Cover

“The holiday romance of my dreams. A cozy, cinnamon-scented hug of a book.” —Ashley Herring Blake, author of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care

Kiss Her Once for Me

A Novel

Alison Cochrun

Author of The Charm Offensive

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Kiss Her Once for Me

“A sparkling winter wonderland, quirky family traditions, and a messy ‘love trapezoid’ make the yuletide gay in this earnest queer rom-com…. It’s delightful to watch this clever spin on the fake dating trope unfold. This is a winner.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Beautifully tender and delightfully sexy, Kiss Her Once for Me is the holiday romance of my dreams. A cozy, cinnamon-scented hug of a book.”

—Ashley Herring Blake, author of Delilah Green Doesn’t Care

“Dizzyingly adorable and brimming with laugh-out-loud humor, Kiss Her Once for Me is the new rom-com gold standard. Alison Cochrun writes with palpable compassion, tenderness, and heart that makes every page a memorable one. I swooned, squealed, and shrieked my way through this absolute masterpiece.”

—Mazey Eddings, author of Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake

“Bighearted, affirming, and dreamy—Kiss Her Once for Me is an ode to those in search of love, family, and a new lease on life.”

—Timothy Janovsky, author of Never Been Kissed

“Cochrun’s writing is by turns whip-smart, hilarious, and deeply vulnerable. Kiss Her Once for Me is both a queer celebration and subversion of romance tropes, along with being a love letter to Portland and an incisive exploration of family, art, and failure. Jack and Ellie’s swooningly romantic love story will make even the most cynical among us believe in the magic of snow days.”

—Anita Kelly, author of Love & Other Disasters

“Kiss Her Once for Me is a gift of a story. Capturing the festive charm and nostalgia of the season, the fresh-fallen-snow wonder of falling head over heels, this holiday romance also reminds us that giving and receiving love can be as tangled as a knot of Christmas lights, yet, with patience and perseverance, finally unwound and no less beautiful, the glowing joy we all deserve.”

—Chloe Liese, author of Two Wrongs Make a Right

“Don’t let the holigays pass without gifting yourself the unparalleled delight of coming home to the magic-brimmed pages of Kiss Her Once for Me! Alison Cochrun stuns in her sophomore novel, lovingly ushering readers into the giant hearts and all-consuming, snow-laced romance of Ellie and Jack. Kiss Her Once for Me is at once deeply tender and whip-smart, radiating joy and intimate self-love from every line. With ultimate care and close attention to detail, Alison establishes her work as a safe haven of sensitivity and affirmation. This is precisely the take on While You Were Sleeping that the Queer Community deserves, and the whimsy-infused second-chance romance of my dreams. May we all get a snow day.”

—Courtney Kae, author of In the Event of Love

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Title Page

Dedication

This book is for my parents,

who love me when I fall as much as they love me when I fly.

And for the grandmas, obviously.

Last Christmas

A Webcomic

By Oliverartssometimes

Episode 7: The Girl on the Bridge
(Christmas Eve, 11:22 p.m.)

Uploaded: February 4, 2022

Snow days are a special kind of magic.

When I was a kid, snow days meant freedom from the stress of school and from the debilitating social anxiety I felt there. On a snow day, I could wander outside and make friends as easily as packing a snowball between my gloved palms.

In college at Ohio State, snow days meant freedom from my rigorous study schedule, when my best friend, Meredith, would burst into my dorm at one in the morning so we could go sledding in South Oval on trays stolen from the dining hall.

And in Portland, a snow day seemed to mean freedom from everything.

My boots sink into nearly a foot of snow as I step onto the Burnside Bridge. The boundaries of the city had blurred over the course of the day, and now nothing is contained to its usual place. Grass, sidewalk, and street have all become one smooth, fluid thing—a world that looks sugar-spun and impossibly sweet. Up ahead, a couple cross-country-skis across the bridge while their portable speaker blares “White Christmas,” and behind me a group of twentysomethings is having a snowball fight in the middle of the road, and beside me, a woman slips, grumbles, and curses, “Fuck the snow!” at a rather loud volume.

“Is it the snow we should be blaming?” I ask calmly. “Or your shoes?”

“The snow,” she answers, clomping her boots deliberately with each step. “These boots are magnificent.”

I gesture to the boots in question. “They do seem like they were selected more for aesthetics than utility, though. Like your coat.”

She stops stomping through the snow and looks up. “Wait. What’s wrong with my coat?”

She’s wearing one of those brown Carhartt jackets so popular among a certain demographic back in Ohio and an entirely different demographic here in Portland. Hers isn’t even zipped, so her flannel is exposed beneath, tucked into her light-wash jeans.

