Page 12 of Mad About Yule

“Going great. Right on track.” All virtually ninety-eight percent true. Mostly.

“That festival must be a pretty big undertaking.” She sounds like she’s at the top of a high dive looking down—a little bit excited, a little bit uneasy.

“It is, but I’ve got it all under control.” Again…mostly.

“Is all the advertising taken care of? Do you need any help getting the word out? What does your social media plan look like?”

I sigh right into the phone so she can’t miss it. “Mom put you up to this, didn’t she?”

“What? No. I’m asking because Icare.”

Her Broadway play audition isn’t going so hot.

“You’re a terrible actress. You need to learn not to oversell it.”

Now she sighs, managing to sound more put out than I am. “Fine. Mom hinted I should see if I can help you out. Don’t you need a team working with you?”

Teamgets me thinking about Griffin, and his apparent aversion to the word. Most of my volunteers want everything spelled out for them, but he waltzed in ready to take over. I resent his attitude…and that all his suggestions were spot-on. Which I will be taking with me to the grave.

“I’m not doing everything by myself. I’ve delegated a bunch of tasks—you know what, I’m not doing this. If Mom wants to know about the festival, she can come straight to me.” She’s already abused that privilege, but she doesn’t need to send Lila to check in on me, too.

“She’s just trying to look out for you. First you leave your job in Portland, then you startand quitdoing real estate with her, then you open this pop-up store—”

“It’s not a pop-up.” True, The Painted Daisy is roughly the size of an average SUV, but I run it year-round. Not the same.

“And now the Christmas festival. I don’t understand why you didn’t ask me to help you in the first place. I put together big, successful events all the time, and you never have.”

Harsh. True, but still harsh. Kind of a microcosm of our whole relationship right there.

“You don’t want to put your job on hold and take vacation time for this.” Also, it won’t count asmywin if I have to tag Lila in. “I’m sure you’re busy with all the wedding planning too.”

“Yeah.” Her voice goes so soft I barely hear it. “There’s plenty of that.”

“Did you figure out a date yet?” My mother lost her mind with pride when Joshua Brandt III proposed over the summer—she would have shouted it from the rooftops if Lila and Josh had set a firm date. Engaged, working PR for her fiancé’s uber-successful tech firm in Seattle,anda minor Instagram celebrity, Lila is basically the living embodiment of everything our mother has ever dreamed for us.

I flatten out my bitterness and fold it up into an origami box. Lila works hard for what she has, and I’m proud of her. I just don’t love having her successes shoved in front of my face all the time in Mom’s eternal hopes I’ll achieve the same things.

“We haven’t decided yet. You know how it is.”

“I really don’t.” Lila found her Price Charming, but I haven’t found mine, despite Mom’s aggressive attempts to help me with that.

“Have you heard anything from Mark?”

I shudder at the mention of his name. “No, and I don’t expect to.”

“It was a simple misunderstanding.”

“Only from Mom’s perspective.” Lila has been happily paired up for years. She can’t possibly understand the humiliation of having Mom mow down my dating life with her overzealousness. Lesson learned: I haven’t told our mother a thing about my love life since.

Not that I’ve had anything to relate. The point remains—my dating life will never be up for public consumption again.

“If you really like him, you could reach out. Let him know you’re still interested.”

Lila just doesn’t understand failure. She has about as much experience with that word as Griffin has with humility.

“No way. What would I say? ‘Hey, sorry I came across like a psycho last summer. Want to give it another try?’”

“Maybe don’t use those exact words.”

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