Page 51 of Christmas in Coconut Creek

I went on to explain how my two oldest half-brothers were near impossible to shop for nowadays, so they were getting sweatshirts and gift cards, because they’d probably hate anything I tried to pick out anyway.Teenagers.

But Gavin was always barricaded in his room playing video games, so I bought a few of them despite knowing absolutely nothing about it, or if he even played those ones in particular.

Leo loved fishing with my dad on the weekends, and Florida had some amazing bait and tackle accessories in a little shop I found walking around downtown. I bought those with some stickers to add to his tackle box because he was always collecting.

The twins were obsessing over makeup, so I splurged on the good stuff that I usually bought for myself so they weren’t stuck with my stepmom’s used drugstore palettes to play with anymore. Then I went a little crazy at the thrift shop because for some reason every twelve-year-old was dressing like Fran Drescher in the goddamn nineties.

Finally Laila, who was only seven but already over her head in books in the second grade, was getting the full collection of Junie B. Jones that I’d already secured back home, and one of those collectable name keychains that said LAILA in all capital letters across a Florida license plate.

Frankie listened with rapt attention the entire time, leaning back on both palms on the carpet with a smile on his face. “They’re very lucky to have you as a sister.”

I waved it off, blushing.

“No, seriously,” he continued. “It’s obvious how much you care about them, your attention to the little things. They’re young, and maybe they don’t understand now, but one day they will. You’re making them feel seen and special, which is something kids really fucking need.”

I, too, was feeling very seen and special at the moment. Frankie brought on that weird tingly feeling in my stomach far more in the last week than I’d felt in twenty-six years.

The truth was, Ididcrave that validation from my younger siblings. I wanted them to know how much they meant to me, regardless of the intense age gap, and I wanted them to return that love. I’d never be as close to Leo as he was with his twin sisters, or be able to share a bedroom wall and chat through the floor vents like Gavin and Laila. But I still wanted tobe there.

“I think gift giving is just my love language,” I joked. “It makes me happy.”

“Yourlove language?”

“Yeah, everyone has one, or a couple.” I tossed Frankie the scissors and instructed him to start cutting again. “Gift giving, acts of service, physical touch, words of affirmation, quality time.”

He didn’t look like he believed me.

“It’s how you show love to others and want love shown back to you. It’s a real thing, look it up.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he murmured. “I guess mine is…acts of service. No wait—physical touch.”

“I think you just like to touch,” I quipped.

Frankie’s eyes dimmed a shade darker, and that smirk was accompanied by the swipe of his tongue across his bottom lip.

I liked looking at him way too much for my own good. With a hat on, he was brooding and boyish, but in this perfect orange lighting with his thick, shaggy, finger-combed hair—Frankie wasfuckable. There was no better word.

“I agree with acts of service.” I nodded. “I noticed it even when we were on the plane.”

“Sitting next to you is considered an act of service?”

“No.” I snorted, twisting a piece of burlap into a bow. “Filling my soda cup for me, pulling my bag off the carousel, little things. But things a stranger wouldn’t normally do. Then that night when I was drunk youtotallybabied me.”

The oven sheet panged from the kitchen and the entire house smelled like mouth-watering chocolate chip cookies as Frankie sat there contemplating. “I didn’t baby you, I…”

“Serviced me.”

He grinned. “No, that wasn’t until a few days later.”

I ignored him and organized a new present into the middle of the silver foil fray. “You’re distracting me.” Quickly, I measured the paper, cut it, folded it neatly over the rectangular box, and cinched it with tape.

“Now you’re just showing off,” he commented. “Whatever happened to a good old-fashioned gift bag?”

The eyeshadow palette he was wrestling with looked like it’d been wrapped by a blind elf with no thumbs, but he did it without complaining. It would be an interesting day answering for the state of the gifts to my family, and I had half a mind to blame the entire thing on Natalia instead of explaining who Frankie was to me.

Iwasn’t even sure who Frankie was to me.

A casual hook-up? A one-time fling? A friend? Friends didn’t go back and forth the way the two of us had for the last week. As much as I loved my friends back home, I most definitely wasn’t looking at them like I was looking at the man across from me.

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