Page 63 of Holiday Friend Zones
Mistletoe Match
BY LILY MILLER
ChapterOne
AVA
The train screeches into the station, brakes whining, a hiss of steam curling up into the night.I press my forehead to the cold glass and stare out at the platform.Same string of white lights along the eaves, same crooked wooden bench by the doors, same layer of snow dusting everything in sight.This place hasn’t changed.Not one bit.
I step down with my bag slung over my shoulder, the icy air biting my cheeks.It smells like pine and woodsmoke—like home, if home were a postcard I’d stuffed in a drawer and forgotten about.
My eyes immediately scan the crowd looking for one tall, grinning, infuriatingly familiar face.
He’s not here.
Of course.
I linger near the bench for five minutes.I sit down for another ten.another ten.By fifteen minutes, my toes are numb, and my patience is gone.I duck inside the tiny station, use the washroom just to warm up, then end up at the vending machine buying a bag of candy I don’t even want.By the time I walk back outside, tearing the bag open with frozen fingers, I’m already rehearsing the speech I’m going to give him about punctuality.
“Need a hand with that, city girl?”
That voice.I don’t even have to turn to know.
Sure enough, Liam Carter is leaning against one of the old wooden posts like the years haven’t touched him.Beanie pulled low over his dark hair, camera strap across his chest, hands buried in his pockets like he’s got nowhere to be.That same easy grin curves his mouth, the one that used to get him out of trouble and into just about everything else.
“You’re late,” I say, fingers tightening around my suitcase handle.
“You’re early.”He pushes off the post and heads toward me, boots crunching over the snow.“Classic Ava Reynolds move.Punctual to a fault.”
“And you’re still allergic to being on time.”I tip my head, squinting at him.“Tell me you actually brought a car and we’re not hiking six miles back to the cabins.”
Cabins.I don’t know why we still call them that.They’re houses—solid, cedar-sided, with wide porches and stone chimneys—sitting side by side at the edge of the pines.Liam’s family moved in when he and I both were five, and from that day on, it was the Reynolds-and-Carters, like one big extended household.Summer nights playing flashlight tag, winters tunnelling through snowdrifts, birthday parties that always seemed to spill from one porch to the other.
Cabins or not, those two houses raised us.And now, for the first time in years, I’m about to walk back into them with him at my side.
He gestures toward the parking lot where his sleight gray 1967 Ford Bronco is, exhaust puffing into the cold air.“Would I let you freeze?I brought a blanket, too.Luxury service.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it.“I’ll have you know heated seats are more my speed.”
“Bet they are,” he mutters under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear.I swat his arm as he takes my suitcase like it weighs nothing.
When he tosses it into the bed of the truck and turns back, his smile softens in a way that shouldn’t make my chest squeeze like this.Liam and I have only ever been friends.That’s all we’ve ever been.So, I don’t know why the sight of that smile makes something tight and unsteady shift inside me.
“It’s good to see you, Ava.”
I don’t say it back, but the heat creeping beneath my scarf probably says enough.
The heater blasts the moment I climb into Liam’s truck, but it still takes a full minute for my fingers to stop aching from the cold.I rub my hands together and glance around.Same cracked dashboard, same pine-tree air freshener dangling from the mirror, same stack of maps shoved into the door pocket like it’s still 2005.
“You still haven’t upgraded?”I tease, buckling in.“This thing was old seven years ago when we graduated high school.”
Liam shoots me a sideways look as he slips the camera strap over his head, letting it dangle from his hand before setting it carefully on the backseat.That camera has been practically glued to him since we were teenagers.Now it’s his livelihood.He’s a freelance photographer, always jetting off to some far-flung corner of the world to capture glaciers, deserts, and city skylines while remaining in Vermont as his home-base.
Liam starts the truck and pulls onto the road.“This thing is a fully restored, classic Bronco.It’s every guy’s dream, plus, it’s reliable.Unlike certain people I could name who abandoned Vermont for city skylines.”
I roll my eyes.“Don’t start.You know why I left.”
“Yeah,” he says softly, then turns the radio up a notch.Christmas music filters through, cheerful and obnoxious.He hums along, just to annoy me, and I smack the volume down.