It’s an aesthetic, all right.

“It’s a very nice coat,” I reassure her. “Not exactly practical for snow, though, is it?”

“In my defense, it hardly ever snows here.”

“Yet when you left your house this morning, you knew snow was in the forecast.”

She harrumphs and shakes snowflakes out of her exposed hair like a golden retriever in the rain. Her black hair is cut short, shaved along one side and long on the other, so it falls across her forehead in a damp clump. All day, I’ve fought against the urge to push that hair back out of her eyes.

On a snow day in Portland, you could meet a stranger in a bookstore, spend the entire day with her, and find yourself on a bridge overlooking the Willamette River at 11:23 p.m. on Christmas Eve. On a snow day, you could be the kind of person who followed a stranger anywhere, even if she did complain about the snow.

The stranger in question moves to the edge of the bridge, her eyes staring out at the black water. “Okay, explain it to me, Ohio: what’s so great about snow?”

“Well, first of all, it’s gorgeous.” I exhale, and she turns to shoot me a sideways glance. The freckles beneath her eyes almost look like snowflakes on her light brown skin. It’s only been fourteen hours since I met her, but I’ve already memorized the pattern on her cheeks, charted those freckles so I can draw them later.

I wrap my blue scarf tighter around my neck to hide my blush. “And it’s… real snow, like this… big snowstorms… they have the power to stop the world for a minute. Snow freezes time, so the constant pressure of life is briefly suspended in a blanket of snow, and for one day, it’s like you can catch your breath.”

She leans against the railing, her arms lazily draped over the edge. “You know you’re allowed to relax even when it doesn’t snow, right?”

“When it snows,” I say, more emphatically, “the world transforms. Snow is magic.”

I gesture around us, to the night sky that shimmers light purple, almost glowing to match all the white. To the trees that sparkle an iridescent silver. To the snowflakes floating through the air, giving off the illusion that they’re traveling in all directions, defying gravity. I stick out my tongue and manage to capture one, and I notice too late that she has her phone in front of her, and she is taking a photo of me with my tongue out.

“What are you doing?”

“Attempting to document the supposed snow magic. For scientific purposes.”

“And from such a cute angle.”

“Oh, please. You’re adorable, and I’m sure—” She pauses, tilts her head to the side to study her phone screen, and winces. “Actually, maybe we might want to take that again….”

I shove her arm. “I will not subject myself to further mockery.”

She holds her phone in front of my face. “Come on, Ellie. Something to remember you by before the night is over.”

“I don’t turn back into a pumpkin when the clock strikes midnight.”

“Yes.” She smirks. “But maybe I do. Besides, I’ll want to have a photo of you when you’re a famous filmmaker. Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is part of the ten-year plan.”

“Twenty-year plan,” I correct. “I don’t want to be unrealistic.”

“Ellie,” she says, her tone surprisingly serious. “I have full faith that you will accomplish whatever you set your mind to. Now.” She holds up her phone again. “Look like you don’t want to murder me, please.”

I drop my arms limply to my sides and shrug, as if to say, Like this?

She shakes her head. “No, show me you. This does not capture your essence.”

“I’m not sure you’ve known me long enough to comment on my essence.”

She eyes me through her phone screen. “I know your essence is not an awkward shrug.”

“Are you sure? An awkward shrug could definitely be my essence.”

She makes a restless, impatient sound with her tongue, and, not knowing what else to do, I lift my arms in the air, like a standing snow angel, and I twirl on one foot in a slow, sweeping arc in the middle of the bridge. Eyes closed, tongue out.

“How was that?” I ask, slightly dizzy and struggling to reorient myself.

She studies her phone with an unreadable expression, then takes a step closer to me. “Here.” She shows me. The photo is blurry, a few snowflakes sharply in focus in the foreground, and me in the background, a contrasting swirl of color: the muted dark brown of my braid and the pale white of my skin against the purple of my jacket, the blue of my hand-knitted scarf, the little slice of red that is smile and tongue.

“I think it’s perfect,” she says.

“My turn.” I snatch her phone and wheel it around on her. There she is, in portrait mode, nearly six feet tall, steady with her feet in the snow. “Show me your essence.”

She shoves her fists into the pockets of her khaki coat, flashes me a sideways smile, and leans back against the guardrail separating the bridge from the river below. Her essence: perfectly distilled into a single pose, as if she knows, so unequivocally, who she is.

I take the picture.

She reaches out for me. “One more,” she murmurs before she wraps an arm around my waist. I know I can’t really feel her body between all our layers, but I imagine I can, imagine what it would be like to have her skin against my skin. I can smell the eggnog, the maple-bacon donuts from Voodoo, and the freshly baked bread scent that lingers on her clothes. She looks like she should smell like pine trees and campfire, like the wild and untamed parts of the Pacific Northwest. Rainwater and damp soil and moss.

