Page 1 of The Holiday Honeymoon Switch
Prologue
December 16, 2016
New York City
Some things are meant to be together, especially at Christmastime—like popcorn and cranberries threaded through the boughs of a Douglas fir, or clementines studded with fragrant cloves. Stockings and fireplaces, angels and treetops, hot cocoa and marshmallows, ice skating and Rockefeller Center, mistletoe and stolen kisses, chestnuts and an open fire. The holly and the ivy.
Or, Holly and Ivy.
As in Holly Beech and Ivy Casey. The kind of best friends who finish each other’s sentencesandeach other’s experimental multicourse dinner party dishes. (Even the cassoulet pan.) The ones for whom those necklaces that say “best” onone side and “friends” on the other were created. Friends who have their own karaoke song (the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe,” naturally), a lexicon of inside jokes (that only get more humorous the less other people find them funny), and always say yes to randomly themed movie-marathon dates (for example, Every Movie Brad Pitt Has Ever Been In, Including and Perhaps EspeciallyThe Favor). Taylor and Selena, Oprah and Gayle, Cameron and Drew, Bette and 50 Cent, Marissa and Summer…all of these friend duos have nothing on Holly and Ivy—who are about to meet for the first time.
Christmas break is almost here, and to mark the occasion, Phi Delta Epsilon is hosting its annual Columbia-U Christmas Kegger. Holly is already eyeing the door, though she knows her boyfriend, Matt, will, as usual, want to be Last Man Standing. (He has the T-shirt. He’s wearing it.) “Hey, sweetheart,” he slurs, pressing a red plastic Solo cup into her hand. “You gotta try the rum and eggnog.”
Holly tries to arrange her grimace into a smile as she looks into his flushed, handsome face. She accepts the cup and says, “Maybe you should stick with beer, though, Matty. Remember what happened at the Purple Jesus party.” He grins and gives her a sloppy kiss that smears across her cheek. “You’re always right. That’s why I love you, Holly McBollyface.”
He heads off in search of the beer, and she goes searching for somewhere to dump the noxious nog. She finds a windowsill and sets the cup down, longing for something slightly more palatable, knowing she won’t find it here. When she brought a nice bottle of wine to one of Matt’s fraternity-sorority mixers, she overheard two girls in the bathroom—people she had believed were, if not exactly her friends, at least friend-lyacquaintances—whispering about her. “I mean, what, is she forty?” A giggle. “Like, is she mymom? Who bringsChablisto a toga/foam party?” Holly had tucked her feet up in the bathroom stall so she wouldn’t be spotted.
She is used to this. She has been called an “old soul” since she was five, when she begged her parents to let her stay up late and watch the Barbara Walters interview with Monica Lewinsky. Or when her nana got her a subscription toHighlightsmagazine when she was seven, and she asked if she could exchange it for theNew Yorker. Still, she resolved never to bring wine to Matt’s frat parties thereafter unless it was in a box. She tries to fit in.
Lost in her thoughts, she stumbles over a group of partiers engaged in a bottle-flipping competition. “I did it! I landed it!” A girl with a high ponytail jumps up and down, her sleek hair bobbing along with her. Holly touches her own dark hair, which she flat-ironed for the party. The frat house is as humid as an August afternoon at the monkey hut in the Bronx Zoo, and she can feel the strands around her face and neck frizzing already.
Holly turns in another direction—and is nearly hit in the head by two people attempting to take selfies while high-fiving themselves. “2016, you arecrazy,” she whispers, backing away. But the reminder that a new year is approaching in two weeks brings a smile to her face. Despite having a festive first name, Holly has never connected with Christmas as she has with New Year’s Eve. Even thinking about the approaching blank slate of a new year causes a twang of anticipation to thrum through her body. New day planner, new set of notebooks, new goals, new dreams. On New Year’s Day, anything feels possible—and Holly has never understood why so many people end up spending such a sacred, possibility-filled twenty-four hours curled under duvets like hungover shrimp.
Matt has joined the bottle-flippers, and waves joyfully at Holly from across the room. She waves back and checks her watch: only 11:15. Too early to duck out, and besides, Matt needs someone to steer him away from the nog should he lose his way again.
Holly and Matt have been together since they were freshmen and locked eyes over a mud pit during a frosh week tug-of-war her new roommates dragged her to as a “team-building” exercise. Holly would likely have spent most of her college years at the library studying. Or in her room binge-watching nature documentaries—which she used to refer to as her “guilty pleasure” until her older brother, Ted, explained that watching documentaries about climatechange and endangered species did not meet the definition of a guilty pleasure. The important thing is, Matt brings her out of her shell. Their dads went to Yale together, and their moms know each other from Vassar. Everyone is thrilled with the match, and they have their life together all planned out: graduate from Columbia, get accepted to Yale Law, move in together, secure jobs at A-list firms, get married, have kids.
