Andrew’s cocktail is a variation of whisky eggnog, and as soon as the taste hits my tongue, I’m back there, sitting in a dark bar with Jack on Christmas Eve, sipping spiced eggnog while our knees brush. I’m on the metal step of the Airstream, tasting eggnog on Jack’s mouth.

“If only in my dreams…” Katherine sings, and as the song comes to its pretty end, she turns to me. “Okay. It’s Ellie’s turn!”

Suddenly, there’s not enough alcohol in the world to make my legs unstick from the furniture. “Oh. No. I don’t think I—”

“Come on, sugar. We don’t judge. This is just for fun.”

I believe Meemaw, but the Kim-Prescotts’ general decency doesn’t seem like sufficient justification to humiliate myself. Andrew clearly disagrees, and he hoists me off the couch. “Come on, Oliver. You’re family now. You’ve got to sing.”

“Yeah, come on,” Dylan agrees. “You’ve gotta,” and I don’t trust for one minute that Dylan isn’t going to judge me.

Andrew positions me beside the piano. Jack is still on the bench, her long, square-knuckled fingers resting on white keys. She looks up at me, flicking her chin to get the hair out of her eyes. “What do you want to sing?”

“Nothing.” I set my eggnog down on a coaster atop the piano. “I—I don’t know very many Christmas songs.”

Jack drops her head, and I stare at the lock of hair that spills forward again. My whisky eggnog brain so badly wants to sweep that hair aside.

“How about this one?” Jack’s long fingers dance out the opening bars to “Holly Jolly Christmas.” We’ve heard this song a half-dozen times just in the past two days.

“Everyone knows this song.” Jack quarter-moon smiles at me, and my insides are a runny glass of eggnog. I hear the moment I’m supposed to start singing, but the words get caught in my throat, lodged behind memories of that smile and those fingers.

Jack loops the song back to the beginning to give me the cue to start again, but I’m frozen. Paralyzed by the idea of embarrassing myself.

She loops the song again. “We’re okay,” Jack whispers—actually whispers—so even Katherine close by can’t overhear. “No rush. Sing whenever you’re ready.”

I think about Jack sitting on Gillian’s tailgate. We’re going to be okay.

And then when I don’t sing again, Jack belts out the beginning of the song herself. And Jack’s singing is earsplittingly abominable. That deep drum of a voice that always sounds half-musical to me somehow doesn’t translate into actual song. It’s screechy and off-pitch and not aligned to the tune she’s playing on the piano.