A Very Snowed In New Year (Very Holiday #6)

1. Piper

ONE

Piper

ONLY ONE DREAD

Three Decembers Ago

Big yikes.

This is the opposite of what usually happens in the boring days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve that my uncle Declan calls “The Taint of the Year.” This is objectively not awesome. But it’s also kind of exciting in a really awkward, terrible way! In the character arc of the story of my life as a devoted chronicler of romance and feelings, this is going to be one of those defining moments. This is one of those uniquely awful situations that will reveal what I, Piper Puckett, am made of.

As soon as I decide what to do.

Being a hopeless romantic is so much more than just a label or a full-time job. Yes, I am the Queen CEO Lady Boss of being in love with love. Yes, I have had the song “Dreams” by The Cranberries in my head for every waking moment since I first watched You’ve Got Mail with my mom at the age of six. Yes, I’ve shipped more people than the Staten Island Ferry.

But it’s more than that. It’s more than having a signature fragrance that leaves an enticing scent trail. It’s more than keeping mints and lip balm in every bag and pocket so I always have a kissable mouth. It’s more than an attitude or a character trait or a way of life, even. It’s a soul promise I have made to Love and Romance itself.

Also, I prefer to call myself a hope ful romantic. Because being a romantic is a good thing. An admirable thing. My life is fuller because I have so much hope for romance. Even though I have not yet experienced True Love myself, I have witnessed it all around me and I have created it, over and over again, on the page. And although I have not had the physical, real-life experience of being known by another person in the biblical sense, I do not self-identify as a virgin. I consider myself a nineteen-year-old woman who has not been sexually active with another person yet .

At all.

Aside from a moderate amount of kissing and consensual above-the-waist, over-the-bra stuff. And not counting the time I accidentally put my hand on Elijah Finerman’s crotch when I lost my balance at a party. Even though the thing in his jeans felt like actual wood and he was all Buy a guy a beer first, will ya? And he still tries to get me to go out with him every now and then to this day, but the wood-in-the-pants thing kind of scared me, so it’s always a hard no-thank-you.

I blame the delayed onset of my sexual prowess on all of the men in my entire extended family who are hell-bent on keeping me a virgin forever.

And it may have something to do with the fact that I still want my first time to be magical and beautiful and perfect and with someone really special who genuinely cares about me. Even if that someone isn’t Shawn Mendes or either of the Efron brothers or even the TA for my Digital Media Studies class who looks like the duke in Bridgerton . That magical, beautiful, perfect situation with the right person has not presented itself yet . But it will.

In the meantime, I do enjoy looking at and thinking about hot guys and writing about them, and I am a very creative writer.

Even in my Extra Super Secret Diary.

Which is currently in the hands of the one person who I really, truly never ever wanted to read what’s in it.

My dad.

My poor, poor dad.

Of all the men who don’t want me to have sex, it may not surprise anyone that he does not want me to have sex the most. He is the hell-bent-iest on preserving my virginity. And that journal he’s waving around is the vessel wherein I have stored all the most inspired, creative, private, some might say embarrassing thoughts I have had about boys and Doing the Big It for years.

I am a writer. I was born to share my writing with other people. But that writing in that diary is not meant to be read by anyone other than me. It isn’t even meant to be read by me, really. It’s the writing that just has to get out of my head so I can go about my day.

I write a lot. I have always written for school, and I sometimes still share my stories under the handle PiperThanFiction on fanfiction websites. I write for fun, I write as exercise, I write and rewrite romantic-comedy screenplays that should one day become movies. I write as a ritual. I journal in my Regular Diary to enhance my creativity and self-awareness, knowing full well that while I lived at home, my mom was reading it to make sure I wasn’t doing drugs or thinking about joining a cult. Or more likely she read it because she was bored. I have been writing in my Super Secret Diary, which is a collection of Microsoft Word documents I have kept in a locked folder on my laptop, since I was thirteen. And sometimes I write feverishly, using a special prefilled fountain pen, in my Extra Super Secret Diary, which is a nondescript hardcover notebook. Like Ana?s Nin did, because I am a sensual woman and writing by hand is a sensual experience.

But I sure as shit never wanted my dad to read those handwritten words.

Why is he holding my Extra Super Secret Diary and pacing around the living room, panicking like it’s the end of the world instead of the end of December, you might ask?