But actually, she smells like bread. Like warmth. Like something that would fill you up.

“On the count of three,” she starts, and on the screen of her iPhone, I can see our faces cheek to cheek. Me and the beautiful girl with the impractical jacket and the half-moon smile. Snowflakes in her black hair and city lights sparkling behind us.

We both smile.

“One… two… three.”

Her thumb swipes at the screen to pull up the photo, and I stare at the girl captured on her phone.

“On a snow day,” I tell her, “you can be a different person.”

With her arm still around my waist, she asks, “What kind of person do you want to be?”

Not an awkward shrug. I want to be the kind of person who pulls a stranger close in the snow, so I do it. I wrap my arms around her, pull her in, until our bodies are flush, entangled, moving slightly to stay warm.

And then we’re slow-dancing in the snow. She’s humming the tune to “White Christmas” in my ear, and the rest of the world falls away as we dance on a bridge while the minutes tick down until Christmas. All that exists is her breath, her voice, her arms, and all the places our bodies meet. We’re suspended in a perfect snow globe built for two.

On a snow day in Portland, you could fall in love.

Chapter One

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

There is almost an inch of snow on the ground, so naturally, the entire city is on the verge of collapse.

Since buses are delayed, I tighten the red, hand-knitted scarf around my neck and plow angrily down Belmont Street. Cars are Tetrised bumper to bumper from the arcade all the way to the dispensary because no one here knows how to drive in the snow. Schools have prematurely closed for the day, and children appear in every doorway and walkway, dancing joyfully, catching snowflakes on their tongues. Up ahead, I watch two kids attempt to make snowballs that are at least 90 percent dirt.

Leave it to Portland, Oregon, to be simultaneously so delighted and so horrified by such a modest amount of snow.

And, quite frankly: fuck the snow.

By most meteorological definitions, this doesn’t even constitute snow. It’s small and wet, falls too quickly, and halfway melts into the concrete as soon as it lands. Still, it’s enough to delay the buses and completely derail my day.

I reach into the pocket of my puffy jacket and pull out my phone to check the time again.

Three minutes. I have three minutes and ten blocks to go, which means I’m going to be late for work. And if I’m late for work, I definitely won’t get the promotion and pay raise I so desperately need. And I’ll probably get fired. Again. And if I get fired again, I’ll probably lose my apartment.

Two days ago, the neon-yellow flyer appeared in the slit of my front door, informing me of the raise in rent January first. Fourteen hundred dollars a month for four hundred square feet of subterranean hellscape in Southeast Portland.

If I lose my apartment, I will have to find housing in a city with a horrible housing crisis. And if I can’t find a new place to live…

The anxiety extrapolates and catastrophizes all the way to its natural conclusion: if I’m late for work again, my trash heap of a life will finally be put in the compactor and crushed into a cube of steaming hot garbage once and for all.

Why does Portland snow always insist on ruining my life?

The image creeps in. The girl with fire in her eyes and snow in her hair. Dancing on a bridge at midnight. The sound of her laugh in my ear and her breath on my throat and her hands—

But no. There’s no point in torturing myself with the memory of last Christmas.

I look down to check the time again just as my phone buzzes with an incoming call. The cracked screen on my iPhone 8 flashes with the name Linds along with a photo of a woman holding a two-gallon alcoholic beverage outside the Bellagio.

I briefly consider ignoring the call, but Catholic guilt, solidified in infancy, wins out. “Hey, Linds—”

“Did you Venmo me that money?” my mother starts as soon as the call connects. It’s abundantly clear that no, I did not Venmo her the money, or else Lindsey Oliver would have no reason to call me.

“Not yet.”

“Elena. Lovey. Baby girl.” Linds adopts her best mom voice—the one she probably learned from watching Nick at Nite reruns while stoned through the better part of the late nineties. Lindsey Oliver insists everyone, including her only child, calls her Linds, while she exclusively calls me Elena despite the fact that I’m Ellie, that I’ve always been an Ellie, that Elena fits me like a too-tight pair of jeans.

“I really need that money, sweetheart. It’s just two hundred dollars.” I can perfectly picture my mother’s pouting face on the other end of the line. Her dark brown hair, which she dyes a stark blond; the natural waves she straightens every morning; the pale skin she’s eradicated through numerous tanning salon punch cards; the high cheekbones she highlights through contouring.

I can picture her face because it’s my face, except I still have the curly brown hair Linds calls “frizzy” and the pale skin that makes me look “washed out.” If my mother isn’t asking me for money, she’s probably criticizing my appearance.

