Page 49 of If This Was a Movie

“Will you come see our decorations when you’re done?” Sophie asks, her voice high and squeaky and hopeful and breaking the moment. I step back from Nate and slowly, like he’s still categorizing what it was like, lowers his hand. “We’re not done, but it’s going to be magical!” She closes her eyes as if she’s visualizing their future masterpiece, and I smile. “I just know it.”

“I don’t want to interrupt—” I say, but she cuts me off, moving closer and holding her hands together like she’s pleading.

“Please?” Her eyes go wide, and I wonder how anyone is ever able to resist her, or if she genuinely always gets her way.

I’m leaning toward the latter as I find myself speaking without the approval of my logical mind. “Okay, fine,” I say. “I should be back around six.”

“Perfect. I’ll make dinner, if you’re okay with eating with us,” Nate says.

Once again, I answer without thinking.

“Yeah, that works.” My voice is breathy as I speak, his eyes still locked on mine as they go warmer, as my belly flips over and over in ways it should not. Finally, he breaks the look, and I turn away like I’m meaning to escape.

But even when I’m across town at my studio, I feel that tether in my chest, just like Nate mentioned and I denied, pulling me back to the place where a little girl and her dad are decorating their home, waiting for me to return.

I think about what Nate said the entire drive to the community center and then throughout the entire rehearsal. Thankfully, Gina was feeling better and able to dance tonight, so I didn’t need to dress up, but unfortunately, that means I had time to think.

Think about the mess I had gotten myself into.

Think about Sophie and her sweet smiles and her all-consuming belief in Christmas magic.

Think about how I swore off love and romance and how my commitment to that is wavering in just a few days in the presence of Nathan Donovan.

What would happen if I risked it?

What would happen if I fell into the fantasy of it for the next month and let myself believe this was real, that this wasn’t dangerous for my sanity?

This is what’s running through my mind as I park in the drive at Nate’s house and walk in the front door with a gasp, Sophie running my way in excitement.

“Do you like it?” she yells.

“Wow, you guys did an amazing job,” I say with an impressed laugh, toeing off my boots in the entryway. Nate walks over to me, grabbing my coat and hanging it as I step into a Christmas wonderland.

The tree we decorated together stands in the corner, glowing bright and covered in multicolored ornaments, a red and white tree skirt at the bottom, an angel that looks suspiciously like Sophie at the top.

The mantel over the fireplace has faux green garland and snow, and on every surface there’s something Christmassy, fromholiday art Sophie has done over the years pinned to the walls to a tiny Christmas village taking up the dining room table.

“My mom and sisters have given me very specific decorating notes over the years,” Nate says, explaining.

“It wasn’t like this when I came,” I say, still looking around, then going red as I realize what I just revealed.

He comes over to me, standing next to me in the doorway to the living room and smiling.

“The clutter gets to me. I can deal with it for only so long, so by the day after Christmas, I’m itching to take it all down. When Sophie leaves to be with my parents in the Poconos, I always use it as an opportunity to pack everything away and clean.”

“Ah, makes sense,” I say.

“I wish it could be like this forever,” Sophie says with a wistful sigh, and I smile at her, but then her eyes go wide and a giddy, excited smile spreads over her lips. “Look!” She points over my head.

“Wha—” I start confused, but when Nate and I both look up and see a bundle of white and green tied with a red ribbon over the doorway we’re standing in…

“Mistletoe! That means you have to kiss!”

“Oh, I?—”

“It’s a Christmas tradition!” she shouts, then claps her hands. Glancing at Nate for some kind of out, some explanation to his daughter as to why that’s not how that works, all I see is a small tip of his lips.

“Sophie must have hung them up when I wasn’t paying attention.” There’s a chair a few feet away, and when I look up, the sprig is taped to the frame haphazardly. It’s not like it wouldn’t be very on brand from what I’m learning of her. Meddling seems to be in her nature, just like her aunts. “It is the rules though,” he says in almost a whisper, lips spreading in a bigger smile. “We wouldn’t want to let the girl down.”

---