Because I couldn’t exactly leave my diaries in my UCLA dorm room over winter break, so I brought them with me. All of them. I traveled with one piece of checked baggage that’s filled with every journal I’ve ever written in and one carry-on bag for clothes. My mom got me new luggage for Christmas, and I was in the middle of transferring things out of my old bags in my room when I got a text from my friend to meet up at a restaurant before she has to leave for the airport. I guess I left the notebook out and by the time I realized it, had the driver circle back, and ran up to the fifth floor, my very tipsy mom had already decided to “tidy up” my room while I was out. Now I’m hiding in the darkened foyer watching my parents’ reflections in the living room window, my dad thinks I’m a nymphomaniac, and he wants to lock me up for the rest of his life.

“To be clear, I am talking about locking her up until after I die!” he exclaims. “I am talking about the rest of my sweet girl Piper’s entire life, not just mine.”

“Why am I so turned on by how distraught you are right now?” my mother says, and I can just hear her eyelids getting all hooded.

Unbelievable.

“Because you’ve had two glasses of chardonnay and I’m incredibly handsome when I’m being logical and rational about protecting our daughter from herself and all of peniskind. Why in the blue blazes did you show me this notebook, woman?!” My dad always gets more Southern when he’s stressed out. It’s cute.

“I didn’t show it to you—I left it on the table when I went to make popcorn! Will you stop pacing?! Why are you so stressed out about this?”

“This is not some salacious HBO show about promiscuous teenagers, Rebecca. This is our daughter! And our daughter is obsessed with boys’ butts and sex!”

“She is an aficionado of boys’ butts, and she’s obsessed with writing about sex, not having it. She’s been like this since she was thirteen!”

My poor dad groans.

“She’s in college now, Josh. Just trust her.”

“First of all, it is the men at her college that I don’t trust. Nor do I trust the men in Los Angeles as a whole. Or New York. Or any living man on the planet. Second—y ou’re the one who’s always reading her diary.”

“Yeah, and she’s always known it! It’s our thing. She acts like she thinks I’m a dork, but really she knows I’m hip and this is how she communicates with me.”

Wrong. I will always think my mom is a dork.

“I’m fairly certain she genuinely considers us to be dorks.”

“Whatever. She wouldn’t have left this out unless she wanted me to read it. It’s cool.”

“Nothing about this is cool, Bex. Not one damn thing. We can’t let her go back to LA.”

“Oh my God, you are way too freaked out about this, babe. I think a little exposure therapy is in order here, okay? Confront your fears. You’ll feel a lot better if you just read a few pages. They’re just words.”

Oh, for shit’s sake.

My mom is the worst. But she’s also right. And it’s infuriating. My dad needs to deal with the fact that I am a nineteen-year-old woman who will one day have mind-blowing intercourse with someone really wonderful who has an amazing butt and is a really good kisser. And honestly? I don’t know which one of us needs this more—my dad or me. Because I also need to stop worrying about my dad worrying about me.

So I will stay hidden here around the corner for another minute or two, until one of us has come to terms with my impending real-womanhood.

“Here,” my mom says to my dad. “Have some wine first.”

“I am not going to drink chardonnay.”

“You don’t want to be totally sober when you read this, trust me.” My mom sounds like she’s enjoying herself way too much. “She isn’t going to be out all night—come on. Read it out loud. I need to know that you’re really absorbing it.”

“I’m not going to read it out loud—Ben will hear.”

“He’s playing Super Mario . He doesn’t care about anything else in the world right now. Here. Read this list.”

Oh no. Not the list.

“For each line you read from this list of ten… collections of harmless words …I will do a thing that you want me to do to you for date night next week.”

Ew.

But also—how else was I going to turn out with a mother like this?!

I can hear my dad gulping down the wine and then placing the glass on a coaster. “You are a devious woman and you are out of your damn mind. Hand it over.”

Oh God. Here we go. I cover my face.

My dad clears his throat. “ 10 Ways I Can’t Wait to Screw. Oh for Christ’s sake—no! Absolutely not.”

“Just keep reading. It’s so cute.”

Cute?!

My dad grunts, then sighs, then clears his throat again. “ One. Nailed against a wall, like in The Notebook . Although, I guess that’s technically a wall kiss? But so fire! I would feel banged, I’m sure. I can’t. No. Where is she? She will begin her internship at my company in January, and she will never leave my sight.”

