Page 96 of Meet Me at Midnight

She laughs, shakes her head, and heads straight for my door. “Get back to work, Beau.”

I smile and waggle my eyebrows as she leaves the office, and even though there are a hundred dirty ideas rolling through my head, I drop it for now.

June is right. Today’s the last day before the office’s Christmas break, and I need to spend all the time working I can.

With the way I’m starting to feel about June, the rest of my time is likely to be filled by her.

I move my Escalade through the gate in front of my parents’ house and pull into the driveway, the bright lights of Christmas nearly blinding me. Clearly, my mother and her go-to Christmas décor company went a little overboard this year trying to beat out Martha May Whovier.

I pull to a stop in front of a large inflatable snowman, and Avery and June climb out the passenger’s side while I cut the engine and hop out. The sounds of actual Christmas carols coming from discreet outdoor speakers placed around the yard fill my ears, and I don’t know whether to be amused or horrified that the entire neighborhood has had to listen to “Jingle Bells” on a continuous loop since the day after Thanksgiving.

My grandfather Phil’s Mercedes is already parked in the front of the house, the hood cold to the touch as I walk by, and I glance back one more time to make sure I’ve parked in a way that puts my car in no danger when he goes to leave later.

He’s fine on the road, but for some reason, any situation involving parking causes a real complication for him.

Since moving into Coral Village last year, a senior living neighborhood for the uberwealthy, both sets of our grandparents have taken to carpooling everywhere they go. To the doctor, to the movies, or here for the holidays—it’s all scheduled to be a group activity. And because they’re allcompletely unhinged, despite his finicky record, my grandpa Phil is the best driver out of the bunch.

And when I say they do everything together, I mean it. We never see them on Thanksgiving because, for the past decade, they’ve been taking the same monthlong cruise on the same cruise line across the Mediterranean. Last Christmas, my grandpa Bill got his knee replacement surgery the same day they docked—which was the day before our Christmas Eve dinner—and they didn’t even think to consider other dates.

Grandpa Bill spent the whole damn night with his leg propped up on pillows and his face pinched in a grimace, pain pills stunting his appetite for dinner.

Avery and June are already inside by the time I make it in the door, and Linda takes my sport coat to hang it up for me before I join the rest of them in the kitchen. The inside of the house matches the outside, and I have to maneuver past what feels like a forest of Christmas trees before I can find everyone.

My mom is dressed to the nines in a red sequined dress, and my dad wears one of his black velvet suits to match the occasion. Both my grandfathers—Bill and Phil—wear bow ties, and my grandmothers—Bev and Judy—showcase ballgown-style dresses. The moment all four of them see what Avery, June, and I are wearing, the looks of disgust are palpable.

“I swear, kids are caring less and less about the way they dress these days,” my grandma Bev chides, whispering to my mom in an anything but quiet voice.

You’d think we’re all schlepping it in sweatpants, but Avery is in designer jeans and some kind of complicated top she probably spent too fucking much money on, and June is wearing a cream-colored sweaterdress. I’m in jeans and a dress shirt, and while it’s not black tie, I wouldn’t say we look disheveled either.

Avery grabs a carrot from the vegetable tray and crunches on it as she jumps directly into the fray of Grandma Bev’s dress code annoyance. “Maybe I’m just waiting for you to bestow me with a gift worthy of wearing, Grandma. Versace, Balenciaga, Gucci? What is it? Give it to me now, and I’ll go change.”

Grandma Bev shakes her head, but she also smiles. “Avery, honey, you really need to start sticking with the classics.”

“I can’t even imagine you’d want to wear Balenciaga after their horrid Paris show,” Grandma Judy chimes in with a scoff.

The classics they speak of involve Chanel, Hermès, Ralph Lauren, and Yves Saint Laurent. I shouldn’t know any of this shit, but when your little sister is Avery with a black AMEX, you find your brain being filled with things whether you like it or not.

If it isn’t already clear, both sets of my grandparents come from money. Very old, very WASP-esque kind of money. Frankly, they’re so set in their old-fashioned ways, there was a period of time they weren’t thrilled about my dad’s choice of starting a marketing firm back in the day. They thought it was too edgy, and his dad, my grandpa Phil, was horrified that his son wasn’t going to continue the Banks name in the financial world.

Eventually, though, when they saw how well my dad was doing, they got over it.

My mom just laughs off my grandmothers’ passive-aggressive chatter about proper Christmas Eve dinner attire, and my dad directs us all to the living room for premeal cocktails that are already arranged on a silver tray.

June loiters until I catch up to her, and the two of us walk in together, my hand gently touching the small of her back. It’s not something I never would have done, but it’s not exactly innocent anymore either.

I’m more than ready to have all of this in the open so I can love her out loud.

The thought stalls me for the briefest of seconds as I consider it.Do I love June?

It sure seems like it these days. Any time we’re apart I spend wishing we were together, and I’m happiest when she’s around. She’s even come more into herself, and the new comfort we find together is something to be envied.

I grab a glass of champagne from my dad’s tray and hand it to June before grabbing a glass of neat whiskey for myself. My fingers itch to pull her closer to me, to feel the warmth of her body pressed against mine, but I take a seat in one of the chairs beside the fireplace to keep myself from misbehaving. If I sit on the couch with June, I’ll be running my hands all over her legs without even realizing it, trying to find the skin under her sexy, thigh-high boots.

Avery takes the seat next to June, and I focus on my dad as he stands in front of the mantel to make his traditional Christmas Eve toast. Our stockings hang behind him, the glow from the fireplace casting warm shadows over them, and I spot the one withJuniperwritten on it directly beside the one withBeau.

Internally, I smile, thinking back to the first Christmas my mom added a stocking for June. She was ten and I was fifteen, and the way her eyes brightened when she spotted her name on the mantel lit up the whole damn room.

My eyes move back to June, taking in the way her long red hair hangs down her shoulders and the way her mouth turns up into an adorable grin when Avery whispers something to her.

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