Page 25 of Holly and Nick Hate Christmas
The best revenge was to simply Christmas like I’ve never Christmas’d before.
I tossed the oven mitt on the counter next to the stove. Maybe I needed to take the Christmas-love up a notch. After all, Ryan hadn’t said a word about my outfit or questioned my sudden heart change other than that one distracted comment. Maybe I wasn’t being hardcore enough. It was going to take more than a Santa hat, a red skirt, and some icing to become unbearably Christmas.
Unfortunately, just because those things were unbearable for me didn’t make them universally so. Maybe Nick’s holiday tolerance was higher than mine.
I was going to need more time to google.
Olivia waved her snowman corpse toward me. “Don’t you think so?”
“I think…” What did I think? I quickly replayed the conversation in my head. She walked in and said something was up. Was the something referring to my Operation: Naughty List? I paused, unsure how much to give away.
“WithMom.” Olivia bit off the snowman arm.
“Oh, that.” I grabbed the spatula and scooped cookies off the tray. I’d almost forgotten how weird things were before my change of heart. “A little, maybe.”
“Make thatdefinitely.” Ryan glanced over his shoulder toward the door that led to the living room, then lowered his voice. “Where even is she?”
“Is this about the Christmas decorations?” Nick looked up from the table. A dot of icing lingered on the corner of his lips, and if he hadn’t completely betrayed me and shown his true colors, I’d have daydreamed about removing it for him.
But not now. I looked away, back at the oven mitt that was decidedly not holiday-patterned, and frowned. Olivia had a point.
“Exactly!” Olivia pointed with her cookie. “Whatdecorations? No Frosty, either. He’s literally a staple of our childhood. Something is going on.”
“Maybe she just didn’t feel like decorating this year.” Lydia leaned back in the breakfast nook. “She did seem a little tired to me.”
“Mom? Not feel like decorating for Christmas?” Olivia bit off the other snowman arm. “That’s like saying elves don’t feel like making toys.”
“Well, maybe they don’t.” Ryan grinned as he shook sprinkles onto the cutout tree. “Have you ever asked them? No. Because you’re s-elf-ish.”
Nick laughed out loud. I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
“I’m serious. She’s not herself.” Olivia gestured again, sending a spray of crumbs onto the floor. She kicked them under the island with her socked foot, then winced. “Oops. I forget that’s rude to do in someone else’s house.”
“And kinda lazy to do in your own, by the way.” I went to the pantry for the hand broom and dustpan, where it’d hung as a setfor decades near the third shelf. The nail was sagging from the wall again, next to the doorframe where all the Sinclair kid height measurements were scribbled in pencil. My line was scrawled a full inch under Kat’s, despite my being older than her.
When had we measured last?
I quickly grabbed the sweeping supplies. No time for nostalgia—that felt too Christmasy—and I was on a mission. I shut the door and shoved the dustpan set across the island to my sister. “Here.”
“I’ll get it.” Nick stood from the table, brushing his hands on his jeans. Flecks of flour stuck to the denim, though thankfully, the icing was gone from his face. Not that it would have mattered. He was my enemy. He was a jerk. He was…
…kneeling on the floor to clean my sister’s mess.
I swallowed, switching my attention back to Olivia, who stood with raised brows as she pointed to Nick’s turned back. She widened her eyes at me and dramatically mouthed the wordshusband material.
I frowned and shook my head. Then something—disappointment, maybe?—chose that moment to wedge itself in my windpipe. I coughed, which only made my throat tickle for no reason at all. Rubbing my throat, I coughed again, harder, turning away from the cookies on the counter.
Oh, how embarrassing. I continued hacking, like that time in church when I was roughly ten years old. The more my mom had tried to shush me, the fiercer that dry tickle became, until Pastor Hough’s wife finally passed a bottle of water down the pew.
This might be worse than that.
“Are you okay?” Nick sprung to his feet, still holding the dustpan of crumbs, his eyes on full alert. He started toward me—to do the Heimlich?
Fresh panic seized in my chest, and it had nothing to do withthe coughing. Operation: Naughty List would hardly make for good revenge if I disgusted Nick right out of the gate.Thanks for trying to save me, but I’m not choking on anything more than my own spit here.
He couldn’t reject me while I was busy trying to reject him.
Backpedaling across the floor, I bumped into the refrigerator, clutching my throat as I coughed and waved a desperate hand to keep Nick at bay. My words weren’t cooperating, refusing to leave my raspy throat. I just needed privacy, or maybe another bottle of water from Mrs. Hough.
