In a Holidaze

Call me a bitch. Call me impulsive. Call me drunk. After last night, I deserve it. The morning of December 26th is cold and silent, but my heart is pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I made a terrible mistake, one born of too much spiked eggnog and a deep, aching sadness. Last night, I kissed Theo Hollis. It was clumsy and awful - his hand grabbing my breast like he was performing a medical exam, his tongue licking my face - and now the one place on earth I feel truly at home is poisoned by my regret. Theo is practically my brother, but more importantly, he is the brother of Andrew Hollis, the man I have been silently, hopelessly in love with for thirteen years.

The awkwardness of the morning is a thick, suffocating blanket. Theo won't even look at me, dismissing our fumbled encounter with a cruel, “I should have known you'd make a big deal out of it.” Andrew, bless his kind heart, saw us and tries to tease me, but I can see in his easy smile that he doesn't care one way or the other. That casual indifference hurts more than anything. The final blow comes over breakfast, when his parents, Ricky and Lisa, announce they're selling the cabin. This cabin. Our cabin. The one place where my divorced parents still act like family, the one constant in my chaotic life. It's all ending.

The drive to the airport is a blur of grief. My life feels like a dead end - a job I hate, a childhood bedroom I've retreated to, and now, the loss of my one true sanctuary. I close my eyes and send a desperate, silent plea out into the universe. *What am I doing with my life? Please. Can you show me what will make me happy?* The prayer is barely formed when a horn blares. A flash of green, a wreath on the grille of a truck, the shriek of metal, and the world shatters into a thousand pieces of glass before going black.

I wake up with a gasp, lurching against a seatbelt, my heart trying to escape my chest. But I'm not in the car. I'm on a plane, wedged between my brother and a stranger, the recycled air humming around me. The date on my phone reads December 20th. We are on our way *to* the cabin. It feels like a vivid, horrifying dream, but as we arrive, the day unfolds with an eerie familiarity. I know my dad will crack a tooth on Lisa's rock-hard cookies. I know my little cousin Kennedy will scrape her knee after tripping over the dog. I am living the week all over again, and I'm the only one who knows it.

The loops are relentless. Each time, I try to change the outcome, to fix what I broke. I try to warn my father, but he eats the cookie anyway. I fall down the attic stairs after a panicked conversation with my friend Benny, and wake up back on the plane. I try to save the cabin by becoming a tyrant of tradition, forcing a rigid cheerfulness that culminates in a chaotic snowball fight and a heavy branch falling from a tree, knocking me back to the beginning. It seems no matter what I do, I'm doomed to repeat my mistakes, to relive this perfect, doomed week until I get it right.

Frustrated and exhausted, I finally decide to abandon the script entirely. If nothing matters, why not do exactly what I want? I arrive at the cabin a whirlwind of blunt honesty and impulsive decisions, shocking everyone with my strange, reckless mood. But instead of disaster, this new freedom cracks open something real. That evening, Andrew finds me on the porch swing. He doesn't tease me; he brings me a drink and sits with me, his presence a warm, steady anchor in my swirling confusion. For the first time, it feels like he's truly seeing me, and in that quiet moment, something shifts between us.

With each new loop, I grow bolder. I quit the soulless job I've been clinging to. I tell Andrew, in a rush of terrified honesty, how I feel about him. And he doesn't run. Instead, he leans in. We go sledding, and pressed against him as we fly down the mountain, he whispers, “I never knew you were an option.” We hide together in a dark closet during a game of Sardines, and his lips finally find mine, hesitant and then hungry. That night, in the freezing boathouse he's claimed as his own, wrapped in dusty sleeping bags, we make love. It's more perfect, more right, than anything I have ever imagined. It feels like I've finally found what I was looking for. I am incandescently happy.

But happiness is a fragile thing. When Theo discovers us kissing in town, his hurt and confusion are palpable. Moments later, a real car crashes just feet away, the sound of it echoing my own past trauma. The confrontation that follows is public and painful. Overwhelmed and terrified that the universe is about to reset again, I crack. In front of everyone, I confess everything - the time loop, the wish, the kiss with Theo that started it all. The revelation lands like a bomb. Andrew stares at me, his face a mask of shock and hurt. The kiss with his brother, something from a reality he can't remember, feels like a betrayal. He pulls away, leaving me utterly alone in the wreckage of my own making.

In the quiet aftermath, I realize my mistake. I had asked the universe to *show* me happiness, not to hand it to me. The point wasn't to win Andrew as a prize; it was to become the person who was brave enough to deserve him, to be honest enough to build something real. On Christmas Day, I find him in the boathouse and give him my truth. I give him a drawing I made of us, old and gray and still sitting together on the cabin's porch swing. I tell him that I've loved him my whole life, and that even if this is all we ever get, it was enough.

I leave him there, believing it's over. But later, as I walk up the stairs in the main cabin, I find a trail of my favorite peppermint candies leading me through the house. It ends at the closet door where we first kissed. Inside, Andrew is waiting. “I believe you,” he whispers, his eyes shining. “I love you.” In his arms, the world finally stills. There are no more crashes, no more resets. There is only the steady beat of his heart against mine, and the quiet, certain promise of a future that is finally, truly ours.