Chapter 19 Misty
MISTY
“You have to sleep with him.” Sienna claps her hands at me.
Cocoa is roused from her cheese-and-cookies-induced slumber, snorting awake.
“It’s not just about you anymore. Think about me. I can’t go through this again—watching you fall to pieces because Brielle the bitch stole another guy you’re in love with.”
“I’m not in love with Talbot.” I look up from my tearstained pillow. “I don’t care if she steals him; they deserve each other.”
“That’s the low self-esteem and even lower blood sugar talking.” Sienna is sitting on the window seat, splitting a bottle of glühwein with me.
“Ugh.” I fumble for my phone. “I need to try to find a caterer. None of them are able to do Christmas.”
“Gee, I wonder why. Probably because they all have boundaries.”
“I’m trying,” I gasp. “I’m trying not to be in love with him.”
“A nice big fat dick might help with that. And can we please burn the spank bank?”
“Can we please stop calling it that? Gosh, I cannot believe Talbot saw it.”
“Another reason to get rid of it. No one thinks it’s healthy, not even the guy who literally kills people for a living.”
“I think he just does it for spare cash.”
My phone beeps. It’s another caterer telling me very politely that I’m delusional and they’re not going to cater Brielle’s Christmas wedding.
“I’m just going to have to cook the food myself.”
“Or the cheaters could starve.”
“Why does he even want to move this wedding up, anyway? Austen loves her, and he wants to be with her forever.” I fish a piece of peppermint bark out of the tin on my nightstand, wash it down with more glühwein, grab an emergency marshmallow from my stash, and toss one to Cocoa.
“Austen’s a selfish asshole. He has to have some reason for it. Some ulterior motive. He’s not Talbot; he’s not that smart.” Sienna fishes under the bed for the love box.
“I’m not ready!” I pull a pillow over my face.
“You said you were trying to get over him. Let’s take it out to the woods and burn it for real this time. We can combo the bonfire with a little voodoo-doll burning for Brielle, especially since she’s after Talbot.”
“Maybe he can just have her.” I groan and roll over on my bed. “My heart’s already breaking for Austen. I can’t be upset about Talbot. I don’t have the emotional capacity.”
“Talbot’s going to sleep with her if you don’t, and then you will literally be paying for your sister to have amazing sex instead of you. Put up a little bit of a fight.”
“I don’t even like him.”
“You don’t have to like him to sleep with him.”
“Is it a red flag that it feels like I can’t sleep with him, like I’m cheating on Austen?” The room is spinning. I always forget how strong that glühwein is.
“That’s it. We’re going,” Sienna slurs.
“Where?”
“The woods. We’re burning this box and doing shots. Then we’re going to do another demonstration of how to put on a condom, and you’re going to fuck the last of Austen out of your vajayjay.”
“Are you even wearing a bra?”
“I’d rather be warm than cute.” I slump down in the back seat.
“What if you run into a hot guy?” Granny Keagan hollers above the hip-hop Christmas music blaring on the radio.
“I don’t want to be with anyone who’s wandering out in the woods at night.”
“Lower your standards!” she calls.
“Just because you’re sleeping with the health inspector doesn’t mean Misty’s fallen that low,” Sienna says.
“She needs to sleep with the guy who supplies our clams. He charges an arm and a leg.”
“Probably for the best—I forgot the condoms.” Sienna takes a swig from the bottle and passes it to me.
“Now, this is a bachelorette party,” Grandma says. “Not whatever basic-beige-bitch bachelorette party you’re planning for Brielle.”
“It’s not a bachelorette party.”
Granny Keagan turns around to talk to us. “I thought you were getting married to Talbot? Austen was complaining to Spam and Eggs about it.”
We scream as she narrowly misses an inflatable yard ornament.
“You young people are weak. Back in my day, cars didn’t even have seat belts, let alone airbags.”
My stomach turns. “I need a barf bag.”
The car careens up the icy road. Cocoa slides across the seat with a whine.
“I had too much peppermint bark.” I clap my hands to my mouth.
The Cadillac screeches to a halt, and I stagger out, gulping in the cool air, hands on my knees.
The park is up on the hill and backs up to the Maplewood Falls reserve with its miles of trails that lead up to the falls. In the silence of the night, I can just make out the faint rushing noise of the falls and the creaking of the ice as they slowly begin to freeze.
Sienna pops the trunk.
“We should have dressed up a sex doll in Austen’s clothes.” Granny Keagan fishes out a bottle of whiskey from her enormous bag. “Misty could have performed some sort of last sexual rite on it, reclaimed her virginity, then been all ready to move on to becoming a fully realized sexual being.”
