Page 5 of The Holiday Disaster

Whenever he’d come over to hang out with Valerie, I’d always tried to tag along. And I’d been ruthlessly rejected every. Single. Time. Sourness always burned in my stomach seeing him happily hang out with my younger sister but refusing to even be in the same room as me. I never understood why he’d always hated me, but I was damn sure going to get to the bottom of it.

Ethan turned and raised his arms to grab his luggage, and I lunged up to help him before we had a repeat of what had happened when we boarded. The bag wasn’t any lighter this time as I helped him place it on the ground.

“Thanks,” he muttered, as if thanking me was the last thing he wanted to do but his manners prevented him from doing anything else. I wanted to crack another joke about packing bricks or something, but his grumpy face told me that I might get my head bitten off if I tried to comment on it again.

Instead, I gathered my own items and followed him down the aisle. He made a show of not waiting for me, but I caught him sneaking glances over his shoulder to see whether I was following.

My mouth curved in a small smirk. There was obviously some sort of misunderstanding happening here, and I was hoping to remedy that. And as fate would have it, we were now stuck in some random place I’d never heard of. Hopefully this gave us enough time to clear the air between us.

FIVE

ETHAN

Wintertown was in the middle of fucking nowhere. The plane was parked in the middle of the runway, and we all had to climb the stairs down into the freezing elements.

The blistering winds were like ice against my face. The only saving grace was the fact that the small bus that had been waiting outside the plane for us was already warm inside. The bus was mostly empty save for a family of four sitting in the back. I chose to stand near the front by the driver and grabbed onto one of the hand grips hanging from the vehicle ceiling.

Kingsley came up beside me not long after, and I forced myself to not look at him. I knew I was acting like a child. Who cared if the only reason he was being nice to me was because of my brother? And yet that fact still hurt more than I cared to acknowledge.

Since we were the last passengers off the plane, the bus took off soon after Kingsley boarded. The short ride across the tarmac to the airport was mostly smooth, except for the heat of someone’s stares burning into my back.

“What?” I flung my head around, forcing as much venom into my voice as I could muster. He returned my hostility with a bright smile that had me scowling even more.

“What?” he repeated, acting all innocent. I knew he wasn’t. He had to be pretending to be clueless.

“Why do you keep staring at me?”

“I’m not staring at you. I’m looking up front,” he said, then as if to prove his point, he looked over my head and out the windshield.

I swallowed my annoyance at not only the fact that I knew he was messing with me but also the fact that he still had the height advantage against me. I wasn’t short, but I wasn’t considered tall either. I was depressingly average. Average height, average looks, and average personality. The only thing extraordinary about me was my bad luck.

I glanced over my shoulder to find Kingsley staring a hole into the back of my head again. He gave me a wide smile when our eyes met despite the fact that he had been caught in the act. I grumbled to myself before turning back to the front, determined to ignore whatever games he was playing.

The rest of the ride went quick, and when we stopped outside the airport, I jumped out and power walked inside without waiting for Kingsley. That didn’t deter him from appearing by my side moments later. His long legs made my efforts to ditch him futile.

“Looks like we need to head over there.” Kingsley pointed to our left. The small airport was mostly deserted. Except for the crowd of people lined up outside one of the gates, there were only a couple of staff walking around.

“Hmm,” was all I replied. I didn’t care if it was childish, but I didn’t feel like talking to him right now. So silent treatment it was. We walked to the end of the line. There were only about ten or so of us still here, so I was assuming the other passengers had already gotten situated and were heading to their accommodations.

The line was slow moving, much too slow for my liking, especially since Kingsley thought we’d become best friends and was constantly trying to make conversation with me.

“This is the smallest airport I’ve been inside.”

“Hmm.”

“I wonder how long we’ll have to stay here for.”

“Hmm.”

“I feel bad for our flight attendants. They probably had to explain the same thing a billion times already.”

“Hmm.”

“Look, it's snowing outside. I bet your entire body is as pale as the snow.”

“Hmm...?” I twisted my head to look over my shoulder and shot him a glare once the words had finally sunk in. “I’m not pale, fuck you very much. I’m a normal amount of tan! And why would you even say that?”

He shrugged. “It got you to finally reply to me, didn’t it?” he said as he reached his hand out to my collar. He pulled back my coat and sweater and peeked down my back.

---