“Fine, I’ll read the rest. Two. In a dimly lit library, like in Atonement , preferably with a guy who has an English accent, while I’m wearing a beautiful silky green dress, and it’s just the sound of a ticking clock and us breathing. Sooooo hottttttt. ”

“La-la-la-la! I can’t hear you, devil woman!”

“ Three. Like any time Damon and Elena kissed or didn’t kiss on Vampire Diaries because Delena4Eva. ”

“What are you doing, weirdo?” my little brother, Ben, asks from behind me in the foyer. He is louder than any almost-seven-year-old should be at eight thirty, but that’s the holidays for you.

And so, because my mom forgot to take her birth control pill around eight years ago, my cover has been blown. My parents have gone totally silent in the living room.

“I’m defining my character,” I tell him as I stand up straighter and step away from the wall. “Go to bed.”

“No.”

“Okay. Go back to your room and play Mario .”

“Okay!”

I wait for the little turd to run back into his room and shut the door before boldly striding into the living room, swiping the notebook from my mother’s hands, snapping it shut, and securing it with the elastic closure.

“Heyyyy, girl!” she says through a forced smile. “You’re back already?!”

I narrow my eyes at her before turning to my poor, mortified dad and declaring, “If you must know, Daddy, I still have not screwed anyone, in any way.”

“Oh, thank Christ.”

Holding up my notebook, I emphatically continue, “And this list—which I, in fact, did not write for you to read, Mother—was written two years ago. Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t use dates in this journal. To paraphrase the great, sensual diarist Ana?s Nin from something I read online—the diary is written in the emotional heat of the present, interweaving the past with the present. I am in emotional heat almost all the time. I am a passionate person. That is why I write what I write. And if I truly wanted anyone to read what’s in this particular notebook, I would have published it.”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen my dad blush before, but he is definitely blushing. I can’t tell if he’s more embarrassed that I caught him reading my diary or by the things I wrote or what I just said out loud. I can’t tell if I’m more embarrassed for myself or for him, and it doesn’t even matter because I need to get downtown to meet Shoshanna and I also need to complete this exposure-therapy session.

“But one day,” I continue, “I will be a responsible, sexually-active adult woman, and you just need to accept that and trust me to make good life choices. In New York. In Los Angeles. And anywhere out there in the world. Okay?”

“No. No, sugar, I do not accept that and it is absolutely not okay.” The corners of his lips are slowly, hesitantly curling upward. He knows how ridiculous he’s being. He knows I know he’s being ridiculous. We both know my mom is always ridiculous. But I’m confident that we all know that I will indeed wait until all circumstances are right and wonderful for my First Time. Finally, I can see his jaw and shoulders loosen up a little. “I do trust you, sweet pea. You’re a precious girl, and it’ll always be my job to protect you.”

I place my hand over his heart, and he covers my hand with his. “I know, Daddy,” I say. “But you don’t have to protect me from romantic love. Or from boys’ butts.”

His jaw clenches again for a second, and then he laughs the resigned laugh of a girl dad. “Understood.”

I turn to walk away, picking up my shoulder bag from the floor in the foyer. “I have to go meet Shosh. Be home before midnight!”

“You know if you ever want to talk to me about anything,” my mom calls out, “you can totes talk to me, buddy!”

“Nobody says totes anymore, Mom!” I say without looking back. I refrain from telling her that I have plenty of friends who are more than happy to explain their blow-job techniques to me, because my dad has been through enough for one night. Tucking my diary into my bag, I don’t wait for the elevator and take the stairs down to the lobby, because all I want to do is keep moving.

There was a cab right outside the building heading downtown, so maybe that was the Universe’s way of high-fiving me for making a bold choice. Traffic on Columbus Avenue is not great, but Jodi is already with Shoshanna and they don’t care if I’m late. I take the journal out of my bag, turn on my phone light, and take a wistful, somewhat painful trip down memory lane while my driver has a hands-free phone argument with his wife and honks the horn at anyone who tries to pull in front of him.

