Page 73 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

“Residents and visitors of Warm Springs, the annual pig lighting ceremony will take place in five minutes. Please gather around.”

I turn to Gabe. “Since you’re new in town and this is your first pig tail shootout, I would like to gift the prize to you.”

I hand him the stuffie as everyone walks off toward the giant pig.

He looks at me with affectionate amusement.

“The weirdest gift, from the weirdest game, in the weirdest town ever,” he says as he takes it in one hand and wipes a drop of water off my cheek with the other. The stroke of his thumb sends a prickle of pleasure across my skin.

And it dawns on me I’ve just done exactly what Sir Percival does in the legend.

CHAPTER 23

GABE

This is truly the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen in my life.

A crowd of people, adults and kids, a large percentage of them wearing pig ear headbands, is gathered around a twenty-foot tall, semitransparent, round pig.

It’s wrapped in unlit lights and covered in hooks from which a completely uncoordinated collection of decorations dangle.

Aunt Lou is standing behind a podium on a platform near the nose of the pink animal. A polite chuckle runs through the gathering when she cracks a joke about Gerald’s homemade wine being strong enough to power the pig for a week.

Given what I’ve learned about this town in just the last seven days, I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t even the strangest ceremonial activity the mayor has to take part in.

But who am I to talk? I’ve become a man with a fluffypink stuffed pig shoved inside his jacket because he didn’t want to carry it around.

I look down at Natalie as she tips her head back to scan the sky.

“Beautiful night for it,” she says to the heavens.

A patch of her smooth throat is lifted from under her plaid scarf, and I have to fight the instinct to adjust the fabric so that delicious skin doesn’t get cold.

“No clouds at all,” she adds. “Just stars.”

I lean down and whisper in her ear—partially so no one hears what I’m saying and partially because I just want my lips next to her skin and her sweet flowery scent in my nostrils. “None of them as remarkable as that one though.”

She brings her eyes back to Earth and looks up at me, puzzled.

I nod toward the giant gold star on the pig’s head.

She rolls her eyes and shoves me with her shoulder.

Exasperating Natalie has become my new favorite hobby. At least if I had hobbies, it would be. Being here among a town full of people who volunteer to make costumes for a kids’ play, Aunt Lou being involved in a bunch of community things as mayor, and Natalie helping out with Senior Central activities brings home to me that not only do I not have any interests outside work, I have never had any.

My only hobby was ever hockey. Until it became my job. And since then it’s been my everything.

“And so it is,” Aunt Lou’s voice comes out of the speakers attached to the lampposts around the square, “with the power vested in me as the mayor of Warm Springs, that I declare this year’s pig officially lit.”

She pulls a comically large lever attached to the side ofthe lectern that clearly has no connection whatsoever to any electrical power. It looks like it’s been constructed from cardboard by someone who makes props for the theater. I can only assume there’s someone somewhere else flipping the actual switch that turns on the?—

My hand flies to my eyes as a giant cheer goes up. “Good God. Got a welder’s mask I can borrow?” I ask Natalie, my eyelids blinking in spasms to try to get my pupils to adjust. “I wasn’t expecting it to be that bright. Or that”—I squint—“pink.”

“What color did you expect a pig to be?” she asks, likeduh.

I summon the courage to lift my head and take it all in as everything gradually comes back into focus. “I certainly didn’t expect the star on its head to flash and rotate like it’s a festive emergency response vehicle.”

Holy shit, I just noticed what’s at the other end. “Or for the corkscrew tail to twirl. But it explains why you thought all that crap you covered my house with was no big deal. That was a picture of elegance and subtlety compared to…whatever this is.”

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