Nightlife ✓

35 | christmas

THAT SWEET RELIEF AFTER FINISHING your final, final exam cannot be understated. Granted, I still had one more semester of college to go, but that was a problem for another season.

After Viv, Jo, Quen and I escaped the largest lecture hall in Science 1—where our last final of the semester took place—we marched straight to the Foxhole for celebratory drinks. I felt lighter than air and brighter than sunlight. At various stages throughout the night, other friends from our dorm and our classes joined us to play pool or play darts or dance or drink.

By the time we left it was freezing and dark outside.

Quen walked Viv and me back home. She dashed for the heated, toasty lobby immediately, complaining, "I don't think I can feel my extremities."

But I was warm all over.

Our breaths misting in the night, I wordlessly wrapped my arms around Quen. His hands curled at my waist. "Nine o'clock tomorrow?"

"Yep," I said into his sternum. He was going to see me off to New York City. Tommy was flying up from Texas. Our family of six—plus Wenghao, Olly's husband, and Pippa, their daughter—was scheduled to visit my uncle's family in the suburbs for the holidays.

Quen smirked, "Will you miss me?" My answer came when I curled my fists around his collar and pulled his mouth to mine.

The tip of his nose was ice-cold as it nudged my cheek, as I'm sure mine was, too, but his lips and tongue were scalding. I wrapped myself in him, memorising the way he held me and the way he teased me and the way he kissed me, deep as the ocean, but soft as sea foam.

I pulled away slowly. "Does that give you your answer?"

"Nearly." Quen pressed me back into the red brick wall of the dormitory building, his hands sliding under my sweater. I shivered at the caress of his cold fingers along my spine, arching into his chest. He whispered hoarsely, "Needs a repeat trial."

I barely had time to laugh deliriously before his lips sealed over mine once more.

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The afternoon of Christmas Day, I stood with Mom and Aunty Helen in the Wangs' spacious marble-accented kitchen. Mom and Uncle David were siblings, and Aunty Helen was David's wife.

"So, Krista, how's college going?" Aunty Helen asked me graciously, simmering a gravy over the stove. The ham rested in the oven below, cooling down. Next to her, Mom sliced garden vegetables for a salad.

"You're in your last year, correct?"

I glanced up from the kitchen island, which I had claimed for my cookie-decorating station. "Yep. It's going good."

She beamed over her shoulder, blonde bob swaying. "Are you excited to be going to Med school? Olivia and Thomas should give you all their hard-earned advice."

"Um..." I rubbed at an itch on my nose with the underside of my wrist, keeping my sticky fingers well away. "I don't think I'm going to go anymore."

"Oh, wow."

Mom stiffened. Aunty Helen noticed. In the long silence that followed, I heard the faint noises of a Hallmark movie soundtrack, babbling children and my siblings laughing.

At length, my aunt said tentatively, "That's a big decision."

"It is a big decision," Mom snapped, her knife thumping a mile a minute on the cutting board. Her food preparations went uninterrupted as she lectured me under the guise of talking to her sister-in-law. "Which is why she should have at least gone through with the rest of her interviews. Then she can decide later on if she actually wants to accept or reject any placements."