I flip open to the first page. My Extra Super Secret Diary entries started when I was sixteen, and I guess it says a lot that I haven’t completely filled the 196 pages in three years. I’ve gone through dozens of regular diaries, but I’m only moved to write in this one on special occasions. The first special occasion was on February fifteenth, the day after Eddie and Birdie’s wedding in LA. Eddie is my aunt Maddie’s husband’s youngest brother, so we’re somehow related by marriage? I don’t know if there’s a word for who he is to me, other than the owner of one of the top five butts I’ve ever seen IRL. Regardless, he’s a dreamy actor with abs for days and he was a celebrity crush for me long before I met him through my aunt.

Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am to know so many beautiful men—Uncle Declan, Eddie, their cousins Nolan and Billy Boston. They’re all married now, to amazing women who aren’t me. And while they are, along with my dad, very much to blame for my virginity because they’re so overprotective of me, I am now realizing that they have prevented me from hooking up with randos in another way—they have shaped my idea of the perfect man. The bar has been set so high, not just by their chiseled jawlines and abs and butts but by the way they love their women—it’s no wonder I haven’t settled for boning a douchebasket in a bunk bed.

Dear Extra Super Secret Diary,

It’s all happening. I have met The One at Eddie and Birdie’s wedding and it’s the beginning of my HEA and I am so lucky because I’m only sixteen!!!!!

Well. I’ll just skip ahead because I know where this is going.

Dear Extra Super Secret Diary,

Well. It’s twenty days after Eddie and Birdie’s wedding in LA, twenty days after my first real kiss that didn’t involve a closet or spinning a bottle at a party, and eighteen days since I’ve heard from the hot waiter who kissed me. As per seven of my best besties’ opinions and advice, I have been ghosted and most likely blocked by said waiter and need to move on. Oh well. The long-distance thing never would have worked anyway. I live in New York. He lives in Los Angeles and London. Even though I will be going to UCLA in a couple of years, I can’t ask him to wait for me. Not when he’s that hot and two years older than me and has an English accent.

Sigh. I shall keep calm and move on. Wistfully.

At least it happened. And. It. Was. AAAAHHHHHMAZINGGGGG!!!!! With a capital AAAAAHHHHHH and so much ZING and the perfect amount of tongue! I thought so anyway. That kiss will live rent-free in my head 4Eva and it inspired SO many stories and those works are getting PiperThanFiction so many hits and new followers on FictionAxis.

I am choosing to remember the absolute magic of that night—of how confident and pretty I felt in my pink dress and the way we bantered and how he looked at me right before he leaned in to kiss me in that hallway.

I am choosing to feel even luckier than I felt when I thought I had found my One, because now I don’t have to be tied down by the same guy for like eighty years. Now I can get back to the journey. Now I can get back to wondering who gets to have their HEA with me. And I won’t have to feel guilty about checking out all the hot guy butts, because I’m still single!

I am choosing not to dwell on the fact that I totally effing BLEW IT in text form. I will learn from my mistakes. I will look upon this as a valuable lesson and I will do better. I have printed out the text convo and will refer to it whenever I need to remind myself what NOT to do when texting with a guy that I don’t want to scare off.

I am determined to get really good at this by the time I’m seventeen. And by “this” I mean flexting and sexting with guys. I will dominate all manner of textual relations.

I mean, I basically got Aunt Maddie and Declan together by texting him from her phone. I just need to get better at texting hot guys from MY phone. As me. I will. My thumbs will slay. I will shoot sexy fire out of the tips of my thumbs. Pew! Pew! Pew! I will wait the appropriate amount of time to respond to a text from a guy that I like. I will withhold enough information to be intriguing and yet be straightforward enough that it doesn’t seem like I’m playing games. I will be sexy and alluring.

I will.

Oh, to be so young and optimistic. But I was right. I did get better at texting with guys. Just not in the way I’d hoped to.

Looking out the window, I can see that we still have about twenty blocks to go, so I unfold the printout I had carefully tucked into the pocket inside the hard cover. Sighing, I glance through the three pages of screenshotted texts in a chat with Brett!!!!! smiling face with hearts emoji. Yeah. I added five exclamation points to his first name and gave him an emoji surname. I was adorable.

Brett!!!!! smiling face with hearts emoji: Hello there, luv. This is Brett. From the wedding at the train station.

ME: OMG hi! How are you?!

Brett!!!!! smiling face with hearts emoji: I am well, luv, and you? You still here in Los Angeles?

ME: No, but I can be in like nine hours! LOL

Brett!!!!! smiling face with hearts emoji: So you’re back in New York now, then?

