I give a happy sigh as the credits roll, humming along with the Beach Boys singing “God Only Knows,” which is the ending of one of my favorite holiday movies of all time.

If you’ve got even a tiny sprinkle of romance and holiday spirit, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Love Actually, baby. That ode to love and Christmas that I watch about eight times every December.

Burrowing deeper beneath the blanket Mark’s mom made, I reach for the remote and turn the volume down a smidge. “Who’s your favorite couple?”

“Hmm?”

Alarmed at the sleepy sound, I turn my head toward my best friend and give him a gentle kick when I see his eyes are closed. “Mark Blakely, tell me you did not just fall asleep during Love Actually.”

“I didn’t fall asleep during Love Actually,” he repeats dutifully.

I start to kick him again, but he grabs my foot. “I didn’t! I just closed my eyes for two seconds because the movie’s over.”

I narrow my eyes. “So who’s your favorite couple?”

“Out of the ten million?”

“It’s what makes the movie so special,” I insist. “It captures all sorts of love. New love, sibling love, lost love . . .”

He holds up a hand. “Can we not book-club it up in here?”

“I like the prime minister story line the best,” I say, reaching for my mug of hot cocoa. It’s a little lukewarm, but I’ll never let marshmallows go to waste.

“Why’s that?” he asks, turning to look at me.

It’s nearly ten, and other than pausing for dinner (yummy roast chicken and some sort of sinfully cheesy potatoes), and a couple snow-shoveling breaks, we’ve more or less been watching movies all day.

It’s been the perfect snow day. Well, almost perfect. I’d prefer to be at my house, since I’ve got the tree, and he’s only decorated with a weird nutcracker his aunt gave him. Still, his place has its perks. His cooking skills and stocked fridge, for one. His pajamas, for another. I borrowed a pair of pajama pants, an old sweatshirt, and a pair of socks. All of which are about three times too big for little old me but are cozy as heck.

“I like the way Hugh Grant chases his girl around London.”

“You mean abuses his power by stalking a former employee?”

I’d kick him again, but he’s still holding my foot, pressing his thumb against the ball of my foot in warning.

“Come on, favorite couple. Pretend for a second that you’re romantic,” I cajole.

Mark sighs. “Fine. I like the sign guy. The one who knocks on the hot girl’s door with the posters.”

I wrinkle my nose. “It’s cute, but it doesn’t even have a happy ending.”

“Sure it does.”

“No,” I say emphatically. “She’s married to the other guy.”

Mark waggles his eyebrows. “But she kissed the sign guy.”

“A goodbye kiss,” I explain patiently. “So that he could move on.”

Mark studies me for a sec. “Huh.”

I set my mug on the coffee table. “So, now which of the stories with a happy ending is your favorite?”

He’s silent for a moment. “Still that one.”

“But she’s with someone else.”

“For now,” he says, releasing my foot and sitting up straight to stretch. It makes his black T-shirt ride up a bit, revealing a tiny strip of toned abs, but I act like a lady and don’t ogle, much.

“I’m just saying,” he continues, “I’d want to see what happens after the end of the movie.”

“Actually, I think there is a—”

“Nope.” He pats my knee. “My holiday-movie-conversation limits have officially been reached.”

He stands and picks up both mugs, glancing out the window. “Snow’s still coming down. What do you think the chances are I can coax your dog to take a piss in the blizzard before bed?”

I glance to where Rigby’s curled up on his dog bed in the corner of the living room. “I think if I put on his leash, I can probably drag him across the lawn on my way home, and bribe him with a treat to pee on the way.”

“You’re going back out in that? You can stay here.”

“I can’t,” I say, with no small measure of regret, because the thought of putting on my boots and snow crap really doesn’t appeal. “I’m too old to be sleeping on people’s couches, especially when my own bed is a thirty-second walk that way,” I say, pointing toward my house.

“’K. I’ll walk you,” he says, taking the mugs into the kitchen.

I roll my eyes and follow him to the back door, grabbing my boots and beginning to wriggle my feet into them. “Seriously? You’re going to walk me the twenty steps to my back door? What do you think’s going to happen—I’ll get lost and walk into a snowbank?”

“Remember the senior year camping trip when you got lost going to the porta-potties that were fifty feet away? They had to send out a search party.”

Excellent point.

I shrug on my jacket and pull my hair into a messy bun. “So good of you to remind me, best friend. Can I wear these pajamas home? I’ll wash and return them.”

“Now she asks, after she’s already put on her shoes and coat.”

“Thank you,” I say with a toothy grin.

