Page 51 of The Holiday Hate-Off
I gasp in horror. I wouldn’t wish that on…well, my worst enemy. “How old was he?”
“Nine or ten. Aria was just a couple of years old. We think that’s why he’s so protective of her.”
It feels like my stomach just dropped to my feet. His mother left four children to fend for themselves. It’s hard to imagine. Then again, my mother’s husband left her when I was still too young to even remember him.
“That’sawful.” I feel guilt clogging my throat. This must be the reason Enzo hates this beautiful, sweet town.
It may look like a gingerbread house in the window of a master baker’s shop, but it’s haunted by the worst memories in his life, and everyone knows it. Worse, they talk about it. Not maliciously, I’m sure, but that wouldn’t make a difference to him.
Oh, crap. We’recurrentlytalking about it.
“We really shouldn’t gossip about this,” I say.
Charlie shrugs dramatically. “I’m going to take the high road and not point out that you brought it up. Ooh, I think those are our drinks!”
Lars gets up to grab the mugs of mulled wine, delicious and exactly what I usually enjoy during the holidays. We drink them and talk about everything but Enzo. The Sip, my classes, Charlie’s art, and Lars’s birds. But the whole time, I’m thinking about Enzo as a little boy, watching his mother drive away.
It must have hurt so badly. It muststillhurt.
My own pain and sense of loss flare to life again at the thought.
Which means it’s time to put pause on Plan Revenge-zo on Enzo.
I’d asked Eileen if she could set me up with a fake date for Hook, Wine, and Sinker on Thursday so I could mess with Enzo, and she’d responded that she had an “inspired” idea. Apparently, Erica has two gorgeous sons, one of whom is averysingle firefighter and already on the short list of men Eileen picked out for me. She’d promised me this hunky firefighter, Hudson Locke, would know it’s just a fake date, because I didn’t want to mess with anyone’s feelings.
But what I’d once thought was a harmless prank no longer feels so harmless. Knowing what I now know, it would feel unethical to continue tormenting Enzo.
The thought is disappointing for reasons I can’t put into words.
Charlie and Lars walk me home after we leave The Shore Thing, and I hug my friends goodnight and head upstairs. Trying to keep it together.
The only thing that lifts my mood is the note card slanted against my door, from my neighbor/friendly stalker.
I’d thought he’d stopped writing to me. I’d been sad about it—and felt silly for feeling sad.
I bring the note inside and curl up on my couch to read it.
My heart swells, because goodness, he was so real with me. Soopen. It makes me want to do something for him, so I write a quick reply into a Rudolph card and then leave it against my door with a tin of cookies I baked yesterday while doing schoolwork.
Dear Lobster Stalker,
Your secret’s safe with me, and only partly because I have no idea who you are. And, for the record, you DID make the right choice with your job. Even if you should have totally forced them to pay you severance.
You know, I’ve always had a strain of pettiness, so if I were you, I’d send that report you wrote to your boss’s boss. If your strategy is better and your former boss ignored it, they should know. Especially since it’s VERY BAD policy to eliminate jobs right before the holidays. Even more so if one of the employees is pregnant.
Actually, now that I’m warming to the topic, I think that’s exactly what you should do. Maybe you can still save their jobs, making your resignation far from pointless.
Okay, petty rant over. I pinky promise.
By the way, these cookies are for you. I think you need one tonight. I sure did.
I’ve struggled to feel the Christmas spirit this year. I’m so full of anger, and it doesn’t take much to set me off. I’m angry because I lost my mother just before last Christmas. I knew it was going to happen, and I’d been preparing myself for years, but I wasn’t ready to say goodbye. Not like that. Not in a room full of wires and beeping monitors. Not after she’d lost so much of herself.
I wanted to remember her the way she’d been when I was little. When we used to dance around the Christmas tree, the way you saw me doing.
I wanted to be able to keep her, because she was the only person who was ever really mine. But she was taken away from me anyway.
My friends keep asking what I’d like for Christmas, but the truth is that I want the one thing no one can give me. My family.