“If time travel is ever invented, remind me never to go back to the seventies.” I hoist the love box out of the trunk then brush my hand over the photos of Austen I shellacked all over the box.
There’s Austen in his hockey gear, there’s Austen at the West household for dinner, there’s Austen when we announced that we’d decided to get married.
Or rather, when I’d begged and badgered Austen to propose to me and he’d begrudgingly told me fine, he’d get me a ring.
“Do you think he ever really loved me?”
“If your threshold for love is a creepy stalker box, then probably not.” Flashlight in her mouth, Sienna picks up a red container of gasoline out of the trunk along with a lighter.
As I follow her to the grill area, I have this feeling like I’m being watched, like there’s something malevolent in the dark woods.
It’s guilt, is what it is.
I hoist the box onto one of the concrete and steel grills in the park, and I dust off the snow. “Maybe I shouldn’t do this over Christmas. You know, the holidays make people crazy. You shouldn’t make big decisions over the holidays.”
“Let’s channel Marie Kondo and thank this box for feeding our delusions for not just the past year but a significant portion of your teenage and young adult life.” Sienna huffs.
I pull out my treasures—the broken hockey laces from his last playoff series, the dirty towel he tossed me when I was fifteen.
Sure, he probably meant to toss it to the laundry bin, but same difference.
I kiss the little glass hockey ornament I spent all my Christmas money on one year because it reminded me of him.
“I will help you with Brielle’s surprise wedding if you burn it already,” she says.
None of the things in the box are presents or gifts that Austen carefully selected and gave me. The only thing from him was the engagement ring around my neck. “Oh my god. It’s the collection of a madwoman,” I whimper. “Talbot is right. I have low self-esteem.” I clutch my chest.
“I am a basket case. Did I just make this whole thing up? Was it always a one-sided relationship?” I gulp down the cold air, suddenly feeling like I can’t breathe.
“No. He has to have cared about me a little bit, right? We’d be married if it wasn’t for Brielle.
This was always Brielle’s fault, because she gets everything she wants.
Everyone loves her, including Talbot, and no one loves me.
Now I’m going to be all alone,” I blubber.
“We should have brought the leftover Christmas cookies.” Sienna tips the last of the glühwein into my mouth. “You need butter and sugar. Granny Keagan, hit me up with some of that whiskey.”
I sob over the box.
“You’re not alone yet, but you will be if you don’t get rid of this box. It’s a red flag. You’re even going to send that cold-blooded hitman packing.”
“Sienna, shhh!”
It’s too late.
Granny Keagan’s eyes bug out, then a grin splits her face.
“Hitman? That’s my granddaughter!” Cackling, she slaps her thigh.
“That’s what I’m talking about! This is a boss babe right here.
Did I ever tell you that back in the 80s, I got arrested for killing your grandfather?
They had to let me go on account of they didn’t have any evidence it was me, but—” She taps the side of her head. “I knew you were my favorite.”
“This is a fucking disaster,” I mumble. “Where’s that whiskey?”
“So, when’s the final showdown?” She shadowboxes. “I hope your assassin is gonna wait to put a cap in his ass after the big hockey match against New Jersey. I’ve got money on that game.”
“He’s not killing Austen, Granny Keagan.”
“What!? He’s a two-for-one deal. He fucks, and he fights. You rented the high-end model.”
“Gran.” I press my hands together. “Please. Do not tell my mom, okay?”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Sienna warns.
“Right. If I tip the authorities off, he can’t go through with it.”
“That’s not—” I wipe a hand over my face. “You know what? Sure. Yeah, we want this on the down-low.”
Granny Keagan beats her chest and makes a gang sign. “I gotchu, fam. Cheaters get stitches.”
Sienna is now dumping gasoline on the love box. The fumes are making me woozy, especially with the added sage. “Chase away the bad spirits.”
Cocoa sneezes from the fumes.
Granny Keagan hums a church hymn.
Cocoa looks on apprehensively. I fix her hat. I need to knit her a new one.
“Dear St. Nick, we are gathered here this fourteenth night before Christmas to say goodbye,” Sienna prays. “We are saying goodbye to Misty’s dreams, we are saying goodbye to Misty’s delusions, and most importantly, we are saying goodbye to Misty’s spank-bank material.”
“Don’t call it that.”
“I mean, I can’t stand Austen, but that’s not half bad, what he’s packing.” Granny Keagan flips through the photos.
“That’s it fully erect…”
“Good lord have mercy. Burn it, Sienna, burn it all!”
“Misty.” Sienna bows, handing me the book of matches. “Any final words?”
