Page 39 of Acting Merry
Hannah cringes like she’s personally responsible for the damage to it. “Sorry, Brady. How was the air mattress, Cole?”
Brady piles my plate high with bacon, as promised.
“It was…great.” I don’t have the heart to tell her the truth.
“Maybe we could switch tonight,” Brady suggests.
I can’t help a quick glance at Reese, who looks almost offended on my behalf. “Uh…yeah, maybe,” I say non-committally.
I wouldn’t mind letting Brady experience the floor, honestly. Apparently, I have a lot of pent-up resentment toward him.
Tyler smiles at me knowingly. “Did you even sleep on the mattress?”
“All night,” I say.
“Mmhmm.” He grins. “Definitely no secret trips to the bed, huh?”
Hannah elbows him. “Shutup, Tyler. Stop being weird. Can you pass the syrup, Tess?”
Hannah is officially on the nice list.
Reese, on the other hand, is on the red cheeks list.
Tess hands Hannah the syrup. “After breakfast, everyone can have some time to get showered and ready, and then we’ll have the next activity.”
“Which is…” Megan prompts.
Tess smiles with a hint of mischief. “Another twist on a tradition.” She addresses Brady and me. “Every year, we play a game of Christmas sardines. Whoever finds the group last has to wear the ugly Christmas sweater for the year’s picture. You brought it, right?” She looks at Hannah.
“Rub it in, why don’t you?” Hannah says. “But yes, of course I brought it.”
“Ugly Christmas sweaters are trendy,” Brady says, like he’s not impressed with the punishment.
“Not this one,” Reese and Megan say together.
They glance at each other and smile with the slightest hint of awkwardness on Megan’s end.
Not enough, if you ask me. I’ve been trying to figure her out. She seems nice enough, but what sort of good friend does what she did?
“So, what’s the twist?” Reese asks.
“It’ll be played in couples this year,” Tess says. “Dylan and I happened upon a true treasure while looking for another pillowcase, which means we’ve acquired a second sweater for the other half of the couple that loses.” She nods at Dylan, and he gets out of his seat, jogs to theassortment of bags on the counter, and pulls out…something.
It’s green. Not Christmas green but vomit green. It takes me a second to realize that the brown blobby mass on the front is meant to be a reindeer. Its 3-D nose droops from the bottom half, like it lost its sense of identity years ago and is trying to drop to the floor and roll to freedom. Pipe cleaners stick out at odd angles, more like a threat to anyone who dares get near than like the antlers they once were. It’s massively oversized, like it was made for an NFL offensive lineman after Thanksgiving dinner.
Smiling at everyone’s reactions, Dylan grabs something else out of the bag. It’s ugly—like a box of tinsel got in a fight with a strand of icicle lights and a ball of red yarn—but it’s at least a normal size.
“The couple who loses will don these sweaters,” Tess says. “That one”—she indicates the tinsel sweater—“will be for the male half of the couple, while the new one”—Dylan holds up the vomit blob—“will be for the female half. And”—she waits for the chatter to die down—“we have one last little trick up our sleeve. Hannah?”
“Instead of hiding the sweater like usual,” Hannah says, “we had the cleaners hide a sprig of mistletoe. Each couple has to kiss under said mistletoe when they find it—a kiss of no less than four seconds. Now, obviously, if you’re the first couple to find it, it’ll be an honor system kiss. But, hey, if you choose not to kiss your person when the opportunity arises, we have bigger problems thanyour lame dishonesty. The second couple will have an audience of two, the third an audience of four, and the last couple will have a full audience waiting to be entertained.”
“Nothing like a little voyeurism to get us into the holiday spirit,” I say, possibly to distract myself from the way my heart is reacting to the prospect of kissing Reese. I’m kind of regretting not doing it on the porch when we first arrived. Now it’s become this big thing in my head.
“It’s not voyeurism,” Hannah says, feigning offense. “It’s an incentive to find the mistletoe first.”
Once breakfast is cleaned up, Tess tells everyone they’ve got an hour to get ready.
I slip my napkin into the trash can, which is almost overflowing, while I watch Megan making her way over to Reese.
