Page 13 of The Friendsgiving Pact

It took Theo every single ounce of his willpower to stop kissing her. Just practice, his brain hissed, but his body was not reacting in a way that agreed. He wrenched himself away, hoping she didn’t notice his desperation, and immediately his eyes dropped to her lips. Avery was breathing harder than usual, her breaths making little white puffs in the rapidly cooling car.

“Okay,” she said, like he had asked a question.

“Okay, what?”

“Just—okay. That’s what it’s like to kiss you, I guess. Without, you know, an audience, or whatever,” she said, and turned to face her house. He had never seen her this interested in the garage door, but she appeared to now be counting the individual panels or inspecting them for secret clues. Theo had no idea if this was a good or bad reaction, or maybe it was neither—maybe he was the one making it weird and reading into things he had no business reading into.

Theo barely managed to keep himself from pointing out that they probably wouldn’t need to kiss without an audience, since this whole charade was pointless without one. “Was it . . . okay?” he asked, mostly to fill the gaping, soundless void that stretched between them.

Avery huffed, a noise that might have been either indignation or a laugh. He could usually tell with her, but the kiss had fully scrambled his brain. “I think we’ll be fine,” she said finally, still closely examining the garage door for a hidden code.

“Will we?” he asked, and he meant it to sound sarcastic, but it didn’t. Instead, he sounded almost vulnerable, worried, and he hoped she was too distracted to notice.

But he never had much luck. Avery whipped her head around to look at him, and now it was his face that seemingly held the mysteries of the universe. “We will,” she said hesitantly. “Won’t we?”

Theo recovered. “We will,” he repeated, relieved he sounded much more assured now. “Sorry, I just needed to be sure you were sure.”

Avery smiled, a crooked half grin that could have meant any number of things. “I should go. Before Mom wakes up and wants to know what took so long.”

He didn’t feel like getting the third degree from Avery’s mom, so he nodded and helped her grab the duffel bag she’d brought from the trunk. But she took the handles from him—her fingers brushing against his—rather than let him carry it the way he had from the dorm. “I’ve got it,” she said, glancing nervously toward the door. “Really. Thanks—for the ride. And, um, everything.”

“Have a good night, Aves,” he said, and she walked up the front path, fumbling for her keys. She turned at the door and waved once more, but he didn’t move from his spot on the driveway until the door was shut.

Theo stumbled down the hall the next morning, starving and grateful he wasn’t hungover. The one time he’d hung out with Sawyer back at the U, Theo had ended up in a stranger’s dorm room drinking entirely too much shitty vodka, and spent the next twelve hours with the worst hangover of his life—even worse than that night with Tommy over the summer, when Theo had gotten drunk and maudlin. But the hangover he got from Sawyer had been nearly enough to keep him from drinking ever again, although he had, obviously, pushed through that particular mental block.

He could hear the sound of fake punches from the living room and wandered in to find Jake sitting cross-legged on the floor, playing Theo’s old favorite video game. “Hey, bro,” Theo said, clearing the raspiness from his throat. Just like last night, he was caught off guard by the overwhelming surge of fondness he felt for Jake. He had missed him, but it wasn’t until this totally pedestrian tableau that it really hit him how much. It had been months since Theo had wandered into the living room to find his brother playing video games, and that had been a daily occurrence before. He didn’t want to go back, exactly, but he also suddenly didn’t want to go back to school at the end of the weekend.

“Hey,” Jake said, barely looking away from the screen. “I beat your high score last week.”

“I know, you texted me that from Mom’s phone. And for the record, you really should let people know when it’s you, because getting crushed your high score, loser from Mom was sort of alarming.”

Jake laughed and glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “Mom bought you some Lucky Charms. And I’m supposed to tell you to have a banana too.”

Theo rolled his eyes. Their mom was very concerned he wasn’t eating enough fruits and vegetables at school, if her weekly texts to him about that were any indication. Unless it was Jake who was worried about his vitamin intake, which was honestly plausible. The kid could be a champion worrier. “She’s working?”

Jake made a disappointed noise as his fighter took a hit that laid him out. “Yeah, she’s on for another hour. And Dad’s at work too.”

“Figured,” Theo said. Karl worked plowing the streets for the county, and his pickup had been gone when Theo finally got home from dropping Avery off.

Theo’s stomach lurched as he remembered their moment in his car. He had avoided thinking about Avery so far that morning, but now it came back to him, far too clear for comfort. He needed to get his shit together when it came to her, or else this weekend would be a lot harder than anticipated. “I’ll go eat and you should get dressed, your caroling thing starts soon.”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Jake said, once more absorbed in his video game. Theo was most of the way into the kitchen when Jake called out to him again. “Hey, Theo?”

“Yeah?”

Jake smiled widely, his braces glinting in the reflected glare from the TV. “Good to have you back, bro.”

The sidewalks downtown were coated in hard-packed snow, already well on its way to being ice. Tommy and Grace were clutching each other to remain upright, although Theo had his doubts as to the effectiveness of their technique. For one thing, Grace was wearing combat boots that looked cool but apparently had zero traction, and for another, Tommy kept shrieking loudly anytime one of them started to lose their balance.

“Where is she?” Harper asked as they reached the small park in the middle of downtown. Under the gazebo, Jake and the rest of the middle school choir were lining up, each one looking more and more nervous than the last. Itasca was already in full Christmas mode, which tended to start promptly on November 1 for the entire town. The gazebo had white Christmas lights and garlands winding around the posts, and across the park the town Christmas tree was set up. The streetlights had red bows tied around them, and most of the windows of stores facing the park were decorated with trains, teddy bears, Santas, and, in the case of the Goldstein Deli, one lone menorah. Theo pulled out his phone to see if Avery had messaged him, but nothing new had come in since he picked her up yesterday afternoon. That already felt like it happened months ago, so much had changed.

“She’s coming,” Theo said, and ripped his mind away from reminiscing about last night. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about it—less than twenty-four hours ago, Avery had been his best friend. Now she was his (fake) girlfriend and he knew how she kissed and absolutely nothing in his life could have prepared him for this.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m here,” Avery called from ten feet behind them. “The Methodist church has their lot blocked off, and I wasn’t planning on having to find street parking. I didn’t miss it, did I?”

“They haven’t started,” Harper assured her. Avery stopped next to him, not really any closer than she would have normally, but just close enough that Theo felt like she was closer.

“Mr. Krueger hasn’t started a concert on time since the dinosaurs roamed the earth,” Tommy muttered.