“I declare—” Hannah paused dramatically, raising one finger high in the air in proclamation.
“Don’t do it!” Miriam cried. Noelle watched them, back and forth, beginning to see how they must have been as children and teenagers. The way Miriam’s presence eased something in Hannah made Noelle’s heart flip over.
“—a Shenanigan!” Hannah finished. Then, all in a rush, she said, “I declare a Shenanigan!” She threw back her head and laughed at the still-snowing sky. Miriam fell to her knees in mock anguish.
Hannah put her hands on her hips, a triumphant smile lighting up her face. “You know the rules, Miriam Blum.”
“I know, I know. Once a Shenanigan has been declared, no one may back down. I would never break our most sacred oath.”
Noelle didn’t understand the byzantine rules that governed the calling of a Shenanigan, because it had been Hannah and Levi’s thing, but she did understand that she was now honor-bound to keep Miriam and Hannah from killing themselves by doing something reckless. So, as they piled onto a sled, she wound up on the bottom, ostensibly steering. Mostly, she tried to concentrate on surviving while distracted by Miriam’s ass pressing up against her, Miriam’s mane of curls blowing in her face.
It was like a Calvin and Hobbes strip, if Calvin and Hobbes were sexually frustrated sapphics.
All three of them hurtled down the tallest hill on the property at wildly unsafe speeds, ending up at the bottom in an inglorious heap. Miriam landed on top of Noelle, her nose inches from Noelle’s own, her hair curtaining them from the outside world.
“Hi,” Miriam breathed, making no move to get up. She smirked a little.
“Hi yourself,” Noelle managed to grunt. She reached up to push a curl out of Miriam’s face. Miriam turned her head so that her lips nuzzled Noelle’s palm, for just an instant, before she felt Miriam being pulled off her.
“Miriiiiiiii!!!!!!! Our first Shenanigan in a decade! We must celebrate!” Hannah crowed, dragging Miriam back to the house. Noelle was left behind, happily, to bring the sled back to the barn. She looked ahead at her best friend, waddling around with snow under her clothes, her head thrown back in a laugh, and at Miriam, the wind blowing her icy hair into liberty spikes. It felt like they were in a snow globe, precious and fragile, and at any moment, someone might turn the whole thing over and shake it.
“Wait!” Hannah yelled, suddenly stopping. She turned back, running clumsily toward Noelle in her snowsuit. “NoNo! You have to be with us! We’re the Three Musketeers now!”
She linked her arms through Noelle and Miriam’s, sandwiching herself between them, and looked up at Noelle with peace radiating from her face. “When was the last time we had fun, Noelle? When was the last time we were just…happy?” Noelle saw her eyes get wet as she asked this, and she teared up in response. She always cried when Hannah did.
“I don’t remember, babe.” Before Cass got sick, maybe. Before Levi left. It had been a long damned time.
Mr. Matthews rolled his eyes when they wandered back in and refused to let them past the mudroom in their gear. The three of them stuffed in together, pulling off each other’s boots, blowing on their fingers to make them work well enough to undo zippers, and throwing scarves over each other’s heads onto hooks. When they were finally reduced to fleece-lined long johns, he admitted them into the kitchen for stew and hot tea.
That night, they all lay on their backs on the floor in the great room, with their stockinged feet propped up in front of the fire. Kringle had stretched his whole body out, belly up, to join them, and was nearly as long as Miriam. Miriam’s hand was so close to Noelle’s their fingers brushed against each other. It felt like high school, with all the potential of someone you liked who liked you back, trying to decide when to finally let the delicious tension break.
Except, of course, giving in would mean trusting that Miriam was staying and wouldn’t run away again as soon as things got complicated.
“Do you think any moment will ever feel this perfect, again?” Hannah asked, sounding sleep-drunk. Noelle looked over at Hannah, who had basically been vibrating with stress every moment since Cass died. She was confused as hell about a lot, right now, but if she got to see her best friend this happy, it might all be worth it.
Noelle pretended to shake an imaginary Magic 8-Ball. “Outlook not so good.”
“What will we do? If the Rosensteins say no?” Hannah had turned over on her side to face the two of them.
Miriam propped herself up on her elbow to meet Hannah’s gaze. “Then we go to the bank without them, and we still save Carrigan’s,” she said, sounding more sure than Noelle felt. “I’m not giving you up now that I just got you back.”
Hannah nodded, holding a fist out for Miriam to bump. “Ride or die.”
Later, long after the fire went out, Noelle was still awake, remembering Miriam licking s’mores off her fingers. She pulled her blankets over her head and groaned to herself. Miriam was closer to being exactly what she was looking for than Noelle wanted to admit. If she were looking. Which she wasn’t. If a romance exploded spectacularly, they could lose all the work they’d put into saving Carrigan’s. But it was hard to ignore how her whole body lit up when Miriam walked into a room.
She hit herself over the head with her pillow.Go to sleep,Noelle, she told herself.You aren’t going to solve anything after midnight.
Finally, under the weight of Kringle and the promise of a very early morning, she fell asleep.
When she awoke, the answer had come from the Rosensteins. They were ready to sign on—with one condition. They wanted to see an event successfully planned and executed by the new Team Carrigan’s.
“We need to go to the banksoon. Like, before Christmas. How do we show them an event in time?” Noelle asked, pacing in front of Hannah’s desk, where they’d gathered to read the email.
Hannah took a pen out of her bun and tapped it against her lips, her gaze unfocused. She materialized a yellow legal pad from seemingly nowhere. She propped herself on the corner of her desk and perched her purple sparkly reading glasses on her nose before pointing her pen at Miriam. “This is your baby. You got any ideas?”
“I actually kind of do have an idea,” Miriam said speculatively, nearly vibrating with what Noelle now thought of as Miriam Geeking Out Energy. She loved when Miriam got excited about something. All her lights were on, right now. “We have the annual tree lighting on Christmas Eve to wrap up the festival. It’s new, since it started after I left, so I don’t know for sure, but it’s mostly unveiling the tree, right? Not a lot of other stuff going on?”
“Mr. Matthews usually dresses up as Santa,” Hannah said, nodding. “Other than that, the attention is on the tree. Cass decorated it every year, and you know if she was giving a performance, she wanted the spotlight on her.”