothing. Just tired.”

  “Excited for the ball?” he said, ignoring me completely. This time, when I handed the ribbon around, I was braced for Lisette to take it, and I just shivered a little at the softness of her touch. “I think you could be a last dancer, Alice. I know how good at it you were last time. If you had the last dance, with that Henry, your mother and I would be so proud.”

  Ugh. This was worse than embarrassing myself with Lisette. We went another round of the ribbon before I said, “I don’t know. Guess we’ll see.”

  “Just do your best, baby girl. But I hope I get to see you fall in love.”

  I handed the ribbon over, and met Lisette’s eyes for just a second, both of us looking away as suddenly as it had happened.

  ∞∞∞

  I’d hoped maybe dinner would be a chance to get away and stop embarrassing myself a little, but seats were assigned, and of course mine was right next to Lisette. And with the sheer number of people squeezed around this table, it was a miserable coincidence or evil conspiracy that we were seated right across from not only Seth, but Henry.

  The first man I’d ever rejected.

  He at least was way less greasy than Seth. He had short, curly brown hair and a sweet smile, and he looked around a little shyly at all the other people here. He was wearing more or less the same thing as Seth, suit jacket and white button-down, but he had his shirt buttoned up like a civilized human being.

  “Alice,” he said once we’d taken our seats, shooting me a quick smile. “It’s lovely to see you again. I’m happy to see you’re with Lisette.”

  I was happier. And also kind of miserable. “It’s good to see you again, too, Henry,” I said, trying not to sound like I meant it too much.

  “Be careful, man, she doesn’t want to kiss you,” Seth said, clapping Henry on the shoulder. Henry just smiled awkwardly. “She’s much more interested in Lisette.”

  I clasped my hands in my lap and used every damn bit of willpower I had not to flush. Lisette came to my rescue.

  “Are you two practicing together again this time?” she said.

  “That’s right,” Seth said. “Should I kiss his hand now, too? Is that what we do?”

  God, he was not going to let me live that down. He’d started it, though.

  Henry looked him over. “Is that what we do?” he said, offering up his hand, and between that and the look of horror Seth gave him, I decided I liked Henry now.

  “I refuse, man.” He gagged. “Of course, I understand. The bond between men and the bond between women, they are different things.”

  I didn’t think he shared my idea of bonding between women. In my case, that had usually involved passionately kissing in bed.

  The food, at least, was amazing. I hadn’t appreciated as a kid, a little girl whose parents fed her every day, how incredible it was to just have big, fancy dinners made for you every day. It came out on huge platters and trays, and I realized I was twice as hungry as I’d thought. When the bread came out, I snatched a roll, set it down on the separate bread plate—because of course there were separate bread plates—and a second later, I felt another hand land on mine.

  I looked down to where Lisette had just reached for the same bread plate, and I looked up at her. She was looking at me, wide-eyed, and I just stared.

  “Is—which side is my bread plate?” I looked to my other side, where there was an empty bread plate, and flushed. “Oh. My bad.”

  “No—problem,” she said, not moving her hand. “It’s kind of confusing.”

  “Yeah,” I said, not moving mine. “Hard to get used to.”

  That was the hand I’d kissed, too. And she was just keeping it on top of mine.

  I looked back at her hand, and back up at her, meeting her gaze, and then Aunt Gina yelled.

  “A toast!” she shouted, and Lisette and I snapped away just as quickly. “To the first day of Christmas!”

  This was just the first day. Holy crap. I was not going to survive.

  We toasted to the first day of Christmas, hapless me trying not to make eye contact with Lisette, Seth, or Henry. I just stared down at my plate while I did it.

  I still felt her hand on mine. And that was one thing. Tomorrow, I’d be dancing with her, hands on her hips, on her shoulders, holding hands with her…

  As a kid, that had been the best thing in the world. Now? Now it sounded like torture.

  Beautiful torture, but torture.

  “Lisette, you have food on your face again,” Henry said, raising an eyebrow at her. “On your lip. No, other side.”

  Seth laughed. “Alice, help your beloved partner.”

  Lisette stiffened. I couldn’t blame her. I’d been really bad with handling physical contact like a normal person today.

  She thrust her napkin into my hands and turned to face me. “Alice, I’m incapable of helping myself,” she said, and I froze at the sight of her right in front of me like this.

  There was a little dollop of sauce on the right side of her lip. For a second, I wondered what it would be like if I kissed it away, and my breath hitched in my throat.

  I wiped it off her so aggressively I was practically slapping her in the face and shoved the napkin back into her hands, saying, “Here, you’re good. Good now. I got it.”

  “Thanks,” she said, acting like I wasn’t having a freak-out, and went back to eating. I was way too nervous to eat.

  I was a complete disaster. I wasn’t going to survive long at all like this.

  But I had to wonder, what would it have been like to kiss it away?

  Probably, I thought, incredibly nice. And incredibly wrong.

  ∞∞∞

  I won rock-paper-scissors, which meant I got to sleep on the floor. Lisette had huffed into bed in her pajamas—which, thankfully, she’d been reasonable enough to change in the bathroom. I’m sure Aunt Gina would have expected us to just change in the same room as one another.

  So I was lying on the floor, wrapped up in a little cocoon of blankets, before Lisette spoke.

  “So,” she said, her voice small, “do you like Henry?”

  My stomach dropped. I mean, he seemed all right, but I didn’t like him the way she meant. But at the same time…

  God knows I wasn’t going to tell her I was a lesbian. She’d take half a second to piece together that I had a crush on her. And if I acted like I was interested in Henry, that would be the perfect smokescreen, wouldn’t it?

  So I took a quick breath and I said, “Yeah. He’s nice.” I shuffled. “I hope you don’t like Seth.
”

  By that same logic, I should probably have been cheering for her and my cousin. But screw Seth.

  She laughed. “Does he actually speak Spanish?”

  “He knows, like, ten words. He had a month trip to Spain in August, and he acted like he learned Spanish for it but he doesn’t actually know anything. He’s just a douche.” I coughed. “I mean… excuse my French.”

  “I’m not that sensitive. I can take a few curse words, even if the Lord apparently can’t.” She rolled over to the side of the bed and looked down at me. “Henry’s really nice. He’s one of the only family members I can stand. He’s a lot more… progressive than the rest of the family. I think you’d like him.”

  I curled up, burying my head in the blankets. “Yeah… he’s sweet…”

  She laughed, but it almost sounded bitter. “You’re pretty cute when you have a crush.”

  She had no goddamn idea. I wanted to cry. If she liked me with a crush, god would she love me around her. “Sorry, uh,” I mumbled, “sorry about crushing your hand when Seth was there and all. I just got mad.”

  “Oh.” Her voice got a little smaller. “Yeah. No problem. I don’t like him either.”

  “He’s really gross,” I urged. “Last I heard, apparently he’d been two-timing girls. And you’re his type.”

  Which, if there was one thing about my cousin I hated the most, it’s that he shared my taste in women. Tall, elegant and strong—and blonde—you know, all those things Lisette was.

  “Consider it duly noted,” she said, “but trust me when I say I didn’t need to be convinced.”

  “You really don’t like him, huh?”

  She was quiet for a while before she said, “Truth be told—and this is a secret you have to keep. You will keep it secret, right?”

  “Of course.” I sat up. “I’ll take it to my grave. What’s up?”

  She looked away. “There’s, well… someone else I’m interested in.”

  Right. Okay. Sure. She might as well have just driven a molten poker into my heart, but that was fine. “Really?” I said, trying my damnedest to sound excited. “What are they like?”