Chapter 30
I’m not sure how long I’ve been staring when Izaac leans in. “Uhhh, B, are you seeing this too?”
Before I can answer, Audra comes running up to him.
“Surprise!” She shouts this pretty much right in his face as she barrels in for a hug.
“Audra, what… what’s going on?” he says.
Then Carlos comes sauntering up behind her.
“Looking sharp, my man,” he says. “Loving this suit!”
“Thank you?” Izaac says, almost as a question. Bless the dude for looking stunned to death but never forgetting his manners.
“You guys…,” I stammer on behalf of us all. “What?”
“Well, I’ve been promising Casper for years that I’d bring the truck up one of these days. After hearing y’all talk about it, I figured the Christmas party was the move. So I called him this morning and asked if they might want to surprise the crowd.”
My mind races to make sense of it all. At some points throughout the day, I was certain what happened in Brooklyn was a dream, something I imagined like so many other holiday city scenarios. And after this morning’s fiasco I almost wanted it to be.
But this scene—the truck, Audra, Carlos, the fact that people around me are lining up and talking about the tacos they’re about to have—is proof that it wasn’t a hallucination.
Audra grins. “But that’s not a-aall.” She sings the last word like a game show host. Then she gestures to the stage.
Instead of the jazz quartet that’s been playing low-key carols to partygoers so far, there is a figure, at least six feet tall, wearing a red-and-green sequined gown that could stop a reindeer faster than a set of headlights.
And through the speakers behind my head comes her low and gorgeous voice, crooning a brassy version of “Jingle Bell Rock.”
A sign behind her head unfurls and reads:
Johnna Candy & the Kickers from Queens
She’s here, in the flesh, accordions and all.
The crowd is going absolutely bananas for this sound I have never once heard in my life. It’s fast and lively and frankly? A little unhinged. But like last night at Wade’s, I kind of love it. If this is polka, consider me a convert.
As the song winds down, Johnna addresses the barnful of revelers. “Thank youuuuuuu, Ripton! I hope you’re all polka fans, because we are about to hop, skip, and turn our way into the holiday spirit tonight!”
A cheer goes up and another raucous number kicks off.
“She was so excited when I asked if they’d come with,” Audra says, shouting over the speakers in the corner. “Cash, she specifically wanted to know if you’d be here.”
Cash raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth wide in Muppet-like excitement.
“This is the queerest thing this town has ever seen,” Izaac says with a joyful laugh. But the terminally straight farmers and sea of heteros are all just shaking their tailfeathers to this drag-tastic diva.
“Yessssss! Queer joy comes to Connecticut at last!” I say.
“You did it, B. You made a big queer Christmas movie happen!” Cash says. “Except real life.”
“Documentary style,” Diya adds.
Before I know it, she is dancing with Cash, and Carlos and Audra are holding hands, and Izaac and I are just taking it in. It’s picture-perfect, all of it. I should be filming.
Then, as if reading my mind, I hear a voice say, “You might want to get that camera out, Strudel.”
My heart seizes. Slowly, I turn. And that’s when I see her come up behind Carlos.
Eve.
She’s standing there in her red jacket, but this time with her hair piled up high in a red bandana and green ribbon. Her lips are painted with a Santa-suit red gloss and in my belly is an explosion of sparkles, even as it twists at the thought of how we left things.
“I’ll catch up with you later, Bosley,” Izaac says, and steps into the crush of dancing partygoers.
She’s smirking at me again, obviously, enjoying her turn having the element of surprise.
But my last memory of her is how she looked at me after that kiss, the way that smile faded.
What is going on? But before I can stammer out the question, she arches a perfectly shaped eyebrow at me and gestures around the room.
“Because if you’re trying to capture Christmas magic out in the wild, I think this might actually qualify,” she adds.
Chiiiiiiiill, Bosley is all I can think, even though I don’t have it in me to play it cool.
“I didn’t, uh… I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I say, because this much, at least, is true.
“Well, I mean, I can just hang on the truck and wait for Carlos if—” She jabs a thumb back toward the parking lot.
“No,” I say immediately, with stranded-in-the-desert thirst. “No. I mean, I’m happy. To see you here.”
Her grin returns, but what is she doing here? Wasn’t she the one who said we barely knew each other and can’t get involved?
“Well, it was Carlos’s idea,” she says.
