Page 39 of Three Days of Holiday

People clapped.

My smile grew, hearing a winner, but then it faltered when I realized she hadn’t called our name.

Will jerked beside me and turned drawing me into a hug. He stopped short at seeing my face and the reminder of who I was.

No one.

A competitor.

An enemy.

I watched the shock happen, and in the next minute Will’s team pushed me aside to circle him with loud congratulations. His ex-girlfriend Diane pressed me out of the way into the other team’s leader. The congratulations and good jobs were a mess of words ringing my ears.

Will didn’t notice when I took a few steps away, almost ready to turn and leave the stage. I, however, noticed when Diane jumped into his arms and planted a deep kiss against his lips. He pulled away, but not quickly enough.

My sister met me at the bottom of the stage and gave me a hard hug. “I’m so sorry, Holly. We’ll win next year.”

She led me out of the large room and down the hall toward the front door as I worked to scrub the tears from my eyes before I ruined my mascara. “No, I can’t leave yet,” I said, pulling away.

She was obviously trying to guide me to the front doors, but we had to pick up and grab our supplies. “You should not stay and watch those jackasses celebrate. Hale and I will pack up. I’ll take care of everything.”

I should have stayed because the judges would ultimately make the rounds again and tell everyone congratulations. Just because I hadn’t won first place didn’t mean we couldn’t make good contacts, but the tears were too close to falling, and Diane was too close to Will. My heart too close to breaking.

I gave it another moment of thought, and then when Hope held open the door for me, I made a quick escape.

The afternoon sunglared outside my window on the winter day—a rare occurrence for a month which normally had little sunshine, but I kept my blinds drawn. I wasn’t in the mood for happiness or sunny rays.

I fluffed my pillow and resettled next to it, taking another sip of eggnog. It was the Christmas season, andmy family owned an orchard. It was the most alcoholic beverage I dug up in the kitchen when I escaped to my house and let myself into my room.

Gloom wrapped around my heart as I leaned against my headboard, staring up at the ceiling and counting the dots in the paint job for the hundredth time in the last twenty-four hours. Sure, my family visited at some point. They barged their way into my room to let me know I was still a winner.

It sounded painfully like when a child lost a little league game and somebody wanted to give them a trophy. They may not have been mad at me, but that was okay because I had enough anger at myself.

I lost the biggest competition of the year. My first chance to prove myself as a worthy Halliday, and I let everyone down. The entire family. Not just the ones who were living currently, but the generations who came before us. The dead ancestors in their graves. And not only them, but the future generations to follow.

They’d know me as Holly Halliday, the woman who lost the annual taste-off. More than likely, one of my brothers would write it on my gravestone.

My bedroom door pushed open again, and I groaned out loud, not wanting to hear any more of their platitudes. Hope’s body tumbled into the room. Her eyes held as much pity as my brothers’ and parents’, but at least she wasn’t judging me about my indiscretion with Will.

That’s what my brother called it—an indiscretion.

As if all I did was make bad decisions and lose competitions. When you needed a shoulder to cry on or a girl BFF in your corner, you could not substitute in a Halliday brother. They sucked at being supportive.

“What are you drinking?” Hope asked as she took a spot at the end of my bed.

I grabbed the glass of milky white liquid from my counter and took another large swallow before answering, “Eggnog.”

Hope pursed her lips. “Okay, but why? I thought you hated eggnog.”

Another one of my huge failings, being a Halliday who didn’t like eggnog. Maybe I was adopted. My genes were obviously defective.

“I’m trying to get drunk so I can forget my colossal waste of a life.”

Hale told me I was being dramatic, but he got upset when his favorite football team lost. One year he refused to shave because he had a stupid belief his scruffy facial hair helped the team win. I swore he cried for a week when Tom Brady switched teams, so the man didn’t really have anything to come at me with.

Hope patted my leg. “You might have to drink a lot more than that. It doesn’t have alcohol in it this year.”

“Great.” I slammed the glass back on my nightstand. I’d given myself an upset stomach and wouldn’t even get drunk. Wonderful. I thought it was taking a long time, and now I spent the morning drinking crap for absolutely no reason. See? Seriously, a disappointment.

---