Dylan and Katelyn wound up sitting cross legged on the bed in her childhood bedroom, facing each other, and talking to excess. She started by telling him about her brother--how Connor was off living this impossible life doing too many things in New York City and how she was proud of him but that she missed him like crazy.

“Do you know that thing where Mindy Kaling said that a best friend isn’t a person but a tier? Well. Connor is, like, a big part of my tier,” she explained.

From there, the conversation turned to everything. Just as Dylan was in the midst of telling Katelyln about how he was a little bit in love with James Corden, her dad knocked on the door while simultaneously opening it.

“You better be decent in here,” he announced, swinging the door open. “No hanky-panky in the house.”

Pretending that there wasn’t a blush spreading furiously across her face, Katelyn stood up and exclaimed, “Hey dad! You were asleep when I got here!”

“Hi-ya Katy-Bear!” her dad chirped, enveloping her in a hug. Then, he glanced at Dylan and added, “And you must be Jason.”

“Uh. Yes, sir,” Dylan said. He paused for a moment first. Katelyn frowned. She had kind of forgotten that he was there pretending to be somebody else, and it almost seemed as if he’d forgotten it, too. “Hello, sir.”

“All right, that’s enough with the sirs, kiddo,” Jon laughed. He was grinning, though, and Katelyn suspected he kind of enjoyed being called sir.

“Sorry, sir,” Dylan said. The tips of his ears tinted pink as Katelyn’s father laughed.

“If the two of you care to join us,” he said, “we’re going to be ordering pizza and trimming the tree downstairs.”

“No!” Katelyn exclaimed, eyes wide. “I forgot to tell mom. Connor’s coming! He told me last night. We can’t decorate the tree without him.”

Jon’s smile broadened gleefully. He leaned away from the door and shouted down the stairs, “Martha! Elizabeth! Everyone! Get up here!”

Soon, the entire family was packed into Katelyn’s room. Katelyn became all too aware that there was a boy in her room sitting on her bed. She felt herself blush again.

“What is it, dear?” Martha asked.

Dylan moved to stand behind Katelyn. His fingers brushed against her hand and she felt her face warm. Malik raised his eyebrows in Dylan’s direction as if to say, “I think you’re standing a little too close to my sister-in-law.” Dylan shifted away from her, just slightly. At that, both Katelyn and Elizabeth rolled their eyes in Malik’s direction.

“Well! Aren’t you going to tell ‘em, Katy?” her father asked, an ebullient grin on his face.

“Um,” she mumbled. “Okay. So. I kind of forgot to mention it earlier. But Connor called me last night. He’ll be here for Christmas after all. He’s flying in on Friday. He sent me all the details, so I’m going to go pick him up. He doesn’t want the whole family coming to get him, though. You know how he gets about crowds. And people asking him stuff. Also, he’s bringing someone, and he would like me to remind you all to be nice.”

The reactions across the room were all different variations of surprised. Martha Eubanks’s eyes widened and grin stretched across her face. In a singsong tone, she chirped, “A girlfriend!? He didn’t tell me!”

Jon had his eyebrows raised, pitched high on his forehead, and he asked, “Really, Katy-Bear? This is great! It has been so long since he’s had someone!”

Malik and Elizabeth both shot one another surprised and possibly even mischievous glances at the words he’s going to be bringing someone. Neither of them, to Katelyn’s knowledge, knew that there was a “someone” to be brought, but they at least knew that the “someone” wouldn’t be a girlfriend.

Katelyn didn’t think either of her parents would be bothered by the fact that Connor was gay. She and Elizabeth had been telling him that since he came out in high school. But, she also knew that they would be seriously thrown by it. He had gone to all of his school dances with girls, and that was how they remembered him. He’d had a boyfriend during his junior year of high school, but it was a very secret affair with the son of the pastor at the church they were attending. He’d broken up with Connor after a few months in a terrible homosexuality is a sin, all of this is a test, and I’m not going to continue to fail sort of way. It sucked. A lot. Katelyn was the only one that Connor had told, so she managed to convince their parents to switch churches without telling them what happened. Once he was in college, he only talked about relationships in a vague way. He’d been seeing someone but it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere so they called it quits. He’d gone a date and it was fine but unimpressive. And so on and so forth. He always kept it vague enough for their parents to imagine that he was seeing girls, and he never bothered correcting that assumption.