Next week, Holly will see Matt’s parents at the annual Beech Family Christmas Eve Carol Sing, and she’ll be reminded of what a smart choice she’s made in her boyfriend. It will almost be enough to get her to enjoy the Christmas Eve Carol Sing—which is the opposite of the warm, welcoming gathering its name suggests. It’s a catered affair at Holly’s parents’ Brooklyn Heights town house. Musicians are hired to sing the carols; last year it was the Lumineers. Holly’s mother will stress about the caterer serving East Coast Canadian oysters when she requested West Coast. Holly’s brother—who works out of Belgium now as a chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund and only comes home at Christmas—will get in an argument about politics with their father, and Holly fears the 2016 political argument will be the worst one of all. Holly will find herself biting her nails to the quick, counting down the days until Christmas, with all its never-quite-met expectations, is behind her and she can start fresh in the new year, and spend at least one day feeling like she could be anyone and do anything.
She has plucked a bottle of water from a stack meant for flipping and is making a beeline for an empty couch she has just spotted in a dim corner when Matt calls out her name. “Holly! Come over here! There’s someone you havegotto meet!”
Ivy Casey hates keg parties. But her current boyfriend, D’Arcy, is Phi Delta Epsilon. Ivy met him at a pub night she accidentally walked into after a life-drawing seminar. She has never dated a frat guy before and is pretty sure she isn’t going to be dating one for much longer—but she said yes to the keg party to give her roommate at Cooper Union and her visiting out-of-town boyfriend privacy. Plus, she figured if she didn’t have fun, it would be easy enough to duck out unnoticed and tell D’Arcy the next day that she was there all along; he just doesn’t remember.
She contemplates him from across the room. D’Arcy is tall, muscular, and Theo James–level handsome, complete with square jaw and cocky grin. He flips a plastic water bottle, lands it, and hugs the dark-blond, equally handsome guy beside him like he’s just scored a winning Hail Mary touchdown in the final quarter-second of the Super Bowl, complete with butt pats and Jesus-thanking hand gestures. As Ivy watches, she wonders if her latest relationship is going to make it through the night, let alone the holidays. Thenshe tosses her long, dark braid over one shoulder as she moves through the party, searching for somewhere to sit.
The song changes from “Work” by Rihanna to “Last Christmas” by Wham!, and half the room starts singing along. Ivy glances at her watch. 11:15. If the Christmas music lasts until midnight, she’s turning into a pumpkin and Cinderella-ing out of here. Her family doesn’t really do Christmas, and she’s never grown that attached to it. Her father sees the season as a capitalist plot designed to boost materialism, stupefy the masses with sugar and fat, and drown the planet in excess plastic packaging. Fair points. Last year, when Ivy went home to spend the holidays on her parents’ maple syrup farm in Quebec, she discovered her parents had left for Brazil to take a shaman-led ayahuasca journey in the Amazon rainforest, which was paid for by swapping farm equipment with an offbeat travel agent since her parents lead an entirely cash-free existence. Ivy wasn’t hurt—her parents have always marched to the beat of their own drum, and so has she. It just reminded her of why she doesn’t love the season. Too many expectations.
She spots an empty couch and starts toward it. She hears D’Arcy’s voice. “There you are!” He grabs her from behind and kisses her ear, then her neck. Ivy feels a small shiver of the attraction that made her notice D’Arcy in the first place. Maybe he’s just as tired of this party as she is and is about to suggest they go back to his room and do the one thing she isdefinitely sure she likes about him: he’s inventively great in bed and surprisingly generous for a total bro.
But no such luck.
“Isn’t this the sickest party?” he says. “And there’s someone I need you to meet. My best buddy, Matt—remember, I’ve told you all about him?” Ivy nods vaguely. “You’ve got to meet his girlfriend! Trust me, it’s a Christmas miracle! Come on, come on.” Pressing his body against hers from behind, he shuttles her through the room. The dark-blond guy D’Arcy was celebrating his bottle-flip with earlier is waving at them.
“This is Matt!” D’Arcy says with a flourish. Matt then pulls a pretty brunette with wide-set dark eyes, a heart-shaped face, gently frizzing hair, and a shy smile into their little semicircle. Matt and D’Arcy look like kids on Christmas morning. What is going on here?
“Ta-da!” Matt exclaims.
“Umm. Hi?” Ivy extends a hand to the young woman, who looks just as confused as she does.
“I’m Holly,” she says.
Realization dawns.
She winces. “I’m Ivy.”
“Oh, great,” Holly says, just as Matt and D’Arcy break into an intoxicated version of the carol “The Holly and the Ivy”—except they don’t know the words because no one does, so they mostly just shout-sing “The holly and the ivy! The holly and the ivy!Dadadadadadaaaaa!”
“And!” D’Arcy says. “Look at you two. You’re like…” He searches for the right word and finally finds it. Sort of. “Doppelbangers.”
