Page 8 of Three Days of Holiday

Holly: I’m fine. His car is fancy.

I peeked up to make sure Will didn’t see what I typed and hit send. “My sister is checking in with me, so you can’t kill me and then leave my body in a cornfield because I already gave her the okay that I was safe.”

His mouth fell open, and he twisted in his seat to look at me. “I promise no cornfield graveyards.”

I shrugged. We were in Pelican Bay. Weirder things happened in the middle of nowhere.

“I promise I’ll get you home with no incidents,” Will said.

“I trust you.” And it was true. I’d snuck out of my house and gotten into his car, but I didn’t have a bit of apprehension. For some reason, the man made me feel safe. Hope was right to worry. I’d probably end up in a cornfield.

We spent the drive to Clearwater chatting about his dog Bacon, who he left with a friend and had to pick up before midnight. Any later and he worried the dog might turn into a gremlin and eat everything within reach. Then they had an hour’s drive home where he worriedabout his car’s interior with said hungry gremlin. They seemed like legitimate concerns.

“He’s been trying to train Misfit on how to fetch slippers, but she does not care,” I finished a story about my brother’s dog as Will parked in front of Clearwater’s best diner.

The hostess, a server who happened to be by the front door when we walked in, directed us to a booth in the far corner of the mostly empty restaurant.

“Do you have a dessert menu?” Will asked her when she slapped two plastic coated menus on the table.

She looked at him and then flipped over his plastic menu and pointed to a section on the bottom. “It’s on the back.”

“Right. Got it.”

I lifted my menu and held it in front of my face as if I was studying it intently so he wouldn’t see me laugh.

“I think going to go with a banana split,” he said, placing his menu on the table.

It sounded like a good idea to me. “I’ll have one of those too and a hot chocolate please,” I said.

She didn’t take the time to write our orders on a ticket. “You want hot chocolate with your ice cream?”

“Yes, please,” I tacked on the “please” for extra emphasis.

“They’ll be right out,” she said, and then turned back to the kitchen.

“Did you know Alaska eats the most ice cream per capita?” Will said before she was out of sight completely.

“Alaska?” I asked for confirmation. That didn’t sound right.

He nodded, and his green eyes sparkled in the florescent lights hanging overhead in the diner.

“Have you ever been?” I asked.

My brother Haden had been pretty much everywhere anyone had ever been, and I planned to ask about the Alaska ice cream thing when I got home.

Will’s mouth opened like he was about to answer when a crash sounded from behind the partition that acted as a buffer between the kitchen space and the dining room. Dishes shattered against the floor, breaking into conversations as a plate clattered back and forth, creating a distorted symphony.

Will and I both flinched, and I covered my ears until the ringing stopped. The plate just leveled out when our waitress rushed from the kitchen with a big back tray in her arms, shaking as she made her way to our table.

She no longer looked put out by our presence, but I swore she was actually shaking in her boots. She deposited both banana splits with a heavy hand. The white dishes clattered against the top of the table as her arm shook.

She passed over two spoons, but let go before Will and I grabbed them, causing the silverware to fall against the table and create another onslaught of noise. Will put his hands on both, stopping them quickly.

“Are you okay?” he asked the waitress, sounding generally concern.

I plucked the cherry off my banana split and stuck it between my lips, eating it first. How sweet that he cared about a waitress who was rude to us less than five minutes earlier.

She rubbed her palms nervously against her apron. “Yes, but the boss is here.”

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