Better Not Pout (Mistletoe Falls #1)

Chapter 1

one

. . .

Rosalie

Santa, Baby

“Hellllooooooo, sexy Santa.”

My brow pulls together as I squint down at Kennedy’s phone in my hand, the glowing screen slightly blurry.

Likely from a mixture of both the fact that my best friend showed up at the front door of my apartment with a fantastic red wine for our girls’ night and that I’m wearing my glasses instead of contacts.

The lenses are so ridiculously thick they’re basically bifocals.

Poor-vision girls unite.

“Rosalie Sullivan, that is not sexy! My God. Ew.” She groans from her spot in the corner of my couch, a fluffy blanket tucked over her legs, the remaining wine in her glass sloshing around as she pushes off the cushions and ambles over to where I’m sitting.

“Who sends unsolicited nudes to a girl they met once at a Trader freakin’ Joe’s? ”

I lift a shoulder. “Happy Holidays, I guess? I mean, honestly though, I’m kind of impressed at his dedication to the cause. He even put a little Santa hat on the tip of his di—”

Suddenly, her free hand shoots up, clamping over my mouth and cutting my words off, as she stares down at me with wide eyes. “Please, it’s bad enough that it’s going to be burned into my mind for… forever. We do not need to discuss the painful details out loud.”

I’m still giggling behind her hand, and when it drops from my mouth, the first words that spill out are “Oooookay, but he is hot. I think? I can’t tell if he’s actually hot or if it’s the wine that’s making him hot.

Hence, the reason that no rash decisions should ever be made during girls’ night.

He could be the one, Ken. His execution could just use a little… work?”

“A little? That’s absolutely the wine talking right now.

You have lost your mind,” she scoffs, plopping back down onto the cushion beside me, draining the last of her wine.

Penny, my long-haired mini dachshund and built-in bestie, lifts her head from the couch to look at Kennedy—a look that says, Why are you interrupting my nap—then promptly lays her head down and goes right back to sleep.

“This guy could literally not be any further from my type, and this just goes to show how exhausting it is to be in the dating world in today’s day and age.

It’s truly a tragedy. God, Rosalie, what happened to real romance?

Guys who woo you and sweep you off your feet? ”

I wouldn’t know because I’ve never really experienced that.

Romance. Someone sweeping me off my feet, making my heart race, making me feel a flutter of butterflies in my stomach.

If I’m being honest, I’m not even sure it exists.

I’ve only had a handful of relationships. The longest being with my ex Bradley, and after the way we ended things, I have absolutely zero desire to have a repeat.

He broke up with me after getting a job at his dream firm in Los Angeles and basically said that he was only with me because it was convenient.

Comfortable. I was his fallback. His constant comments about my body were damaging in and of themselves, and then he dropped that bombshell on me as a parting goodbye.

Talk about a fracture to my already fragile confidence. I always thought that he was far too hot to be with a girl like me, something that remained constant in the back of my mind for the entirety of our relationship.

So, I do my best to not think about Bradley or what he’s doing. The last time I allowed myself to look at his social media, I saw that he’s dating some influencer who is so gorgeous that it makes me feel even more terrible about myself.

“But here I am, the hopeless romantic per usual, believing that somewhere out there, there’s a fairy-tale love story waiting for me,” Kennedy adds with a sigh when I don’t answer her rhetorical question, petting Penny’s head and twirling the little bows tied along her cream-colored ears.

Pretty deep red, velvet Christmas ones, of course.

I’m not anti-love or anti-relationship per se. I’m just far more… realistic than my best friend, who perpetually lives with her head in the clouds. I’m firmly planted on the ground and much more skeptical. Especially when it comes to men.

“I think you’ve been reading too many of your romance books, babe.” I lift my brows, waggling them suggestively, and her eyes roll. It’s not that I think love isn’t real, but maybe it’s just not as whimsical as it seems between the pages of a book about a man, written by a woman.

For a second, she’s quiet, chewing the tip of her fingernail, something she does when she’s lost in thought.

A habit I’m not sure she even realizes she has but, of course, that I notice.

We’ve been best friends, completely inseparable, since we were in elementary school, and there’s no one that I know better than Kennedy Elizabeth Belmont.

Sometimes, I think I probably know her better than she even knows herself.