It was a surprise to Katelyn, and probably to Malik and Elizabeth as well, that their brother was bringing someone home now. He was secretive enough that they had started to think he would go his whole life without ever coming out to their parents. He could get married and adopt a hoard of children and never let on to their parents about any of it.

“Wait a second,” Martha frowned. “He wanted to remind us to be nice? Aren’t we always nice?”

Katelyn grunted, noncommittally. Malik hoisted Sapphire into the air as though no one would expect him to be aware of the conversation with a toddler in his hands. Elizabeth sighed and explained, “Mom, look, he just means that...if whoever he brings home surprises you, you still have to be nice.”

“Yes, exactly,” Katelyn affirmed.

“Yeah, so, like, avoid saying anything like if you’re Asian, why are you so tall?” Elizabeth said. As she was saying it, Dylan dropped his head forehead behind one hand: the hiding technique of an ostrich. Katelyn hissed her sister’s name and Elizabeth sighed, “Sorry, Jason, it was just an example.”

“That was mean?!” Martha exclaimed.

“Not mean,” Katelyn said, carefully, “But...well...it also wasn’t exactly nice. So, just be nice, okay? Like, try extra hard to be really nice. Like, really try to think of the situation from Connor’s guest’s perspective and then go above and beyond with the niceness.”

Martha started to scowl, and everyone in the room could sense her defenses rising. Malik passed his daughter to her grandmother and said, “All right! Awesome. So, Connor is coming for Christmas. Let’s go order pizza. I, for one, would like one with all the meat.”

“And I,” Elizabeth said, slipping her hand into his, “would like one without any.”

“Oh, right, so,” Jon told his wife, “we’re going to hold off on decorating the tree until Connor gets here. Tonight, let’s watch It’s a Wonderful Life.

After Katelyn’s family left her room, she raised her eyebrows in Dylan’s direction and mouthed the word, “Sorry.” He laughed and they followed her family downstairs.

“Hear me out,” Dylan said, picking up where he left off in their conversation. “James Corden is funny. And well dressed. And he’s like super cute and I just feel like he would give good hugs, you know what I mean?”

Katelyn laughed, “Yeah? Are there any other guys you’re smitten with?”

“Aziz Ansari, honestly. He’s also, like, super funny. Plus he’s probably the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.”

“Save that judgement until after you’ve met my brother. Connor might be the only boy, but he’s also the prettiest of us,” Katelyn laughed.

“He must be, like, insanely pretty then,” Dylan said. Katelyn raised her eyebrows at him. It was probably a joke. Fake flirting or something. But he’d said it so sincerely and he seemed to blush under her gaze.

In the living room, they sat on the floor in front of the couch, next to Elizabeth and Malik. They left the whole couch free for their parents. They wouldn’t take up the whole couch at the start of the night, but gradually they would both doze off and stretch out across the entire thing. The Eubanks children had learned years before that it was best just to leave their parents the whole couch from the beginning, otherwise they’d risk getting pinned beneath a pair of calves.

The sisters sat next to one another with Malik on Elizabeth’s right and Dylan on Katelyn’s left. In the kitchen, the Eubanks parents called for pizza, with Jon on the phone and Martha feeding him instructions. Elizabeth used the opportunity to interrogate her little sister’s boyfriend.

“So, Jason, how did you and Katelyn meet?” Elizabeth asked.

“Work,” Dylan answered without thinking. Then, after realizing what he said, he attempted to correct himself. “Er, I mean, some of the guys from the...work...and I went to Katelyn’s diner after...uh...conference thing and...uh...that’s you know. When I met her.”

“Hm. And what made you want to become an investment banker?” Elizabeth asked. Katelyn tried to knock a knuckle into Elizabeth’s side. Elizabeth dodged the attack and scowled at her little sister before returning her attention to Dylan.

“Oh. Well. You know,” Dylan babbled. “I just really like...I uh...I just really want to make my father proud.”

“Oh, that’s sweet. So do you need to have a degree for investment banking?”

“Um. Yeah. My. Uh. Undergrad is in...finances.”

“Just general finances?”

“Yep.”

Katelyn finally cut in, “Elizabeth, quit it. He’s here for the holidays, not for an interrogation about work.”

“I was just trying to get to know your boyfriend,” Elizabeth said, shrugging and smiling just a little too sweetly. Katelyn didn’t trust her. Thankfully, Katelyn got a reprieve from worrying when their parents returned and started the movie.