“I don’t usually watch the ball drop.” I walked over to the couch and looked at Xavier, chomping down on the pizza like he’d never left.
“I see.” He looked at pills. “You sick?”
I coughed a little. “Just a slight cold.”
“Hum . . . Guess I won’t be kissing you tonight.” He laughed.
“Kissing me?” I repeated. “X, what are you doing here?”
He clicked off the television.
“I missed you. I was sitting in my place this morning and I thought, I can’t go into the next year without her. I can’t make a new start without her,” he said. “So, that’s what this is. That’s why I’m here.”
“I see.”
“Do you want that?”
“I told you to go away. I just thought you would stay away. . . .” I said. “I mean . . . you were away. But now you’re here.”
“Do you want me here?” He took my hand and kissed it.
“Yes. I do.”
“Good! Because you know what they say—”
“Whoever you’re with at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve is the person you’ll spend the next year with,” we said together.