Tic-Tac-Mistletoe - N.R. Walker Page 0,50

the kitchen, leaving us alone again. “So, Haims . . .”

Hamish laughed. “She’s always called me Haims. Mum and Dad called me that too. It feels a bit weird to hear her say it,” he said quietly. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard it in person.”

“None of your friends back home called you that?”

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“I like it. It suits you.”

He smiled and rubbed my knee a little before he took his hand away. “She’d also call me Mish or Mishy when I was being an overly dramatic teenager. You know, Hay-Mish. But she’d say it ‘heeeeey, Mish’ or Lady Mishka, like I was drag queen.”

“Because you were a dramatic drag queenager,” Liv called out from the kitchen.

I tried not to laugh. “A queenager.”

Hamish sighed. “I refuse to feel shame.”

“‘I will not feel shame about the mall pretzels,’” I quoted.

Hamish laughed and Liv gasped from the doorway. “Did you just . . .” She looked at Hamish. “Did he just quote . . .”

Hamish nodded. “Quote Schitt’s Creek? Yes, he did. It’s how we communicate. It’s prettier than interpretive dance.”

I nodded too. “Also, less chance of straining something and/or scaring small children,” I added, making Hamish laugh.

“Holy crap,” Liv said, clutching the tea towel. She did some weird eye thing with Hamish, like a silent conversation, and Hamish cleared his throat.

Josh appeared with a whisk in his hand. “What am I doing with this? And stop embarrassing them.”

She took the whisk, then looked at us. “Haims, you can pop the telly on if you want. I’m sure there’s something extra Christmassy on.”

“We’ve already watched a bunch of Christmas movies and played Mariah and Bing Crosby songs,” Hamish said. Liv raised an eyebrow at him, and he pursed his lips. “While we put up Christmas decorations and made cookies. I told you I landed in a freaking Hallmark movie.”

“Oh,” she said. “The boxes you sent over are in the bottom of the closet in your room. I just shoved them in there when they arrived. I didn’t open them, so you might want to check how everything fared.”

“Hm,” he said. “I forgot about them. I guess I could have a look, see what broke.” He stood up from the sofa and offered me his hand. “Wanna help?”

“Sure.” He pulled me to my feet and I followed him into the bedroom even though I wasn’t exactly sure what I was helping him with.

He slid the closet door open and there were three decent-sized boxes stacked in the bottom. He pulled the first one out and carried it to the bed. “I shipped over some stuff I didn’t want to leave behind,” he explained. “Didn’t make sense to bring it with me on the plane, so I began sending stuff over a few months back.”

“Good idea.” I looked at the box and more noticeably the return address. It was some suburb I’d never heard of, and it was weird to think of him having a whole other life in a different country. “Hamish Kenneally. 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.”

He chuckled and pulled at the tape. “That’s me. Though I’m probably more Dory than Nemo.” He pulled away some bubble wrap and packing bubbles, and the first thing he saw made him smile. It was another box, but this was a Christmas present, already wrapped in white-and-gold paper with a now-flattened bow. “It’s for Liv,” he said, trying to fix the ribbon.

There was a second smaller box, another one for Liv, and one for Josh. Hamish sighed as he pulled out two older photo albums. “These were my mum’s,” he said, placing them on the bed. He opened to a random page and the first photo I saw was of two dark-haired little kids in a park somewhere, laughing at the camera.

“Cute kid,” I said, nodding to the photo of him and his sister.

“Mum would take so many photos,” he said quietly. “It used to annoy me, but now I’m grateful.” He turned to another page and there were a few photos of a young Hamish, maybe ten or eleven, with two people I could only assume were his parents. They looked all dressed up, and they looked very happy.

“That was my year-six graduation,” Hamish said.

“You look like your dad.”

Hamish rubbed his beard. “We Kenneally men weren’t gifted with overly strong jawlines, so hence the beards.”

“I like it,” I whispered.

“I can’t believe you’ve never kissed a man with a beard before.” He held my gaze for a long few seconds and stepped