Page 120 of Catching My Dreams

She and Noah had gotten a bit distracted, and she hadn’t actually set it up.

Noah let out an audible sigh. “I think that’s called false advertising,” he informed her as she took the first evermore vinyl record out of its sleeve.

“Hey,” Olivia scolded, slapping her brother’s shoulder and nearly making him spill his coffee. “If you weren’t aware, “’tis the damn season” is a Christmas song.”

Ella blinked at Noah’s half-sister. “Thank you, Olivia,” she practically squealed. She’d finally found someone who got it.

“Is there something wrong with normal Christmas music?” Riley asked, her brows lifted.

“So many things,” Ella responded with a shudder.

“She thinks it’s cheesy,” Noah explained while she finished setting up the record.

“But having a gingerbread-house-making competition while wearing an ugly Christmas sweater isn’t?” Chris drawled.

“Precisely,” Ella said. She moved to stand next to Noah now that the music was playing.

“Speaking of the competition,” Riley said, her eyes alight with anticipation. “When are we starting?”

She was the one who’d suggested the idea. It had been something she’d done with her dad before he passed away, and Ella and the others were more than happy to keep the tradition going.

“How about now?” Ella replied, also eager to start.

She was determined to wipe the floor with Noah. She didn’t care about the others. As long as she beat Noah, she’d be happy.

???

“It’s…something,” Noah said, taking in the mess on the dining room table that was Ella’s gingerbread house.

“It’s a disaster,” she groaned.

One side of the roof had cracked down the middle, and it had fallen into the house. The icing holding all of the pieces together was smeared and dripping all over the place, and to top it all off, most of the M&M’s she’d stuck around the windows had fallen off.

“And yours is so good,” she complained, turning her attention to his creation. “It’s so unfair.”

“It’s not unfair,” he retorted, his arms wrapping around her and squeezing. “I’m just better.”

Ella scowled at his stupid gingerbread house with its adorable Gumdrop-topped roof, artsy piped icing shingles, and perfect construction. He’d even piped snowflakes above the windows and a wreath above the door.

“At least you didn’t eat most of yours,” Noah said.

Ella twisted her head to the side to look at Chris’s attempt. One side of the roof was entirely absent, and no candy decorated his very plain and incomplete house.

Chris popped another Skittle into his mouth. “It was going to go into my stomach eventually,” he told them. “I just sped up the process. Besides, mine is still better than whatever Asher made.”

Ella smothered her laugh with her palm. Asher’s was opposite her own, so she’d seen plenty of his gingerbread house—if one could call a pile of gingerbread rubble a house.

“Mine was obviously defective,” Asher asserted with crossed arms. “It just crumbled as soon as I tried to put it together.”

“Sure,” Ella drawled. “I’m sure it had nothing to do with how you pressed down on the roof to stick it on like you were gluing together pieces of steel instead of cookies.”

“I vote Liv’s house as the winner,” Chris said before breaking off the other side of his roof and popping a piece in his mouth.

Ella looked at Olivia’s house, marveling at how neatly she’d glued everything together with icing. All her walls were perfectly straight, and the piped borders around the windows were precise and even.

There was no doubt it was good, but Ella preferred the artistic flair of Noah’s over the clean lines of Olivia’s.

“I might not have placed in the Winter Talent Show, but at least I get your vote for this,” Olivia replied to Chris with a self-deprecating chuckle. “That’s something.”

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