ME: Yeah. But my dad has like a billion frequent flier miles that I could use to fly to LAX. I mean I have an exam on Wednesday, so I probably shouldn’t miss it. But I could definitely come out Friday night and stay until Sunday! I can do my homework on the plane.

ME: I can’t believe you only waited two days to text me! smiling face with hearts emoji

ME: I mean not that I am assuming you waited a certain amount of time on purpose. I’m sure you’re genuinely busy.

ME: And not that I’ve just been staring at my phone waiting to hear from you.

ME: Wait, that felt like negging and I just want to be clear that I’m not playing games here. I really was hoping to hear from you.

ME: But I mean I had to babysit and do family stuff and then there was all the traveling.

ME: But I did think about our kiss a lot.

ME: Like, A LOT a lot.

ME: You’re a really good kisser.

ME: I think.

ME: I mean the kiss was amazing, obviously. I just haven’t had a lot of kisses like that. I haven’t kissed a lot of boys like that. Yet.

ME: I mean, I don’t PLAN to kiss a lot of boys like that. If you wanted to be exclusive or whatever I would be perfectly happy to only kiss you for the rest of my life.

ME: But we can just take it one step at a time.

Woof.

It goes on. But my phone is blowing up, and it feels urgent. There are, like, ten new messages in my group chat with Shoshanna and Jodi.

SHOSHANNA: Poops!!!

Did I mention my name autocorrects to poops for most people? And I’m still a hopeful romantic.

SHOSHANNA: GAHHHH! WHERE ARE YOU?!?!?!

I scan through the many ALL CAPS texts, down to the one that really matters. The one that makes my heart race.

JODI: THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Get your ass over to 7th and Carmine now.

SHOSHANNA: Following Holden Archer for 15 mins!!! On foot. Heading north. COME NOW!!!

Oh.

My.

God.

Holden Holy Grail Archer.

My cab’s on 7th Avenue right now. Probably ten blocks from Carmine, heading south. Traffic is slow, not jammed. But I can still move faster on foot. “Sir?!” I tap on the plastic divider to get the driver’s attention. “Sir! I need to get out right here!” I don’t have time to deal with paying by card, so I give him the fifty-dollar bill Nana sent me for my birthday and Christmas, plus ten, which is the smallest bill I have and is way too big of a tip, but I tell him to keep the change because Holden Freaking Archer!!!!!

I hop out and fly down 7th. I don’t even have time to text my friends to let them know where I am. This has to be the Universe rewarding me for being bold tonight. If hot guys’ butts are my Roman Empire, then Zac Efron’s is Julius Caesar, because he formed my appreciation of boy butts, but Holden Archer’s is Virgil, because his ass in jeans is a classic epic poem that defines an era.

I don’t have time to paint a picture of his marvelous behind with words right now, because I need to concentrate on not getting hit by a car or falling down. What’s important is that after an epic, worldwide talent search, casting agents finally found the perfect actor to star as Zephyr in the film adaptation of The New York Times best-selling romantasy series Riders of Storm and Fire . My favorite romantasy series by my favorite living author, who I met at a book signing in Boston. Casting that role was an even bigger deal than it was for Edward Cullen in Twilight because this story is HOT! Not Fifty Shades hot, but the books get spicy. They even delayed production for over a year until they found the perfect actor. And it’s him. Holden Archer.

He is twenty-two years old and hasn’t been in a ton of shows or movies yet, because he promised his mom he would focus on completing his bachelor’s degree in case the acting thing doesn’t work out (swoon!), and most of the shots he’s in feature his impossibly handsome face and expressive, ocean-blue eyes. However, I invite you to go to YouTube and find the jeans commercial he did, which had, last I checked, been viewed six million times ever since it was announced that he’d play Zephyr. It’s just him walking down the street in a white tank top and jeans on a hot summer day while women ogle him, and then he looks over his shoulder and arches an eyebrow at the camera. You will watch it seventy-five times in a row, bookmark it, watch it again whenever you need a pick-me-up, and start salivating every time you see denim of any kind or hear the song “Heat Wave” by Martha Reeves & the Vandellas.

You will forever lose your mind at the very mention of Holden Archer’s name and forget almost everything else.

Important things.

For instance, I’m now realizing that there is, in fact, another person besides my dad that I really don’t want to read my Extra Super Secret Diary…and that is whoever finds it in the cab that I left it in just now.