In A Holidaze - Christina Lauren Page 0,30

twice as much food as they usually do, too.

Kyle hands the empty platter to Theo, who complains that he has to go refill it.

“Mae.” I look up to see Theo standing back from the table, giving me the boy chin lift to indicate that I should come with him. To help him open the oven? To hold the platter while he fills it?

Instead, I gesture how busy I am, thwack a giant dollop of jam on my blintzes, mumble, “Why the hell not?” and follow with an enormous spoonful of applesauce.

But with this masterpiece in front of me, it is easy to ignore the gaping stares around the table.

“Honey,” Mom says gently, “are you sure you want to eat all that?”

I never argue with my mother, but since none of this matters anyway—

“My eyes say yes,” I tell her. “My stomach says probably not. But these are the best blintzes I’ll have all year, and who knows when I’ll get them again?” I look at Benny and wink. “Well, except me. For sure I’ll get them again.” I nosedive my fork, spearing a bite of food.

Benny gives me a gentle warning look. “Take it easy, kiddo. Why don’t you keep the condiments moving?”

With a frown, I hand them to Andrew, who gamely smothers his own breakfast.

“Mae,” Kennedy says from the far end of the table, “if you eat all of that, you will throw up.”

“I ate four chocolate chip pancakes once and threw up in Papa’s car,” Zachary says.

Kennedy closes her eyes. “It smelled bad for a long time.”

“Like the subway,” Zachary adds enthusiastically.

“Kennedy, Zachary,” Aaron begins, “no vomit talk at the table.”

“That’s right,” Ricky says, helpfully redirecting. “Let’s talk about building. Everyone know what they’re making this year?”

Andrew leans in, whispering in my ear. “I was thinking we could do a panda.”

I shake my head and turn my face to his. We’re only a few inches apart. He has a tiny dot of applesauce just below his lip. In my head, I lick it off, and a voice inside me purrs, Just do it. He won’t remember anyway.

“We’re going to build a snow monkey,” I tell him. “Her name is going to be Thea, and we’re going to win.”

• • •

Andrew bends, carefully sculpting Thea’s face. All around us, everyone works in focused silence. Not a snowball in sight.

“So, we never really talked about this stuff, but you’re still in Berkeley, right? Not back in LA?”

I look over at him, surprised by the question. I mean, I’m not surprised that he asked it—it’s an obvious thing to talk about with someone you only see a few times a year. What surprises me is how Real Life Mae feels like someone who existed a long, long time ago. I am now Cabin Mae. Time Loop Utah Mae. Apparently she spends all her time with Cabin Andrew. For all I know, I might never go back home again. If this time jump keeps happening, I might never leave Utah, and the real world will never know I ever left.

Exhaling slowly, I say, “Yeah, LA wasn’t really working.” In truth, LA didn’t work because I shouldn’t have taken the job to begin with. I was fresh out of college and it was a graphic designer job at a tiny startup that could barely pay me a living wage in one of the most expensive and least accessible cities in the country. The shame of moving back in with my mother—and her new husband—was immediately outweighed by the relief of not having to use a credit card to pay my bills. But two years later, I feel less money-smart and more failure-to-launch.

“But life is good?”

“I mean,” I say, “I don’t have to pay rent, and I get to hang out with Miles whenever he’ll have me. But I also sleep in my childhood twin bed and know what it sounds like when my mother and her new husband have sex, so . . . define ‘good.’ ”

He winces deeply, groaning, “Why?”

“Listen, if I suffer, you suffer.”

“How’s work, then?”

I pack a bit more snow onto Thea’s abdomen. “It’s okay.”

“Easy,” he says, and his deep voice vibrates down my spine, “don’t get overexcited on me.”

This makes me laugh. “Sorry. It’s just that when I took the job, I thought I’d be doing more of the fun stuff and less of the soul-sucking computer stuff.”

“I thought you were doing something with kids?”

I shrug, oddly detached. “The program didn’t turn out exactly how I expected.”

An understatement if