“Cold,” she said.

“Yeah, you need to get back in bed. I let all the cold in opening the window.”

“You.”

I was cold. When Wavy held the covers open for me, I sat down on the edge of the bed. I shrugged outta my motorcycle jacket and kicked off my boots. Left my jeans, belt, and shirt on. Drunk as I was, that seemed okay. She was in her nightgown, but I was still dressed.

Getting under the covers was easy enough. I fluffed the quilts and tucked them around both of us, since my arms were long enough to arrange it all. She huddled up along my side, shivering, and rubbed her feet against my leg trying to warm up.

Once I got my arm around her and she laid her head on my shoulder, we were warm and comfortable, and ready to go to sleep. And that was the goddamn problem. This wasn’t the same as falling asleep next to Wavy in the meadow. I was in bed with her. If Val came upstairs and found me there, I couldn’t exactly say, “I was too comfortable to leave.”

“Wavy? I better go.”

She shook her head.

“I can’t stay here.”

She dug her chin into my arm. A nod?

“Seriously, sweetheart. I can’t.”

Her answer was so quiet, I wasn’t sure I heard it right. I didn’t want to be sure, except I needed to be sure. It felt like two dogs were playing tug-of-war with my heart. She wouldn’t say it again, and it turned out I wanted to know more than I didn’t want to know.

“You love me?” I said.

The sharp chin again. Twice. There weren’t many things she thought were worth nodding twice for.

“I love you, too. I love you.” I said it twice, to be sure she heard it. I shivered, not cold anymore but knowing that saying it out loud made it real. For a long time it was this sneaking feeling I didn’t look at too closely, but now I’d said it. I laid awake for a while, feeling her breath on my arm, but finally, being warm and comfortable and drunk caught up with me, and I fell asleep.

*   *   *

I woke up needing to piss, with my dick hard as a rock first thing in the morning, and there I was in Wavy’s bed, with her curled up next to me. When I went to get up, she held onto me.

“Present?” she mumbled.

“Yeah. Here, let me up. You think your mom’ll wake up if I go down to the bathroom?”

“Window.”

“Sure, I can leave the way I came.”

“I won’t look.”

Her eyes were squeezed shut against the sun coming up, but she turned her head away, too. It was the quickest fix, so I lifted up the window sash and undid my zipper. The cold took care of my hard-on right quick. Wavy giggled at the sound of piss splattering and freezing on the metal porch roof, but she kept her face hidden until I zipped up and closed the window.

“Present.” She must have been feeling brave. All that talking and the way she looked at me.

Her present was on the floor where I’d dropped it the night before. Seeing it in daylight, I was embarrassed it was something so cheap. I’d thought it was magical when I bought it and, when she took it from me, it still was. Her face lit up, so she was half angel and half little girl with sleep wrinkles on her face.

“They glow?” she said.

“Yeah, and you stick them up on your ceiling. So you can have stars even when it’s cloudy like last night. So you can see Orion all year round.”

“Wonderful.” She said it so soft it wasn’t even a whisper.

“I better go. I don’t think Val would be too happy about me being up here.”

Wavy shrugged. I pulled on my boots and jacket, before I opened the window again. Looking at the trellis, I couldn’t believe I’d climbed up it in the middle of the night. Stupid as hell.

So the boots had to come off again and I tiptoed down the stairs behind Wavy. In the kitchen, I tugged my boots on, while Wavy waited in her bare feet. When I reached for the knob on the kitchen door, she put her hand on my arm.

“Nothing for your birthday,” she said.

“Not nothing. You gave me the best present I’ve had in a long time.”

Since she didn’t step back from me, I took her face in both my hands, turned it up, so I could lean down and kiss her. On the mouth, but nothing dirty. The kind of kiss you give someone you love.

She smiled at me. A real smile, with teeth and dimples and the whole shebang.

2

AMY

After Thanksgiving, Mom started calling Aunt Val and saying, “We want the kids to come for Christmas. If you’ll tell me how to find your house, I’ll come get them,” but Aunt Val wouldn’t. Mom finally gave up, but four days before Christmas, this little bald man showed up to drop them off. He didn’t even bother to take the cigarette out of his mouth to introduce himself to Mom. His name was Butch, and he was a “business associate” of Uncle Liam’s, he said. He told Mom that somebody else would come pick Wavy and Donal up, but he didn’t say who or when. Until then, they were all ours.

Dad made Wavy promise not to sneak out, but that didn’t keep her from doing other weird things. At the rehearsal for the church Christmas pageant, Donal got cast as a shepherd and the choir director cast Wavy as an angel.

“That’s probably not a good idea,” said Leslie, who had been passed over as the Virgin Mary every year and twice was stuck being the Innkeeper, the jerk who makes Jesus get born in a barn. Now that she was too old to be in the pageant, she helped the choir director corral angels. She didn’t want to corral Wavy.