As his head is covered in tinsel.

Directly behind me, Hall’s armed with a T-shirt cannon stuffed with tinsel, wielding it like a machine gun.

“Bettie did not have to convince me to propose to her,” he tells my brother darkly, an uncharacteristic hardness in his gaze. He doesn’t glance at me, keeping that dangerous glare leveled on Felix. “It is all very well if you want to pass remarks about me, about my clothing or hobbies, but I won’t sit by while you imply that I wasn’t on my knees in front of this woman, absolutely gone for her, hoping with every fiber of my being that she would say yes to being mine forever, and to letting me be hers.”

The authoritarian tone shuts everybody up.

“It is an honor to be Bettie’s fiancé,” he informs the stunned room. “Just as it was an honor to be her boyfriend before that, and her friend before that. I count myself lucky every day that I get to be the man who makes her smile, that I’m the one she wants.”

Everything about my mother softens as she regards him, as if she always liked him but now her esteem is irreversibly fixed.

“Have we reached an understanding?” Hall asks Felix, more steely than I’ve ever heard him.

Felix blanches. Grandma’s chin has dropped, appraising Hall with a delighted gleam. This is the best excitement this kitchen has gotten since she successfully drove a wedge between Liam and Noel Gallagher of the band Oasis.

I think something strange is happening to my face—it’s somehow hot, cold, and also losing feeling. All I can do is gape at Hall, in disbelief that he would go to bat for me with this sort of fervor, all to deny an accusation that’s actually true.

Felix blinks a few times. “I’m sorry.” He’s clearly guilt-ridden when he turns to me. “I don’t know why I doubted you. I guess I was—”

Thwick, and more tinsel explodes everywhere, piled high on Felix’s head like a snowdrift.

“Sorry,” Hall says hastily, lowering his weapon. “I was expecting you to argue.”

Felix shakes the silver out of his hair with a scowl, which transforms into a reluctant smile when he notices how hard Marilou’s laughing at him.

“He’s certainly got my blessing,” Dad remarks to Grandpa, who nods thoughtfully, watching us.

As Hall meets my eyes, the world seems to tilt sideways, and I find myself tipping right into him. He catches me in his arms, faint surprise etched on his face, eyes curious.

Grandma raises her glass in a toast. “To Bettie and Hall! Long may they reign!”

I don’t know what prompts me to do it—maybe it’s because I’ve suddenly found my face so close to his, or maybe it’s because my relatives are raising their glasses to us one by one and it feels perfectly natural to do so—but I cup the back of Hall’s neck and shock him with a kiss on his smiling mouth.