Page 39 of Christmas Ever After
‘I’m good at social media, you know that.’ The giant nutcracker is heavy and he starts waddling it towards the shop door, one side at a time. ‘You don’t do anything to encourage people to post about your nutcrackers. People just buy them and that’s it. You have an Instagram account but you barely use it, and it’s cold and impersonal and you only ever post when you’ve got a sale on. You never let customers get to knowyouor share anything about the process of making nutcrackers or show what goes into each one. What we need is an “event” to get people talking. Hence, giving away a giant nutcracker.’
‘Whereareyou going with him?’ I ask as he stops to negotiate the door, and I go over and hold it open for him to manoeuvre the nutcracker through and onto the pavementoutside, and he stops to grin at me as his body brushes against mine.
Once the nutcracker is outside, Raff comes back in and heaves the tree onto his shoulder and pulls the box towards us.
‘He’s going to stand out there, in prime positioning, next to this nicely decorated tree, which we’re going to decorate with these.’ He plunges a hand into the cardboard lid, pulls out a bow-shaped tag, and holds it up for me to read.
Take a bow to win! Grab a tag, hold it up and take a selfie with the nutcracker! Post it on social media, and follow and tag The Nutcracker Shop to enter!
‘Oh wow, that’s genius. Forcing people into social media engagement. You’re a publicity wizard.’
He blushes and if he didn’t have a tree over one shoulder, I’d throw my arms around his neck because I’m so touched that he’s even given it a second thought, let alone gone to all this trouble.
I peer into the box and realise it’s absolutely packed with the handwritten bow-shaped tags, as well as lights and tinsel for the tree. He must’ve been upallnight doing this, and he’s already doing two jobs anyway. ‘I can’t believe you did this. You didn’t have to…’ The words get choked up as they’re coming out. His unwavering support is the last thing I expected, but it’s something I’ve never had before and the thought that he’sthisdetermined to save my shop reinforces how much I want both of us to stay.
‘You’re welcome,’ he says gently and I’m certain he can tell what I’m thinking. He reaches out and touches my left forearm, like he’s trying to think of something else to say. His fingers graze my skin and trail downwards, over my wrist with a feather-light touch, across the back of my hand, and when he reaches my fingers, he slots his fingertips between mine and jiggles themplayfully and meets my eyes, and I realise it’s been far too many minutes since I last took a breath.
While I claw air into my lungs, he blinks as if he isn’t sure what just happened and pulls his hand away quickly and mumbles something about no time to waste in getting it set up. The tree has slid off his shoulder and he hoists it back up and heads for the door, and I follow him out with the box.
There’s a tree stand in place on a flat part of the cobblestones, with a chain to a nearby bollard to prevent the nutcracker being stolen. He gets the tree set up and I hold it steady while he secures it into the stand, positioned in the perfect spot between my door and windows, but not blocking either of them.
‘Ever tried to decorate a tree one-handed?’
‘Nope.’ I can’t help laughing at his enthusiasm as he takes the box out of my arm and starts pulling strings of lights out of it. ‘But there’s a first time for everything.’
He grins and hands me a battery pack to hold while he untangles one of the strings of blue star-shaped lights and starts draping them around the tree, and I watch him, well aware that a few of our fellow shopkeepers are looking at us curiously.
‘What if it rains?’ I glance up at the ominous-looking mid-December sky. ‘These nutcrackers aren’t designed to stay outdoors. The two by the door are weatherproof, this one isn’t.’
‘Ahh, you think I haven’t thought of that.’ He throws one last string of lights onto the tree, and then rifles through the box again. ‘And now for thepièce de résistance…’
He gets out a festively red umbrella, and when he opens it with fanfare, there’s a pattern of green and white tiny nutcrackers all over it.
‘Where’d you get that?’ I ask, impressed by his ability to think of everything.
‘I asked Mrs Coombe in All You Need Is Gloves to source a nutcracker umbrella for me, and she did.’ He lifts the sceptreout of the nutcracker’s wooden hand, unscrews the handle of the umbrella, and pokes the shaft through the hole where the sceptre was held, and positions it so the huge umbrella perfectly covers the nutcracker and the tree.
The sight of a giant nutcracker holding a nutcracker umbrella finishes me off, and I get the giggles, and in trying to stop laughing, I realise something else. ‘You’ve been planning this?’
‘I wouldn’t say planning. I’d say… giving it some thought… for a while now.’
‘Raff, you are…’ I stop myself because there are so many words that could fit after that pause. Brilliant. Funny. Gorgeous. But the most fitting one is ‘lovely’, and that feels like too much of an unguarded admission to make out loud.
‘I know,’ he says with a grin that’s nowhere near as confident as it looks. We hold each other’s gaze for a moment and I’m sure he knows every possible word that just went through my mind.
Eventually he shakes his head and bends down to get a handful of bow-shaped tags from the box, hands me half the stack, and starts hanging them on the tree branches, and I try not to watch him walking around the tree, or think about the concentration on his face as he chooses theperfectbranch for each one.
I do the same, listening to the carollers in the cabin, trying to remember the last time I did anything this Christmassy or enjoyed anything so much.
Raff keeps glancing at me and each time I meet his eyes, he smiles but looks away quickly, and I get a little thrill every time as we carry on hanging tags.
‘So how long have you hated Christmas for?’
‘I don’thateChristmas. I love Christmas, but it’s…’ I let out a sigh. ‘It’s the time of year for nutcrackers and ballet performances and parents who make digs about my career choices, and every year it gets harder to ignore. Every Christmasfeels more difficult than the one before. My mum thought I should have gone into teaching ballet when my dancing career ended. She thought it was criminal to throw away all my years of training to make “wooden toys”, and my dad thinks it’s just embarrassing, and every year…’ I think about it before I carry on because it’s the elephant in the room that I never acknowledge, but it’s always there, looming in the background. ‘I wonder if they’re right, I guess. I wonder if I have thrown my life away and if I should be doing something more.’
‘Do you want to move on?’
It reminds me of when I asked him if he wanted to lose his shop and he deserves an answer as honest as the one he gave me. ‘No, not from here. But the council are right. My shop feels stale.Ifeel stale, like I have nothing left to offer Christmas Ever After, and if they choose you over me, then maybe it’s for the best… Maybe it’ll be the kick up the bum I need to get out of this rut.’