I look down, clasping the engagement ring I still have around my neck. We’re not completely saying goodbye, I assure myself.
“Austen.” I sniffle. The gasoline is really making my eyes burn.
“Austen.” I look down the hill to Ryan’s mansion, where my ex is holed up with Brielle, planning their perfect life.
“I’ll never love anyone as much as you. I wanted the family.
I wanted the perfect Christmas morning. I wanted the love. I wish it had ended differently.”
“I need more anger from you!” Sienna shouts. “Curse his entire family.”
Granny Keagan takes Sienna’s elbow and pulls her back. “She has to do this on her own. There comes a point in every woman’s life when she must stand alone in the woods and burn her ex’s shit. This time for Misty is now.”
“This isn’t goodbye. Our love is just evolving to a more platonic brotherly-sisterly kind of love.” I sniffle.
It could be all the questionable alcohol, but it almost sounds like in the woods, someone mutters, “This fucking chick.”
Cocoa starts to wander off toward the trees.
“This is healthy for me and for you.” I wipe my nose. “I’m ready to move to the next stage in my life and hopefully find the man of my dreams and start a family.”
“A rich man, Santa, if you please!” Sienna hollers.
“With a big dick,” Granny Keagan adds.
My hands tremble as I fumble with the matches. The winter wind picks up, feeling like fingers tugging at me. “I’m moving on with my life. I’m moving past Austen. I am healing.”
The first match breaks. I place the second against the strike…
“Misty, no!” A huge shadow flies out of the woods right as I strike the match.
I scream as an enormous man tackles me. We go down into the snow, and he curls his huge body around me.
For a split second, I think it’s Austen, that he’s somehow found out that I was burning our love and had come to save me, save us…
Until a fireball the size of a house erupts, lighting up the night and reflecting in ghostly pale-silver eyes.
“Do you have some sort of a death wish, Gumdrop?” Talbot demands, half crouched over me. He peers at me as I blink up at him, the bright light of the fire still leaving dazzles in my eyes.
“What are you doing here? Are you following me?” I slap at him. “Stalker!”
“You’re lucky I was here.” He pushes me back into the snow. “You could have died, Misty.”
He looks… angry? He’s not concerned about me, is he? Surely not.
“You don’t even like me.” I push off Cocoa, who’s licking the chocolate off my mouth. “Besides, yesterday I made hot chocolate cookies without weighing the ingredients. I like to live life on the edge.”
Talbot grabs my arm, swinging me upright. I dust myself off.
“All you did was interrupt my girl-power moment.”
“Yeah, men are always ruining everything,” Sienna slurs, swaying and almost dropping the whiskey bottle.
“You’re both drunk as shit, and there’s gasoline everywhere.” Talbot curses. “How is this any better than having me off your ex?”
The snow around the grill has melted, and the last tufts of dead grass that survived the winter are flaming cheerfully away. The love box is smoldering ash.
“It’s a sign! The universe sent you a sign!” Granny Keagan whoops, raising her arms to the snowy sky. “Dammit, Sienna, why are you so forgetful? She needs those condoms.”
“I hope you’re not meeting Austen out here.” Talbot scowls and adjusts his black skullcap. The mist of his breath swirls around him. His face is darkened, gray and dark-green paint all over it. With the humongous rifle on his back, he looks like something out of a spy thriller.
Wait… a gun?
I peer down the hill to the house, Ryan’s house—and Austen—then back to Talbot.
“You were here to kill him.” I throw myself at the hitman, shoving him. Talbot barely even moves. “Don’t hurt him. I told you not to.”
“Gumdrop…”
“I told you to leave him alone!” I scream at him.
“Misty, now you need to calm down. This man’s out here doing god’s work. Leave him be,” Granny Keagan scolds. “She’s her own worst enemy.”
“I don’t think your ritual worked, ladies.”
“It’s because she hasn’t had sex with you yet.” Sienna giggles.
“Out here? In the cold? No offense, Gumdrop, but you smell like a gas station.”
“Oh my god, I think I’m going to be sick.” I sit down on the concrete gazebo steps.
“Yeah, definitely don’t want to hit that tonight.” Talbot pulls the rifle over his shoulder.
“You think you can make that shot?” Granny Keagan is excited.
“No shots.”
“Really? Because I’ve got some eggnog-flavored vodka in the car.”
My head sinks between my knees, and I groan.
Talbot taps the scope on the rifle and smirks. “Actually, I was kind of hoping to get a glimpse of you touching yourself in bed. Maybe not wearing the Snoopy Christmas T-shirt with the rip in the armpit, but honestly, I’m not that picky.”