Which is why I’m always the voice of reason in our friendship.

A sigh tumbles past her lips as her gaze connects with mine. “Maybe. But I’m going to hold on to hope that my Prince Charming is out there, and it’s absolutely, without a doubt, not… this guy.”

My nose scrunches. “Yeah, I think I have to agree on this one. I was trying to be, I don’t know, positive? But the fake beard is a liiiiiittle too much.”

“For sure, it’s just the beard. Absolutely has nothing to do with him tainting Santa Claus with his ridiculous wiener pic?”

A laugh erupts out of me before I can even stop it, and then we’re both laughing so hard that tears coat our cheeks, cuddled in a heap on my old, comfy couch, surrounded by the half-hung Christmas decorations that I attempted to put up earlier in the day.

I lift a finger and point to the nutcracker on my mantle. “Honestly, the nose on that nutcracker kind of looks like his dick.”

“Oh my God, would you please, for the love of Christmas, stop!” Kennedy screeches. “I cannot handle it.” She taps away at her phone, then tosses it onto the couch. “I blocked him. It’s done. We’re never talking about it ever again.”

“Dang. I was kind of interested to see what he’d come up with for New Year’s.”

Would there be fireworks… on his firework? Sounds dangerous.

“I don’t even want to know where your brain is going right now. I can practically see it spinning. Keep me far, far away from it. Did Grams and Gramps finish getting all the decorations up?” she says, changing the subject.

My mind drifts to the twelve-hour days that I’ve been putting in at work, trying to make sure everything’s ready for the holiday season, which is now officially in full swing.

Long hours during the holidays, specifically Christmastime, which is by far our most busy time of the year, come with the territory when your family owns a candy store. Not just any candy store, but one where we still make ninety percent of the candy in store.

It’s what makes us unique in a sea of chain stores.

Sweet Sullivan’s has been my entire life for as long as I can remember.

It’s been in our family for three generations, and one day, it’ll be mine.

My grandparents adopted me when I was four, after my parents passed away in a boating accident, and all of my favorite childhood memories take place inside Sweet Sullivan’s walls, along the old checkered tile floor that I used to play hopscotch on.

It’s the place where I feel the most at home.

Where I feel safe. Where a piece of me will always belong, no matter how old I am.

Even though I’m no longer the little girl who played hide-and-seek between the displays or a pretend game of candy shop on the vintage register before I even understood what the numbers meant, it’ll always be the magic of my soul.

It’s why I chose to live in this adorable little apartment above the store.

So truthfully, the long hours and all of the love I’ve poured into it really don’t feel like work at all.

It feels like I’m exactly where I was always meant to be. And I know how much of a blessing that is. To never feel like you’re actually working.

“Mostly,” I say as I set my now empty wineglass onto the coffee table in front of us, then turn back toward Kennedy. “There’s a few strands of garland and lights left to hang, but I can do that when I get there first thing in the morning.”

A dreamy look passes over her face, her eyes dancing with excitement. “I’m so glad it’s almost Christmas because I’ve been dreaming about Gramps’ chocolate caramel Christmas trees. Don’t ask me why the Christmas-shaped candies always taste better, but they do.”

“You and me both. He said he was going to do an early batch for us, so I’ll ask him about it tomorrow.”

My mouth waters at the thought, but I push it down because the very last thing I need is more sweets. It’s been the hardest thing in the world trying to keep myself from tasting every single thing that comes out of the kitchen.

I’m trying to lose weight… again, and the constant temptation is exhausting.

This isn’t anything new though—it’s been a pattern my entire life.

I’ve always been the “pretty, fat girl.” The one people assume eats everything in the candy store just because I work there, when that isn’t at all true.

Kids used to pick on me in elementary school and call me Round Rosalie, and it’s one of those things that I’ve never forgotten.

Hence, the constant fad dieting. The desperate need to be slimmer because of my perpetual wavering confidence.

It didn’t make things any better that my ex was constantly criticizing my body, what I ate, how I carried myself.

But now that I’m older and there are thousands of miles between us, literally and figuratively, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I feel slightly more confident with my body, more comfortable in my own skin, but admittedly, it’s still an everyday struggle.

I think it always will be, no matter how much weight I lose.

I still see the same insecure girl in the mirror who was once sixty pounds heavier, despite what the number on the scale says now.