Page 8 of Holly and Nick Hate Christmas
My credit card, however, could not.
“Hello?” I pressed my nose against the glass, staring at the adorable royal blue sweater that would pop my red hair, hit that perfect spot on my hips,and,better yet, have nothing to do with Christmas.
“What are you wearing?” My brother’s voice filled my ear.
I frowned into my phone. “I’m assuming you have a reason to ask, but it’s still weird, Ryan.”
He exhaled a long-suffering sigh, like I was the problem. “To Mom and Dad’s house. You’re driving up tomorrow, right? Like we talked about?”
His voice pitched toward mild panic by the end of hisquestion, and it was my turn to sigh. “It’sdown,Ryan. Driving down. North is up; south is down.”
“I don’t see why that’s important.”
“But asking about my wardrobe is?” My breath fogged the glass and I leaned back, offering an apologetic wave to the salesclerk.
Ponytail waved back, cautiously. She beckoned me inside, her dramatic eyebrows furrowed.
I shook my head.
She squinted.
Great. Now I looked like I was casing the joint.
I turned away from the window, pretending the conversation on my phone wassoimportant. Down the street, a horn honked and someone yelled out their car window. Men in suits wearing AirPods and women in yoga pants toting Lululemon bags pushed past me on the sidewalk. The wind picked up, tempting my naturally wavy hair to go full curl.
“Just answer the question.” My brother sounded impatient, which was odd. He always sounded busy, but rarely annoyed.
I pulled my puffy coat tighter around me. “I don’t know, sweats? If I have to go home for Christmas, you can bet I’ll be eating the homemade cookies.” Of course, I’d scrape the red and green icing off first on principle, but a carb was a carb.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t eat cookies? That’s bossy, even for you.” I risked another glance over my shoulder at the mannequin, who, upon second look, probably wore that sweater better than I would. But still. The detailed stitching on the shoulders, the cuffed hem…
“Wear something nice.”
I grunted. “Okay. Where’s Lydia? Go bother your wife—isn’t that why you got one?”
“First impressions matter, baby sister.”
I love-hated when he played the sister card. “You’re older by not even two years.” Then his words registered. “What do you mean, ‘first impressions’? Is that some kind of sarcasm about how I rarely go home?”
Not that he’d be wrong. Mom and Dad traveled to me way more often than I went to them. But with Ryan only a few hours away from me, our oldest sister, Olivia, roughly four hours south, and my sister Kat stationed at Fort Knox, they could make a big loop and kill several birds.
On second thought, it probably wasn’t healthy to associate quality family time with the death of animals.
“No, but now that I think about it…yes.” Ryan snorted. “I’m bringing a friend.”
I scuffed one booted foot against the dirty sidewalk. “Hate to break it to you, but if your friend has a problem with my sweatpants, then he’s no real friend, big bro.”
“He’s more likeyourfriend.”
Ryan was officially making no sense. “It’s a little early in the day to be drinking.”
“I don’t drink,” he sputtered, which was funny, because I knew that he not only never drank but also that he was incredibly proud of the fact.
I resisted the urge to look back in the window. I didnotneed that sweater. “I’m just trying to come up with a valid reason for the most cryptic phone call ever.”
Dang. Now he had me thinking…whatwasI going to wear? There was a mandatory Christmas Eve service, and the sweatpants wouldn’t fly there. And Mom would insist on her holiday family photo, which, whether I liked it or not, always ended up in a hallway frame or scrapbook at some point after New Year’s. As much as I hated Christmas, I hated more looking like a frump between two stickered pages for all of eternity.
