Page 117 of The Holiday Hate-Off
I glance in every direction, as if it’s a trap, then carry it inside. Bowie circles around me, demanding pets, which I give him as I examine the tag on the package.
For your cabinet of curiosities. Your landlord should have no problem with this one.
I open it and gape at the perfect, fuzzy little stuffed animal.
A calico cat.
I hug it, and breathe in its scent, because it smells just like him.
CHAPTER 25
ENZO
It’s finally Wednesday.
The last couple of days have been busy, full of “wheeling and dealing,” as Aria would call it. Audrey at Making Whoopie loves the idea of the cannoli whoopie pie, and we’ve already come up with a name for it—Take the Gun, Leave the Cannoli. She has a remarkably in-depth menu for her shop, which provides a description for every item available. For the new cannoli, she wrote up a blurb that had my brothers and me laughing:
Take the Gun, Leave the Cannoli—criteria-zested vanilla whoopie pie cakes embrace a whipped ricotta-mascarpone filling flecked with mini dark chocolate chips and candied orange. Lightly dusted with powdered sugar and crowned with crushed pistachio.
Subtle. Slightly dangerous. Just like your Nonna.
Portia, who’s my new best friend after the taffy pulling demonstration, is all in to provide the Six-Pack Santa taffy, as well as limoncello candy canes. I’ve been talking with the other shop owners too, doing what I do best.
But my nights have been full of Lucy. The words of her letters have been dancing through my head, along with the memory of her silhouette pirouetting around that Christmas tree.
I want to tell her that she’s been writing tome.
Now that I know she’s Dancing Queen, something has changed for me. I want to be with her, all the way. I want to know everything about her, and I want her to know me fully too.
But she insists she only wants me physically, and if she learns I’m Lobster Stalker, she might stop writing to him. She might also decide it would be best to stop sleeping with me.
So I haven’t told her yet.
Instead, I’m determined to earn her good opinion before she learns I’m her anonymous pen pal. I want her to want me to be the man she’s been writing to so openly. So I’m trying to think of ways to support her that she won’t consider overreaching. Which is why I had a talk with Eileen, who agreed to disengage the “Jingle Bells” doorbell that Lucy finds so aggravating.
Then I texted Lucy yesterday asking if there are any fantasies she’d like help fulfilling.
She wrote back:
Meet me at the Wishing Bridge at ten.
Honestly, I had plenty of substandard hookups at the Wishing Bridge when I was a teenager, and I’d prefer to have her somewhere comfortable, where I could take my time with her. But it was her fantasy, and I wasn’t going to deny her. If sex was all she would take from me, I’d give her as much of it as she wanted.
Still, I didn’t want her walking there by herself that late, so I replied:
Are you still staying at the dead animal place?
Until tomorrow.
I’ll meet you at the cottage at 9:45. I’d prefer to walk with you.
To my surprise, she didn’t object and insist on meeting me at the bridge.
To my elation, she was waiting for me at the door in the skimpy red dress lined with fake white fur that she’d worn on the Santa Speed Dating night, and she had nothing on underneath it.
“Do you think I’m going to be on the naughty list this year?” she asked, her eyes glinting with mirth.
“You will be if I have anything to do with it,” I said, guiding her inside.