So maybe that’s it, and it has nothing to do with how she feels about me.
“As if I had a choice!” Carlos says. I didn’t realize he was listening from a few feet away.
He throws an arm over Eve’s shoulder now.
“I couldn’t watch her moping around all Christmas, pining for you.
” He nudges Eve, and she grits her teeth.
“Get it, pining ?” He nods toward the wall of Christmas trees behind us.
It’s written all over Diya’s face that she loves this, and a smile pulls at the corners of my mouth without my permission too.
“Don’t you have some tacos to make?” Eve asks. She looks at the line that’s formed.
“All right, all right,” Carlos says. “I go where I’m appreciated. Dope to see you, Bennie. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.” He winks at me and walks off.
More questions pop up like text bubbles around my head. Like, after the party? Whenever I visit Audra? I try to tamp down my expectations.
“You probably have to go too, right?” I ask Eve, as Carlos begins opening up the window on the truck to the intense line.
“I will have to help him, but Audra said she’ll cover for a bit.”
I nod. My heart is beating so fast that it’s hard to hear my own thoughts to make sense of them, so I just look out at the crowd, where Cash, Izaac, and Diya are all dancing again, now with Naomi and Reena.
Eve stands next to me, taking it in, and I can smell the cinnamon on her.
I can feel every single inch of my own skin and how badly I want to jump out of it the longer the silence goes on.
“Well, I don’t want to tear you away from the dance floor, but… maybe we could take a walk?” Eve asks finally. She has to get very close to me so I can hear, and I feel her breath on my neck. My knees are basically just for show at this point.
The idea of being alone with Eve again terrifies me. But trying to talk at all in this commotion would be a total waste of my already short breath, so I just nod.
We make our way for the exit at the other side of the barn—the one where there isn’t currently a crowd rabid for tacos, or a stunned group of revelers following a drag queen’s dance instructions.
As we make our way against the current of people, I catch Naomi’s eye.
My mother has no context for this person I’m with, but the way she’s grinning at me, I can tell that somehow she’s figured it out.
Mothers seem to have radar for these things.
There’s an old gazebo behind the barn. During the summer, it’s used as a stage for live music, and has been the centerpiece of a few weddings over the years.
Now it’s embroidered with white Christmas lights, and wearing wreaths every few feet under a thick crown of snow from the storm.
I lead us toward it. Since everyone else is clamoring for Carlos’s tacos, it’s empty and quiet.
Eve looks at the sky before walking up the steps to the platform.
“This place is something else, huh?” she says. “Those stars.”
Despite the clouds that are producing the snow, it’s clear enough to see constellations like sprays of spilt sugar across the sky. The snow that our moon predicted.
Our moon. Our magic. Is it still ours?
I wait for her to continue. I’m not sure what this is about… and I’m not sure I trust it.
“Well, it may not be the best cold weather gear, but that suit is fire,” she says, stepping closer, and my temperature skyrockets. She has that New York City radiator effect even all the way out here in Ripton.
For a moment I think she’s going to reach out to touch it—to touch me—but when I don’t respond, she dips her hand into her bag instead.
“Anyway. Um. You forgot this,” Eve says, holding out the book on humanism she gave me before everything blew up.
“Ah,” I say, gazing down at the cover. I completely forgot I left it.
I’m grateful, but surprised.
“Is this why you came all the way to Connecticut? To spread your philosophical gospel?” I ask, then I look up at the stars again. “Or was it for the view of the heavens?”
She shakes her head at both.
“To sell tacos, then?” I nod toward the truck and the clusters of partygoers digging into their orders.
Eve shakes her head again, still looking at me. “I didn’t come for the tacos, Strudel. Or the stars.”
I’ve spent all day replaying the morning in my head, and then imagining moments when I might get to talk to Eve again, to explain. Moments like this one. But now that it’s here, I’m strangely hesitant. I don’t want to relive those feelings—the ones that hurt so much.
“Honestly, I was pretty sure you never wanted to see me again.”
“Well, for a while there I think you were right.”
“I know that was intense…,” I say.
“Yeah. But it was more than that.” She looks like she’s searching for the right words. “It hurt, Strudel. It hurt, and I didn’t even know why in the moment. I really had to think about it.”
I wait, just sitting in my nerves, trying to listen and not speculate or assume or script the scene for once. And it’s harder than I thought.