Page 93 of A Lucky Shot

“Get him in here! I’m not heating the whole province!” a deep voice bellowed from the living room, and Libby slammed the door on the cold.

The house smelled like a pending food coma. Turkey and pumpkin pie and who knew what else wafted in from the kitchen. His salivary glands ached in anticipation. His family had the barest adherence to Christmas traditions, as evidenced by their cavalier approach to holiday planning. His father hadn’t ported over any Graham traditions from his side of the family, and his mother’s side was far more likely to go surfing than roast turkey in the peak of Melbourne summer.

More than once his father had joked they should just convert to Judaism for all the Westernized Chinese food they’d consumed at Christmas.

Josh suddenly had a visceral craving for mediocre sweet and sour pork.

Libby wrapped him in a sweaty hug, the bells on her festive sweater jingling merrily.

“Glad you could make it,” she said.

Josh returned the hug cautiously. “Why are you being nice to me?”

“Because,” she said, baring her teeth, “your husband asked me to be.”

Stephen popped around the corner and grinned, the bells on his own sweater swaying.

Matching novelty sweaters. Called it.

“Hello, darling. Glad you could make it.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Josh gave his friend a one-armed hug, peering past his shoulder. “Thanks for the invite. Both of you.”

“She’s not here yet,” she replied smugly.

Josh suppressed a chastising sigh. Of course, he’d want to see the only other person he’d know here. He shoved the wine into Stephen’s chest, who cradled the bottles like a linebacker. “Introduce me to the hosts, why don’t you?”

Libby’s parents welcomed him like a long-lost cousin. Her mother squawked over the turkey, a garish apron cinched under her matronly bosom, cheeks flaming from bending over the oven and her second glass of wine. Her father shoved a beer and a candy cane into Josh’s hands, and he wondered absently if it was a Calgary tradition to stir the beer with the candy cane. He left both the full beer and unwrapped candy cane on a coaster by the fire.

With an arm slung around Josh’s shoulders, Libby’s dad steered him from room to room for the house tour, ending in what was a childhood bedroom. The navy walls sagged with photos and ribbons, with a shrine dedicated to boy bands that was twenty years out of date, posters peeling at the corners. A twin bed with a wrinkled coverlet butted against a melamine bookshelf in the corner that displayed rows of YA books and trophies with dancers frozen mid-twirl on the risers.

If he swapped the dance trophies for basketball and the navy for mauve, he could have been in his sister’s room in middle school.

“Here’s Libby and Cassie for Halloween in third grade,” her father said, gesturing at a framed photo. He squinted, peering over the top of his bifocals. “They’d gone as … I’m not sure what they were that year, but they had fun.”

Josh couldn’t recognize the costume either, but their blue-painted faces beamed under layers of makeup, buck teeth like Chiclets in their tiny mouths, and he felt his own mouth stretch in response.

“And here they are at the Canadian nationals.” The girls wore matching black leotards, tee shirts strategically ripped to look simultaneously badass and age appropriate. Cass had been right. They had to have been all of fifteen years old in this photo. Libby looked like any other teenage girl, but Cass could have passed for a skinny twelve-year-old.

“And here they are, at the eleventh-grade formal.”

The two girls stood side by side, flanked by gangly, spotty boys. After a double take, he realized one of the gangly, spotty boys was Stephen, albeit several inches shorter and a hundred pounds lighter. The two photos couldn’t have been taken more than a year apart, and while Libby looked identical in both, Cass looked like she’d had one hell of a summer.

She stood with the hunched posture of a girl convinced rounded shoulders would hide her unwelcome new body, making her look even shorter than she was. The boy with his hands respectfully resting on her waist looked stunned, like he had been hit by the same Mack truck that had hit Cass.

“Robbie Johnston,” Cass said, appearing at his other side, and his heart thudded against his sternum. The Cass of today stood, if not tall, at least with her back straight. She stepped closer to him, and her sweet scent caressed him, an antidote to the air thick with the promise of dinner. The silky green blouse she wore draped around her shoulders with a complicated twist he couldn’t unravel in his mind, falling in a layer of clouds that displayed her collar bones.

He huffed a jet of air through his nostrils to clear his head and forced as much attention as he could muster back to the photos. “I didn’t hear you knock.”

“That’s because I don’t knock here.”

“When did you ever knock, Cassie?” Libby’s father asked and kissed her cheek. “I’m going to see if the girls have put Stephen to work yet.”

When the footsteps scuffed down the stairs, Josh leaned over to click the door quietly into place behind him. He swept his eyes up from her shoulders before stalling at her lips. That fiery red. Definitely on theme. “Where’s your ugly Christmas sweater?” he demanded.

“I could ask you the same thing,” she scoffed, eyeing the black jeans, sans-holes, and the only knit pullover he owned without graphics on it. She toyed with the fine lamb’s wool at his throat and flipped the collar to examine the seams. She hummed in approval, her breath smoothing over his skin, the tips of her fingers drawing out a patter of goosebumps that awakened his skin. “Besides, I don’t wear acrylic.”

I like wearing beautiful things she’d told him the night they met. Whatever her shirt was made of whisked quietly against his chest. Desire flared under his skin like an errant firework. He wondered what beautiful underthings she was wearing tonight. He wanted to drag his fingers under the neckline to find out.

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