Page 2 of The Holiday Hate-Off
I’ve never gone to Europe, something else I long for.
And, up until last month, I’d never lived alone.
“Drink up,” Eileen says, pointing to my cup, and I realize she and Charlie have stopped their happy dance and my friend is watching me with concern.
I take a sip and try to fix my wavering smile, probably overcorrecting. “So, are you going to wait until after Christmas to do the engagement party? Can we have it here? Or maybe?—”
“Your smile is scaring me,” Charlie says.
“It’s scaring me a bit too,” I say with a sigh, taking a bigger sip of the hot chocolate. “Have you told your mother?”
Charlie’s not close to her parents, both of whom are stern corporate types who aren’t pleased their only child is a bohemian artist whose environmentalist boyfriend makes a living following birds around.
“Yes, and she’sthrilled,” Charlie jokes with sparkling eyes.
“Come, sit.” Eileen gestures to the pink armchairs assembled in the corner of the room by the front window.
A visiting businessman once fell asleep in one of those armchairs. Of course, Eileen being Eileen, she’d sent over a single local woman to wake him up, hoping it might be their meet-cute. It might have worked if he hadn’t jolted and accidentally spilled the cold coffee he was still holding all over her blouse.
We lower into the chairs, and Charlie sets her hot chocolate on the coffee table and takes my hand.
“Sorry,” I mutter. “It’s just, I pulled the last prompt from the magic ball last night. It’s hard to believe it’s over.”
Her eyes widen and she swears. “It was last night? Oh shit. I’m such a selfish bi?—”
“No,” I say, squeezing her hand. “You’re happy. You should be happy! You and Lars are getting married, and you’re going to have lots of enormous children together, and probably way too many pets for two people to take care of.”
Eileen chuckles.
“Very funny,” Charlie says, pulling off her cap. A few hairs dance above her head, static-charged. “And what an obvious deflection. I should have been there, Lucy. We should have done it together. What was this one?”
“Dancing to Britney Spears. It was cathartic until I realized the blinds were open and someone was watching me from the street.”
“Was it a man?” Eileen asks excitedly.
“Oh, here it comes,” I groan. “You’ve got one of your assistants engaged, and you’ve already moved on to the next.”
“As if you weren’t always on her matchmaking docket,” Charlie says. “She’s got half a dozen schemes running. You’ve seen her list.”
I have. Eileen keeps a Google doc of the town’s single people and is constantly trying to match them up. I knowseveral of the people on her list, of course, and most of them aren’t aware they’re on there. I know for a fact that Audrey, the fantastically talented chef/owner of Making Whoopie, the bakery just next door to us, has no idea that Eileen has an ebbing and flowing list of candidates for her.
“Charlie’s right,” Eileen confirms. “But you’re my number one priority this Christmas. I already have a short list of candidates for you, which is shorter now that Charlie crossed off two of them.”
“You’ll thank me later,” she says with a grimace. “They were serious duds. One of them is that guy who’s so terrified of Skippy he leapt into traffic and got hit by a car going five miles an hour.”
Skippy is the town dog, a sweet Saint Bernard who has as many owners as there are people in Hideaway Harbor. He sleeps wherever he wants but never lacks for a warm bed.
Eileen grimaces. “Yes, I’d forgotten about that.” Glancing at me, she says, “I’d love to see you with one of those Hawthorne brothers. There’s a fortune on the line with that massive fishery of theirs, you know.”
I make a face. “I get seasick.”
“Or one of the handsome Cafiero boys next door.” Her face lights up with the idea, but then she purses her lips. “It’s too bad Francesca is still cross with us.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I murmur.
The Cafieros run Hidden Italy, the Italian delicatessen, catering service, and gourmet grocery next door, accessible only by a curving stone stairway leading down to the Hellmouth…or so Charlie and I like to joke. The two of us went there for lunch three times the week of my spring visit—there is no better eggplant parmesan sub in the continental United States—but our love affair with it was short-lived. We’ve been…well…banned.
There are a couple of reasons behind our ban. For one,Francesca’s granddaughter, Aria Cafiero, dated Lars before Charlie “got her claws into him,” and even though Aria has moved on, her grandmother holds a grudge. Especially since Aria accepted a job at a resort in Greece and now lives halfway around the world.