“I promise, this will be the last time I ask,” she insists.

“I’m sure it will be,” I huff as I jog to catch the tail end of a “Walk” sign. Not for the first time in my life, I regret that my only means of physical exercise is the occasional kitchen dance party while I wait for my frozen burrito to heat up in the microwave. “I’m just a little strapped for cash at the moment with my student loans and my rent, but hopefully I’ll get this promotion to assistant manager, and—”

“It’s not my fault you insisted on going to college forever and got fired from Lycra Studios,” she snaps.

“Laika Studios,” I correct her for the dozenth time. My mother may switch her career goals as frequently and thoughtlessly as she shuffles through husbands, but she never misses the chance to remind me of my greatest failure. I don’t let her see how these words affect me, though—don’t let her know about the hot kernel of shame that blossoms in my stomach. “And I didn’t go to college forever,” I manage casually. “I got a master’s of fine arts in animation.”

“And what’s the point of having that fancy degree if you can’t financially provide for your elderly parents?”

Linds is forty-six.

Her rant is really starting to build now. “For eighteen years,” she laments, “I clothed you! I fed you! I kept a roof over your head!”

Her claims of providing for my basic needs are greatly exaggerated. When I was twelve, I’d asked my mother for money for new art supplies. Linds hadn’t taken it well.

“Do you know how much it costs to raise a child? And you want more?”

“Add it to my tab!” I’d screamed in a fit of preteen surliness.

And Linds had screamed back, “Maybe I will!”

And she had. Lindsey had calculated the cost of my existence down to the nickel, and she expects full reimbursement. Unfortunately, saying no to my mother is not a skill I developed in the first twenty-five years of my life. I exhale a lifetime of parental disappointment into the wet, snowy air. “Okay. I’ll see what I can do to get you the money.”

Her voice goes soft on the line as she coos, “Thank you, Elena, my darling.”

And this is it. This is my moment. I need to strike while she’s briefly filled with maternal pride and affection.

“So, Christmas is less than two weeks away,” I hedge. “Any chance you’ll make it up to Portland for the holidays this year?”

There is a desperate hopefulness in my voice, even though I already know the answer. She didn’t come last Christmas, and she won’t come this Christmas, and I’m only setting myself up for heartbreak.

And is that even what I really want? To spend Christmas morning scraping a hungover Linds off the floor between suffering her rants about everything from my lackluster physical appearance to my even lacklustier love life? The last time we spent Christmas together back in Cleveland—before Linds followed husband number three to Arizona—she dragged me to a nightclub, tried to set me up with a handsy forty-year-old Realtor named Rick, and then promptly ditched me so she could go home with Rick’s friend. I didn’t see her for three days after that.

I was nineteen. My mother had provided the fake ID. Happy fucking holidays.

Is that really my Christmas wish?

The answer is, apparently, yes. I don’t have anyone else. If last Christmas is any indication, it’s best I’m not alone for the holidays. I tend to make misguided life choices in the name of loneliness.

“Why would I leave Phoenix for somewhere wet and cold?” Linds asks, reminding me that my Christmas wishes are always irrelevant.

“Because I’m here?”

She smacks her lips into the phone. “Elena Oliver, don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what?”

“You’re so dramatic. You’ve always been like this. Don’t get all sensitive and try to make me feel guilty for not wanting to spend Christmas in the rain.”

“I wasn’t—”

A deep voice growls in the background of the call, and Linds mutters something under her breath in reply. “I gotta go.”

“I could always fly down to Phoenix,” I offer pathetically. So very pathetically. Just a twenty-five-year-old woman, begging her mother to spend Christmas with her.

“Now’s not a good time for that. Just Venmo me the money by tonight, okay?”

That’s it. No happy holidays. No I love you. The call disconnects before I can even say goodbye. The earlier shame in my stomach is eclipsed by the aching hole of loneliness in my chest. I’m going to spend Christmas by myself in my squalid studio apartment, eating a five-dollar rotisserie chicken over my kitchen sink for dinner.

Homesickness sluices through me, but there is no home to be sick for, nothing waiting for me here or anywhere.

I don’t let myself think about the brief moment last Christmas when I thought I’d found someone to ease the ache, a person to call home.

But I’m always alone, have always been alone, and just because it’s Christmas doesn’t mean there’s any reason for that to change. You can feel just as lost and aimless at Christmas as any other time of the year.

I pause as I wait for a walk sign, and around me, the snow is already turning to rain.

The thing about snow is, it never lasts, and you’re always left a slightly dingier version of the world when it starts to melt.

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