Page 35 of A Curvy Carol

The next morning,I texted her again after breakfast despite the sense of dread growing in the pit of my stomach.

Whit: Hey, Christmas Carol. Want to go ice-skating again?

I waited and waited, but still no reply.

Now I knew for sure: something was wrong.

I racked my brain trying to figure out what I had done. But I couldn’t think of anything. Was she having second thoughts about our kiss at Mistletoe Hill? That was the only thing I could think of.

If that was the case, I needed to see her. I needed to find her, talk to her, and clear this up. Because being her friend was better than nothing.

It was never my intention to make her uncomfortable, and if that was the case, I’d apologize or do whatever it took to fix things between us.

I couldn’t stick around the lodge knowing something was wrong, so I headed into town, hoping I could come up with a plan to fix the issue. But how was I going to do that if she didn’t respond to my text messages and tell me what I’d done?

I sent her one more message.

Whit: Everything okay?

After waiting for something, anything, from her after several minutes, I gave up.

All I could do was walk around and try to get my mind off of it for now.

But I decided that if she didn’t respond by lunchtime, then maybe I’d go to her house and find out what was going on that way.

She had to talk to me, right? Tell me what was going on?

It was crazy how quickly I’d gotten used to having her in my life.

I missed her like crazy too.

As I neared Scrooge’s, my stomach grumbled. I hadn’t had much breakfast, being more focused on Carolynn than anything else. Surely by now Scrooge had forgotten me and would let me come in to eat.

I took a peek through the window, only to be completely surprised by what I saw.

It was Carolynn.

She sat at a booth toward the back alone. Wearing her stocking cap and her head tilted toward the table, she would’ve been easy to miss, but I would’ve recognized her anywhere, especially her long blonde hair.

She picked despondently at her lunch, an orange soda in front of her plate. Then I noticed her phone sitting on the table.

It was like a punch to the gut.

She was ignoring me, and I was going to find out why.

21

CAROLYNN

Ihad escaped to Scrooge’s for the time being, but at some point, I’d have to go back home and face my parents.

I ignored the texts from my parents and wiped away the tears threatening to run down my cheeks.

Just when I thought Christmas with my parents couldn’t get any worse, they had paid a boy to hang out with me.

I felt so humiliated. All this time I thought I was making a friend, maybe even more, but all I was making was a fool of myself. Now, every memory I looked back on of Whit and me was layered with shame. He had to have thought I was pathetic, needing my parents to pay someone to spend time with me.

Scrooge came by, and I quickly got it together and pretended to study the menu. “What’ll you have?” he asked.

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