“Of course she does!” Jack pulls me into a hug, lifts me off the ground, and spins me around until I’m all warm and fuzzy again. “You’re incredible, Elle! This is incredible! Oh my God! Like Alison Bechdel!”

“I know!” I look down at my phone again, chewing on my bottom lip as a gnawing doubt seeps in. “Well, maybe. I mean, I’m sure it’s not a guarantee or whatever. She’s just expressing interest.”

“Still! Interest is huge!”

The thought of responding to the email turns the hope bubbling inside my chest into something bordering on panic. Jack gives my arm a playful shove. “We’re going to celebrate this,” she says. “Before we start panicking about what this means and what comes next, we’re just going to exist in this moment and fucking celebrate it!”

I feel dizzy and giddy and hopeful. “Yes! Yes, we have to celebrate it!”

“But first…” Jack points up ahead, to where the cabin is visible through an outcropping of trees.

But first, we have to deal with the Kim-Prescotts.

“You’re safe!” Katherine opens her arms and promptly bursts into tears the second we walk through the front door.

“Yes, Mom, we’re safe.” Jack allows herself to be hauled into a hug and kissed excessively on the face, then I do the same, secretly loving Katherine’s kisses. Paul Hollywood flings himself at Jack next, jumping up and down and licking every inch of her exposed skin.

“Merry Christmas Eve!” Lovey gushes. “We thought you two might be dead!”

“Not dead,” Jack clarifies.

“I didn’t think the two of you were dead,” Meemaw says, nudging me with her elbow and actually winking. Alan lurks in the back of the little semicircle that’s forming, offering a running commentary about the deficiencies of Jack’s truck, her driving abilities, and the decrepit state of the Singhs’ cabin.

“Oliver!” Someone shouts across the house, and then I’m violently accosted by Andrew as he pulls me into his arms. What I assume is a performance as my doting fiancé feels surprisingly genuine as he hugs me tight. “We were so freaked out when you didn’t make it back.”

Dylan is there, too, wearing their penis/middle finger Christmas sweater. “Are you okay?” they ask Jack. And then Andrew is hugging Jack, and Dylan is hugging me, and I realize both of their concern is genuine.

“We’re fine.” Then, quieter to Andrew: “Can I talk to you privately for a moment?”

I shoot Jack a look that attempts to convey Don’t worry—I’m all in. Then I haul Andrew upstairs. Before I even close the door to our bedroom, he blurts, “I had sex with Dylan!” He’s his face-scrunching, nose-pinching, mouth-half-open self.

“Yeah,” I say. “I figured.”

“You… figured?”

“Jack and I saw the two of you. At Timberline. We saw you kissing.”