Page 11 of Merrily You

Danny was only a few inches taller than me, so I didn’t have to go too far to whisper to her.

She looked down at me and nodded. “Okay.”

Taking her hand, I pulled her through the crowd, ignoring some of the cheering and comments. Some of the comments bordered on lewd and I definitely didn’t pay attention to those.

Once we’d made it to Danny’s former room, I shut the door. She went over to sit on the bed, rolling her shoulders and closing her eyes.

“You okay?” A check-in with her seemed necessary. We were trying to figure out this fake relationship thing as we went.

Her eyes opened and she gave me a tired smile. “Yeah. It’s just a lot this year. For some reason.”

I sat next to her on the bed and it was like going back in time. Her room hadn’t changed much in all the years she’d lived in it. Even now, there were framed pictures on the dresser of us, grinning. Old posters on the wall. Piles of her favorite books. A closet full of her old awards and trophies and certificates. At least the ones that her parents didn’t display in the rest of the house. Part of the living room was taken up by a shrine to the three Romano siblings. Danny hated it, but I thought it was sweet. My parents had a less embarrassing shrine for me too. You couldn’t fight proud parents.

“It’s going well, I think,” I said, sinking onto the bed next to her. It still smelled the same. Danny loved peach scents and had her whole life since she’d worn too much peach body spray in junior high. Whenever I smelled anything remotely peach-like, itmade me think of her. A few times I’d even had to make myself a peach cobbler or pie because I’d been craving peaches.

“Yeah,” she said, huffing out a breath and looking out the window, which was lit up by the numerous blinking lights outside. I could just see the corner of one of the inflatables in a crack between the curtains. Those things were hilarious.

“Are you sure you’re good? We can go out there right now and tell them it was a joke. They’d believe us.” Danny’s family and mine were lovers of (harmless) pranks. Her mom might yell at us for getting her hopes up, but she’d get over it.

She shook her head and looked back at me. “No, it’s fine. We can keep going.”

“We didn’t kiss in front of them. I’m surprised they didn’t make us.” That was definitely something they’d do.

Danny let out a long breath before looking down at her lap.

“Maybe we should…get the first one over with. So we’re not doing it with so many eyes on us. So we can make it convincing.”

Oh. That was unexpected. I’d thought that I’d have to convince and cajole her into kissing. It was going to have to happen before we went to my parent’s house because there was mistletoe right above the arch in the living room and she was going to make us pose under it for a picture once she found out about us.

“I mean, yeah, sure,” I said, trying to hide my trembling hands. Actually, my whole body was trembling. Why was I shaking so bad? This was Danny. My best friend. She’d seen me on my literal worst days. She knew all the most embarrassing corners of my soul. She had the dirt that was under the dirt. The microscopic organisms that were under the dirt that was under the dirt.

If there was anyone in my entire life that I was most comfortable with, it was Danny. This shouldn’t be a big deal.

Why was this a big deal?

“Just a quick one,” Danny said when I hadn’t responded.

“Yeah, sure.” Why did my voice sound so far away?

“Do you want me to do it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes as we sat on her yellow flowered comforter that wasn’t her style, but her mom had gotten it for her anyway.

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t move if I tried. My body was seized by some kind of deep panic that I couldn’t understand as Danny leaned forward and tilted her head slightly so she didn’t bump my nose.

“Here I go,” she whispered when she was inches away from my mouth. Her breath brushed across my skin while my heart thumped in my chest, loud as thunder.

This was happening. Danny was going to kiss me.

And then she did.

Chapter Six

Danny

No clue where the idea to kiss had come from, but once I said it out loud, it made sense. We should kiss in private for the first time before trying to do it in public. If we were awkward about it, people would know. Everyone would be watching and would have no qualms about calling us out for a bad kiss.

To make this work, we had to be comfortable. Although, “comfortable” was the last word I would have used to describe kissing Holiday. It should have been comfortable. Hugging her was probably the most comfortable I’d ever been. But a kiss was different. I didn’t know why, but it was. It was absolutely and entirely different.

When she didn’t take any initiative, I said that I could do it. And now I was, while Holiday sat next to me, her body absolutely rigid. I told her I was going for it to give her a chance to stop me, but she didn’t. Instead I softly pressed my mouth to hers and then pulled back almost immediately. I’d told her it would be a peck. Just a moment in time. A blink. A nothing.

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