Page 42 of The Snuggle is Real
My focus should be on her, not…Mason’s bright hair and cute freckles.
“They’ve got a cool new Light Maze this year,” he said. “It’ll be more impressive after dark.”
“What the heck is a light maze?”
He grinned. “You’ll find out later. Come on, we better get going. The maze will be fun in the dark, but we kind of need to see to cut down a tree.”
He started forward without a second look back, leaving me even more off-balance. Apparently I was the only one weirded out by the way I’d held him.
Which was good. Obviously.
Charlie and I followed along, stopping at the cute little store full of Christmas kitsch, including some more of those wood-carved gnomes that had caught Charlie’s eye. She crooned over them while Mason went to hook us up with a farm worker who could help us go get a tree.
A few minutes later we tromped through rows of evergreens.
“What do you think?” our guide, Kaysen Brooks, said to Charlie. “Any of these look good?”
“Hmm.” Charlie turned in a circle eyeing all the trees. Peppermint snuffled every tree as if he had an importantdecision to make. I hoped he didn’t pee on one. No one wanted to bring that scent in with their holiday tree.
“We have to keep looking,” she said. “I need aperfecttree.”
We walked a little farther, Kaysen giving us some idle information about the farm’s history.
“It’s named Milton Falls instead of Christmas Falls because this tree farm dates back to when that was the name of our town. Of course, there were just a few rural households back then.”
“Really?” Charlie said.
“Yep. The town was renamed after a Christmas decor factory set up shop here in the forties. After the factory went out of business in the mid-eighties, the town had to find a new way to survive.”
“By becoming a Hallmark lookalike,” I joked.
“Pretty much,” he said with a grin. “Bruce, my oldest brother, grumbles about how Christmas-tastic it gets. But hey, his fiancé is totally into it. It was his idea to put in that new Light Maze, and Bruce is a goner, so he agreed with a smile.”
Mason laughed. “He sounds like a lucky guy.”
“Yeah, he did all right with Felix.” He glanced at us. “Are you two…”
“No,” Mason said quickly. “I’m just here to—” He looked at me, stumbling over his words. “We’re just?—”
“Friends,” Charlie said, with all the simplicity of a child.
“Right, friends,” Mason said with a tight smile.
I assumed he got tripped up on how to explain his presence. I appreciated the discretion since I didn’t particularly want to announce to the town gossip mill that I couldn’t pay my own way.
But now shit was awkward enough rumors would probably start up that weweresecretly dating.
The idea didn’t bother me nearly as much as it should have.
I had no beef with anyone’s sexuality. My sister’s husband had been bisexual and open about it. There was a higher than average number of gay couples in town. To each their own, I always figured.
But I had never had any interest in that direction. Shouldn’t it bother me that someone might think Mason and I were more than friends?
But then there was no fighting the tide of small-town gossip. I’d learned years ago that it was a waste of energy. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get fussed. People would believe what they wanted.
“There!” Charlie exclaimed, running ahead. “That tree is perfect!”
We hurried after her, stumbling to a stop as she pointed to the smallest, most stunted and mangled tree.
