Page 9 of The Mistletoe Trap
His little sister swept inside, a cool puff of air following in her wake, and threw her arms around him. Gavin attempted to lift Nikita off her feet, same way he’d done with Julie, but with her being only an inch shy of six feet, the tips of her toes remained on the hardwood floor. “Hey, Niki. Good to see you. When did you get in?”
“Late last night. Denver traffic was horrible as usual, and the mountain roads were pretty snow-packed so I had to drive slowly, but other than that, it was smooth sailing.” Niki jabbed her thumb toward the door. “I just got back from hanging with my friends, and they all insisted I say hi to my famous brother for them.”
Gavin grinned.
“My college teammates are all annoyingly impressed, too.” Her smug grin revealed the pearly whites that’d spent a few years behind braces, the flash of the tip of her tongue between them a sign she was about to take a jab at his expense. “It’d be a real blow to my ego if I wasn’t Dad’s favorite.”
Already, Gavin was shaking his head. “What? No way.”
“Uh-huh. I play basketball, just like he did. You’re the one who chose to go the football route—it’s the inferior sport, in case you didn’t know. Isn’t that right, Dad?”
Both of them spun toward their father.
“Go ahead and tell him.” Niki batted her eyes, same way she did when she was little and wanted her way. “Now that his ego is so huge, he can handle it.”
“Oh yeah?” Gavin shot back. “When’s the last time anyone saw your games on TV?”
Niki shoved him, and he shoved her right back. Then they graduated to sticking out their tongues at each other—what was it about siblings that turned you into a kid?
They returned their gazes to Dad, who wrapped an arm around Julie’s shoulders. “Uh, myactual favorite kidand I are gonna go check out the food options.” As they walked by, Dad clapped Gavin on the back and kissed Niki on the cheek. “For the record, I love you both very much.”
“Just not as much as me,” Julie said, the dimple in her cheek popping. She leaned in and greeted Niki with a hug, and then slipped her backpack halfway off and fiddled with the zipper. “Before we grab dinner, can Kylo Ren run around for a while? He’s gonna get grouchier than usual, and trust me, no one wants that.”
Niki extended her arms, the tips of her fingers wiggling in agimmemotion. “Ooh, I’ll put him in my room. I’ve always wanted a kitty.” She told Julie she’d already eaten dinner anyway, and assured her she’d take care of him as she took the proffered backpack.
After heading into the kitchen and stacking his plate with cold cuts, crackers, cheese, and veggies, Gavin paused at the entry to the living room. He leaned against the archway, observing his family as they talked and laughed, the fire roaring in the background. With the scent and nostalgia of Christmases past hanging so heavily in the air, he wished that the niggling thoughts swirling through his brain would leave him alone already.
“Just enjoy being home,” Coach Bryant had said, and Lance Quaid echoed it. Most owners weren’t as hands-on, but Coach and Lance were on friendly terms, and he often showed up at practices, loosened his tie, and tossed around the pigskin.
“I was a lot like you when I played,” Lance had said to Gavin. “If you’re out here on the field, you’ll start pushing it. Go home, rest up, see that physical therapist you mentioned, and soak in those hot springs. It won’t do us any good for you to hurt yourself worse.”
“But what if after a day or two of icing—”
A simple raise of an eyebrow from Coach was all it took for Gavin to swallow the rest of his sentence. “I believe you and I both heard the part about how if you push it, that minor tear could rip the rest of the way, and you’ll be dealing with a separated shoulder. Then we won’t have you until next season, and we haven’t put in all this work for that to happen, have we?”
“No, sir.”
“Go home. Heal. We’ll loop you in to practices via video, and I know you’ll be doing your PT exercises.”
“Yes, sir,” Gavin had said, and he’d sworn to do his best.
He straightened, intending on walking into the room, but the wall of pictures to his left caught his eye. There were the stiff school photos of him and Nikita through the years, along with snapshots of his high school team and a picture from junior prom.
Warmth wound through him as he studied it. Julie had gone with her lab partner, Marlin Williams, and Gavin had gone with Claudia, his girlfriend at the time. In the picture, instead of talking to their dates, who they were posing with, he and Julie were looking at each other and laughing. He couldn’t remember over what, but the photographer had obviously been done with their shenanigans, snapped the picture despite their lack of focus, and called it good.
Claudia had been pissed about how they’d turned out, he remembered that. Then again, angry was sort of the factory setting when it came to her. Back in the day he’d thought she was just passionate. And she was. With a side of unreasonably jealous, overly paranoid, and melodramatic.
It was one reason he’d been so pleasantly surprised at how easily Kristin accepted Julie from the very beginning. At how understanding she always was, to the point he wondered if she could honestly be that easygoing. Even as he told them not to, his eyes skipped to the next frame over, where he and Kristin were frozen in their homecoming formalwear.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t over her—it was more like he couldn’t get rid of the notion that he’d failed her. Not just back then, when he hadn’t done a better job correcting the “not-Julie” jests they’d at least had the dignity not to make in front of Kristin, but that he’d dragged her along his pathway instead of allowing her to go her own.
The doorbell rang, jerking him from his reverie, and his mom was already up and off the loveseat she’d been sharing with Dad before Gavin could offer.
Gavin returned his attention to the wall, avoiding the prom photos in favor of the picture his mom had decided was eight-by-ten worthy. It was a shot of the beach at Crystal Lake. He and Julie were facing the water, nothing but their swimmer diapers on. They were holding hands, but in this picture, Gavin wasn’t looking at Jules. No, his focus was on the small plastic shovel in his hand. No surprise, the very same picture was hanging in the O’Neills’ entryway.
“Going down memory lane?” a familiar voice asked from behind him.
Gavin pointed his partially eaten slice of cheese at the framed photograph. “If our families truly wanted an eventual merging of the bloodlines, they should’ve thought about the level of friend-zoning in this picture before hanging it up. It’s a constant reminder of how long we’ve been friends and that we’ve literally been in diapers together.”