I reach for the door handle, but he’s there, reaching up and shutting the door. “Wait.”

I roll my eyes and wait for him to pull on his own boots. He winds a scarf around his neck and pulls on his coat. The zipper gets caught in the soft fabric of the scarf, and I can see he’s about to go ballistic and just yank on the thing, ruining the zipper or scarf or both, so I bat his hands out of the way.

“Hold still.”

It’s his turn to roll his eyes, but he does as I ask and I gently work the zipper back and forth, pulling slightly on the scarf, until it’s free with only a little roughing up of the fabric.

“There,” I say with satisfaction, tucking the scarf into his jacket and pulling the tab up to his chin.

I prep for some sort of mocking “Thanks, Mom” response, but none comes.

I glance up, and belatedly realize how close I’m standing. Close enough to smell his cologne—or is that simply his soap? Close enough to see the dark prickle of his stubble, close enough to see his chest expand with each breath. Close enough to remember what he felt like on top of me in the snow . . .

I take a deep breath and step back, pasting a smile on my face. “Shall we?”

He opens the door, putting his weight into it to push past the accumulating pile of snow, before making a sweeping gesture outward, even as all the snow blows inward.

I squint my eyes and step into the storm as Mark calls for the dog, once, twice, five times, until a reluctant Rigby joins us.

The dog apparently knows what’s up, because he immediately takes care of business and then goes bounding across the lawn to my house.

“Guess he’s cuddling with me tonight,” I say gleefully.

Mark mutters something under his breath that I swear sounds like “Lucky dog,” but when I look over, I can’t see his features through the swirling snow, and he’s not paying me any attention.

I didn’t actually need an escort, obviously, but I confess that company makes the trek a little less miserable. My hat was still wet, so I hadn’t bothered to put it on, and my hood doesn’t do much to keep the snow off my face and neck.

By the time we make it up to my porch, I’m shivering, and really glad we took the time to shovel, because already more snow has piled up, and it takes both of us to wrench my back door open.

The second the crack’s big enough, Rigby wriggles inside, and a moment later Mark and I both squeeze in as well.

“Need a towel?” I ask, shrugging out of my coat.

“Nah, I’ll just get wet again the second I go back,” he says, running his hands through his hair.

“Thanks for the escort. I may not have gotten lost, but I might have turned into a Popsicle trying to get the door open.”

“Yup.”

There’s nothing more to be said, and yet neither of us moves, and I feel a tiny stab of panic because it’s awkward. Mark and I don’t do awkward, and yet the air definitely feels full of . . . something.

“Well, I should . . .” I gesture to Rigby’s snowy pawprints, which I’ll need to clean up.

Mark merely nods, then reaches for the door and steps onto the porch. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah. For sure,” I say, a hand on the door as I step closer and lift my hand in a weird little farewell wave.

See? Awkward. What is happening to us, when did we—

Mark starts to turn, then turns back, his gaze flicking upward. I glance up, too, my breath catching when I see what he’s looking at.

That damn mistletoe. I mentioned I’d put it pretty much everywhere in the house in preparation for my mistletoe test with Chad.

At the time it had seemed a smart part of my plan.

At the moment? I can barely remember the plan. I’m too annoyingly aware that my best friend is a guy. I’ve always known that at the brain level, but right now I know it at the body level, and . . .

Mark steps forward, a little drop of water running along his temple where the snow in his hair’s melted. He brushes it aside impatiently as his head dips almost imperceptibly lower toward mine.

My heart leaps in panic and I grasp desperately at a way to keep it light, to stop from pressing my mouth to his . . .

I give a quick grin and motion him back. “Oh, please. It’s just there from when Chad came to lunch. We don’t have to—you’ve already gone above and beyond your best-friend duties. Love Actually, remember? No need to—”

He steps even closer, a slight smile playing at his lips. “Kell?”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

He sets a knuckle to the bottom of my chin, tilting my face toward his.

My heart’s still pounding, although now it’s not so much about panic as . . . want.

I want nothing more at this moment than his lips on mine, his hands on my back pulling me close . . .

Mark’s lips brush my cheek. My cheek.

He pulls back slightly, eyes locking on mine for one heated heartbeat.

And then he steps away. “Night, Kell.” His voice is rough.

“Night.”

He turns and walks into the raging blizzard, leaving me staring after him, mostly oblivious to the snow that’s getting all over my kitchen floor, soaking my borrowed pajama pants.

I’m ignoring the storm outside because I’m too aware of the storm within . . . and the startling realization that I want a do-over on that mistletoe kiss.

Because a part of me wishes it had gone very, very differently.